Transgender Friends - Part 2

I’m continuing my discussion (posted two days ago) of my first significant experience with a transgender person, a friend I met at work. One thing I was exposed to early in this relationship was that my friend was the subject of ridicule and harassment. So I had to think about that, what it would be like to be vulnerable to this type of treatment, and I couldn’t imagine how awful it must be. My friend had to deal with peoples’ looks. She had to deal particularly with bathroom harassment. Many women did not want to be in the ladies’ room with someone who still had a penis underneath the clothing. Women would leave the restroom when she walked in, and women would giggle outside the ladies’ room while she was in there.

Another thing to think about is what it must be like to suddenly be living as the gender opposite to the way you lived up until that time. I couldn’t imagine how strange, awkward, exciting—everything it must be to my friend. Most strangers had no idea that my friend had ever been male and was actually still male physically underneath the clothing. Men would flirt with her, thinking she was a genetic female, and she had no experience with this. Women, assuming she was a genetic female, would make remarks you’d only make to another woman—about the menstrual cycle and childbirth, for example, although there are probably a million examples that could be cited. I had a lot of problems with my period, PMS, etc. at that time, and I’d go on and on in front of her, things I would never say to a male. Then I’d think about it later and wonder how she took this, whether I was making her uncomfortable. I’m sure women who did not know would ask her things like if she had trouble with her period, how heavy was her flow, did she have PMS, had she ever been pregnant. I wondered how she handled this. People who did not know probably asked her things about her childhood. Maybe they’d even ask for pictures of her as a child. If she wasn’t out to them, how would she answer? Did women ask at what age she’d gotten her period? Did women ask her how she felt when her breasts were too big for 5th grade but she was too young to wear a bra?

This leads to another thing to think about along these lines. What must it be like for my friend to finally, for the first time in her life, live physically in the same gender she has always felt she is in her mind? I couldn’t even imagine what this might be like. I think of things that I’ve experienced: the first time in my life the Red Sox were World Champions; the first time I went to a gay pride parade with thousands of other people who felt people should be allowed to love someone of the same sex; the first time I chanted in Sanskrit at a Muktananda Center, feeling so familiar, feeling maybe there were past lives; knowing I’d done this before; the first time I entered Quebec and could finally speak French in America. But none of these things could compare with what my friend was experiencing!

To be continued…