Prejudice and Pride

Sometimes people mistakenly think I’m gay.

This isn’t particularly a big issue, except it can cause certain awkward situations. For example, last year I met a girl at a party on campus and ended up fancying her. I thought that we hit it off pretty well, so I asked to see her again. We got dinner together at Sushi Love where we had a pleasant chat all night, and we began to see each other more and more. One late night we ended up studying together, just the two of us, and the topic of conversation shifted to very personal issues. She told me some story about a guy she once dated and when I first began talking about an ex-girlfriend she suddenly got quiet and averted her look from me. I asked what was wrong and had to pry an answer out of her. “Well,” she started, “when we first met I wasn’t sure whether you were flirting with me or if you were gay. And since then I’ve just been assuming that you’re gay.”

The precise reasons for these assumptions remain elusive to me. Maybe it’s because pink is one of my favorite colors, or because I’ve been known to sport pins both from the Women’s Center and the LGBT Center on my backpack, or because I’m a “big friendly giant” (in the words of my friend C) who enjoys hugs and other forms of physical contact with friends. Whatever the reasons are, similar occurrences have been happening to me over the past few years, both with my friends and my family.

I have to admit that my knee jerk reaction to these situations was once to feel ashamed, as if I were betraying my identity. So the response was to “tone it down.” Think twice about wearing that pink shirt. Don’t tell your male friend that you love him. In one case I even refused a rainbow flag being offered by a bisexual friend of mine, and probably ended up hurting his feelings.

Perhaps this is a common reaction among straight men. Despite the growing inclusion of LGBT members in our culture, there is still some irrational stigma of emasculation and weakness that is especially associated with homosexual men. Then perhaps it is not surprising (though still not excusable, either) when a straight man becomes insulted when accused of being gay.

It seems that we as a culture have grown comfortable with the notion that gay people should act in a certain way. One does not have to look very far to see this. Consider, for example, how gays are portrayed in film and television. Programs such as Modern Family and Glee feature stock homosexual characters whose demeanors and attributes reflect what we expect to see in gay people. Even when such programs have good intentions they just reinforce the prejudices that we share. This is simply one of the numerous ways in which these standards are engraved into our brains.

The result of this culture is for both straight and gay men to act within the standard social guidelines that have been outlined for them. When one is seen behaving outside of these lines, they are treated as a foreigner. The reaction to such people can be confusion or even hostility. So then this causes a feedback loop of individuals hiding their true selves and adhering to the social standards set out for their sexuality. The end result is a mountain of false pride that stands between the people we are and the people we want others to see us as.

As for me, I now don’t feel insulted in any way when I am misinterpreted as being gay. I’ve come to realize that to take offense with this is to submit to ignorance and uphold the myth that homosexuality is a sign of weakness. Besides, I have grown comfortable enough with myself that I don’t mind being seen as something other than a brazenly macho heterosexual man. This Saturday I’ll be at the Pride Parade and I won’t think twice about what others may interpret my sexuality to be. Instead, I’ll just be honored to stand with the LGBT community and in support of their rights.

In which my father suddenly appears!

(I'm stepping on Dan's toes a bit, since his life is enviably ordinary whereas I'm totally flipping out, so make sure you read his post too!)

So lately, I've had pneumonia. Since I also have severe asthma, it's pretty much been the definition of awful. For one thing I can't bind, since I'm having enough trouble avoiding asphyxiation as it is. For another, I can't... do anything. At all. Awkward: asking your ex to do your laundry and empty your trash because your room smells and you have no clean underwear.

More awkward: complaining about this to your mother, and having her immediately book a ticket for your father to come nurse you back to health.

You guys, he's arriving tonight. At 11:41pm.

So I guess I can't put off the how-did-your-parents-take-it conversation any longer, huh? My mom's reaction, when I finally saw her in person a couple months post-letter, was that she couldn't stand to watch me mutilate myself like that, and she wasn't sure she ever wanted to look at me again. And anyway, I never liked cars or sports so I obviously wasn't a boy.

After three weeks of looking at me, she said she'd done some research and found out that more than half of trans people are estranged from their parents, and she doesn't want that to happen. So I should consider not being trans. But maybe after a decade we could get lunch.

But she also insisted that if I ever really, really needed help, I could always come home. Not help recovering from top surgery or anything, I'll have to find someone else if I want company convalescing, but I don't have to starve to death on the streets. So I do think she'll come around. I also think it will take a decade. It took six years for her to get from "you should consider not being a lesbian" to "have you been going to the LGBT center? It would be nice if you met someone."

My dad on the other hand wasn't interested in a showdown when I saw him this summer - until he suddenly showed up the night before I flew home. He seemed to think a decade was too long a timeline, and was surprised when I said I wasn't under the impression I was invited to Christmas. But then he asked me not to tell my brothers, and proceeded to tell a story about a coworker-of-a-coworker who transitioned from male to female, and... did not lose her job or her wife. I couldn't figure out why he considered it a cautionary tale, except that he used male pronouns the whole time and claimed that the receptionists felt weird finding a non-receptionist in the women's bathroom. (It was a CompSci department in the 80s.)

