i came across an article in the la times entitled trapped inside the wrong body by al martinez. i’ll bet you can guess what the article is about based on the title.

i found it notable in that it doesn’t follow all the stereotypical template for every other news article on a trans person. it does have the title, which we’ve all seen so many times before, and starts off with an offensive first sentence:

There is a place between reality and make-believe where strangers dwell.

i’m wondering in what part of “make-believe” i dwell.

he does avoid using the trans woman’s former name though, but perhaps that’s only because he “will respect her desire for anonymity”, not using her name at all in the article. and while he describes her physically, there’s no picture, and there’s nothing about the makeup she’s wearing (or not). he does give up a detailed description of her clothes though.

he goes on to write:

Why write now about someone in such an isolated state, living on the fringe of a society that finds transsexuals an anomaly? Because, as members of the human family, they deserve identity.

and:

What some see as a person with a cultural deformity, I see as a vulnerable victim of nature’s caprice, a mismatch between the brain and body that confuses the sexuality of an embryo and results in the anguish of indecision. I have admiration for those who, as adults, decide and declare who they are — even though I know that they probably will always be uneasy with themselves, always a part of the lonely places we create in the world we know.

i am happy to see that al feels i deserve identity. however i don’t believe i’m confused or indecisive. and really, it’s not that i’m uneasy with myself - i’m uneasy with the bars that our culture erects around who i can be.