Coming out to family – the Kobayashi Maru for transsexuals

Tags

acceptance, allies, beliefs, children, coming out, Counselor, culture, death, dying, Enterprise, family, family member, friends, GoFundMe, hate, Helen Boyd, Holy Spirit, indignity, James T Kirk, Jennifer Gable, Kobayashi Maru, Leslie Fabian, MTF, no-win scenario, parents, rejection, religion, siblings, spouse, Star Fleet Academy, Star Trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, strategy, support, TDOR, therapist, Transgender, Transition, Transsexual, vulnerable, Wife

I am old enough to remember when the original three seasons of Star Trek were on television in the 1960’s.  The hard core following of fans (Trekkies) eventually led to movies featuring the original cast, a number of new television series that were sequels plus one prequel, and more recently an alternate reality Star Trek.  It has been an impressive run for the franchise.

The Kobayashi Maru test was not introduced until the movie “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”.  But it has been revisited a number of times since then in Star Trek literature, video games and even the alternate reality.

In brief, this test was designed by Star Fleet Academy to see how their cadets would react to a “no-win” scenario.  There was not supposed to be any way to pass the test in the sense of achieving both of the desired outcomes (rescuing a civilian ship in distress in the neutral zone and preserving the Enterprise and the lives of the crew members).

Eventually, it is learned during Wrath of Khan that Kirk was the only person in Star Fleet Academy history to pass the test.  He did so by secretly reprogramming the computer prior to taking the test.  Rather than being punished for cheating, he received a commendation for original thinking.  However, he is accused at a later date of having cheated death rather than facing it.

Whether it is large or small, most of us have a family.  For those of us who are transsexual, intertwined in making the decision to transition is deciding whether to tell our family members.  Associated with the decision to come out is the expectation of rejection.

This is the source of Kobayashi Maru for us: that sense that we are in a no-win situation when we come out to family members.  We are faced with not two but three choices that appear to be less than satisfactory: tell our family and be rejected; quietly leave our family so they feel rejected and don’t know why it happened; grit our teeth and suffer in silence as we hide our secret behind a mask as we deny ourselves and fend off transitioning.

Like the Kobayashi Maru, each of these choices carries with it a sense of dying.  In the first two choices, we die to family.  The only difference is who makes the choice to pull the plug.  In the third choice we die to self, a little bit more each day.  But in some ways, the third choice is an illusion.  For most of us, our self-preservation instincts kick in and we narrow the test down to the first two choices.  We realize that it is transition or die.  But in the saddest cases of all, the trans person chooses physical death.  In tragic irony, to spare one’s family of losing the child, sibling, parent or spouse they thought they knew, they cause that very loss.

Family rejection is all too real.  This week, you may have read the story of Jennifer Gable.  At age 32, Jennifer was suddenly struck down a few weeks ago by a brain aneurysm that occurred without warning.  In life, her family rejected her.  But an even greater indignity occurred when she died.  Her birth family was able to determine how she was treated post mortem.  In her obituary, her funeral, her final resting, they denied that Jennifer ever existed.  All references to her used the male name she had rejected.  For the final viewing and burial, they had her hair cut short and had her dressed in male clothes.  In her obituary, they only referred to events that occurred during the portion of her life when she was in her male persona. They covered up anything about her female persona, even though her transition occurred when she was in her twenties.  The only pronouns used to refer to her are male.

When we observed TDOR in recent days, we were reminded anew of the indignities that are perpetrated upon those of us in the transgender community and our allies, indignities that accompany the taking of lives.  And now we read of a family so hateful toward their own daughter that they would extend those indignities into the grave.

A friend of Jennifer has created a fund to try to set things right.  For those of you who believe that this is a worthy cause to consider, here is a link to its GoFundMe page:

http://www.gofundme.com/hoboug

And if you want to read the full story on Yahoo, here is the story link:

https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/transgender-womans-family-buries-her-as-a-man-103476713077.html

So far I have painted the bleakest picture.  Not every family rejects.  In rare but joyful cases, the entire family accepts and embraces their trans family member.  Hopefully, this is happening more often, especially with the families of transgender children who come out.

Then, there are the cases where the reaction is mixed.  Some accept and some do not.  Yes, that might mean increased family tension, but at least the transitioning person has some family members to lean on.

If surveys have been done in terms of which family members are most likely to be accepting, I am not aware of them.  There’s little point in speculating on who is more likely to be accepting.  Would mother be more likely than father?  Does birth order or the gender of the siblings play a role?  Ultimately, all that matters is the individual trans person’s experience.  The sample size equals one.  How the family reacts trumps the statistics.

