The Other L Word

You know when you learn a new concept or come to a personal realization and all of a sudden it seems to pop up everywhere? Almost as if your realization is causing examples of this phenomenon to emerge? Like you’re learning about different kinds of deafness in you Intro Psych class, you walk out of the lecture, whip out your smartphone, and The New York Times is all, “Cochlear Implants See Changes in Affordability.” You go to English Lit. and your professor’s giving that obligatory 5-minute biographical sketch of the writer you’re reading and you find out that author had congenital hearing loss in one ear. You pop in your L Word DVD for a study break and Bette Porter is getting friendly with an edgy deaf sculptor. Where is it all coming from???

I had a similar experience today in that I decided what to write my final post of 2012 on and then my clever metaphorical parallel for gayness was all over my computer screen this afternoon. I loaded up the Colbert Report from Tuesday night, as I’m liable to do at lunch while om-nom-nomming on a simple, yet exquisite Blue Express turkey sandwich. And Colbert’s in-character doing this bit about California’s ban on gay ‘conversion’ therapy, and he compares it to trying to ‘correct’ left-handedness. That’s what I was going to say!

Apparently it was not just me who was going to say it either, because browsing AfterEllen I found a pretty fantastic article called “What kind of parent would want a gay kid? The best kind.” about all the expectations parents form for their kids even before they’re born. The basic conclusion was that if a parent said something like, “Well, kiddo, you’re OK but I just really wish you’d come out a brunette rather than a ginger” most of us would agree that would be a pretty stupid and terrible attitude to have towards your child. And then there it was again, the writer, Lucy Hallowell, goes on to say, “Having a gay kid should be no different than having a kid with blond hair (maybe you were wishing for brown)…or left handed (because then you have to have a pair of those special scissors around the house).” Not just those scissors, but the pool of lecture desks available to you will be so much smaller. And you’ll probably smudge your paper while you’re writing.

Now I’m obviously not saying all the societal ramifications of being LGBT are tantamount to having to order a special pair of scissors. Hate crimes, bullying, discrimination, and LGBT suicides are extremely real. But I’d like to hold up the left-handed parallel, not as an accurate figurative representation of reality, but as a future ideal. As in I hope one day being gay will actually be like being left-handed. I think that would be a good place to be. I keep realizing, or re-realizing, that a few of my teammates are left-handed, and my primary response is, “Huh, I didn’t know you were left-handed” *moves on with day*. It’s just a sort of quirk, clearly not a handicap. But people used to go to great lengths to try to ‘fix’ left-handedness. The English word “sinister” is derived from the Latin for “left.” I’ll leave you with a scene that illustrates what this gay-as-left-handed reality could look like. It’s from the British show Skins, which has a fairly rabid cult following, especially revolving around the lesbian couple Emily and Naomi. Emily is standing at a bus stop in the freezing cold with her friend Thomas. She’s just borrowed his shoes.

EMILY: I'm gay, Thomas.

THOMAS: It's fine. Shall we call a taxi? I don't think this bus is going to come soon.

Besides, my feet are extremely cold.

Anonymous Posts (11.26.12-12.10.12)

Every week, we collect anonymous entries sent in using the link on our sidebar and post them all on Monday. We post anything as long as it doesn't contain personal attacks, hate speech, or express or insinuate that one is at risk for hurting themselves or someone else. Please read this for an explanation of this policy and seek help if your or a friend find yourself in that position. With those exceptions aside, please feel free to submit your thoughts and questions. :)


Hey y'all,

We've got a post for you today. We at the blog would also like to wish you the best of luck through finals week. See you on the other side.

#1:
How do i get an invite to this party?


Please remember that there are a number of resources available on campus and in the local community. These resources are available over breaks and throughout the school year. If you or a friend are experiencing thoughts or urges to harm yourself or somebody else, please reach out to the following resources: In an emergency, please don't hesitate to call CAPS at any time, including "after hours" at (919) 966-3820. Ask to speak to the advice nurse and tell them you are a Duke student. You may also call the Trevor Project, a national hotline specifically for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and questioning youth (college students included). Their number is 866-4-U-TREVOR (866-488-7386).

Passive

Thanksgiving was last week. That holiday where the main focus is supposed to be around people you love and sharing good times. For me, Thanksgiving was about eating as much as possible while watching the football games and pretending to go to sleep so I didn't have to participate in the conversations that were going on around me. Here a few snippets of the dialogue:

"Black men go over there to Asia and marry them Chinese women because they know they can control them."

