Jennifer Finney Boylan is president of PEN America. Her newest book is “Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us.”
Thanks in part to “Wayne’s World,” most everyone knows what a “Scooby-Doo” ending is:
One of the gang — usually Fred — says something like, “Let’s see who
the monster really is!” and removes the villain’s mask. As his true
identity is revealed, the other members of the gang — Velma, or Daphne,
or Shaggy — says something like, “Why it’s old man Withers, the guy who
runs the haunted amusement park!”
The
key word in this revelation is “really,” the adverb that means “what
something is in actual fact, as opposed to what it might have been
appearing, or pretending, to be.”
I’m
willing to accept the fact that Mr. Withers was not who he had been
pretending to be. But in other instances, “really” has (as the
“Scooby-Doo” theme song goes) “some work to do now.” Is Clark Kent
“really” Superman? Is Bob Dylan “really” Robert Zimmerman? Was Mark
Twain “really” Samuel Clemens?
Is a butterfly “really” a caterpillar?
These questions matter to me, as a transgender woman, because the Trump administration’s attacks on
us are, in some ways, founded on the supposition that women like me are
“really” men. Whenever I hear, for instance, the simplistic edict that
there should be “no men in women’s sports,” my first instinct is to
agree. Because transgender women are not “really” men. We are women. We
may have different histories than other women, but then, every woman has
her own history.
Donald
Trump’s election has released a tide of vitriol against transgender
people (and women in particular; most of our nemeses seem oblivious to
the existence of trans men). The silence of our alleged allies this last
month has been stunning to me, and some of our allies have even
volunteered to throw us under the bus in hopes of rebranding themselves
as mainstream. Does Gavin Newsom — who came out against trans women
in sports last week — really think that the MAGA base will embrace him
now? Or is it possible that conservatives will see him as “really” a
liberal? Hmm, let’s think.
This last week, a House subcommittee hearing on arms control went off the rails when
its chair, Rep. Keith Self, (R-Texas) introduced Rep. Sarah McBride
(D-Delaware) as “Mr. McBride.” Rep. Bill Keating, the ranking Democrat,
asked, “Mr. Chairman, have you no decency?” Rather than addressing
Congresswoman McBride by her proper title, Self adjourned the hearing.
Presumably,
calling the congresswoman from Delaware “Mister” was more important to
Self than arms control, international security or American support for
Europe, which had been the issues the committee had been scheduled to
address.
At
one time, the phrase used to describe trans women like me was “a woman
trapped in a man’s body.” There were all sorts of issues with that
formulation, but in its simplicity, it made a clean case: Trans women
were women in spirit and soul and sensibility (and, many would argue, brain structure and function);
they suffered from a medical condition, like multiple sclerosis or Lou
Gehrig’s disease, a condition that anyone might be born with — even Republicans!
— and which could be treated by medical intervention, leaving the woman
post-transition as a woman very much like other women, with the
exception of her remarkable history.
The
current blowback against trans women holds the opposite view — that
people like me are “really” men, and no matter what sorts of surgical
interventions take place, nothing can alter the fundamental assignment
of sex at birth. That’s what’s behind the oddly phrased executive order
declaring sex immutable and fixed at conception. “God doesn’t make
mistakes,” is a phrase often aimed at people like me, as if to accuse me
of being the gender equivalent of old man Withers.
It
is worth observing that many of the people scolding me about God not
making mistakes are wearing glasses. Or hearing aids. Or have
pacemakers. So far as I know, no one accuses someone wearing glasses or
hearing aids of fraudulence, or sees the existence of someone saved by a
heart-monitoring implant as an affront to divine intentions.
The
challenge for trans people, and our allies, is that many of our
antagonists cannot imagine what it might be like to be wired the way we
are. I still remember when I came out, 25 years ago, telling a friend
that I’d had a lifelong sense of myself as female — that this impulse
had dominated my waking life for 40 years — and her response was to
dismissively shrug and say, “Well, I can’t imagine that,” as if her
inability to imagine the life of someone like me was my problem rather
than hers.
Our
problem is that “No men in women’s sports” or “There are only two
sexes” make great bumper stickers. In such simple phrases they seem to
capture an inarguable truth. “Common sense” is what the president calls
it. But just because arguments against trans people’s right to exist are
easy to make, that does not make them any less wrong. What is difficult
is that understanding how folks like me experience the world takes time
and thoughtfulness. Not to mention decency.
The greatest obstacle to trans equality is not Donald Trump or even Elon Musk — whose inability to love his own transgender child
may well be part of what has driven him to fight what he calls the
“woke mind virus.” Whenever I hear Musk berating trans people, my first
thought is to have pity: This is a man, above all, with a broken heart, a
man hurting because he wrongly thinks that something valuable — a son —
has been taken from him.
No, none of these are the greatest obstacles for acceptance. The greatest obstacle for us is a lack of imagination.
By
which I mean, only a person without imagination could think that
Superman is “really” Clark Kent. Only a person without imagination could
think that a butterfly is “really” a caterpillar. Or that a trans woman
is “really” a man.
Without imagination, it is easy to believe in things that are simple, and superficial, and wrong.
With
it, we can begin to understand the lives of those who are different
from ourselves — and respond to their struggles with compassion, and
kindness and grace.
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