Transgender Conference

The journey to acceptance

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I stand surrounded by about a hundred ridiculously hot transmen, surprised to find myself the minority in a room like this. When I signed up for a conference on transgender issues, I didn't know the event would be populated almost entirely by FtMs. I'm not complaining, of course, and not just because of the insane level of attractiveness. I've now seen more trans and gender variant males here than I have in my whole life and the beauty in this room of these masculine, unique figures is something to admire. The courage of just being, I suppose.

The event itself is actually two conventions held simultaneously in Seattle, Washington over the Labour Day weekend. One set of workshops, known as Gender Odyssey, is for transidentified people, their partners and their allies. The other, Gender Spectrum, is for families with children or teens who are trans and gender variant. There are also a number of parties and meet-and-greets that link the conferences together.

I came here to try to understand, to learn more about what the hell it really feels like to be trans. I am cisgender, meaning that I'm lucky enough to identify with the body that I was born into. I am a lot of things—a dyke and a tomboy, very queer and maybe even gender non-conforming in my appearance—but I am not transgender, and no matter how much I want to empathize, I can never truly get what it feels like.

Unfortunately, I've been left feeling a bit disconnected at this event. Being the minority, the person of some sort of privilege amongst a bunch of trans and gender variant people, feels weird. I'm consistently reminded as I listen to discussions that I don't get it. I don't know what it's like because I'm biologically affirmed, another new term I've learned this weekend. Queerness, my sexual orientation, does not help me to fit in, not that I expected it to; the sex you like has little to do with the sex you are. Or as conference director Aidan Key put it: "My gender is my innate sense of self. My sexual orientation is who I bounce it off of."

It's expected behaviour at these sorts of events to ask a person's preferred pronoun (with the caveat "if you have one") right after you trade introductions. The idea being that you never know and shouldn't attempt to guess someone's gender identity. I find myself feeling a strange sense of shame every time I answer, as if the fact that I was born into a body I'm fine with is somehow something to feel uncomfortable about. This is absolutely my own feeling and not a distaste the other convention goers are projecting onto me. They couldn't care less.

But this isn't about me. It's about the 65-year-old in the elevator who's living in between genders and the 8-year-old at the pool who was born female but is now living as a boy. It's about the supportive parents of a gender fluid teenager and a 20-something "fancy-gendered princess boy" here with his mom. It's about acknowledging people's journey to acceptance and recognizing that it's almost never an easy one.

Meeting and watching the children and their parents has been enlightening for me. The amazing strength and power inside kids who are able to articulate their sense of self while still in elementary school is obvious. What really shook me though, is the parents. Sure some of them are liberal-thinking hippie-types, but most are exceedingly average and "normal" mothers and fathers who were able to listen when their children confided their difference. These are parents willing to take on other family members, school administration, neighbours and a society as a whole that still condemns the gender variant as confused at best or wholly wrong at worst.

Conference attendees all seemed to agree that the best and most important place to instigate acceptance and understanding was inside the grade school system. A number of parents that I spoke to mentioned that it seemed that the younger kids were, the easier it was for them to understand why a classmate would be arriving to school in a dress now or would be using a different name.

It seems an obvious choice to parents at this conference to fully commit themselves to supporting and nurturing their transidentified child. To them, it's clearly no choice at all. As one mom so eloquently put it, "The gifts are seeing my child enjoy life. Because she was living a lie."

And that's what any parent wants, for their kid to be really and truly happy. One mother illustrated this beautifully in relating a story about offering to buy her daughter a dress after years of knowing the child silently desired one. On the day they went to the mall to try them on, she said, "I have never before or since seen her so incredibly happy. I thought she was going to faint." V

Queermonton

Transgender Conference

The journey to acceptance

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