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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

If you know anything about me and this business, you know...well, you definitely know too much about my dating habits, and The Kitten, sorry--but you also probably know how obsessed I am with accepting yourself. Both the bad and good. The good, the bad and the not-so-fantastic. And I say this as someone who went through a period of most definitely not accepting myself, or anything about myself, of being, in fact, resolutely toxic. This period, surprise, surprise, occurred during and immediately thereafter law school. This period occurred when I was trying to be someone else and do what I thought that person should do to be successful. And then, you know, it just got too tedious to pretend to be someone other than myself. Having said that, I didn't wake up one morning, glimmering like Glenda the Good Witch, dispensing love and glitter wherever I went (which is how I assume Lady Gaga rolls). I mean, I knew what I had to do...but I still had to wake up in the morning and actually do it. (Spoiler alert: it worked out okay, thanks.)
All of this to say why I was so blown away to read this article, http://nymag.com/news/features/transgender-children-2012-6/
I will admit, in the nature of full disclosure, that as a teenager, I sort of wasn't thrilled to be a girl, and I sort of wished I was a gay man in the 1970s.( Party time, b*tches!) In hindsight, I had probably read way, way too much Tennessee Williams, Joe Orton, Jean Genet etc.. Then again, I also went through a phase of listening to Falco, for f**k's sake. (...and yet, I never wanted to be a third-rate German pop singer. So clearly, despite the fact that I also liked Richard Marx, I had some standards. For once.)
My point being, when I first read this article, I was sort of horrified, thinking of these young children taking hormones and in some cases, physically altering their bodies. But if you consider that these kids aren't going through phases, they're trapped in the "wrong" body...if you consider that, then you understand that it takes tremendous courage, for these kids and for their parents, to make these choices.  

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