GENDER BENDERS
The long road to just being my wonderful, weird self
Story and art by Marcia Singer, MSW, CHt
I was a child of the 50s, 60s. Nice girls were sugar and spice. Boys were free to be boys– snips, snails–fewer restrictions on having fun, I thought. My mother’s worry followed me around as I tried to figure out who or what I was: “Tomboy”? Bending gender towards more room to run barefoot, climb trees, try football with the boys. Mommy fretted, “What will the neighbors think?” and warned, “If you hurt yourself, you’ll never be able to have babies.”
My first menstrual period was a disaster. I was twelve, clueless. Mommy found me in the bathroom, bleeding, frightened. She tried to explain while helping me secure a large absorbent pad into a pair of fresh panties. At bedtime that night, my father unwittingly underlined my trauma by commenting, “Mother tells me you became a woman today…” Holy crap. Plus, this meant he also knew I had a “down there.” I was mortified and showed them all up by not having another period for two years.
My sex ed was similarly doomed. My mother shyly handed me a book on the birds and bees; I was so embarrassed by the pictures of genitalia, I didn’t finish reading. Mommy never asked, and I didn’t tell. In junior high, we girls and boys were segregated, then marched down hallways to view films about sex and pregnancy. I wished I could just disappear–as I did before my first supervised dancing date with the handsome boy next door. (I was fourteen, Rickey was twelve). Protective Mommy said, “You know it’s not nice to let a boy put his arms around you and kiss you?” Another nail of shame to my female identity coffin.
Which reminds me of that hot summer day in my 16th year. I was washing our family car in the drive way wearing a two-piece swim suit; Rickey was across the street, washing cars too. “What are you trying to do, advertise?! Go cover up!” fumed my anxious father, humiliating and angering me. Something surely was wrong here, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Post high school, I was most at home with BFFs who were “het-ro” girls and safe queer guys my age, with whom I commiserated about my hapless romances with straight guys. (They all understood!) I sometimes braved dancing at gay clubs, praying we wouldn’t be terrorized by a Wichita police raid. I should mention that my meager education on gay men began at a Saturday matinee with my mom, as an ‘effeminate’ man delicately walked past our seats. Fascinated, I tried not to stare. Mom came to the rescue whispering, “He’s called a fairy, Dear, half man, half woman.” Gender bender, big time.
I could go on: The point is, no one knew much, didn’t realize they didn’t, and feared differences. Kids became young adults left on our own to figure out the rough, scary, depressing terrain of sex and gender. Secret back alley abortions were whispered about as were little white hard-to-get pills. Societal mores dictated “bad” from “good” girls and boys and nixed inter-racial dating. LGBTQ-speak didn’t exist. I stumbled along seeking sanity, equality. As a grad student at U.C. Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare(1968–70), I made a lonely argument that actual trans-sexuals (deemed “drag queens”) existed apart from transvestites (who might be hetero), and that gay men were not perverse child molesters. Meanwhile many suffered, some driven to commit suicide, as did one of my best gay friends, and his lover…
This tragic ignorance and persecution persist, feeding off one another. So many hearts get broken, clamoring to discover–and love–who we really are, or are not. The spectrum of human sexuality is wide. No two people are exactly alike, or meant to be. Gender identity too (feminine and masculine characteristics) is necessarily a rainbow of colors and textures. Each of us deserves to be appreciated and supported to fulfill our unique Design: to survive our backgrounds, heal our wounds, be true to ourselves, to our natural expressions. My personal transforming (androgyny?) began with many dives into the abyss, continually returning with pearls of wisdom and experience. And a passion to help others. My private practice originally was focused on healing intimate injuries to the sexual-sensual-engendered psyche.
Today we’re facing another surge in persecutions, violations of bodies and souls of kindred humans. When will the fears that drive the aggression give way to acknowledging our true natures? Concepts of gender must bend, becoming an over-arching, rainbow spectrum of divine masculine and feminine expressions of One Love, that include each one of us.
Shining deLight, Marcia