"Asian and Japanese women always get more money from the courts when they divorce a Black man because they come over here to America with no skills and can't speak English so they need the help."

"I think a bunch of faggots made up the laws about who gets what when people get divorced. There's no way in hell a REAL man would write laws that would make men give women more money."

"I'll be damned if I let a fag tell me what to do."

I tuned out other parts and tried to forget the worst.

Fun stuff isn't it? The conversation started when a member of my family mentioned how she noticed a lot of Black men in the military were marrying non-Black women. (I have no knowledge as to the validity of the statement...)

So, I sat there trying to ignore the ignorance. Focused intently on the game I was watching with my plate of Thanksgiving food piled high, I figured it'd be best for me to keep my mouth stuffed with food for fear that I'd blow a gasket and go insane from the racism and homophobia.

The more I sat in silence, the more I grew upset at myself. Why couldn't I just say something? Why sit there silently simmering about the bile being spewed in their speech when I could stand up against them? If I sit here in my (albeit, uneasy) comfort and just let it go, what right do I have to ask anyone else to speak up for me when my identity is being dragged through the muck?

I felt like a coward. That was my chance to kill two birds with one stone. I could have finally come out to my family and shown them that I fully embrace this "different person" I've become while at Duke as they like to say. I could have shown them how I learned so much more about life in general than actual knowledge gained from a textbook.

But no. I sat there. Too scared of the consequences to speak up for what is right. Too afraid of becoming the family outcast that I practically already am. Too terrified to show them the real me that hides beneath the shell of the me they used to know. I sat there taking solace in the fact that it was easier for me to ignore it until I came back to Durham than stand up and fight. I could let it all pass until I could pretend once again that the family I'm supposed to love unconditionally and put before anyone or anything else and is supposed to do the same for me doesn't actually hate everything about the real me. I could pretend that I wouldn't know how they'd react or what they'd say behind my back.

Except, now I do know. They didn't even have to tell me directly.

I hate going home.

Anonymous Posts (11.12.12-11.25.12)

Every week, we collect anonymous entries sent in using the link on our sidebar and post them all on Monday. We post anything as long as it doesn't contain personal attacks, hate speech, or express or insinuate that one is at risk for hurting themselves or someone else. Please read this for an explanation of this policy and seek help if your or a friend find yourself in that position. With those exceptions aside, please feel free to submit your thoughts and questions. :)

Hey y'all!

Glad to say, we've got some anonymous posts today. Welcome back from Thanksgiving Break, and I wish you luck in these last few weeks and finals.

Now, notes from OC:


#1:
With voting power comes influence.

#2:
Today, I hesitantly kissed my girlfriend on the main quad and...nothing happened. No one said anything offensive to us, no one made a face. In fact, no one even shot us a second glance. I'm a long way away from this being completely comfortable but...this was certainly reassuring :)

Please remember that there are a number of resources available on campus and in the local community. These resources are available over breaks and throughout the school year. If you or a friend are experiencing thoughts or urges to harm yourself or somebody else, please reach out to the following resources: In an emergency, please don't hesitate to call CAPS at any time, including "after hours" at (919) 966-3820. Ask to speak to the advice nurse and tell them you are a Duke student. You may also call the Trevor Project, a national hotline specifically for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and questioning youth (college students included). Their number is 866-4-U-TREVOR (866-488-7386).

Stealth Trans

On the first day of classes, I stopped by my favorite campus eatery to grab a quick bite before I headed off to my stats class. A couple of the employees murmured for a few seconds after I walked through the door. The cashier approached me, and asked “Did you have a sister that went to Duke?”

I'm a semi stealth transman at Duke. What does this mean? It means that about 80% of the people in my life have no idea that I'm a transgender man. The other 20% are folks I met prior to my transition. After a semester of transitioning, I took a leave of absence from Duke to fully adjust to my new life. Now I'm back a year later, no longer resembling the person I used to be.

It was two and a half years ago when I came across a couple hundred youtube videos of transgender men talking about their lives. I was studying abroad at the time, and I would spend hours at a park near my apartment watching video after video of these men discussing their transitions. I had known that there wasn't something “right” about my gender since the age of 6, but thanks to familial pressure and a education at an all girls catholic high school, I had learned to suppress whatever unresolved feelings I had about my gender at risk of creating trouble in my household and my community.While the notion of becoming who I always knew myself to be was empowering, it was not without many nights of deliberating. This was so much harder than when I came out as pansexual; my decision would have countless permanent life-long implications on almost every aspect of my life. Needless to say, I made the decision to go forward with my transition. When I came back to school that fall, I came out to everyone as a man.

