Mike becomes Shelley

So this is it. In about eight more hours, my friend Mike will be done with being Mike. He will be living as Shelly 24/7: going to work as Shelly, seeing her wife and kids as Shelly, attending church as Shelly, and self-identifying without exception as Shelly.

Much of that isn't new; she's been moving that way for most of the past year. What's new is that this is the crossover point. After breaking the news to her co-workers on Thursday and spending Friday in her male identity, she is returning to work on Monday in her female identity.

After moving out of the house and letting the kids work through this at their own pace, she is visiting them one last time, on Valentine's Day, as their father. The cat is out of the bag, and let the mice beware.

After today, I'm not really sure how to classify what her relationship to them will be, as their other mother, or as their female father, or as something else.

I've known this day was coming for a year, arguably for closer to a decade, and I'm having a hard time dealing with it. I can only imagine how they're feeling.

Aristotle once wrote, "What are friends but a single soul inhabiting two bodies?" That's pretty much how I've felt about Mike. After my wife, there is not a person alive who knows me better than, nor even as well as, Mike. There is not a single secret that I have from him at this point. Not one.

We have walked with one another through the darkest moments of our lives. When I lost my foster son, Mike listened without reproach as I raged against God. When our marriages have teetered on the brink, so near to ruin that we could taste the burnt gunpowder of divorce, we listened, we stood together, and we provided support without a word of judgment or reproach.

We've written together. Stories, the first draft and half the second draft of a fantasy novel, and reams of original humor, from faux news reports to mock histories, and our signature "Chicken Soup for the Soulless" that nearly got us sued by a publisher of inspirational material.

And now ... and now, I don't know what to say.

Mike has been my best friend for more than half my life at this point. This is without question the biggest change either of us has gone through so far: bigger than our respective marriages, bigger than having children, bigger than his decision to break with evangelicalism or mine, and to be honest, I'm more than a little uncomfortable with it.

I don't get it. Gender dysphoria is a mystery to me. I don't understand how someone can physically be one sex and yet self-identify as another. I don't understand how dressing and socializing as a woman will in any way make him feel that he has actualized this self-identity any more than wearing a costume can make someone feel that she is a police officer. I don't get it, I don't get it, I don't get it. I try, but I do not.

All I can say is that I know that Mike is a good person. I know that he has put himself through hell trying to make it work as a man, for the sake of his wife and his children. I know that he has taken every reasonable measure he can, and more, to avoid hurting the people around him. He has gone out of his way to consider the feelings of his parents, his wife and children, his sister, and his friends.

I'd be a liar to say that I'm completely at ease with the approach he has taken and the decision he has made -- I'm not. But it's not my decision, it's his, and for better or worse, he's made it.

God be gracious to us all.

Copyright © 2009 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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small acts of decency

Next month my friend Shelly is turning 40.

She's going through a difficult time right now, separated from her wife, marginalized by her own parents, and feeling at times quite alone in the world. She's my best friend; I've known her for 20 years, more than half my lifetime. So I sent her a note and asked her if she wanted to get together next month to celebrate her birthday.

You would have thought from her reaction that I had just paid off her mortgage.

My friend Walks in the Rain, who I am sure will keep me from ever getting conceited or feeling special about myself, recently told me, "Congratulations, you're a decent human being. which makes you above average." It calls to mind the many times I have failed even these basic acts of decency, and how far below the standard I really am.

How can we stand to live like this, where a simple kindness is above average? How can we bear to look at ourselves in the mirror?

On the Metropolitan Community Church and being different

If you hang out in some evangelical circles and the Metropolitan Community Church comes up, you'll probably hear it dismissed as a false church, or at best as a church that has it all wrong on matters of sin.

For those who have never heard of it, the MCC is a Protestant denomination that identifies itself with the gay, lesbian and transgendered Christian community. It's a place for people who are outcast because of their sexuality or gender identity can find shelter from the storm and be welcome.

My friend Shelly, who is transgendered, visited one on Sunday morning that is local to her. I've never been to one, but I like what she has to say:

I also remember when younger all the hostility aimed at Metropolitan Community Church and the "gay Christians" who obviously were so deluded, as they were described in my evangelical circles. When I was there, all I heard was people who put God first and considered themselves humbly and really sought to be Christlike and accepting of wherever God put them. It didn't sound any different in terms of "kingdom living" than the conservatives who had good hearts, despite any theological differences.

