This was written by a partner who calls herself Elf, who wrote it for a trans person who calls herself Elle, “when she got so disoriented & disgusted by the face she sees in the mirror every day that she was going to kill herself. She told me, bitterly, that not having the courage to do so was a sign that she really was a girl.”
We both thought it might be useful and healing to many others of you out there.
My beloved types, How can you look in my face and see L?
She types, I looked in the mirror. I was filled with disgust. I almost threw up.
My beloved was assigned at birth, and lives her life now, as a male.
He has a wife and grown children. His hair’s receding. He looks like, and is, a slim nervous man who’s done physical work much of his life.
L came into my life as a woman in a story. My beloved emailed her to me. After a week he typed, I could be L. Then, later, Could anyone love me if I was L? Could I be your wife if I turned into L?
I am trying to understand what it means to be a woman.
If you look at me, you will probably see a skinny woman of 40 with a fuzzy gray topknot. If you look at my beloved, you will most likely see a wiry man of 55 with a round small belly and neatly-trimmed dusky black hair.
Then again, I don’t know you. You may see something completely different.
Perspective is everything.
I look at a sheaf of XML printout. I see 300 pages of wasted paper.
I look again. I see a data stream.
I focus. I dig in deep.
I see an audit trail that could rock your world.
I spin around in my swivel chair.
My beloved takes the audit log and turns pale.
L could get my beloved fired.
L could get him divorced. He might never see his granddaughter again.
If he was a poor guy, in a rough hood – and he has lived as a poor guy, in a rough hood – L could get him killed.
Being a woman is something that can get you slapped, punched, spit on, killed.
Not me, though, I think. I’m not like L. I’m an ordinary-looking middle-aged lady. I’m safe.
I finish the last sentence and typing it in, late at night, I remember that I’ve been thrown, slapped, and raped. Why do I forget these things?
And who would choose to be a woman?
L takes the risk. Continue reading “Out of Love”
Here’s a nice piece by Radiolab on Alan Turing, who was convicted of “Gross Indecency” in England. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what Oscar Wilde was convicted of, both of them a result of the Labouchere Amendment which was part of the Criminal Law Amendment of 1885.