People generally want to protect the children.  And yet they may be the most resilient and understanding of all the family members.  Once again, which ones will accept and which ones will not is guesswork.  And it should be remembered that for all family members, the initial reaction may not be the final one.  Someone who initially rejects may come around in time.

There are also external factors that influence the decision to acceptance or rejection.  In particular, we can look to the categories of culture and religion.  Decisions are made in an atmosphere of national beliefs and sometimes regional beliefs.  They are made in light of their family’s spiritual beliefs.  And it also depends upon whether the family member tends to conform to or rebel against their family’s norms.

I have saved one family member for last.  I did so because this family member’s reaction is the most important in terms of future family stability.  I did so because this person is a strong influence on the couple’s children.  And I did so because this person is the most likely to be negative.  I am talking about the spouse.

I am not familiar with any details of an FTM transsexual who was married to a man prior to transition.  But I know a few MTF transsexuals who were married to a woman prior to transition.  I know some whose marriages ended, some whose marriages are in the process of ending, some who are keeping a marriage together during transition (for some it is a struggle), and some who are facing what might happen to their marriage once they start transition.

This is the relationship that appears to have the most difficult time surviving.  Typical comments from the wife are, “I didn’t sign up for this,” or “I’m not a lesbian,” or “I thought I married a man, not a woman.”  This is where the no-win situation is the most frequent and most obvious.  Transition and the spouse’s reaction to it often splits the marriage apart and leaves little common ground on which to stand.  It is a profoundly grievous situation.

Even sadder is when a spouse feels justified in turning the children against the transitioning parent.  Of course, we must remember that this often happens during the divorce of a cisgender couple.  But it is especially hard on a transgender parent who usually is much more vulnerable and suffering loss from many directions.

Again, I will point out that some marriages do survive, at least in some form.  Helen Boyd has written two books about her continuing marriage with a transsexual husband.  More recently, Leslie Fabian has written a book in support of her trans husband, describing the three year process of struggling to be accepting and supportive to actually falling in love all over again with the person she married.  But they are examples of the exception, not the rule.  A husband’s transition is often too much for “till death do us part” and “unconditional love” to bear.  And I even know of cases where the wife willingly admits that her husband has become a better person by casting off her mask and becoming her true self, yet still struggles to find a way to stay in the relationship.

Is there a way to implement the Kirk solution to the Kobayashi Maru for transsexuals?  If there is, I don’t see it.  When a transsexual comes out to family members, people are involved, not computers.  But I do have some suggestions.

First, make any amends with loved ones that are due them.  Do not require them to do so in return.  I am not advising you to ACT like a better person.  I am counseling you to BE a better person.  Hopefully accepting your true self will help accomplish that.  The closer you are to transition, the shorter your time to do this and some may be suspicious of your motives anyway.  But it could help with some family members.

Second, plan an overall strategy.  In what order do you tell people?  Come out first to adults who are most likely to be supportive and an ally with other family members.  Come out last to those who are either least likely to be supportive or who are most likely to gossip to other family members that you would prefer to tell yourself.  Minor children will almost certainly require some negotiation with your spouse as to how and when they will be told, including who else needs to be present.  Some may forbid the children being told at all.  This area is especially likely to require help from your therapist/counselor.

Third, tailor your approach to the individual family member.  I only needed to come out to one immediate family member, but I did also come out to a close cousin.  And while I had to tell some clients and friends in a mass mailing due to time and geography limitations, I did tell a number of others in person.  Their attention span, my awareness of their beliefs, my estimation of their likelihood of accepting and any other personal knowledge I had about them all went into tailoring my approach.  When I was less confident during my early attempts, I relied more on third party material in case I became nervous.  But I also had to guard against overconfidence when things started to go well.  And if you like to joke around, you may need to curb it somewhat, and especially be on guard against a joke which could be misinterpreted and bring out the “icky” factor in the other person.

Finally, as a Christian, I relied on the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  My own gender counselor closely questioned the decision on who to come out to first in my apartment building.  It proved to yield many benefits far beyond where I live.  Some of my TG friends initially chided me for being overly cautious and analytical.  They later acknowledged how it led to my success.  I was following the Spirit’s guidance in these matters.

On an even more personal note, the close family member I mentioned is my brother.  Because we had other differences to patch up, I just came out to him two weeks ago.  He is struggling with the news, but reports from his wife and from one of my cousins make me hopeful that things will work out.

Let brotherly love continue. – Hebrews 13:1

God bless,

Lois

Why does it come down to bathrooms?

