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"Embroidery"
3 Comments - Show Original Blog
Christine, There is a reason for who or what we are...learning acceptance and loving a person because of their qualities and now how we label them!
Always,
Deborah
I haven't been looking at blogs here lately because I'm not very fond of blogs in general. But when I got the notification that you had posted one, I came and looked, and am glad I did.
I saw a statistic that only 8% of the population has come in contact with someone who is transgender. My experience is only with a guy who was assigned to me because he didn't fit in in another department where they wanted to, "get rid of him." I thought he may have been autistic because of his behavioral problems. When I first came in contact with Robert as a student, he stuttered quite badly. That seemed to disappear as he got more responsibility and became a staff member. I've found that I could never get him to work well with me on projects because he always wandered off and did other things for other people, and unfortunately, much for himself.
Another employee told me that when he was eight years old, he came to his house and it was burning. He tried to run in and save his mother, but the firemen held him back. She died. I don't know if his father is still living or not. She also told me that his brothers had an insurance policy but never cashed in on it. He seemed like a student who never really grew up, got his degree, and stayed on as an employee. Robert visited the health center often with problems he didn't discuss with me. In fact, he discussed nothing of his personal life with me, like many other employees and students that I've known.
We both were fired through the same cruel tactic, reorganization. Fortunately, I was of retirement age and had even already filed for retirement, embarrassing those who fired me for obstructing the progress that the greedy, ill caring administration was foisting upon the University.
For Robert, who had already started a transition similar to Bruce Jenner's, wearing a bra under his shirt and panties during his work out in the school gym, to several other employees' amazement (and disgust) that I just ignored, things were much more difficult. He couldn't get a job, and within six months had changed his name to Rachyl. He/she still competed in his favorite charity, the MS 150, but did not contact me except to beg for a Christmas gift card, because he/she was out of work and money.
I certainly hope that Rachyl has found a job and is, secure by now after four years. If I was a private employer, I would not hire her for her work habits, not her gender.
When I became paralyzed at 20, I immediately lost at my so-called friends (acquaintances?) I found myself stigmatized and discriminated against in social groups, work, and by women who probably believed that my paralysis could be passed on if I had children with them! That's why I've always accepted people with differences for who they were as a person and not for whatever "group" they could be assigned to by physical or cultural trait.
Ron
Looked for that poem, Christine, but could not find it. I am conservative, but I am not a holier than thou conservative. I look at things with a look generated from those two lost decades of mine which were spent on the mean streets of America. I don't have to be ultra educated to see when things are not right, and your transgender thoughts and feelings is one of those whom I agree, among many others you and I probably would agree on. Social issues take me to think differently than many of my conservative friends. My conservatism is mainly within the political front.
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