Sometimes I feel like a total slacker. I know that I’m not, but when I measure myself against a handful of my transgender role models, I kind of feel like a loser.
Don’t worry, my pride is more-or-less intact, and I don’t think any therapy is necessary, but when I measure my contributions to “transgender-dom,” I just always feel this need to push myself to do more for the cause.
Obviously, there have been things my life I’ve been interested in. Nothing, however, has stirred the intense passion in me like educating non-trans folks about what it means to be transgender and to fight for equal transgender rights for all. Considering where I was just over six years ago, barely starting my male-to-female transition, this activism, I’d guess you’d call it, wasn’t on my radar screen. However, something radically changed in me when I finally set the female me free, and, for better or worse, depending upon who you talk to, I haven’t been the same since. I’ve heard similar responses from other transgender folks.
It is hard to describe or understand where this comes from. However, when you go from feeling like you don’t want to live anymore to having this incredible other-earthly zest for life, I guess that says it all. It is kind of like religion, but it’s stronger. It’s like falling madly in love, but more intense. My journey has been the hardest thing I’ve ever faced, but it is immensely rewarding. At 50-something, I finally feel like me.
Numerous transgender women have been beacons of hope for me on my journey. One of the first was Dr. Lynn Conway, a brilliant electrical engineer and college professor who set up an informative web page in the internet’s early days with resources for transgender women. Then, there is Maine author Jennifer F. Boylan, an English professor at Maine’s Colby College when her book “She’s Not There” came out in the early 2000s. Her book, more than anything else, gave me the courage to come out. I was lucky enough to meet her after she delivered a touching Pride Month sermon at Riverside Cathedral in New York City in 2019.
There is also Nicole Maines, a young actress who was the subject of a pivotal legal case on transgender rights in the state of Maine. Her story is told in the book “Becoming Nicole.” I had the opportunity to meet Nicole at a Connecticut Trans Lives Conference and had a few words with her after her talk. Also, I’d be remiss not to include Charlie Martin, a talented British race car driver who moved me with her emotional YouTube videos prior to my transition.
One person on my “Would Die to Meet List” is the incredible Laverne Cox. I had tickets to see her at Smith a few years ago but the event was canceled. Her activism is as incredible as her stature, and she has done an incredible amount of work in support of the transgender movement. She is my muse.
As for me, I write articles for this paper on this most personally important issue. Beyond just me and my trans siblings, it is important to all of us, which may sound odd. When any group’s civil rights are curtailed, it is a loss, and not fighting that loss gives power to those who want to strip rights from those they don’t like. It happened in Nazi Germany, it happened in the Soviet Union, it is happening now in China, Poland, Hungary, and a host of other countries. We don’t like to think about it, but it can, and is, happening here in the U.S., too.
Meeting others, hearing their stories, seeing how they live, that is the key to creating understanding. I hope that the essays I have written for the Gazette over the past three years in some way allowed you, the readers, to meet a real, live, trans woman, to see what makes me tick, to see what I stand for, and to see that I am real, human, and maybe even fun. If any of that happened, maybe I’m not such a slacker after all.
Mariel E. Addis lives in Florence.