What your joke means to me

[Note: a slightly modified version of this post is also available here]

Well, my friend, you got me again. Oh, was it the first time for you? I hope so. Sadly, it's far from the first time for me.

I'm talking about the bit of "humor" you posted on Facebook the other day, the one you captioned, "too true, but funny!" or something like that. I imagine you didn't even think much about it, you just chuckled and hit 'share'.

Since it came from you, someone I like and trust, (I thought you felt the same way about me) I checked it out.

To be honest the mean-spirited use of sexist stereotypes was a bit off putting. I didn't think you were someone who would accept jokes based on the notion that women are crazy, greedy, manipulating, and only to be valued for "hotness," and men are stupid, horny, and governed mainly by their crotches.

I suppose that should have stopped me, but I was curious as to why you thought it was funny - there had to be a twist coming up.

And that's how you got me - there was indeed a twist. Well played, my friend, well played. Just as I was thinking the piece wasn't very funny, as if reading my mind, the author deployed the comedic big guns.

Yes, if men and women treating each other like objects isn't funny enough, we all know what's really funny, right? Yes! A dude in a dress! Funnier still is a guy who's attracted that! OHMYGOD! A guy finds a f**king tr*nny attractive! Gross! Hahaha... that's too funny! Amirite?

I stopped reading at that point, stunned, with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I considered the messages in your post.

One message is that the very notion that someone might be attracted to me is absurd, hilarious, and improbable. Another message is that I am a fraud. The overall message: my life is a joke. The post you find “too true but funny” gleefully asserts all that hurts trans people most.

This message isn't new to me, far from it - as a trans person I see messages like this every single day of my life. But those messages come from strangers, from haters, from trolls, and I have my armor up. I know the kinds of posts to avoid, I never read the comments, and I'm steeled for the hate.

You caught me with my guard down, because I thought you were a friend.

I am at a loss as to how to respond to your message. I know that while I might hope for you to realize what you did and apologize, that is not likely to happen since apparently you thought it was funny.

Can I even tell you how much this hurts? Do I have to say that this is one of the worst things you can tell a trans person?

If I do, will you sincerely apologize? Or will you make excuses and imply that I'm "too sensitive?" Will it become a back and forth where you don't believe I'm hurt, and I don't believe you're sorry?

Or should I tell someone else? Will that help?

I remember that on a similar occasion I vented to you, and together we bemoaned cruelty and ignorance of "some people," unaware of the future irony.

Most likely I'll do what I most often do - say nothing. I won't risk making things worse, and I won't spend the emotional energy a confrontation always takes. Instead, it will stay unspoken between us, something that will always come to mind when I think of you.

Some might say that my silence is cowardice, a lack of love, or a failure of forgiveness.

Perhaps it is.

But I've been here before, and I know that I will be here many times again, and I've learned to pick my battles.

So that's what your joke meant to me - another cut at who I am, another friendship diminished, another loss of a port in a storm. In other words, just another day in the life of a trans person.

NOTE: The situation described above is based on several different occurrences, and is not intended to identify any single, specific person. 

The unappreciated power of being unremarkable

Too busy to write... and why that's a good thing

 

It's been a while since I've posted here. It's not been because I've run out of ideas, on the contrary, over the past few months I've had several ideas for posts I'd like to write.

 

But each time I get one of those ideas and make a mental note to write a post  here, I've hit the same wall. I find that I don't have the time. Between work, travel and other projects, it's been just about impossible to find the two or three hours it takes me to write a blog post. 

 

Why being unremarkable is an important story

 

I know this will sound boastful and self-centered, but I'm going to argue that my being so busy is important to the trans* community. In a huge fit of self-importance I'm going to suggest that even though the reasons I have no time are unrelated to trans* issues, the fact that I am that busy is as important to the trans community as someone like Janet Mock making a book appearance, Monica Roberts writing a blog post, or Mara Keisling making a speech. 

 

On the face of it, such a claim is absurd. Compared to the many stars and celebrities of the trans* world, I'm pretty much a nobody. The media doesn't want my opinion, I'm not sought after to deliver keynotes, I haven't lead advocacy initiatives, raised funding, been the notable "first transgender _____", or lead a high profile fight against injustice.

 

Instead, I'm pretty unremarkable - a late transitioning, middle aged white trans woman in tech. We're all over the place, almost a cliché. 

 

Add to that the fact that the things taking up all my time are unglamorous and not trans* related. I'm the originator and organizer of the PyCon Education Summit, where we bring together people who are teaching Python in a variety of venues. That takes some time, but I'm spending even more time, including overtime, on my day job, working to help my company spread their online business model to Europe. This involves frequent travel to Europe, meetings and phone calls at all hours, and more business dinners than I'd care to count. 

 

Yeah, I know, good for me and all, but where do I get off claiming that any of this is important for the trans* community? I'm not even working with the trans* community on this stuff. What's the big deal?

 

Well, I would argue that the big deal is precisely that I'm pretty ordinary and that I'm doing pretty conventional things in a non-trans context, among mostly non-trans people. Apart from the accident that I'm transgender, I'm not exceptional at all.

 

Indeed, I'm not the only, nor even the first, trans Pythonista, but the very fact that I openly transitioned while being involved in the community and helping organize its largest conference sent a message. Here was a person who turned out to be transgender, and that fact made absolutely no difference - my contribution to community continued unchanged. Several people even told me that I was the first trans* persion they were aware of in the Python community. I like to think that there are several Python programmers whose first view of a trans* person was positive, but also essentially unremarkable.

 

I also was open about my transition at work, as I became the first and only openly trans* person among 16,000 employees in the US. For many, probably most, of the people I've interacted with in the company, I am the first and only openly trans* person they've ever known. And what they've seen is a trans woman who from the very first day of her transition has interacted with people from across the company, as well as with vendors and suppliers from around the world.

 

These days, when I meet other people in the company, they often say that they've heard of me. I usually give a wry grin and say, "that always makes me nervous." Without missing a beat they look me in the eye and mention a successful project I've been a part of. While they almost certainly also know that I'm trans, it's clear that's not the only thing they see. They also see someone reasonably senior with a track record of success in the company.

 

We are not all "exceptional"

 

Okay, so I'm fairly uncomfortable with the tone of self-promotion of all of that, but it is a important story to tell. It's important because trans* people are almost always shown to the world as different and exceptional. We're portrayed as talk show freaks, psychotic killers, tragic victims, and comic parodies. At best, even the positive stories are portrayed as amazing exceptions - the brilliant actress, writer, athlete, or whatever else rising like a phoenix from the ashes of transition.

 

Or successful trans* people are shown as activists or advocates. Of course I believe that it's hard for a trans* person not to be an activist or advocate in this world to some degree, and that we need all the people heping with the work that we can get.  But I worry that, aside from the exceptional ones, people are getting the message that the only career for a trans* person is in effect, being a trans* person. 

 

While we are few in number, I don't think it does us any good to be seen as exceptions. That's just another way of othering us, of putting us outside ordinary humanity, and ultimately of erasing many of us. We can't all be those famous exceptions and full time activists. 

 

So that's why I think stories like mine are important, too. Stories of unremarkable people who are transgender and are doing some pretty ordinary things in the non-trans world - contributing to our communities, being successful at work, living our lives. I know that there are many others like me and we need get our message out more. We'll never be picked up by the media but with the people we interact and work with we can tell our own oddly surprising story, "Hey, I'm transgender and I'm really pretty ordinary."