If you want to know who your real friends are, forget about times of adversity and change. Just tell them you want to get a sex change.
When I first started seeking therapy for Gender Identity Disorder (GID), I knew that I, like many others before and after me, would face discrimination, public mockery, harassment from strangers, GID-related mood disorders and threats of violence. People with GID do not live easy lives, but I knew I would work my way through it with the help of my friends, people who’ve always proclaimed their undying loyalty to me, as I have to them.
Not even six months since therapy began, my two best friends have stopped speaking to me, some other friends destroyed my $1,200 laptop with a magnet, others actively avoid me when I’m presenting myself in the gender opposite from what they’re used to and one even thought it would be fun to make a bonfire out of some of my wardrobe.
To say that I’ve felt backstabbed and betrayed by my most trusted friends would be quite an understatement.
For those unfamiliar, Gender Identity Disorder involves the persistent belief that one’s inner sense of gender identity does not align with one’s given, physical sex. Thus, someone who has a penis believes that she is female. Someone who has a vagina believes that he is male. Contrary to popular belief, persons diagnosed with GID are not delusional, perverted, escapist or impersonators; we suffer from a condition that quite likely has a neurological, prenatal etiology.
Just imagine having a bad hair day every day, and it’s not just your hair that’s bad. Treatment typically involves getting a better haircut, or in other words, aligning one’s biological sex with one’s internal sense of gender.
This all seems well and good, and in many ways, working through GID and completing a gender transition is sort of like working through a PhD. It takes quite a few years, costs a lot of money and energy and has mixed results, but for the most part, it’s a rewarding and fulfilling experience. Unfortunately, while appending a “Ph.D.” to the end of one’s name is a source of pride, society at large is severely threatened by the change from “Mr.” to “Ms.,” and vice versa. This is the category that my so-called “friends” happened to fit into.
There’s something very strange about people who will judge their friends based on their genitalia. In many ways, it’s less understandable than racism because, while one’s skin is the largest organ of the body, even the genitalia of the most fabled porn stars only occupy about one percent of their bodies. And in reality, we never even see these so-called private parts on a regular basis. So why all this backstabbing and betrayal?
If I were the CEO of Interpersonal Relationships, Inc., I would stipulate that good friendships follow the guidelines of quality equal-opportunity employment: “I do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc.” A good friend should hire friends based on character and not on superficial aspects that every human being happens to inherit to varying degrees.
The idea of a contingent friendship-one contingent on a person being white, for instance, or having a certain set of spiritual practices, or even staying the same sex for his or her entire life-seems to me like a very false sort of friendship. It seems to lack that genuine foundation in the individual’s character that any true friendship ought to have.
We never realize how much gender influences our day-to-day existence until we actively go against the tide, whether it be a man who wears a skirt or a woman who shaves her head. In modern urban America, even amongst otherwise liberal-minded persons, the desire to completely change one’s sex and gender presentation borders on the unspeakable. To actually carry out the process-changing one’s wardrobe, changing one’s name, changing one’s job, changing one’s voice, changing just about everything but one’s core self-warrants nothing short of that most capital of social punishments: social ostracization.
When I think about the friends who abandoned me as soon as they saw me presenting myself as female, I realize something. These people chose to base their opinions of persons with GID on “Jerry Springer,” Mrs. Doubtfire and Silence of the Lambs rather than browsing sound scientific literature, researching serious journalism or simply listening to my own personal story. (hotcanadianpharmacy.com)
If they had taken the time to understand the medical, psychological and spiritual background of GID and its treatment, they might have learned that this is a condition that no one chooses and that no one goes through easily. They might have learned about the huge differences between GID, homosexuality and transvestic fetishism.
They also might not have chosen to pass around my photos amongst themselves and threaten to “out” me to the general public. They might not have chosen to call me a “drag queen” and a “fake woman” and then burn some of my clothing. They might have just decided to hang out with me anyway.
There’s a lesson somewhere here about friendship and what it means to love a friend unconditionally. If these people would judge and betray me on the basis of my gender identity and the way I present myself, then I don’t think I’ve lost my friends at all. The friendships never really existed in the first place.
