The joyful stranger

I've written before about one of the reasons that it took me so long to take seriously that I might be transsexual was the lack of positive role models. I could never see myself in the trans women I knew of. People like Wendy Carlos and Renée Richards were celebrities. It was OK for them, but not for me, or so I thought. I never found information that would have helped me learn about other trans women. It's only fairly recently that there has been such a wealth of information on the web.

The one image that stuck in my head was very negative. This would have been in the early to mid 1980s, probably, when I was working as a computer journalist. I was at a trade show, and I spotted a woman who looked familiar. I soon realized that the last time I had seen her, she had been male. She was, or at least had been, a columnist for one of the trade magazines. As a male, she was pretty masculine looking, and she had not lost that as a female. I saw a woman sitting alone, apart from everyone else. In reality, she might have been happy as a clam, but that was not the impression I got. And my thoughts from that impression were that I never wanted to be in the same situation. I did not want to be like her.

Fast forward to the spring of 2004, when I was an active member of a Unitarian church. I was so active, in fact, that I attended that year's Annual Conference Meeting as a delegate. One of the workshops in which I participated was one on alternate sexualities, co-facilitated by Gilles Marchand, then head of Égale Canada. I remember a young woman at the workshop who was doing her student ministry at the time and who said she was in a polyamorous relationship, which was new to me at the time. It was a fascinating discussion.

One of my favourite parts of the conference were the large services. I heard some inspiring speakers leading those services, and it was easy to get caught up in the spirit of worship and song. There was lots of song, and that's where I saw her—a woman who was part of a choir made up of people from various participating churches. I kept looking at her (from far away), and I came to the realization that she was trans. And there she was, singing her heart out with all those people, including the minister of my church, looking very happy. I wanted to speak with her, but I didn't know how to approach her, and in the end I never did. When I saw her, she always seemed to be speaking with someone already. I just watched from afar and thought, wow, this is very cool. She wasn't the prettiest trans woman I've ever seen, but she looked good, and she gave me a much more positive impression than the trade magazine columnist.

The funny thing is that I had forgotten about seeing her until just now. It has been several years since I was an active church member, and although of course I remember that I was at that conference, I hadn't thought much about it for a long time. But now that I remember, I'm thinking that was a seed that was planted. It might have grown even more strongly if I had actually met her and spoken with her. Maybe fear held me back, because I spoke with plenty of other people I didn't know. Or maybe it was that I didn't want her to feel like I wanted to meet her only because she was trans. But then, maybe she would have been fine with that. I'll never know.

My "second life" kicked my dysphoria into high gear, but it didn't come out of nothing. That unknown woman was part of my awakening. I wish I could thank her—for being herself, and thus for showing me a positive image of trans women. The memory might have been filed away, but it never left me.