When i was a teenager back in the early 00s, i went to a trans support group. It largely consisted of older transitioners, age 50+, who were not living good lives, through no fault of their own. But it was a very dark experience for me. I expected that my life would play out like theirs, and i would join the 41% club. I never thought that I’d get to experience just being a regular girl, and that part still seems surreal a decade later.
Older cis/het here. This was striking to me, because there has really been a change in my anecdotal experience interacting with trans people. The ones I met (usually through work) early on, especially in the 90s and early oughts were . . . difficult to be around. Not because I had anything against them, nor even because they wanted to be – rather, they were doing everything in their power to fit in, to be “normal”, even just to “pass” if you want to use that word. But it was just difficult, because (I think) they never knew when they were going to be attacked, including by people who acted friendly, so there was a lot of aggression in situations that didn’t necessarily call for it, and emotions injected into situations that were, for others, devoid of emotional content altogether. It was just hard all around.
At the time, they were not even remotely seen as normal by society. And it was sad, because they were regular people, just like everyone else, once the armor was dropped and work started. (One of them I knew was absolutely brilliant: she saw the potential for the web back when the web was still text only.) But looking back, and older now myself, it seems that they had gone through SO MUCH SHIT at every level of their lives, shit that was STILL going on, everything from familial rejection to mere strangers being assholes, that I think they were just through their individual stores of natural resilience. I think they couldn’t readily navigate normal “unloaded” civilian interactions because their entire lives had been turned into a battlefield by any passing asshole who wanted to make it one, and at the time, there was NO end in sight.
A lot of that has changed today. And at the very least, one of the best things that has happened is the normalization of trans people as human beings in the media and entertainment. Elliott Page, for example: that show carried on without a blink. That’s possible now. It absolutely was not back then. And even just speaking for myself, back then I’d have noticed if someone was trans or seemed so. Now I don’t even care anymore: you’re just you, and I’m just me. And that’s how it should be, IMO.
It is absolutely horrible that you even have to fight the battles that you do, and I am frightened for you in terms of the way cruelty and even the wish of extermination is being normalized, not just toward you but all LGBTQIA+ and anyone quantitatively “different” on sight. But I wrote all of that to say this:
Today is a different day, even with all the hate. Like it or not, even the people that use their voices to openly wish you harm are validating your existence and your humanity even against their own will. Back then, it was a low-level kind of simmering dislike and fear of “the other,” but now there are a great many cis/hets like myself who are very firmly in your camp simply because we hate hatred, and we’ve been forced to take a stand because the trans discussion is everywhere now. And that’s in your favor.
You don’t have older role models because they all lived in a hell of isolation, ridicule, and societal rejection that is impossible to even describe now. They didn’t have anything left to be nice or heroic people with, because it was already all used up by the time you met them. But that’s not the case anymore. I was a young adult when the Renée Richards thing came out, and I don’t even want to tell you what a common trope that was at the time; but today you’re not one in a hundred million, not even one in a million, and all of those trans people have helped to normalize the whole thing on a societal level.
Back then, you could fully expect to hear ongoing wisecracks on Johnny Carson about it; today no one in the mainstream media will risk their employment that way. That’s how much it has changed. Today, you have social media; back then it was television and the newspaper, and if the tv laughed at someone or something then it was okay for you to laugh too – and people did, openly and repeatedly, ad nauseam. Today, you might get a laugh – OR you might get properly told off by people that recognize causeless hatred for what it is.
For as much shit as you have gone through and are going through now, I have to say you literally have a normalcy and even a basic acceptance today that the transpeople before you knew nothing of.
From the outside looking in, I personally think you’ll be the hero you were looking for back then. Too late for yourself but in time for those behind you. Society has changed, and if, IF we can avoid the descent into authoritarianism that makes your very existence a political football, there will be a day when you are just as “normal” and accepted as anyone else. That’s where we were headed before Trump, anyway.
