Just in time for coming out day

(cross-posted from elsewhere, but I thought it was blog-worthy as well)

Every month, the engineering team at my startup gets together to report on what we’ve accomplished that sprint (development cycle), with a short slideshow and demo. I asked my boss to go last today, and after the rest of my presentation, when everyone was starting to drift away from the conference table, I showed this final slide, my heart pounding so hard in my chest I could barely ignore it. I took a deep breath, and dove in.

“Some of you know this,” I said. “And some of you probably suspect, by changes I’ve been making recently. I’m transgender. I’m about a year into my transition, and if any of you have questions, feel free to come to me.”

My ally asked how I wanted people to refer to me (she’s awesome! Perfect setup!), so I said: “Female pronouns would be great. I realize that may take some of you a little time-” (at which point my boss interrupted to tell me that I should correct people anyway). “We’re all going through a sort of transition together,” I went on. “I promise I won’t jump down your throats if you occasionally slip.” Again, my boss (and his boss) both said a word or two of support (they’ve both known for a few months), and... then it was done.

A few of my co-workers approached me afterward, expressing their admiration at my courage, and I did my best to be gracious, still a little tiny bit in shock. I’d done it. I’m out. The only people at this point who don’t know are my sister, my parents, my old Mormon congregation, and Facebook. I suspect a lot of those conversations may not go this well, but it ultimately doesn’t matter. I’m me, now, 24/7.

No more hiding.

Where I'm at

So... I kind of dropped off the planet halfway through my 30-days-trans-challenge. Things since November have been hectic, and a lot has changed, but more on that in future posts.

The big news is what's been happening in the past month. Last week, I began transgender-focused primary care at the UCSF Women's Health center in San Francisco. My GP, Dr. Deutsch, is a trans woman, and was very helpful and understanding as I explained my situation and that I'm looking for something to manage my dysphoria, but not take any steps toward transition. Next week I go back in for a follow-up appointment and consultation on HRT options (yay!).

She also suggested I should see a therapist, not for gatekeeping reasons (they're an informed consent clinic, so I don't need a therapist's letter as a precursor to treatment) but just so I can better work out my goals and how to include DW. Well, with a great deal of nervousness, tonight I had my first appointment with a trans-friendly therapist. She was incredibly patient and accommodating, even though I was kind of all over the place about my faith, my body, my job, our marriage, our kids, and on and on. She asked a couple of pointed, clarifying questions, but otherwise, sat back and let me begin to untangle this Gordian knot I've been calling my "gender issues". It's still early days, but so far, I feel like it's going to be a very productive and positive relationship. I'm hopeful. :)

Trans Awareness Month, Day 9 - What is something positive about being trans?

(This is part 9 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

9) What is something positive about being trans?

I'm going to echo Brin's answer on this one, although she and I aren't really in comparable situations. Being trans has made me aware of my white hetero-normative privilege, and the inequality and marginalization suffered by minorities. It has made me more empathetic to others, more prone to include than to shut out. These are experiences I wouldn't trade for the world, no matter how hard it is to be trans.

A Bad Dream

Let me preface this by saying I don't often remember my dreams. I'm sure I have them, because, generally speaking, I wake up fully rested. They just usually fade away in the early morning light.

Last night was different.

Most of my readers know that I'm trans*, I've accepted it and shared it with my wife, and am trying to acknowledge that part of myself while staying true to her and our kids. While I'm not going to pass judgement on anyone who decides differently, for us as a couple, that means no transition. Which is fine, because as I said last time, I feel more comfortable trying to find a hybrid middle path anyway.

One coping strategy we've talked about, but which I have yet to act on, is finding a good endocrinologist to see if my hormonal balance can be tweaked to offer me some peace of mind. (I also have a few little physical annoyances like skin brittleness that I think this might help, too, but that's the topic of another post). Of course, messing with my hormonal balance is tricky, because, remember, I'm non-transitioning.

Anyway. Last night I had a dream that I'd consulted with an endo, and was on a regular program that seemed to be really helping. Then, out of the blue, my sweetheart told me she was leaving me, because of dream logic reasons that made sense at the time.

Then I woke up.

