To the Lady Minna

I got the news this past weekend that one of the SOs (half of one of the couples) I interviewed for the book passed away this past Sunday, May 15th, after two years of battling breast cancer. She was 40 years old, only, and is survived by her husband (Heather) and two daughters.
I’ve been thinking and mourning for Minna, in some obvious ways, like just sitting here crying, reading old emails from/to her, but also in maybe atypical ways: by toasting her at our birthday party Friday night.
Minna was a gem. She was enthusiastic and willing to help with the book, and did her own kind of outreach – within the BDSM scene she & Heather belonged to.
So I thought, in her memory, I’d reprint her words here, because no one could explain Minna – except maybe herself.
I wish you could walk a mile in my shoes. See what I see the way I see it. See what I know and experience it. Taste what I taste and see how I enjoy it. My life is not the same as yours. My husband is a crossdresser. I am a dominantrix. I am a mother, a wife, a lover and a sadist. I am Republican. I am Wiccan. I am not the average person and thank the Goddess I am not.
You walk by me everyday and do not know any of this. I don’t stand out in a crowd. Well, yes I suppose my bright red hair does and the way I walk does, but I don’t look threatening. I look like an average woman with 2 kids.
You do not know what my double life entails. The frustration of not being able to let my husband walk out of our house dressed because we are a military family on a military post and that’s grounds for him being discharged from the service to his country that he loves. My kids can’t know about dad because my son is from a previous marriage and my ex-husband would take him from me in an instant if he knew.
I worry every time my husband goes out dressed without me that he will be hurt. It’s why I usually don’t allow it. Not because I don’t trust him, but because I don’t trust you.
I hear what others think about crossdressing and I really want to take interviewers like Jerry Springer out back and get a switch. The average crossdresser is not the one you see on TV talk shows. They are normal men and women who have a need to dress in the clothing of another gender.
My husband is not a child molester, a rapist, or some sick perverse serial killer. He isn’t morally loose and sleeping around with everyone and everything. He is a man whose internal gender does not match his external gender totally. That is the definition of a Transsexual, but he doesn’t want to be a woman full time either. It’s more complex than him just wanting to be a woman; he wants to be a man too. It’s not some sexual fetish either; he doesn’t need to dress in order to get sexually aroused.
I wish you could walk a mile in my shoes. In my friends’ shoes. In my husband’s shoes. See what we go through every day.
Maybe you’d be a bit more tolerant of those different than yourself.