Being True

Today’s post is about one of my daughter Randie’s friends. For purposes of this post, I’m going to call this friend Avery. Names and other details are changed. But the story is true. 

This is a story about being true.

 

My daughter has shared with some of Avery’s story, a hard life filled with struggle and abuse. Randie describes Avery as smart, imaginative and sweet, a good person who has endured a lot of hardships. But despite all that, he is good at heart and is a good friend. Avery just wants to live his own best life. A simple goal but for Avery, not one simply obtained.

 

Tonight is the Senior Prom at Randie’s high school. Randie will be attending with a number of her friends, including among them, Avery.

 

Avery will be in a dress.

 

Avery does not want to be in a dress.

 

A little background. Avery was born a girl. But Avery did not feel like a girl. He experienced what Randie describes to me as gender dysphoria. It is a condition where trans gender people do not feel comfortable in the gender role that society would have them play. As I understand it, “uncomfortable” is a gross understatement of what this condition feels like. Fear, stress and anxiety are more apt descriptors of what a person feels to be trapped in the wrong body. 

 

Avery wants to be man the he feels himself to truly be. Avery identifies as male, dresses as a male. 

 

His mother isn’t having any of that. Avery was born a girl and by God, Avery is going to the prom as a girl. This person is determined to take Avery on a girl’s day out to go dress shopping, to get a manicure.

 

This bothers me. No, let me rephrase: it bothers the hell out of me.

 

I’m not going to pretend I have a perfect handle on what it means to be trans gender. I still mess up my pronouns. I can’t say I fully understand gender dysphoria.

 

But I do know what it’s like to be uncomfortable in my own skin. I know what it’s like to feel and anxious and afraid.

 

Avery should not have to go through this torment. And make no mistake, this is torment.  There is no greater prison than to be in a life that is not your own. 

 

And Avery is, sadly, not alone. There are lots of people in this country, lots of institutions and even the damn US government lined up to make the lives of transgenders a living hell. People who claim to be proud citizens of a country built upon the foundations of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are determined to deny the blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from fellow citizens. These people are ignorant fools who define freedom only on their terms and no one else’s.

 

On the other hand, Avery is, happily, not alone. Randie and a close knit cadre of friends and allies will do what they can to help Avery through this.

 

Avery deserves the right to be true to the person his soul cries out to be.  Avery deserves the rights of of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

 

Just like the rest of us.