The first time I met an openly trans person was at a party in the early ‘90s in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I lived at the time. An old friend was hosting the get-together and his social circle drew from unconventional strata of society, including artists, the theater crowd, the SCA, pagans, poly folks, kinksters and gender-benders. The sort of crowd where nearly everyone could recite dialogue from the “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Being an outsider myself (I had moved to Minneapolis with the explicit goal of finding my place in gay culture there), I was delighted.
The trans person was a trans woman and we conversed for quite awhile. She was interested to talk about herself and her experiences and I was interested to listen and ask questions. I can’t remember many details now (this was over thirty years ago!) but at one point she emphasized how important it was to her to be able to use the women’s room in public places. This was a point of curiosity for me, as I had never given the subject any thought before, but I accepted her concern at face value.
Over the years that followed I met other openly trans women, though no trans men. I’m sure I also met trans people who were not openly expressing themselves, and just didn’t know. Ten years after that Minneapolis party, now living in Portland, Oregon, in the early 2000s, my opinion of openly trans women was simple: I considered them to be some of the bravest people I knew. After all, they were going public in expressing their sense of identity even though it exposed them to serious risks ranging from social ostracism (with consequences for employment and housing) to verbal harassment to violence. How ironic, I thought, that “courage” was considered to be such a macho trait, but that the people showing the most of it were those who were most outwardly breaking with male norms. I admired them very much for their strength, and also appreciated how their choices challenged a system of roles that I personally found (and still find) stifling and oppressive.
