Transgender Prom Queen

A transgendered high school student has won the title of prom queen. Actually very nice to see that people are looked at as people and not judged by their gender preference. http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/47430.html

As someone who's always been involved in the arts I have been around many eclectic people, gay and otherwise. I had a friend once who turned out to be transgendered, hidden first from everyone but eventually it came out. He (a good looking California blonde, beach body) decided to go the full route and have a sex change. It did destroy his marriage. However, overall most of the friends accepted it, including most of the men. One of my female friends had the largest problem with it.


When my friend became a women, she had some adjustment troubles. Partly she dressed really tackily to show off her boobs. She also told me that at one point on a camping trip this guy tried to push her into a tent and basically rape her (this was before the actual operation had taken place but during the hormone shots). She struggled, frightened and then remembered that she knew martial arts and fought her off. I told her just because she was becoming a woman that she didn't need to take on all the baggage of the negative aspects of being a woman. But she was also becoming a woman in a much more concentrated period of time and that meant not gradual adjustment that girls get becoming women. As a man she had had all those man's skills and they were still accessible to her. It reminds me of the scene in Better than Chocolate about two lesbians but there is a transgendered woman in there. There are some brutal truths and yet she too gets to balance the scales.

My friend eventually moved to Florida, of all places (not known for being that open to homosexuals, let alone transgendered) after she had to file harassment charges at her job in Seattle because the men bugged her about using the women's washroom.She also severed all contact with her former friends, maybe because she didn't want anyone to know her when she had once been a man.

What I do know, from articles I read and from what she told me, being transgendered is not an easy thing at all. It's probably the loneliest thing in the world and no one would choose it willingly. Many transgendered people are denigrated by heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. The greater percentage who go for a sex change are men to women, than women to men. However, universally these people seem to have felt, even as children, that they're in the wrong bodies. Sexual orientation (do they like men or women) is really only a second issue to that of which gender they really feel like. The majority of transgendered going for sex changes are usually in their late 30's and up. One can only presume that by that time the horror, guilt, shame, unhappiness and depression weigh so heavily on them that it's either change or die.

And of course, yes, many die, killing themselves outright or through drugs because they can't fit in. When a man has a sex change operation that late in life, the shape of the body is already settled in. The hormone shots will shrink the muscles and reduce hair to a degree. But if a man was already balding, then the hair won't usually grow back. The shape of a man's hands or shoulders won't change but the edges will soften. Many transgenders get their larynxes shaved to take down the manly, telltale adam's apple.Some will always keep a deep man's voice and some of them will talk softly or whisper to disguise this.

One of my friends who is obviously gay, but not transgendered, grew up in Calgary and Saskatchewan. These places are red neck farming communities at heart and not known for liberalism or embracing gays. I've always marvelled at the fact that he never was gay bashed going through school. Greg has a great easygoing personality and is genuinely funny. I believe it was that personality that let him flow between the groups, keeping him popular enough that no one attacked him. One of my ex-boyfriends who was straight was tagged as an art fag in school and got beaten up, though he wasn't gay.

So in the long run, hats off to Johnny Vera and to the people who are learning to accept everyone for who they are and not put their judgments upon others. And a hearfelt big hug to all the transgendered people and the trials they must face in finding themselves.