The Bold World Read online

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Loss and the Gain

  I’VE INHERITED A LEGACY OF ACTIVISM. “If not me, then who?” was one of my grandmother’s favorite responses whenever she was asked why such a nice, pretty lady chose to protest and advocate and be jailed time and time again. She was relentlessly visible in her activism, never thinking to hold her tongue even when she knew her life and the stability of her family might depend on it.

  When Gloria’s daughters, my aunt Lurma and my mom, came of age, they linked arm in arm and marched with their mother. Gloria was arrested more than twenty-five times; Lurma, an honor student, was jailed more than a dozen times before she turned thirteen, and my own mother, right before leaving to study at Bennett College, did her part, participating in sit-ins and marches, too. Marching was their rite of passage. Gloria recognized very deeply that a new world order—for her, and for her children—was one worth fighting for.

  This was the responsibility left to me.

  To make this world better, there is still so much left to do. And I want to do it in the most thoughtful way, in a way that makes my children proud of me and of their lineage, and that shows them, in real time, what the Patterson-Becker-Ghartey clan stands for. I want more than gold medals and pedestal visibility. What I want, really, is to change the paradigm.

  To do that work, to blow wide open the current narrow definition of gender, I knew I had to do more than just recite numbers and repeat statistics. People don’t feel in numbers; we’re not moved by politics. We respond to stories. I know I do. It is watching Penelope, day in and day out, and being drawn to him, compelled by his narrative, that shifts my mind to a new way of thinking. The mind is malleable. We’re hardwired to look for connections and similarities, and even oddities in our lives, and to shape and reshape stories around them, stories that make the world more united. Narratives over data points. Empathy over fear.

  I recall an email conversation between Aunt Lurma and me, in which she offered perspective on what our family was up against if and when we were to speak out publicly on trans issues. She saw it similar to what her generation went through during the civil rights era. She knew that struggle firsthand—what was asked of them, what they endured, how they strategized, and the advancements they eventually won. Lurma helped me weigh out the complicated balance of progress versus hatred versus safety.

  ME: A national magazine reached out to me. They’re doing a feature on transgender and want to anchor the article with our family. What do you think?

  AUNT LURMA: I don’t know…If you believe Penelope won’t shift to feminine—and that this is not a tomboy phase—and if you don’t think the attention would be harmful for Penelope at this young age, then I guess allowing such an article would simply solidify your commitment to the cause. But there is so much hate and ignorance in the world, it might be better to wait for such media attention until she is a little older. It’s like the question of how soon a child could go out on the picket line in the civil rights movement. Until age twelve, we had to stay in the church basement helping to make signs or serving up sandwiches and juice to the picketers when they came back to rest.

  ME: That’s the first explanation I can actually understand and support. It means so much to Penel and to me to have his story out in the open. But I do understand waiting a bit to shine the light directly on Penel.

  AUNT LURMA: And then there’s the delicate issue of how old one might have to be to understand all the nuances and irreversible aspects of such weighty decisions. Right now all your younger ones are too young to understand sexual dynamics in their full array.

  ME: I’ve spoken with several therapists and doctors. Actually, this isn’t about sexuality. It’s about self-identity. Self-identity begins around two years old. So Penel is actually right on target in terms of the timing of his feelings. He is more expressive and aware than most, but this is the time when we internally begin to define ourselves.

  AUNT LURMA: Okay. That’s good to know. But is the child old enough to know at that age exactly what it means to be a boy or a girl? That definition is not even the same in every culture, is it? When it comes down to it, the sexual part is the only real hard and fast defining factor regarding saying whether someone is a boy or girl, technically, right?

  ME: Self-identity exists even when our organs have been taken away or have never developed properly. Or even if our breasts have been removed. So no, identity isn’t about sex or the body. I’m a woman with or without my breasts and even when I’m not having sex (which is often). I just know I am a woman. I have to believe that Penel knows who he is on a basic and internal level, too. But Penel is a transgender boy. That has its own unique nuances. And it’s very real.

  AUNT LURMA: After a while, “gender” won’t have to fit in a little box. It will be like race—defined far differently for these next generations than it was for their forebears.

  ME: Exactly.

  I sat on that email exchange for a long time—mulling over the questions of timing, of responsibility, of the appropriate level of visibility—for all included. And finally, when Joe began to feel more comfortable with my forwardness, I asked for both Penelope’s and his blessing. It was then that I began speaking in public about us.

  We can never be sure about what we decide. We never know as parents if we’re making the best choices for our family. But we try our best to be aware of all the moving parts—the gains and losses—and then we decide, hundreds of times over, the direction in which we will lead.

  There were articles and interviews on national radio and television featuring us, and then more articles that I wrote in the first person. Each time I opened my mouth, I spoke about our family, about gender and identity, as though there was nothing on earth more worthy of discussion, dissection, and contemplation. The zeitgeist seemed to be changing—people were debating and discussing transgender more than ever before. A few days after Cosmopolitan magazine released a documentary online about our family, to my astonishment, it climbed to over ten million views on social media, reaching people as far away as Africa. And not long after that doc went viral, the Human Rights Campaign reached out, asking if Joe and I would work with them on their anti-trans hatred initiative. And to our surprise, those videos went viral as well. Clearly, what we had to say was resonating.