My apologies if I have offended in any way; I just wanted to share with you how it was back in the days when you were looking for a hero and there were none to be found; older role models that weren’t models of anything but sadness after a life full of rejection. There were reasons, many of which have changed, many of which you and yours are changing even now. Maybe it will round out the understanding of what they went through a little bit better for you.
Older cis/het here. This was striking to me, because there has really been a change in my anecdotal experience interacting with trans people. The ones I met (usually through work) early on, especially in the 90s and early oughts were . . . difficult to be around. Not because I had anything against them, nor even because they wanted to be – rather, they were doing everything in their power to fit in, to be “normal”, even just to “pass” if you want to use that word. But it was just difficult, because (I think) they never knew when they were going to be attacked, including by people who acted friendly, so there was a lot of aggression in situations that didn’t necessarily call for it, and emotions injected into situations that were, for others, devoid of emotional content altogether. It was just hard all around.
At the time, they were not even remotely seen as normal by society. And it was sad, because they were regular people, just like everyone else, once the armor was dropped and work started. (One of them I knew was absolutely brilliant: she saw the potential for the web back when the web was still text only.) But looking back, and older now myself, it seems that they had gone through SO MUCH SHIT at every level of their lives, shit that was STILL going on, everything from familial rejection to mere strangers being assholes, that I think they were just through their individual stores of natural resilience. I think they couldn’t readily navigate normal “unloaded” civilian interactions because their entire lives had been turned into a battlefield by any passing asshole who wanted to make it one, and at the time, there was NO end in sight.
A lot of that has changed today. And at the very least, one of the best things that has happened is the normalization of trans people as human beings in the media and entertainment. Elliott Page, for example: that show carried on without a blink. That’s possible now. It absolutely was not back then. And even just speaking for myself, back then I’d have noticed if someone was trans or seemed so. Now I don’t even care anymore: you’re just you, and I’m just me. And that’s how it should be, IMO.
It is absolutely horrible that you even have to fight the battles that you do, and I am frightened for you in terms of the way cruelty and even the wish of extermination is being normalized, not just toward you but all LGBTQIA+ and anyone quantitatively “different” on sight. But I wrote all of that to say this:
Today is a different day, even with all the hate. Like it or not, even the people that use their voices to openly wish you harm are validating your existence and your humanity even against their own will. Back then, it was a low-level kind of simmering dislike and fear of “the other,” but now there are a great many cis/hets like myself who are very firmly in your camp simply because we hate hatred, and we’ve been forced to take a stand because the trans discussion is everywhere now. And that’s in your favor.
You don’t have older role models because they all lived in a hell of isolation, ridicule, and societal rejection that is impossible to even describe now. They didn’t have anything left to be nice or heroic people with, because it was already all used up by the time you met them. But that’s not the case anymore. I was a young adult when the Renée Richards thing came out, and I don’t even want to tell you what a common trope that was at the time; but today you’re not one in a hundred million, not even one in a million, and all of those trans people have helped to normalize the whole thing on a societal level.
Back then, you could fully expect to hear ongoing wisecracks on Johnny Carson about it; today no one in the mainstream media will risk their employment that way. That’s how much it has changed. Today, you have social media; back then it was television and the newspaper, and if the tv laughed at someone or something then it was okay for you to laugh too – and people did, openly and repeatedly, ad nauseam. Today, you might get a laugh – OR you might get properly told off by people that recognize causeless hatred for what it is.
For as much shit as you have gone through and are going through now, I have to say you literally have a normalcy and even a basic acceptance today that the transpeople before you knew nothing of.
From the outside looking in, I personally think you’ll be the hero you were looking for back then. Too late for yourself but in time for those behind you. Society has changed, and if, IF we can avoid the descent into authoritarianism that makes your very existence a political football, there will be a day when you are just as “normal” and accepted as anyone else. That’s where we were headed before Trump, anyway.
My apologies if I have offended in any way; I just wanted to share with you how it was back in the days when you were looking for a hero and there were none to be found; older role models that weren’t models of anything but sadness after a life full of rejection. There were reasons, many of which have changed, many of which you and yours are changing even now. Maybe it will round out the understanding of what they went through a little bit better for you.