Randi Kreiss

When closed minds creak open, light floods in

Posted

Remember Pat from “Saturday Night Live”? In 1990, when the character debuted, I laughed along with everyone else at the unattractive, androgynous person who was physically awkward and confused about everything in life, especially her/his gender. In the first episode, the big jokes surrounded Pat’s attempt to join a gym.

Now, 26 years later, that laughter makes me uneasy. The emergence of gender issues as matters of basic civil rights has been enlightening. The cultural shift toward acceptance has challenged my bias, conscious and unconscious.

Getting to know a few people who are in various stages of gender readjustment has been the most powerful education.

When I was growing up, I didn’t know anyone (I believed) who was transgender, nor did I have any understanding of what it means to be born in a body that is different from how one thinks and feels. Homosexuality moved out of the shadows just in my own lifetime. Young people today might find it surprising that in the Long Island high schools of the 1960s, there were few openly gay students, no gay organizations and basically no awareness that there was such a thing as a transgender person, unless you happened to be one. And if you were, there was no one to turn to with your feelings. Then, as now, transgender people had disproportionately high rates of depression and suicide.

We know how slowly the wheels of enlightenment turn. We now have laws like Title IX that forbid discrimination based on gender, and we now have state guidelines like the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Students Guidance. The Herald reported on the new guidelines last year, when they were enacted, but my hunch is that few people have actually read the new rules or advocate for transgender rights.

I invite readers to give the issue some thought. If you’re transgender, you already know what I’m talking about. If not, you may see someone at work, a friend, a child in the classroom or at your dinner table, a new roommate at college or a traveler in your group, and realize that he or she may be transgender or gender enhanced or gender nonconforming. The terms are evolving, along with the understanding of them, and they are confusing. Here’s the TGNCSC’s primer:

Page 1 / 3