  I knew that if people could see how our family lived—that we were not crazy, not brainwashing our children, or succumbing to the devil, that we believed in God and spoke prayers of gratitude each night from our pillows; that we laughed during board games, cried on the living room couch over our shortcomings, fought over shotgun in the car, got A’s in math, obsessed over books, got lost in Minecraft, and constantly showed up late after the school bell rang each morning; if they could visualize us sitting for dinner at seven thirty each night, Joe and I the leaders of a united team—maybe then people would believe me when I said that every single member of our family was a healthy part of the human experience. Penelope not excluded.

  What stands before us, the Goliaths and the Ninjas, are real—and they are not always contained in the safety of a padded ring. The monsters that walk the streets with us are out for blood. I know this because sometimes, when I’m up for it, I open my computer and read what they say about us.

  This is sad and disgusting. What type of parent forces an unnatural view of sexuality on an IGNORANT child? When we are children we are naïve. There are so many things that I desired as a child that I no longer desire.

  It’s the caps that bother me most. The hatred they carry stops my heart; it freezes every time I read words like “ignorant,” “unnatural,” and “disgusting.” At first I picture an older white man with white hair and deep lines around his pursed lips as the author of such venom. But when I read the comments more thoroughly, I realize that that image conveys only part of the truth. All types of people hate us: Black people, white people, men and
women, the young and the old, the educated and the ignorant, religious folks as well as nonbelievers have something negative to say. The world as I’ve seen it can be ugly and divisive, and brutal.

  I want to lead our family out of all that ugliness and divisiveness, toward a place where gender as we know it is obsolete. Where any definition we come up with today is understood to be outdated tomorrow. Toward a place where gender, like race, will be defined far differently for these next generations than it was for their forebears.

  * * *

  —

  It was the middle of the week and I sat down for lunch at a favorite café in the Time Warner Center on West Fifty-Ninth Street. I was meeting Tracey, one of my closest friends, for lunch. I was thankful that I arrived early, because it gave me time to unwind before seeing her. As girlfriends do, we’d fallen out of sync over the last year, not because of any particular problem or event, but more, I’d hoped, just because of life—which had taken us in different directions. So much had happened for each of us—sickness, recovery, new baby on her end; advocacy, depression, tumultuous relationship on mine. We needed each other’s ear on this day.

  Tracey arrived and took the seat opposite me. As always, we clasped hands and locked eyes, as old lovers might do when seeing each other for the first time in years. “Your hair looks cute,” I remember saying about her wig, not taking my eyes off her face. The last time I’d seen her, the chemo had taken most of her long, thick, wavy hair.

  “I don’t know.” She paused, moving a few strands of the wig away from her face. “I’m getting used to it. But what I’ve learned, Jo, during this time, is that I’m sexier than my hair…and my tits, for that matter. They were never what I was known for anyway!” I loved how she could turn cancer, something so heavy, into her moment of comic relief—and power.

  “You’re right, Trace. As I get older, I realize there’s much more to focus on than this body.”

  She nodded in agreement. Then there was a break in our energy while she carefully collected her next words. “But forget the cancer, how about you, Jo? I’m worried about you.” I’d always hated that line: I’m worried about you. It usually fed directly into a backhanded, unexpected slap.

  “Oh, really?” I asked, pulling back in my seat, placing my hands in my lap, prepared this time for the hit. “Why’s that?”

  “No…it’s just that Kelly told me you’re going through a lot with Joe. You know I know how that goes. You’re my girl, Jo. What can I do?” If only we could have continued talking about her cancer. Or about our difficult husbands, even. We could easily have had another great laugh over the misused privilege our cisgender men wield. At least then we would have stayed on the same side of the fight. But she’d pulled this one on me—placing me over there, on the losing side, the other side.

  “Well, unless you want to take him off my hands, there’s not much anyone can do. We’re juggling a lot.” I left it at that.

  But she didn’t stop.

  “All those happy pictures you post of you and Joe, that’s got to end.” Why? What did it matter to her? I thought. Those were happy moments. I remembered each one of them. Sure, those pictures didn’t tell an entire story, and maybe an hour later we were fighting and he did storm out of the house, but those kisses and smiles and my hands wrapped around his were real. They showed where my heart was and the place where this family found stability. They were not everything, but they were genuine. And on those days when we were fighting, those images then became goals—everything that I wanted for us. Accomplishments on some days, goals on others.

  But what Tracey saw in those photos were masks over an image she felt she knew better, more accurately, from behind the scenes.

