LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back

Our collective day of action

Today is a collective day of action for the LGBTQ+ community, headed by writer, Julia Serano. This movement was created in response to the right-wing obsession with and dedication to rolling back LGBTQ+ rights—especially those of the trans community. This is my contribution, in honor of Jane.

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Metamorphosis

It was 1993—the year of Jurassic Park, Whitney Houston’s rendition of I Will Always Love You, and Michael Jackson’s iconic Super Bowl performance—and I had just landed my first full-time, post-college corporate job as a Technical Writer for a major student loan guarantor in central Indiana.

When I’d interviewed for the job, a Senior Vice President asked me if I knew how to do this… and this… and this… and in response, I said, “I don’t know now, but I’m sure I can learn.” He’d rolled his eyes and responded, “Well, anyone can learn, but what I’m asking is whether you can do those things now?”

Convinced I’d blown my big opportunity, I returned home to my boyfriend of six years, crying as I told him about my stumbling, bumbling answer.

I was shocked when I received an offer the next week. Full-time. A salary beyond my 23-year-old imagining, and an extensive array of benefits. I didn’t even know what benefits were. I remember sitting in our corporate auditorium where I learned about 401(k)s and what they meant for my financial future.

“The youngest of you are lucky,” the presenter had said to all the new hires. “The longer you invest, the longer your money has to grow and compound.” He flashed figures from an overhead projector onto a screen, and I was certain I’d be a millionaire by the time I was 50.

I was young and green and woefully underprepared for the real world or the corporate world. I’d attended Catholic grade school and public high school in my small hometown, and my college was only an hour and a half away from my childhood home. As a child of a single Mom, we’d not had the money to travel, so I’d never ventured far from where I was born and raised.

I was the first person in my family to graduate from college.

I thought I knew everything.

I knew nothing that really mattered.

When John joined our Technical Writing team a year later, he was a decade or so older than me, quiet and focused on his work. I was newly married to my long-time boyfriend and thinking about trying to start a family.

John and I talked casually about our shared love for Tori Amos and the sheer brilliance of her Silent All These Years lyrics as we poured our morning coffees.

After he’d been on the job for a few months, John began wearing women’s shoes with his pants. Soon after, the pants were replaced with skirts. Then came the lipstick and mascara.

Confused and a little bit scared of such a big unknown, I started avoiding John at the coffee station.

“Is he gay?” I asked my young colleagues who all seemed as perplexed as I was.

My boss called a team meeting and told us that John was transitioning into a woman who would now be known as Jane. The company was creating a non-gendered restroom to accommodate her transition.

I heard the whispers and giggles that happened behind Jane’s back. I did not understand what Jane was experiencing, and I didn’t know what to say or ask, so I kept my head down and averted my eyes.

I wasn’t intentionally cruel or dismissive, but I certainly wouldn’t have called myself an ally, either.

I didn’t even know what an ally was.

When I came out as a lesbian at the age of 46—23 years after I first met Jane—I finally felt and understood what it meant to embrace your authentic self when you’d spent your entire life living the way others expected you to live.

No one ever told me I couldn’t be gay, but gay was not a part of my world. It wasn’t modeled for me. It wasn’t an option presented to me. It wasn’t anything or anyone I could possibly imagine being.

It was not a part of my existence until I could no longer live as anyone but who I had always been: The gay little tomboy who kicked ass on the basketball court and dreamt of soft, silky female curls instead of rough, bearded chins.

When I came out and divorced after living more than four decades of heteronormative privilege, I lost a great deal. Friends. Family. Financial security. A safe and accepted identity. A solid place within my community. My religion.

My footing.

I thought a lot about Jane during those days. I thought about the stares and the questions and the sideways glances. I thought about her sitting in her cubicle, head bent over her keyboard, fingernails painted bright red—tap, tap, tapping on her keyboard. I thought about her walking across that vast, lonely parking lot every early morning and every late afternoon, heels clicking on the pavement for everyone to see and hear. I thought about the courage it took to begin a corporate job as John and to complete her position as Jane. I thought about the pain she must have endured as she tried to survive in the wrong body for so long; tried to be who she was expected to be until the woman she knew she’d always been had no choice but to come bursting out.

I was a reluctant witness to her metamorphosis; to the caterpillar becoming the monarch butterfly. I wish I’d opened my heart to the true beauty of that gift then, to revel in the magic of Jane bravely changing her exterior to match what had always been inside of her.

I wish I’d been a better advocate for her. A better friend. I wish I’d taken the time to go to lunch with her. To talk. To listen. To stand beside her. To quell the gossip. To ask what I could do to support her journey. To talk about lip colors and blush brushes. To trade a few French fries for a Nickel Plate chicken strip dipped in the world’s best honey mustard sauce. To look into her eyes and see her.

Really see her.

When you know better, you do better, but I wish I’d known more things much sooner so I could have been better to her and for her.

After all, Jane is quite possibly the bravest woman I’ve ever known.