This is the text version of the keynote talk I gave at TransOhio this past Saturday. From what they’ve told me, it was recorded so hopefully we’ll get a video link in not too long.I did interrupt myself so that the people listening could participate in the Nationwide Kiss-In.
First, thank you to Shane and Sarah and all the other TransOhio people who made this event happen. It is a very cool event, & I’m honored to be a part of it: thank you again for inviting me.
Recently I received a letter from a woman who had transitioned. She was married and had two young children, and was trying to figure out if there had been any way she could have transitioned where she might have left out some of the pain & confusion her wife and family had experienced. In the email she sent me, she mentioned how it’s expected for couples to try to stay together through transition, and I had to rub my eyes and read it again.
Is it?
Whether it was her perception or indicative of a larger change, it surprised me. When Betty and I first met, it was considered absolutely unlikely that any couple would make it through transition. Shoot, it was a huge toss-up that any wife could tolerate her husband crossdressing. But it was when I started writing back to this woman, to explain how that had never been the case before, that it hit me: I started my first online support group nearly 10 years ago – 10 years this coming February, actually. That’s like 50 in trans years, right? In large part I founded it – and this might make some of you laugh – because I wasn’t angry or sad enough to fit in with the culture of the existing partners’ groups. I was weird for being supportive, and occasionally felt like I was a minority of one. I wasn’t, of course – people who are good with the whole thing don’t seek out support groups – but it was still rare, then, to find anyone who was just looking for community, for other couples in similar situations, to share notes and stories and have someone to be “out” about their partners’ transness with. So to hear, 9 short years later, that now it’s assumed that a couple will stay together, or at least try like hell to do so, shocked me.
Continue reading “TransOhio Keynote: The Metamorphosis of Us”