Visible Man: Coming out never ends

Jamison Green offers a man's POV on life in the trans lane. Opinion, advice, and information from an internationally respected leader of the FTM community.

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This year I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the University of Oregon's celebration of National Coming Out Day, October 11. Events were held on both the 10th and 11th, particularly acknowledging transgendered people and the connections between the LGB and T communities. On the 10th, an evening panel discussion focused on "coming out as trans," and on the 11th the theme of the noontime rally was "activism."

This particular appearance held special significance for me because I did all my college work at the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, and in the six years that I was there I never did come out publicly. I earned my BA in 1970 and MFA in 1972, both degrees in English. I wore a skirt on campus three times, all during my freshman year, 1966-'67, all for "special" occasions. I very quickly learned that I could wear whatever clothing I wanted, since I was no longer a child and subject to the conformist rules of public elementary and secondary school policies or conservative adult/parental schemes of proper behavior. In the fall of 1966 I made all new friends and found my first female lover. Many of the young men I knew wore their hair long and a few of them seemed somewhat feminine; the young women I met were all beautiful and intelligent, funny and energetic. Most of my friends were artists and writers and musicians like myself, and some of the men (I learned much later) turned out to be gay. In the summer of 1967, somehow all my girl clothes seemed to vanish. I have no idea how they disappeared.

In my undergraduate years, my lover and I were the only couple we knew that was composed of two female bodies. I never discussed our relationship with anyone. I think most of our friends knew we were sleeping together, but no one ever mentioned it, at least not to me. And though we didn't have a word for it, such as transgender, everyone I knew was aware that I was different from the other young women, and somehow more like the other men in our group of friends. Once, a block off campus, I was physically assaulted (punched in the stomach) on the street by a drunken fraternity man who called me a "dirty hippie" because my hair was longer than he thought it should be. In other words, he was telling me I wasn't manly enough. I thought of telling him I wasn't required to be manly since I had a female body, but I was afraid he might think he had the right to use that part of my body, too, as much as he thought he had a right to assault the parts of me he thought were male. I knew he was drunk, so I just went on my way, doubled over and in pain, but away from further encounter with him, while he stumbled off in the opposite direction, still mumbling about "dirty pinko hippies."

In 1971, when I was in graduate school, some women approached me and invited me to join a group they were forming that was going to discuss feminist issues. I thanked them, but I declined. I didn't think I needed any women's movement because I already knew that being female was not going to stop me from doing anything I wanted. It hadn't stopped me from anything since all that female clothing had vanished. By 1971, I was already convinced that men's issues were more relevant to me, but no one was discussing men's issues (that I knew of), since men's issues were both dominant and passeé, and therefore did not merit discussion.

I still had not quite managed to identify as lesbian, since both the women I had partnered with while at the university identified as heterosexual in spite of their relationships with me, and I had never seen any lesbians who identified as such in the contemporary understanding of the term. I was, at that time, beginning to think I should identify as lesbian because I had a female body and was attracted to female-bodied people, but lesbian community and feminist discussion groups seemed to me to be two entirely different tracks. It was after I left Eugene and moved to Portland in 1972 that I became aware of the potentiality of lesbian community (this was still before the full inclusion of women in the "gay freedom movement" that received new impetus from the events of Stonewall in 1969). And I didn't acknowledge the serious validity of feminism until 1973 when I saw how women who were not like me were treated in the workplace. Being as androgynous as I was had its own difficulties, but I was never treated as badly as some of the women I saw then, who would not be seen speaking to me because it might bring on further harassment for being queer.

So I've just had my own personal homecoming at the U of O, only this time I managed to come out in a rather publicized way. As the featured speaker for a campus event that involved a number of campus groups, including the Women's Center; the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Educational and Support Services Program and affiliated organizations like PFLAG, my presence, the topic I would address, my qualifications as a transman and status as an alum were no secret. I was out before I even arrived, and as usual no one seemed to notice me as I walked down campus streets and walkways that I had first walked 35 years ago, remembering the fears, the hopes, the passions, the anticipation of the future that I had experienced there. The future is now.

The events were well-attended, my sponsors were pleased. It was a treat for me to share the dais with Lori Buckwalter, a highly accomplished transactivist and performance artist from Portland, and Rachael Parker and Jorie Leech, who are younger, new activists and speakers just beginning their "out" gender journeys. It was especially rewarding for me to speak for 30 minutes in the amphitheater outside the Erb Memorial Union building, a place where, in 1967, several hundred fellow students kicked and shoved and screamed at me and some artist friends for drawing psychedelic designs on the sidewalk with colored chalk on a beautiful day like the one this October 11.

Only one person who knew me back then was present at these events: the woman who had been my first lover, who was first to suggest (when I was unable to hear it) that I might "enjoy having a sex change." It meant a lot to me to have her there. Though we broke up in the summer of '69, we have remained friends ever since, and we have seen each other through many evolutionary changes. I used to tell her, back in 1967, that I was a "life artist," that my life was my art and that it was going to matter somehow. Seeing gay, lesbian, bi and trans students who have a program office of the university devoted to their concerns dancing and drawing gay slogans on the sidewalk in colored chalk with rainbow flags flying and no one attacking them made me feel that I had played a part in making a difference here.

The work is far from done; and there is cause for rejoicing along the way. We'll keep coming out forever. One day, though, coming out will lose its dangerous edge. I hope it's soon.