But... he did indeed get me an invitation to Christmas, and to Thanksgiving. And even though he's never really been the parent I talk to, he's also never been the parent I fight with.

When I came out as a lesbian he gave me a hilarious lecture about how no boy would ever date me again, and then he... let it be. My mom read my diary, read my email, snuck into my girlfriend's house; she woke me up to cry on my bed several nights a week; at one point she actually informed me that my girlfriend and I had broken up, and forbade me to see her. My dad... once drove me to a date.

So I want to be optimistic. But that's long-term! What the hell am I going to do with him here??

It says Lawrence Evalyn on my door decoration! Every person I interact with on campus will call me Lawrence! The composites on the wall have a hilarious serious of photos in which my hair gets shorter every year, and then suddenly my name is Lawrence and I'm wearing a tie! He's going to help me unpack and organize my stuff - he'll find my suit and ties! He'll find my pride flag! He won't find the condoms, I figure it's normal to hide those so I made my ex take them after the laundry-incident that spurred this whole mess. (Ditto the sex toys.) He'll find my trans T-shirts! He'll find my binding shirts! He'll find my queer fridge magnets, and I don't even know where those are so I can't hide them!

It's mostly a moot point, since the whole reason he's coming is that I barely have the physical strength to bend over and pick things up, let alone relocate a bunch of stuff to, I guess, a box in a friend's room. But my ex has been very helpful.

I don't plan to correct him when he uses the wrong name and pronouns, which in my book means I'm already bending backwards so far to accomodate him that I'm halfway to breaking. But I think it's fair to give him time. I don't want him to feel like I'm 'flaunting' my gender, but I think we all know how much opinions can differ as to what counts as 'flaunting' it! And it would be worse for him to think I've gone out of my way to hide it, since that would suggest I have something to be ashamed of.

I'm not going to ask my friends to stop calling me Lawrence while he's around. But I'm also not going to bind, thanks to my buddy pneumonia. Everything else is a huge muddle.

My binding shirts are underwear. The shirts and magnets and flag and so on will probably strike him as being too 'aggressive', and might give him the impression that this is the only identity I have any more - especially since I've hidden them all for his other visits, so he'll assume they're new.

The name on the door will be right in his face, fairly literally, the whole time he's here.

But... it's my name, here. Last year I didn't put a name up because I was in an all-girls hall, and I just went without a door dec. That bare door felt like a concession every time I walked through it. It was a real triumph, for me, when I told the RA that he had been given the wrong name for me. I fought hard for that.

But, should I do a queer-cleaning to tone it down inside the room to compensate for the name outside??? These are all battles that I've fought with myself over the last year - but which battles do I fight tomorrow?

As I said to Risa when I asked to post early: I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS. What do you guys think? Help me out!

In which I backtrack from last week's bravery

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

I did not come out to my parents, everyone. I didn't even come close! My mom derailed everything right from the start by handing the phone to my dad instead, and while I love my dad he's totally different from my mom conversationally and I wasn't expecting that. Then, last weeks' "how is the LGBT center?" conversation was totally not revived, contrary to my expectations; instead, he asked about classes and then said he was watching the game (what game? I have no idea) and needed to go.

So. I've been fluttering around dealing with the rest of my life while wondering how I'm going to handle this.

I only named myself Lawrence a little while ago (October 16). Even that is kind of a long time, really, since I started coming out en masse to people pretty much as soon as I was settled on the name. Three and half months of being absolutely sure who I am, down to my very core, and living that out-- it's starting to feel more solid. But every time I comb through my history, trying to pin down one single day when I finally knew... it's like there's this whole huge chain of causality, and it just keeps stretching further back.

I knew my name on October 16 of this year. But before that, I spent six whole weeks this summer wearing exclusively dude clothes, as a treat to myself. And before that, I had my fraternity composite photo taken in a suit, because I knew how I wanted to look immortalized on the wall. I met with Janie February 9 last year, to tell her I was pretty sure I was transgendered (the first time I used to T-word to describe myself to someone else!). But even before then, I knew what road I was on. I was terrified, but I knew. I bought myself a binding shirt October 18, 2009. Almost exactly a year before I knew my name, I knew that I was going to bind my breasts often enough that I should invest in something better than Ace bandages. And it was November of two thousand and eight-- more than two years ago!-- when I first confided in a friend that I was uncomfortable with the way that people reacted to my gender expression, and that I wished people would use male pronouns to refer to me.

