LGBTQ columnist, Aldwin Era shares his experiences in the transgendered community.
Her name was Cookie. I sat nervously in her salon chair as my mother patiently read from under a hair dryer in the corner. “Don’t move cutie, okay?” she chimed affectionately as she flipped the hair clippers on with her hot pink acrylic nails. I stared in quiet terror at my reflection in the vanity mirror. Cookie had a man’s body, that much was obvious. She had strapping thighs, well-toned biceps, and a grossly protruding bulge that was clearly suffocating from beneath the tie-dyed leggings she was sporting. But from what I could see in the mirror (because I refused to look her in the face) Cookie was also definitely a lady. I mean, I had watched the “Conga” video enough times to figure out that Cookie, with her puff of curly red hair and bright orange lipstick had a little obsession with Ms. Gloria Estefan. Already well aware of my own sexual orientation, a slew of thoughts raced through my five year-old gay mind: “Does this mean I’m going to grow boobs?” “Will I have to change my name?” “I don’t like leggings! They’ll make me look fat!” Imagine, just becoming cognizant of your sexual identity and then having it thrown for a whirl by a tranny doing the samba in between shaving your sideburns. I was freaking out.
“Okay darling, you’re finished huh?” Cookie brushed off the last of the freshly cut hair from off my neck. “Come, Auntie Cookie will take you to Mama.” She took me gently by the hand and we click-clacked our way to where my mother’s perm was “activating.”
“Cookie, thank you huh?” my mother said. Cookie smiled and accepted my mother’s payment graciously. She moved to the adjacent room and spent the rest of the afternoon watching The Price is Right. My mom turned to me and smiled. “She’s a nice lady no?” I looked up at her blankly. Strangely, I could see her eyes welling with tears. I didn’t know how to respond.
“Mmm…I guess so,” I said.
“She is,” my mother’s voice quivered. She sighed and left it at that.
My experience with Cookie represented my first foray into the transgendered world. Although shocking, it desensitized me and initiated the beginning of a lifelong fascination with this deeply marginalized community. Occasionally, on weekend strolls with my mother in New York City during the 80’s, I’d see a figure like Cookie working the pavement. Normally she’d don a pair of fierce pumps, had lip gloss for days, and cruised down the sidewalk with a switch in her hip as if to say, “Girl, you betta watch out!” From afar, I stared in awe, riveted by the power she commanded. In my adolescence, my interest flourished when I became enamoured with the transgendered characters created by cinematic genius Pedro Almódovar. I fell in love with a character named La Agrado in particular in the 1999 film All About my Mother. A transsexual prostitute who reunites with a long lost friend in search of her dead son’s father, she delivers a moving monologue at the film’s end that speaks to themes that resonate with the LGBTQ community: identity and authenticity.
There is just something so appealing about them for me: their confidence in the face of adversity, their refusal to succumb to society’s myopic definition of gender, their evolution from self loathing to self acceptance; in one word, their resilience. I asked one of my good friends Hannah, whom I knew as Glenn years back, how she lives her life as a transgendered person and whether as a successful twenty-something, she still feels alienated not only from society in general but from the LGBTQ community in particular.
First however, a small disclaimer. Since its inception, the term “transgender” has been a difficult term to define because of issues relating to the relative definitions of “gender” and “sex.” Here, it is sufficient to use the Merriam-Webster definition of transgender as an umbrella term “of, relating to, or being a person (as a transsexual or a transvestite) who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex at birth.” I also want to caution that the experiences expressed here are predominantly those of male to female transsexuals and transvestites and unfortunately don’t touch upon other sub-groups under the transgender umbrella.
Hannah, a self-identified transsexual female and two-spirited individual (a term of aboriginal origin referring to the possession of both male and female spiritual identities) talks candidly about the integral complications in her life:
“Right now, I’m still transitioning and I’m not full time yet. I’ve just recently started hormone therapy…and let me tell you…it’s really a long process and…it’s pretty expensive. I had to go see a psychologist first to make sure that I was properly evaluated…then after that an endocrinologist can start prescribing hormones. I go to work very androgenous. I have my long luscious hair…but i don’t go to work as Hannah. Right now, I’m [fine] with living part time. After six or seven months of hormone therapy, that’s when I plan to live full time. I’m excited and nervous at the same time.”
Her childhood experiences are reminiscent of many of the experiences shared by the LGBTQ community. There is the overwhelming burden that “feeling different” can strain on a young person and she concedes that as a result she “kept to herself” and was “very quiet.” Not until she found herself in Toronto, studying at Ryerson did she start coming into her own: “I was lucky enough to have met friends…and girls from my program who didn’t care that I was trans…I sometimes wish I had transitioned earlier…but things happen for a reason.”
Speaking frankly, she likens being a transgendered female in today’s society to “being a female during the 1940’s”, serving as a “second class citizens”, but what I find more compelling are her thoughts on being a transgendered female within the gay community. She expounds:
“I know there are those…macho types of gay guys who make or poke fun at transgendered people. I think they see that being feminine is a sign of weakness. Also I think the gay community has this misconception that transsexuals equals trash…but when you think about it, you have to be really brave and strong to transition. You have to deal with so much, like whether or not you can pass and live as a girl [or that] your friends or family might disown you…there are murders against transgirls…poverty and not getting a job…but I stand by this motto that I would rather be hated for who I am than be loved for who I am not.”
The one thing she’s taught me, above anything else, is be who you are because even those whom you assume would be the most accepting (i.e. members of the LGBTQ community) may in fact be your harshest persecutors. It is a sad but very real truth. Discrimination is alive and well within the LGBTQ community. Where the fight originally was an issue of us versus them, it has in many ways degenerated into an issue of us versus us. But here’s the kicker everyone: we’re all fighting the same fight. Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Femme, Butch, Queer, whatever. We’re all part of the same struggle.
That’s why my mom got teary-eyed that moment in Cookie’s salon. Whether I would grow up to be transgendered or not, she knew her son was going to go through precisely the same hardships that her best friend, whom she knew in high-school as Allan and who now lived her life as Cookie, was going through at that very moment.
I am a self-identified gay man but I have to admit, I’ve gladly dabbled a little bit in the fabulous transgendered universe. Taking cues from people like Cookie, La Agrado, and Hannah I’ve slapped on my share of lipstick and even worked it out down the Vegas strip in a pair of six inch silver pointed-toe pumps (work!). And I’m telling you, I have no doubt that I will want to do it again. But until then, I’m hanging up my heels and I’m going to leave the strutting to my girl Hannah and to the memory of my mom’s girl Cookie.