I was born female and understand my gender to be a girl. That is how I have always felt without anyone having to tell me how I am supposed to feel. I have no concept of what it must feel like to have my brain disagree with my genetics, but just because I do not understand something does not mean it never occurs. I agree with those who have said previously that it hurts none of us to just love and accept and address people in whatever way they understand themselves to be.
I work in law enforcement, and I hear a lot of people in my office make fun (behind their backs) of the transgender people who show up in our office. It makes me sick. When I am drawn into the conversation, I basically express what I said in the previous paragraph. I don't like making fun of what I don't understand.
We had an interesting in-service training class a few months ago. The class was on LGBTQ issues. The instructor was a transgender woman, which I doubt any of us had suspected prior to her telling us. It was a fascinating hour. She had been a correctional officer as a man (with shaved head and full beard), married to a woman and father to two children. She had always felt that she was a girl, but as she believed for many reasons that this was wrong, she went overboard in masculine pursuits. It finally came down to two options - she either needed to accept herself or kill herself. She told her wife and kids, and of course that was difficult. Her wife decided to stay married as she determined she loved the person and not the gender. Her wife now considers herself pansexual, which is a term (as I understand it) that means you are attracted to all genders, including transgender. She still has the same job, her marriage is strong, her kids seem to have adjusted (they were pretty young at the time and probably don't remember her as a man), but of course she lost a lot of family and friends in the process (about 50%, she said).
I asked her about her observations in the difference between how men and women are treated. She said that there has been obvious differences because there is an obvious decline in the power she had as a man, and even on her job she is treated as though she cannot handle the physicality of the job in the same way even though she said she is still as strong as she was before. But she said that what she lost has been more than made up in being able to live the way that she understands herself to be.
Sadly, this class did not seem to change some minds. I heard others later express their distain and disgust for this woman. It's sad.
I work in law enforcement, and I hear a lot of people in my office make fun (behind their backs) of the transgender people who show up in our office. It makes me sick. When I am drawn into the conversation, I basically express what I said in the previous paragraph. I don't like making fun of what I don't understand.
We had an interesting in-service training class a few months ago. The class was on LGBTQ issues. The instructor was a transgender woman, which I doubt any of us had suspected prior to her telling us. It was a fascinating hour. She had been a correctional officer as a man (with shaved head and full beard), married to a woman and father to two children. She had always felt that she was a girl, but as she believed for many reasons that this was wrong, she went overboard in masculine pursuits. It finally came down to two options - she either needed to accept herself or kill herself. She told her wife and kids, and of course that was difficult. Her wife decided to stay married as she determined she loved the person and not the gender. Her wife now considers herself pansexual, which is a term (as I understand it) that means you are attracted to all genders, including transgender. She still has the same job, her marriage is strong, her kids seem to have adjusted (they were pretty young at the time and probably don't remember her as a man), but of course she lost a lot of family and friends in the process (about 50%, she said).
I asked her about her observations in the difference between how men and women are treated. She said that there has been obvious differences because there is an obvious decline in the power she had as a man, and even on her job she is treated as though she cannot handle the physicality of the job in the same way even though she said she is still as strong as she was before. But she said that what she lost has been more than made up in being able to live the way that she understands herself to be.
Sadly, this class did not seem to change some minds. I heard others later express their distain and disgust for this woman. It's sad.
