Hey! What About Me?

Well, the season for giving thanks is upon us, and besides the obvious things like the love of my family, one of the other things I am again thankful for is the support I have found in the transgender community. But one of the things that I have also been seriously considering lately is the definition of that term: "transgender community". A common theme that has been echoed all around lately is one of inclusion, and it has occurred to me that my own personal definition of the term "transgender" wasn't very much of a "community" one. And I don't think I'm alone in that shortsighted view.

If you look through the World Wide Web for transgendered sites, you will find they are mainly concerned with people like me (and probably you). That is, transgendered folks who are, or were, anatomically male but whose gender is feminine (I don't like the term `MtF'); folks who are also predominately white, predominately over the age of 25, predominately able-bodied and predominately heterosexual. I like to think of myself as open-minded, but all too often open-minded does not equate to open-handed. If someone different from myself enters my life, I'm not judgmental and usually very accepting of their differences - I'm not a bigoted person. However, that's a very passive mode of operation. I have not been particularly eager to actively reach out with an open hand to people who are different - not because I don't want to, but simply because I never really thought about doing so.

If I were a transgendered person whose sex was female but whose gender was masculine (I'm not fond of `FtM', either) I would not think that this site, or most of the other WWW sites touted as being transgendered, was for me because it is mainly concerned with the opposite side of the coin. I wouldn't think that most of those sites were part of a community to which I belonged. In that sense, we all have the same shortcoming. We tend to think of our community as others like ourselves, and the more like us the others are, the more they truly belong our community. In some cases, that's OK, but I don't think it's OK for us in the transgendered community. As hard as we have had to struggle, and will continue to have to struggle, for acceptance from the world at large, we have to truly work together as a community that encompasses as many as many of "us" as possible.

Ironically, inclusion, or gathering in, has to start with reaching out. The important factor to keep in mind, though, is that both of those things are conscious actions that we must take. It's not enough to say that we accept and support others, we must actively show them we do by joining with them, and asking them to join with us.

For instance, at every gender conference I've ever been to, I've only been interested in those things that directly affected me. Those were the seminars or lectures that I attended. After a number of conferences over the years, I got relatively complacent about seminar attendance - "Been there, heard that, even done some of it." I figured that there really wasn't much to interest me any more. But that was a very narrow point of view. What it really meant was that there wasn't much left that directly affected me. The next conference I attend, though, will be different. I plan on attending as many sessions as I can on things that don't directly affect or concern me. At the 1997 Southern Comfort, for instance, that might have included sessions like "Female to male sexual reassignment surgery" (I've don't need THAT surgery), or "A transman's perspective on feminism" (I've got my own perspective, thanks), or even "Transgendered sexuality" (I already know what I like). Whatever they might be at the next event I attend, I'm going to try to diversify my outlook to include others by going to sessions such as those. And I will try to become a part of whatever "community" will have me, in an effort to expand the sense of what the transgendered community truly should be: ALL of us whose sex and gender aren't in congruence.