Good Question

Despite my interest in keeping this on general topics rather than personal matters, I was asked a question on Facebook that was sincere and the answer has relevance beyond just me. what follows is a somewhat revised version of the answer I gave her. It does contain some info I've blogged about before, and it is rather lengthy - but I wanted a complete answer.  I offer it not so much autobiographically but to make a larger point about how we all get to this place. As I noted to her, my #1 obstacle is the lack of accurate information and understanding in the public at large. That's not to say that for all of us who transition late in life, the obstacle is religion (though it's by far the leading issue) but for virtually every one, the issue is lack of accurate information and living in a culture that clings fiercely to a lot of customs and traditions that don't really have a rational basis other than "we've always done it this way."
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The question was, in short - "if you always knew you wanted to be a woman, why did you wait until after you were married and had a family instead of doing this when you were younger?"

A reasonable question, but one which reflects a truth all trans (and gay, for that matter) people have to face.

You have probably heard me say that I knew about this before my 8th birthday. I did not know what it was called, or that there was anyone else like me - I thought I was a complete freak for feeling that way. But I knew that I knew I should have been a girl. It would be a few more years before I knew it had a name and that there were others like me. But I grew up in Tippah County in the 60's and 70's. 

This thing was not normal, it was something perverts in California did, so everyone believed and every child learned from the culture around them. It was an "everybody knows" part of the culture (which was even more strickly Christian 35-40 years ago than it is now. When I found out you actually could change sex, I was of course very tempted by the idea but everything I had access to pounded the drum that it was perverted and sinful and an abomination. I had no real choice but to accept that what "everyone knows" must be true.

Once puberty set in and I because aware of sexual desire, I had to consider the potential that i was gay (which wouldn't have been any better but still)- but my sexual fantasies were never connected to a guy/guy situation, it was always with me as the girl. I was never gay.

Through high school and 5 years after, until 1986, I was deeply depressed and miserable and hated myself. I'd have probably killed myself if I hadn't been a coward about it. In the summer of '86 I went to a crusade where Freddie Gage preached that if you had a "besetting sin" that you couldn't overcome, that all you needed to do was sincerely repent and trust God to heal you from it and dedicate your life to his service.

WHAT? I could be NORMAL? You didn't have to tell me twice!!! I fully embraced that message and spent many years believing that "any day now" God was going to deliver me from my affliction. It would be almost 20 years - during which I went from faith, to hope, to desperate tears asking God what was taking so long - before I figured out I'd been lied to and what "everyone knows" ain't always true.

During that time I clung tenaciously to the teaching I'd been raised on, that being trans or gay was a choice that sinful people made and anyone could choose to turn from it if they were willing to repent. And I preached and taught that same message to others whenever I could (for which I now deeply repent and am ashamed).

There was only a bit over 2 years after that when I met the woman I would marry and about 3 and a half before we married - AT THAT TIME I was ABSOLUTELY convinced that my faith would be rewarded, my "repentance" would be heard and I'd be healed and she would never need to know about it. I hope you can appreciate how VERY reluctant I would be to tell ANYONE about my desires, which I'd been thoroughly trained to believe were "perverted" - certainly I would not do that if it was never going to be an issue anyway.  Over the years as I realized the healing was not coming but at the time we met and married and had kids, I absolutely believed it would never ever come to this. By the time the cracks in that confidence appeared, it was too late.


In other words, I acted in good faith based on what I knew at the time. I was a product of my raising and my "churching" just as almost everyone around here is. I had believed it when I was told it could be healed, not just because "everyone knew" it but also because I WANTED it to be true. 

If it were true than I would not have to be the freak, I would not have to be the one that everyone laughed at feared,or hated - I could be a normal guy just like every other guy. why would I ever want anything else? the reason it took me so long to wake up and realize I'd been told wrong is because if God did not hate this, if He did not want me to repent of it, if He was not going to heal it any more than he'd heal any other birth defect for no apparent reason - then I was going to have to go through (and put her through) exactly what is happening now. 

But by and by it became obvious. the tradition I had been taught didn't line up with the Bible. Closer study, without the lens of tradition, showed the Book said very little about people like me, and it said massive amounts of things which stood in opposition to the idea that god would judge me for something I was born with.  Science confirmed what my heart already knew from my own experience - that people are born this way and there is no way to stop being this way  Logic and sound reasoning confirmed that the argument against me was paper thin and the one which said I was not, after all, a pervert, was massive.

It took a long long time to resign myself to that reality. I didn't come to this place in my life because I wanted it, but because it's the last resort this side of death. Surely death isn't a preferable answer for anyone. Certainly she wouldn't be in less pain today if I'd made that choice. Can anyone imagine how it would have felt to have found me dead one day and never have know why I made that choice? worse, she would have surely assumed it was her fault.

But the bottom line is, and this is where my story has general application, if people had not believed a false tradition then, if they had not taught it to me and every other child around me from the time we could walk, if it had not been taught to my wife in her youth - then none of this would have happened this way. 

THIS - this pain and suffering and heartbreak and sense of betrayal - THIS is what you get when you follow man's rules instead of following your own heart in good conscience before God. Good Christian parents across this country have no idea how many times one of their kids is lost to alcohol or drugs, or an "accident on purpose" or running away or even outright suicide because that child was taught BY THEM and by their church and their pastor to hate themselves for feelings they cannot control and cannot stop. 

A child who kills himself, or gives his life to drugs or whatever, because they are trans, or gay, is not doing that because of what they are - but because of how the world REACTS to what they are. That's why I speak up, that's why I answer questions, that's why I won't "behave" when people give me their good advice about being sure to follow the rules. Because if someone does not speak up, then somewhere down the line, another innocent woman will be standing in my wife's shoes because no one ever told them the tradition was a lie.

And make no mistake, it is NOT "God's word" that's at issue here, I've yet to find a Christian opponent willing to even TRY to make the case (and no, quoting a verse out of Deuteronomy is not making a case) that it is. It's just human tradition. The last 2,000 years is a laundry list of rules that everyone thought, at the time, to be "God's will" and which turned out to be nothing but tradition - usually a stupid or at least useless one. I'll be damned if I bite my tongue and be silent while another generation of people are victimized by useless traditions. there are real human lives at stake.