Friday Philosophy: If only you were gay…

In the past few days my mind has been on the Mental Wayback Machine a few times.  I seem to always end up in the same places.

When I made the conscious decision to not end my life, I had to find a purpose in life beyond just existing.  I latched on to a statement I heard from my boss when I refused to resign For The Good of the Team.™

How does one respond to that?  What was I supposed to say?  Was I supposed to point out that no openly gay or lesbian faculty member at the University of Central Arkansas had ever been granted tenure?  Or was I just supposed to accept that assertion that being gay would be an improvement in my life?

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So I had a purpose…a goal…and a dream.  It was worth remaining alive in order to dedicate my life to the eliminating the phrase, “If only you were gay… .”  Nobody should have to hear that in the context that it was offered.

I set out to prove that we were people, too.  My daughter’s partner suggested I join the Sappho list and try to teach the Internet’s larget lesbian email list that pre-operative transsexual women were above all women, and as such that we were lesbians, too.  And I helped found another email list, OWLS, for lesbians over 40.  I remain a member of that list to this day.

One day, there was another list spun off from that, named Aloft, which would presumably have involve philosophical discussions on a bit higher level.  When I asked to be a member, I was basically told, “If only you were gay…”  It was created as a list for women-born women only.  Many of my friends left OWLS to join that list.  I haven’t been in contact with any ofthem since then.  To them I guess I was not really a lesbian.

If only I were gay…

After my surgery, I tried to find employment in my field (I’m a mathematics professor by training) outside of Arkansas.  I must have applied to a hundred or so colleges and universities.  I even took a leave of absence and moved temporarily to Seattle to see if approaching people in person would help in the process.  I was told, over and over again, in some subtle ways and sometimes directly, “If only you were gay…”

Returning to Arkansas, broke and despondent, I sought to rebuild a life there.  But my friends kept getting fired, because my employer assumed that anyone who was my friend must be, at the very least, gay or lesbian.  It seemed not to matter if they weren’t. 

My online work to improve our image included work for PFLAG.  My daughter is, after all, a lesbian.  She’s one of those lesbians who will no doubt receive no benefit from the new ENDA, since she is extremely androgynous, even refusing to prune the hairs which are now growing our of her chin.  And I joined Little Rock PFLAG locally and committed myself to opening that organization to the parents, family and friends of transgender people.  Those people didn’t need to be told that they were unwelcome because the person involved was transgender, not just gay or lesbian.  And those years of effort bore some fruit.

And I worked to open doors in women’s space for transwomen, because I didn’t then and still don’t believe that transwomen should be excluded from the definition of what constitutes a woman.

I am a lesbian.  It is not anyone else’s place to tell me differently.  If only I were gay…  Indeed.

And one day, while serving on the Board of Directors on the Arkansas Gay and Lesbian Task Force, I learned that I would not be covered by the Arkansas Non-Discrimination Act.  An inclusive ANDA would have protected people like me from hearing those words I heard.  Instead I was being told by my peers on the board, “If only you were gay…”

I resigned.  I’m sure my detractors will say that was a mistake, that I should have just put on a happy face and accept the fact that to my colleagues on the board, I was just a man in a dress, someone whose problems were not theirs.  That was in the mid 90s.

I spent the rest of my years in Arklansas running a GLBT group for students at my campus and running a GLBT group in the Conway community out of my home.  I  provided room and board for a former student at UCA during her transition.  She had dropped out of school after being abused for being differently gendered.  I housed a gay student who was kicked out of his home and was not safe in the dorms.  And I wrote and did workshops and speaking engagements on the same basic theme.  T belongs with G, L, and B.  I managed to convince some folks of that…some influential folks.  I thought that might help.  It turns out I was wrong.

It was 15 years and a month since I first heard those words when on November 7, 2007, the House of Representatives, as a body, and Barney Frank, as an individual, spoke them again:

What happens when a dream dies?  Where does it go?  I hope with all my heart that it gets dreamed by someone much younger than I, someone in whose lifetime maybe some slight shift might occur, wherein we become almost like people, when we cease being things, “it”s and “he/she”s, when “transsexual” isn’t just something to accuse someone of being if you really want to degrade that person.  But it won’t be my lifetime.  That’s what I learned this week.

I’m left with the words of a great man:

There are people who are your fellow citizens that are being discriminated against.  This is a simple bill.  Please don’t turn your back on them. — Barney Frank

I’m old.  I’ve progressed from being 44 to being almost 60.  I’m still broke from my efforts.  That hasn’t changed.  I’ve moved to New Jersey and I have had to change my profession.  I’m often sad that one of the best mathematics teachers in this country doesn’t get to exercise that skill anymore, having become instead a barely adequate professor of computer languages.

I’ll still try to exist, even if the reason I have been doing so has died.  I have a spouse now who needs more of my attention.  I need to finish writing about that.  I shall find myself something to keep me occupied in my remaining years.  I’m just not sure what it will be now.

My father tried to drill it in to me that I would never be good enough.  I hate it that it appears he was right.

–Robyn Elaine Serven