It could happen; you could fall in love with someone who is transgender. What do you do about that? What does that say about you?
Oh, who cares? I mean, look at what's going on these days. Lesbians are falling in love with men, gay men are falling in love with women, previously straight women are deciding they are lesbian, and bisexuals are going, "well, duh." Oh, it's all so confusing!
Wouldn't this be just so much simpler if we let people fall in love with other people without playing twenty questions about sex and gender? If it works, it works, right? You like each other, have fun, rub some body parts together and have more fun, that's amore!
Of course life isn't that simple. Transgender people, and by extension their partners, are truly accepted in very few circles. Being coupled with a transgender person today is like being in a bi-racial couple thirty years ago. (Guess who's coming to dinner? Aieee! It's a tranny! Are we going to let it use the same bathroom us normal folks do? I wonder what they like to eat?)
Okay, I exaggerate, but not over much. Why do we have to go through this whole equality and acceptance and rights thing with each set of people that is different? Women, people of color, gays and lesbians, and now transgender people?
And we aren't done yet. We still treat like shit most people who are disabled. The truly poor are just a growing statistic. We try to ignore our parents when they get old and need our help. Mental illness? What's that? And we are beginning to ignore our children because they get in the way of our lifestyles of work and consumption.
Do no harm. Love others as you love yourself. Act as if your every action creates universal law.
Gods above, are we in trouble!
Have we nothing better to do with our lives than separate people into little groups and make life difficult for everyone who isn't in our own group? This century, soon to end, has seen tens of millions of people slaughtered, hundreds of millions driven from their homes, and of the five and more billion who remain, how many are happy and content and safe? Are you?
Then why, tell me why, are you and I doing anything with our lives other than trying to figure out how we can all live on this planet in harmony? Why is our first reaction to difference, we who are ourselves different, other than to welcome further exploration of what it means to be human? Are we so enamored of the pigeon-hole into which we have been crammed by society that we must deal with other people by cramming them into even smaller holes?
In a thousand ways I am just like you, and you like me. The few ways in which we are different, well, that's the spice of life, you know? We all have so much in common.
We are one species, in one narrow time period, on one planet, in one solar system, in one galaxy, in perhaps one of many universes. Our differences are so small in the overall complexity of reality as to be insignificant. Yet we focus on our differences, to the exclusion of all that we have in common. Why? In all the other planets, star systems, galaxies, and universes, there is no being so like unto you as am I. Why can't we just get along?
So when you encounter a couple that is transgender, how about a little perspective? Do no harm. Love others as you love yourself. Act as if your every action creates universal law.
Sometimes we in the queer community are our own worst enemies. Two against the world is actually pretty poor odds. I prefer, "united we stand, divided we fall" and "an injury to one is an injury to all."
I am going to take a summer vacation from writing this column. If you miss me, please let me know, and I'll be back in the fall. I hope you're having a good summer!
[I did not resume writing the column.]