Trans of thought: Role models

One of the toughest experiences I had during my transition was coming out to my then very young son. After consulting a child psychologist on how to best handle the difficult situation, my ex-wife and I sat him down and tried to explain what was about to happen in terms that an eight year old could understand. It was truly awful in a way that I wish none of you ever experience. However, in the midst of the tears, my son said something that both shocked me and brought a moment of levity to the otherwise grim proceedings. He said, “But Dad, everybody knows that boys rule, and girls drool!” Looking back, I can chuckle a little at what was obviously a schoolyard lesson in gender politics that I’ve since done my best to correct. At the time though, I remember being taken aback, but nevertheless cracking a wan smile and wondering at how my son had managed to absorb assumptions of male superiority at such a tender age. Especially in a household that was quite liberal and emphasized equality.

Had I not been embroiled in the highly emotional situation of the moment, I would have remembered that socialization doesn’t just happen at home. We were not our son’s only teachers. Society plays a tremendous role through school, friends and media. As parents, it can be difficult to counteract some of the more pervasive messages our children take to heart, and sometimes we have no idea what is going on in their developing minds. That was certainly the case for me when I was growing up in ways I am sure my parents did not dream possible.

Too often we are socialized to believe that women are weak, both physically and emotionally. The cliché is that we can’t open a jar of jelly and fall into hysterics at the sight of a bug, both of which necessitate a man to step in and save the day. To be a woman is to be less than a man. It is no wonder that from a very young age I learned that to aspire to be feminine in any way for a male was shameful, but that didn’t stop the intense yearning. I recall taking tap as a nine year old in the same studio as a concurrent ballet class and looking over at the young girls dancing and wanting to join them with a desire so strong that it gave me the courage one day to ask my mother for a “boy’s ballet outfit” for Christmas. My mother tried to put me off my request with different excuses until I got the idea that what I was asking for was wrong somehow. That lesson of shame was driven home when my sisters found out about my unusual request and laughed at me. It stung mightily and I dropped the whole matter soon thereafter.

Of course, things need not be this way. As I watched the Olympics this week in rapt attention as the “Final Five” female USA gymnastics team put on a display for the ages, as a woman I was filled with pride at how they were lauded for their strength and athletic prowess, and not just for their beauty and grace. I couldn’t help but think of a boy like me somewhere in the world, with a secret he felt he could not tell anyone, drawing courage from these young ladies as they defied gravity. Maybe he also had occasion to watch Katie Ledecky as she dominated, while NBC commentator Rowdy Gaines answered the sexist statement that Katie swam “like a man” by saying she swam like Katie Ledecky. A simple, yet impactful statement that affirmed that to be strong does not make one less of a woman.

It has been said that trans women have been socialized as men and enjoyed male privilege before transition. However, as my ballet story highlights, it is that same socialization that holds us in place in a life we do not want with privileges we find uncomfortable. Our gender identity is brutally policed because society has deemed womanhood as an unworthy condition.But the Olympics showed us a different definition of womanhood. One that unashamedly encompassed toughness and strength that, for two weeks in August,served as a shining symbol of equality for both women and trans women. One that proclaimed very loudly that to be a woman was not to be less than a man. Perhaps these Olympic role models were even enough to serve as a tipping point for a trans woman, living a false life she must to survive, to gather the courage to bring her arrested inner woman out into the light to grow and develop for the world to see. Wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?

Melody Maia Monet is a photographer at Southern Nights in Orlando and a singer with the band Mad Transit. She can be reached at monet@alumni.princeton.edu.