I think the MCC church, however, understands suffering and sacrifice in ways that I never quite felt like the middle-class white evangelicals do. When you're found yourself rejected and abused and put down because of who you are and feel you can't change, when you feel constantly excluded because of what you've determined after years is your identity, you either become insanely bitter or you learn how to minister to the broken-hearted and hurting without judgment. These people were not bitter; they really found joy in knowing God.

This is a church that does sound like it has something real to offer even us straight folks -- if we're willing to listen.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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mike and me

Several years ago, my friend Mike told me that he was transgendered.

At the time, I recall, it made little impression on me. He's a good friend of mine, and I knew he was a good person, and that was what mattered. I didn't know much about gender dysphoria, only the old cliche erroneously attached to homosexuals, about "being a woman in a man's body." We had some lengthy discussions pertaining about gender and identity, and life moved on. He was determined to remain a man for the sake of their three children, and that appeared to be that.

Of course, where identity is concerned, that is never that. When a person is required to be something other than what they are, the strain of the pretense builds over time and takes its toll in one area or another. Depression and withdrawal ensued, demanding their pound of flesh from his marriage and every other relationship he had.

And so, some months ago, Mike decided it was time to begin transitioning. He started taking antiandrogens, a prescription drug that suppresses male hormones, and something broke that had survived fifteen years of a sometimes tumultuous marriage. Earlier this year, Mike and his wife, Lynn, formally separated. He moved into an apartment of his own, started taking female hormones, and began going out increasingly as Shelly.

It's been rough. While she has found several transgendered friends in the city where she lives, Shelly has had to face the bigotry of people who see her as a predator or a pervert. Her own parents recently cut her out of the will without even having the courage or the decency to tell him in person that they were doing so.

Her father had the indecency to heap abuse on her when she decloseted herself to them about four months ago, calling her a despicable parent who was abandoning her kids, when the truth is that she's probably more involved now -- still as a father -- than when she lived in the house with them.

The sickening irony here is that her father has been emotionally distant, verbally abusive, adulterous and a drunk most of Shelly's life -- and yet he has the audacity to lecture Shelly on how she's a bad parent.

And, despicably, a minister told Shelly's mom that they were right to disown her, that it was what God would want them to do. I don't get that. I really don't. Where does Jesus advocate or model any such moralistic stance with anyone? The gospels present Jesus as someone who stands by people, no matter what. Prostitutes, adulterers, thieves and lepers with hideous open sores all felt comfortable and welcome in his presence.

And so, even as people ask me how I can do it, I'm standing by Shelly, because she's been my friend for years. I can't imagine not sticking by her. I've been genuinely upset by some of the stuff that other people have done in reaction to this decision to transition, but all the same ... I feel rather left adrift at sea by this whole thing.

It's odd in some ways that it's rattled me this much. I've had other friends, both men and women, tell me that they're gay, and it didn't even make me blink. In some cases, we've become better friends afterward.

I've known Mike [Shelly] is transgendered for years, and yet this turn of events has left me unsteady, uncertain and, in a sense, staggering. I intend to stand by her, because we've known each other for so long and have always been close, but it's a challenge all the same.

As much as I'm supportive of her, I just don't "get" it, probably because I've never felt that I was anything but a guy. It's a mystery to me how she can feel that she's actually a woman in a man's body and that these exterior changes are changing anything.

Yet there's no denying that she's happier, and more alive than I've seen her for years. I'm glad she's got friends, and I'm glad she's found a support network, and I'm glad that I can continue to be a friend for her. I'm glad she's willing to take the risk on me that I won't be a royal bastard and dump her too, to escape having to deal with my own confusion over her gender identity.

In the end, after all, my confusion is my problem and not hers, and given that she's paying such a heavy price for her own situation, it would be unfair and unreasonable to demand that she pay mine as well.

I just wish there were a chart for these waters I find myself sailing with her. I wish the sun were out, and that these uncertain clouds weren't darkening the sky. I wish I knew where we were going, and I hope the ship is seaworthy enough to get us there.


Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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It's called 'self-righteousness,' not 'tough love'

They disowned him. They freaking disowned him.

Back in February, my friend Mike came out to his parents. He explained that he is transgendered and that he and Lynn were separating as he transitions into life as a woman. This went about as well as one would expect it to. His mom was crushed that he had decided to live a "homosexual lifestyle," and prays that he'll return to Christ, and his dad -- who routinely cheated on his wife and was emotionally absent from and uninvolved with his children -- castigated him for being selfish who was and abandoning the kids.

That was about what he expected. Mike had figured that since they've known him for 40 years, have seen him with the kids, and will have the chance to see him continue to be involved with his kids, that they would come around in the end. Or at least his mom would.