I couldn't have asked for a better group of friends to come out to. I'm eternally grateful to the people who were by my side during the earliest stages of my transition; without them, I'm certain I would not be writing this to you all today. However, coming out as transgender at Duke was hard; and even “hard” is somewhat of an understatement here. As someone who prides himself on his reserved and private nature, what would normally be information that I wouldn't share with strangers was now something that I constantly had to explain to everyone: the students in my project groups for my classes, my professors, my fellow coworkers, and every new person that I met. After coming out I was met with a barrage of invasive questions, most of which I didn't even have the answer at the time. “So when are you going to have the surgery?”, “But how do you expect people to treat you like a man when you don't look like one?”, “Are you sure about this? You should see someone”. After 10 weeks of this, it was certainly time for a break. I left Duke for a year, continued transitioning, and spent my days surrounded by close friends whose presence nursed me back to health both mentally and emotionally.

So what's it like being back now? I'm happy to report that after a year and some change into my physical transition, my life here is fairly average. The energy that I used to spend correcting and explaining is now used on cramming for tests and marathon sessions of playing FIFA13. I haven't been misgendered in well over 8 or 9 months. In the eyes of the law, I'm still a 5'9 brown eyed female who requires corrective lenses to drive, but that's going to change after a trip to the DMV soon. Besides cashiers taking my credit card and my DukeCard, I haven't had to come out to anyone in quite some time. Every time I've outed myself in these situations, the people in question have been accepting and apologetic for the most part. My Fridays are no longer filled with anxiety about being outed in public spaces; instead I'm back to twerkin at my favorite bars and kickin it with friends wherever the best drink specials are in this city.

I don't like the idea of “it gets better”, because in a lot of ways it hasn't. My relationship with my family has changed for the worst, I still deal with gender dysphoria from time to time, and living with an endless paper trail detailing my former life is stressful and overwhelming at times. However, I will say that my life here has gotten a hell of a lot easier. I'm back to living my life as a Duke student, balancing procrastination and academic stress like a champion.

Was it all worth it? There are some days where I have massive doubt about the answer to this question, but ultimately, the answer is always yes. Being a stealth transgender man at Duke hasn't always been a party. As I wrap up my last few months walking around this campus, I'm proud to be where I am now. There aren't words to express the feeling I get when I check myself out in the mirror before I head out in the morning. A lot of this experience has been brutal physically, emotionally, and mentally, but I'm still hanging in there.

With the support of my close friends, a small community of other trans folk, and various admins all across this campus, I feel really good about being here.

And isn't being here the most important part?

Agender at Duke

Hello, everybody. I’m the second person who’ll be writing a post for the lead up to Transgender Day of Remembrance. I don’t identify as Transgender, but I do identify as gender nonconforming. Agender, to be specific. The point of this blog post is to try to give a slight peek into how that affects my daily life.

So I’ll start with the bad parts. First things first, the reason I feel that I have to post this anonymously. Gender variance is far less accepted than sexuality, so though I identify as queer also, I feel the need to keep this part of my identity private. Simply put, I do not feel that I have the desire or strength to put up with an endless stream of questions that pry into some of my most personal feelings and attempt to make me justify my identity. It’s something I’ve observed from the outside many times, that though many people feel entitled to ask deeply personal questions of all LGBTQ people, this holds true to a greater extent for those of us who identify as gender noncomforming.

Of course, my decision to keep my identity private has its downsides too. For example, just because I avoid referring to myself with gender specific pronouns doesn’t mean that everyone else does. As much as like to ignore it, one of the first things people assume about a person is their gender. So, as long as I choose to not tell everyone how I identify, I will simply have to cope with the reality that people will type me incorrectly. That said, I don’t want to give off the impression that my life is terrible, as I have a lot of good going for me as well.

On the plus side, I am out to a decent group of my close friends. They have made every effort to acknowledge my identity and have accepted it without feeling the need or entitlement to pry more information from me than I’m willing to give. It’s thanks to these friends that I’m becoming increasingly secure and comfortable in my own skin, and for that I’m very thankful.