Tags

assault, bathroom facilities, bullies, Chaz Bono, children, compromise, crime, criminal impersonation, cross dresser, dangerous, daughters, desecration, disguise, fear-mongering, female to male, hatred, Ladies Room, lifestyle, loophole, male to female, moderate point of view, Murder, physical vulnerability, protection, Public bathrooms, rape, safety, schools, TDOR, teenager, Transgender, transgender community, transgender rights legislation, Transsexual, victims, Women's bathroom

… when it should be about violence against transgender people?

I am female.  That makes me physically vulnerable.  Sometimes, I use the ladies room in public places.  It is a personal issue for me.

As a woman in the world, I need to be aware of my surroundings.  That means where I park my car, where I walk late at night and so on.  It has nothing to do with being transgender.  Having just passed year two of real life experience, the evidence is that very few people have read me.  Certainly they would not from a distance.  This is what friends tell me and this is what the reactions of strangers (or lack thereof) tell me.  So while I am aware of the excessive violence against transgender members of society, my perceived vulnerability is related to being female.

Some time ago, I had the opportunity to comment on some legislation that would give the right of people to (in laymen’s terms) use bathroom facilities based on the way they are presenting themselves at the time.  If they are dressed female, they would have the right to use female restrooms.

My initial reaction is that the legislation was too broad.  Like many women, I would not want to encounter someone the size of an NFL defensive lineman in a women’s bathroom at the mall, simply because that person decided to wear a dress and a wig and maybe smeared on some makeup.  My concern was not about a transgender person, regardless of size.  Rather it was about someone looking for a loophole in the law to prey on women in a place where we need to have an expectation of safety and privacy.

My confession is that I now realize that I was wrong to not comment favorably on the legislation.  There are a number of reasons.  From a legal standpoint, the situation I am concerned about is covered by statues that make it illegal for a person to use disguises or impersonation to facilitate the commission of a crime or the express purpose of committing a crime.  That covers assault, bank robbery, impersonating a police officer and pulling over a motorist on the highway and so on.  If we need to add a clause to transgender rights legislation that confirms that nothing in that new law will nullify the existing laws about committing a crime while in disguise, then do it.  Don’t throw out the law on that basis.

But there is a more basic reason.  It has to do with the reality of who needs to be protected.

Once again we have reached the time of year when we remember those members of the transgender community who were murdered in the past year.  Once again we will read the names of hundreds of those victims of hatred.  Once again we will be reminded that merely living life as we know ourselves to be, based on how we were born, we are thousands of times more likely to end our life at the brutal hands of another human.  Once again we will read and hear the causes: blunt force trauma to the head; multiple stab wounds; stoning; multiple gunshot wounds; dismemberment; suffocation; burning; strangulation; hanging; thrown from a vehicle and run over; pushed off a moving train; drowned.  We are told about the indignities that sometimes are added to these murders: rape, eyes removed, victims bound and gagged, victims dumped like trash.  We read the locations.  Yes many occur in foreign countries: Brazil, India, the Philippines, England and Turkey to name a few.  But this epidemic brutality has not departed from the United States.  Since our last TDOR memorial, we have notice of murders in Cleveland, Baltimore, Memphis, and Los Angeles as well as some smaller municipalities.

Nor does murder against members of the transgender community respect an age limit.  The oldest victim was 55 years old; the youngest eight.  The child’s father was the murderer.  The reason: the child refused to get a haircut, liked women’s clothing and dancing.

Now tell me, how many murders were committed in the past year by members of the transgender community against people because they were perceived to be cisgender?  How many murders were committed in the past year by men disguised as women who preyed on women in public restrooms or similar places provided for women?  Could it happen?  Of course it could.  Does it happen?  Send me the report from a legitimate news source and I will not deny it.  Would the number, if any, approach the number of transgender people murdered over the same time period?  Not even close.

So who is it that needs protection again?  With all the fear mongering and hand wringing about what someone might do or who might be going into the same bathroom at school as your daughter, there are hundreds of people who are actually being killed and even desecrated.  The outcry is against something theoretical that has not caused problems when put into practice in various locations.  But even worse, the outcry is against laws that are designed to attempt to protect people who actually are getting murdered and assaulted.

People are sensitive about what happens to children.  Let’s take a closer look at the arguments about schools.

First of all, who do your daughters need to fear?  Are there no girl bullies in your school?  Consider yourself fortunate.  Some schools even have girl gangs.  Not only are they using the same bathrooms as your daughter, they are far more likely to be predatory than a male to female transgender child.

