Scanning the news in transgender America lately, it has been impossible to avoid the story of punk artist Tom Gabel coming out…not that I know who Tom Gabel is.
Let’s face it, I’m an old fogey now. At 64 years of age, punk was never something on my radar.
Apparently Gabel is lead singer for a band called Against Me!. The punctuation is apparently part of the name (which makes the punctuation at the end of the previous sentence questionable).
The following is an acoustic version of the band’s song, The Ocean:
And if I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman
My mother once told me she would have named me Laura
I’d grow up to be strong and beautiful like her
Gabel has chosen to come out very publicly, in the next edition of Rolling Stone magazine, which came out today (May 11). Gabel plans to begin living as a woman and will eventually take the name Laura Jane Grace. She plans to begin hormone therapy and electrolysis soon.
She also plans to remain married to her wife, Heather. That would, of course, depend upon the state in which they live and whether they would try to intervene…and whether Heather still feels like that after going through transition with Laura.
Sometimes people change.