Well, surprise, surprise. Today he got a certified letter letting him know that his parents had revoked him as executor of their estate, removed him from their will, and left everything to his children instead.

They didn't even have the integrity to talk with him about it. His parents sneaked around behind his back, with his sister, and then they had the gall to claim the moral high ground, saying that this was his decision, and that he had left them no choice.

What. The. Actual. Hell.

How can people do things like this and still sleep at night? They're treating him like a moral and spiritual reprobate without even listening to him, they are changing family dynamics to exclude him, and they effectively are trying to drive a wedge between him and the rest of his family. And then, worst of all, they blame it all on him, probably in the name of "tough love."

One by one his supports are being kicked out from under him: church, friends, and now family. I don't get it. This is supposed to be love? Or is it a moral message? "Look kids, this is how you should treat someone whose choices you disagree with."

He told me all this and was so overwhelmed by the sense of outrage I felt on his behalf that he started to cry. Aside from his therapist, who is paid to take his side, no one else has seen him as a wonged party.

Mike told me he plans to talk with his parents some time soon, about the way they went about this. He thinks his mother's conscience is bothering her. She wrote the letter explaining what they had done, and its tone suggests to him that she was going along with her husband's Morally Righteous Anger for the sake of avoiding a fight, rather than following her own heart.

Me, I'm just appalled ... and I'm glad that I can be there for a friend when he needs me.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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more on mike

Mike and I walk not in lockstep together, but pretty closely. One of Lynn's kinder comments about me came last year, when she observed, "God gave you Dave Learn so you wouldn't be alone."

He stopped going to church sometime last summer, I think, around the same time I also took a lengthy sabbatical, for pretty much the same reasons: finding that much of what was preached, shared, and celebrated in church lacks spiritual depth and honesty, and often gives a Hallmark gloss to what the Scriptures actually say and talk about. (You know the drill, "victorious Christian living," using faith to deny or hide from unpleasant aspects of life, rather than to confront them; and endless assertions about Truth with nothing to back them up.) I guess you could say that he was tired of hearing people pontificate about how Jesus was the answer when they weren't even bothering to hear the question.

I've talked with Mike, and I'm confident that he's still in Christ, but he's seeking a deeper and truer revelation than what he's forced himself to be content with.

I do hope that his church is not disowning him, although in my limited experience, the Christian community is not always the most supportive of transgendered folks.)

The specifics of his situation are not widely known yet, but I expect when some people find out, they're going to freak. There are always a few cretins who feel they need to "speak the Truth in love" and who need to make it clear that such people aren't welcome because of their openly sinful lifestyle and the need to Protect the Children from such a confusing message. And of course, many of us will find it easier just to say and do nothing, and wait for Mike to go away so we can get on with our lives and mourn the tragic mistake he made, from a safe distance.

On the other hand, he's told a few people and been deeply moved by how supportive they've been. So who can tell? I'm praying for the best -- whatever that may be -- and praying that I'll be the friend Mike needs me to be.

the third option

A good friend of mine in Texas is struggling to define his identity. Born male, he is transgendered and believes he would be happier as a female.

I watch this mess unfold, and honestly, I think we're going about this all the wrong way. Maybe it's not meant to be an either/or choice, a mutually exclusive pair of options. Maybe Sisyphus really did have to struggle and sweat and contend with that damn boulder for all eternity in order to receive the reprieve of the Elysian Fields that the gods had promised him, once he got it to the top of the hill; but maybe there was another option, some other way to get it up there, but he never stopped to consider it because he got it stuck in his head that the only way to get the damn thing to the top of the hill was to fight and struggle against its determination to stay at the bottom of the hill.

I'm not saying that transitioning into life as a woman is necessarily the right thing to do, because it is, I think, silly to believe that the inner gendered self is truer or more important than the outward physical self; if God created the one, then surely he created the other. And perhaps the evangelicals and the fundamentalists would be right to say that gender dysphoria is simply part of the sinful nature and you need to nail it to the Cross every day, along with every other question about sexual identity ... but maybe there's an asset to it that we haven't discovered because we've been taught to see it strictly as a right-or-wrong moral issue.

I don't know what I think, honestly. I have to say that Christ is someone who brings life and freedom from shame, while the Church often delights in putting people under the yoke of expectation. Christianist sharia is such a bitch to live under.

That's not a license to disregard our obligations or to revel in self-indulgence, but surely feeling dead all the time isn't what Christ intends for us, is it? I don't see the freedom and life that Christ brings in choosing to be miserable all our lives, any more than I see it in the choice to destroy our lives in the name of self-expression.