In fact, the transgender child is more likely to be the recipient of violence than the inflictor (as we also see in the adult world).  What you are demanding is that someone else’s daughter (as her parents see her), a transgender girl, use a boy’s bathroom dressed as a girl with all her male classmates knowing that she acts like a girl.  Don’t you see how cruel that is?  Don’t you see how much more dangerous that is to this child than the hypothetical fear that you are projecting on this situation.  And I say hypothetical because in school districts were this has been tried (for example in Los Angeles for 10 years) no problems of the kind you are claiming are occurring.  But we certainly know many cases of transgender children being bullied and attacked.

Furthermore, when you say is that you don’t want a male to female transgender child in the bathroom with your daughter, you are implying (whether you know it or not) that it is acceptable to you for a female to male child to be in that bathroom with her.  Regardless of the body with which this child was born, he now thinks of himself as male, has the attitudes of a male, may be working out his body as a male.  In other words, if your daughter is in middle or high school, you are perfectly fine with your daughter being in the bathroom with someone who essentially is a teenage guy.  The only thing he can’t do is get your daughter pregnant.  But he could certainly molest her, if that is what is on his mind.

Now please understand here that I am not saying that this is what female to male transsexuals do or are inclined to do.  The point that I just made is that this is the consequence of the absurd reasoning of those who are hateful and fear-mongering.  Part of this is because the protection of daughters is a bigger flash point than the protection of sons.  Another part is that there is much more attention in society given to male to female than female to male.  When the “average” cisgender person thinks at all about the topic of transgender, my experience is that male to female is far more likely to come to mind.  If not for Chaz Bono, many cisgender people might not even know that the transgender door swings both ways.  Perhaps some people still aren’t aware of that fact.

There are some Christian parents who object to their children being exposed to this “lifestyle”.  I respect their right to their opinion.  But let me point out two things.  First, do they send their children to schools were all the students are Christian?  If they are going to public school, the answer is almost always “no”.  Therefore, they are exposing their children to others who might tell them about the beliefs of another religion, or even the belief that God doesn’t exist.  Isn’t that a far riskier exposure that might turn their children away from what they are teaching them?  In comparison, transgender is one tiny issue that is still a rare phenomenon in society.

And that is the second point.  It is a phenomenon, not a lifestyle.  Children at age young ages (often pre-school) are not choosing a lifestyle.  They are simply declaring who they are.  Those who know truly know.  No matter how much sand some people try to shovel against the tide, the growing evidence is that this is a birth condition.  Indeed, this is the way God made them (and me) and that is what you are arguing against.

Now, move ahead to the adult years.  While the exposure to an objectionable lifestyle argument generally disappears at this time, all the other arguments against transgender rights to use a bathroom commensurate with one’s presentation remain.  But the counter arguments are also the same and even stronger.  For someone presenting as a woman to use a men’s public bathroom is even more dangerous than in school.  The men are stronger and the security is laxer.  And the transman who would be required to use the woman’s bathroom is also now likely to be much stronger.  As an adult, he is far more likely to be on testosterone, not just estrogen blockers.  He is building solid muscle, especially if he is working out.  And many do work out.

Finally, let me address what appears to be a moderate point of view.  I have spoken to people who are supportive of me, but they have a problem with some legislation being too extreme.  They will support legislation that allows people who can show that they have been diagnosed as transgender to use the bathrooms of their target gender.  But they draw the line at a man being allowed to use a woman’s bathroom just because “he feels like a woman that day” (as some would make the argument).

This is pretty much where we came in.  Basically, we are addressing the fear that someone will use this as a loophole to prey on women.  But as we have seen, this is a red herring.  There are other laws that cover this situation.

But while restricting the rights to those who have been diagnosed might sound like a reasonable compromise, there are still many transgendered people who would be exposed to unnecessary danger over such a compromise.  First of all, it does not protect the male to female transsexual who has not yet been diagnosed and in some cases those who have requested a delay in that diagnosis because of family, job or insurance issues.

Second, it does not take into consideration the fact that there are some transgender people who are not transsexual in the sense that those terms have been used in recent years.  They cross dress.  They enjoy expressing their feminine side on a regular and ongoing basis.  But they still see themselves as belonging to their assigned gender.  If their birth certificate states that they are male, they see themselves as male.  But they go to galas, parties, events, clubs, support and social group meetings in female mode.  And whether they are at a public hotel or restaurant or at a rest stop, they may have the need to use the bathroom facilities.  They would face the same dangers as a diagnosed transsexual if they were to use the men’s bathroom.  The legislation needs to be crafted so that they are also protected.  Here again, they are in far greater danger in a men’s bathroom than the other women in the women’s bathroom are from the presence of that transgender woman.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. – Matthew 5:9

God bless,

Lois