And now that I think of it, it was at just the same time that I started planning to create a male online pseudonym to write under, who would gradually take over the writing of my blog until I was able to retire my female pseudonym. In the end, I stopped blogging entirely rather than follow through with this plan, for reasons I couldn't adequately explain to myself at the time. But I was going to name that new pseudonym Lawrence.

I usually tell people that I should have known for years, that the evidence should have been obvious, that I did all kinds of things "for reasons I couldn't explain to myself at the time". And that's still true, I think-- there is surely another chain of causality stretching back from that Skype conversation in 2008, and who knows where it leads-- but I also think that really, I did know why I was doing the things I did. I was just afraid. Pretending I didn't understand my own reasons allowed me to do things I desperately needed to do-- like bind-- without facing my fears before I was really equipped to handle them.

This is where I whine about the fact that I saw three different therapists over those two years, and if one of them had been halfway competent they could have shown me that I really had no reason to be living in fear of myself-- but I have made it out the other end regardless.

I guess this is really just another kind of pep talk for myself, trying to accumulate proof to use as armor (or weapons?) in the showdown against my parents... and trying to remind myself that in every case, for two years at least, as soon as I conquered the fear I discovered that there had been nothing to be afraid of after all. So although I am still terrified that my parents will disown me, prevent me from seeing my brothers, refuse to pay for my study abroad this summer-- I know that really, even if it doesn't go well (which it doesn't always!), it can't be as bad as I fear. And I will be glad that I've done it.

Hopefully after a few more weeks of using the blog as public therapy to psych myself up (sorry, folks!), I'll actually have something to report here... in the mean time, I'd like to remind folks that I'm always up for questions, no matter how basic, and that I love email! So you can comment here or email me at lawrenceevalyn (at) gmail (dot) come and you'll pretty much make my day.

LGBT Leadership

In high school I never read the newspaper or watched the news. Now I read the Wall Street Journal almost everyday. In high school I never played sports and worked out three times a year. Now I (am still learning to) play rugby. In high school the only position related to “student government” that I ran for was National Honor Society President. Now I can’t even say that much. It’s not like I wasn’t president of multiple clubs (who wasn’t?) it’s just that my presidency wasn’t earned from convincing a large number of people to vote for me. In both cases I was the only person who ran- the obvious successor to the previous president. Leadership is a dirty word to me. Every over-achieving youngster is indoctrinated with the idea of leadership. Yet not everyone can be President. Not everyone wants to either. I wanted to be a writer or an intellectual. Someone who knows weird shit that no one else knows. Someone who can give uncensored advice.

I have a feeling that being openly lesbian was the source of my “unpopularity” in high school. I came into Duke with no knowledge of LGBT politicians or presidents and the overwhelming feeling that the only role I could play in life was that of a subversive lesbian intellectual or mathematically adept robot. My experiences at Duke have taught me that LGBT leaders exist and that I can be one of them. The first time I felt like a “representative” was at Common Ground when Bruce appointed me to speak for my group about what we had learned during the retreat. I had the same experience at the LGBT Leadership retreat. Speaking for a group, expressing my ideas and experiences- these are all things I enjoy doing. Every time Gordon tells to run for student government I get closer to the point of no return. The choice to not run for office or influence social life at Duke is one for me to make.

Right now I am focused on other endeavors. I’m trying to greatly improve my grades after a scarring semester in Pratt. I’m trying to not get between Riot and Scorch during rugby games. I’m trying to be involved in Know Your Status beyond just HIV-counseling from 3-4 pm on Mondays. I’m trying to pursue my academic interest in East Asia and find a fulfilling social life that doesn’t revolve around partying and getting drunk. Most importantly, I’m trying to be a good girlfriend. YIKES!

I have looked at applications for various student government positions and try to keep up with school news. I stayed after a BDU-meeting to listen to the three Young Trustee finalists and ask them questions. I take every opportunity to talk about my experiences with campus culture. For someone who thought that she’d be on the Varsity Crew team before she’d have any involvement with student government these are small but vital steps. Though my life as it is has no room for running a campaign, that doesn’t mean I can’t be a “representative” in other ways. Next week I will be participating in an Alternative Spring Break in Washington D.C. where I’ll lobby Congress about bills related to homelessness. What scares me the most is the possibility of failure- not because I’m a lesbian but because I am not the best candidate for a position or don’t have the most compelling argument. It is a fear that everyone must deal with and one that is particularly strong because the game of politics is so new to me.

North Carolina needs LGBT politicians as much as the Duke women’s rugby team needs players. Playing a rugby game with thirteen instead of fifteen women (less when people get injured during the game) sucks just as much as not having enough young LGBT politicians to secure the future. After listening to Mark Kleinschmidt, openly gay mayor of Chapel Hill, I feel this sentiment with great urgency. As I continue to think about what it means to “Stay in San Antonio and fight” the thought of being an elected representative continues to pop up. I have no idea what this part of my life holds. I am excited for what might happen.