  “Maybe, just for some time, to let yourself breathe, you could pull back on all this stuff around Penelope.” Stuff, as if Penelope and advocacy were just side notes. “Stop posting, stop talking, just stop the constant show—of the family.” I wondered if by “show” she really meant “show-off.” “Honey, be quiet for a bit,” she said, reaching out to touch my hand again. And then she asked the question that still gets under my skin: “I’m just curious, Jo, why do you always need to talk about it?”

  I stumbled a bit, trying to explain to her why it felt like being strangled when I didn’t speak up for my child, and how it felt like freedom when I did. I tried to explain the need for a family like ours to be visible until it was no longer a big deal, until 50 percent of trans teens were no longer attempting suicide, until churches and schools and entire communities weren’t turning their backs on children like Penelope. “Each one of us deserves to be authentic,” I said, “and fully actualized. If the world is questioning Penelope’s gender, then it can and will question anything else it may deem suspect: race, class, body, brain, soul. We have to speak up, Tracey. We have to dictate the terms of our freedom. Even when there is a loss.”

  “But honey, your family is breaking apart. Is it worth it?”

  I had laid critical points on the table, but from the look on Tracey’s face, they just sat there between us, untouched.

  A Black family at the center of a transgender narrative holds its own unique, complicated weight. Yes, our family was fragile, and perhaps we wouldn’t make it, Joe and I—but what did that have to do with my advocacy, or transphobia, or all the hatred I was trying to dismantle?

  If we were talking about racism, Tracey would never have asked me why I always needed to talk about it, because racism is a torch Black folks have been carrying for years. We know that when we dismantle racism, we will simultaneously fix so many of the cracks causing our families to crumble. It’s that much of a negative weight on us. We also know that silence and ignorance are the muscle behind all “isms”—so when it comes to race, we refuse to be silent. For centuries, we’ve pushed back against it with our voices and with our unflinching presence.

  That’s when I saw it, etched into the awkward silence between my friend and me. The same “it” that had been simmering on the edges of my conversations with friends and some family for years. A little something Black folks like to call “white people’s problems.”

  “White people’s problems” can essentially be explained by breaking down “hard” and “soft” issues, as defined by the Black community. Hard issues are anything that can be most directly tied into the Struggle—racism, poverty, murder, education, and the everyday injustices that make steel out of our skin. Black people have always had to prioritize our circumstances. We are taught to stay focused. To keep our eyes trained on the prize: rising up, moving forward, and ushering in another generation in better standing than the last. These are the responsibilities defined for us by our ancestors. We sing of them in church hymns, shout them at rallies, and demand that they be addressed by our representatives.

  Everything else, then, is “white people’s problems.” These are the soft issues—issues that often deal with the emotional life, and as such should be relegated to side conversations and spoken of only behind closed doors, if at all. To talk publicly in large groups about feelings and identities and souls—to investigate our deeper, personal selves—is a privilege afforded only to the privileged. It’s a conversation that, historically, we just haven’t had time for. Why? Because we still exist in a time when Black lives don’t matter.

  I knew if I asked, Tracey would protect Penelope at all costs, no questions asked. We had twenty years of history; Tracey and I had solidified our friendship at weddings, on vacations, and through years of late-night confessions and shared secrets. If anyone should understand what I was doing, it would be her, my sister. But I was not naïve, I also knew there was an even stronger collective understanding that whenever we, Black people, picked up the microphone or the pen, there was a list of clearly defined hard issues that we were supposed to endorse—issues that must do one thing only: fortify the Black narrative. Period. Transgender issues are not, nor have they ever b
een, on that list.

  This way of thinking is more insidious than logical, it’s intuitive rather than cognitive. But it exists, and I understand it, nonetheless. The tone my friend had taken with me conveyed it all: Everything that I’d been writing, and sharing about our family, and standing up for was actually doing the opposite of what I intended. Apparently, it was chipping away at us—maybe all of us: Tracey, me, our girlfriends, Black families I had never even met. “So many people, Jo, thousands, don’t want you to write about this stuff anyway. Just think about it.”

  If she’d only said: “I know this is hard, but you’re doing good work—you’re moving us all forward.”

  The lunch continued, and Tracey didn’t offer any more thoughts about my advocacy, only about the things she knew firsthand: the weight that Joe and I were under, the pressures between husband and wife, and the possibility that my time with Joe might be coming to an end. She coached me on how to proceed with care, and again advised me to be a little less in the public eye while it all went down—the demise of my marriage, that is. In between the chewing and the talking and the sipping, I kept telling myself Choose reserve. Don’t explode. Don’t write her off, devise a plan instead. Connect the dots for her, for them—for anyone who questions what you’re about—so they can see how trans issues don’t undermine “Black” issues. And how family fragility shouldn’t silence human rights. And mostly how Black transgender families shouldn’t have to be perfect before being visible. Visibility on all levels is the goal.

  But until then, we were stuck in a “super wicked problem.” I first heard the term in Time magazine. It’s used by scientists to describe an issue with so many different causes and stakeholders that it’s all but impossible to resolve. Environmental issues—big, multidimensional headaches like global warming—are considered super wicked. I immediately connected the article to my family.