For a few minutes, while the dream fog was still surrounding my mind, I felt emotionally numb. I laid there in bed, staring up into the darkness for quite a while. I may have a life outside of my family, with work, cycling, and other extra-curricular hobbies, but without my sweetie and kids, it would seem so empty! I know a lot of transfolk end up losing their families and friends, and that's terrifying to me. Yet to go back to ignoring and cramming this part of myself down into a deep dark hole in the bottom of my soul — well, that's pretty awful too!

Eventually I was able to get back to sleep, and when I woke up this morning, the deep dread of the night had evaporated. I still think finding an endo that can help me is a good idea. But I'd be lying if I said last night didn't spook me a little.

Hybrids

So... um, happy new year?

Life's been crazy lately, and I'm sure I'll talk about why in another post. But this one's been simmering on the back burner of my brain for long enough that I need to just publish it and move on. Enjoy.

---

A month or two ago I had a bit of an epiphany as I was on my lunch time bike ride.

I'd finally gotten myself another mountain bike, to replace the one that I lost in my big summer crash. It's a full-suspension bike, meaning that it has shock absorbers on the front fork, and also on the frame itself, below the seat. This is a first for me: I've owned plenty of road bikes, and my last bike was more rugged than a typical road-only bike, but this is my first full-blown "mountain bike."

Honestly, I'm having a hard time getting used to it.

The thing about full-suspension bikes, particularly the cheaper ones (like mine), is that they tend to be a little "bouncy": the shocks don't just cushion you from the big bumps, they operate pretty much constantly. So it leads to a bit of a weird rhythm that I can't quite get the hang of (yet, ze says hopefully...?). Plus it feels like I'm sitting too low, even though I have the seat post fully extended.

Maybe I just need time to adjust...

On the other hand, there's my new road bike, which I bought early in the summer (pre-crash) so that I could participate in the group rides that a friend in the area often does on Saturday mornings. It's tall—I almost have to get on my tiptoes to get my leg over the top bar—and the brake handles aren't where I expect them to be because it's a road-style cockpit, and my old bike had mountain-style handlebars. So on that bike, too, I feel a little unsteady. And frankly, a little unsafe.

I don't want to sound petty or ungrateful. This is definitely a "first world problem." The fact that I have a sufficient income to actually own two nice bikes during a recession is a real blessing. But I think my last bike really spoiled me.

My got-broken-in-the-crash bike was a crossover, sometimes called a hybrid. Ostensibly, it was a mountain bike, with the straight handlebars and shocks on the front fork, but the frame was much closer in appearance to a road bike's frame than to my new mountain bike's. I could ride it more or less upright, like a road bike, but the cockpit gave me the more precise and immediate control of a mountain bike. Its tires were also wider and knobbier than regular road tires, so I could ride the beat up, worn down streets around my office with confidence, then jump off the road and navigate dirt, rock and root-covered trails with equal aplomb.

I miss it.

So here's that epiphany I mentioned earlier: while riding, thinking about how weird the rhythm of my new mountain bike felt, and how I couldn't go as fast as I wanted to be going, etc etc etc, I realized that I feel the same way about my gender as I do about my bikes!

Yeah, shocker. :-P

Since last spring, when I started to earnestly examine my feelings of gender incongruence, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to me, what's really going on in my head. For years, I basically dealt with it by publicly acting more macho than I felt and rarely sharing my true feelings on a subject, and occasionally dressing en femme in private when the pressure got to be too much for me. I would swing back and forth between those two extremes for YEARS before I finally figured out that neither one felt entirely comfortable, exactly "right" for who I was.

Now that I'm out to my sweetheart, one thing she's felt very strongly about is that I not dress anymore, and I'm trying to honor that request by finding other coping strategies. For the most part, this has been easier that I expected it to be, because I'm finally allowing myself to be me, and not the totally-not-a-transperson-seriously-don't-look-at-me-that-way mask that I used to wear.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I think I'm slowly coming to the realization that I'm not the same kind of transperson as most of my online friends—and that's okay.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Okay, I'm a few days late with this one. (I'm on vacation, okay?)

This past Tuesday was the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to remember all of the transfolk that have been killed by acts of anti-trans violence.

I have a couple of dear online friends who are currently experiencing tremendous distress and hardship because of their desires to live an authentic life. Not physical violence, fortunately, but vicious emotional violence that threatens to tear apart their families and destroy their professional lives.

And why, exactly? Is it ignorance? Fear of the unknown? Is it an irrational hatred born of misunderstanding what "righteous indignation" is supposed to look like, and when it's appropriate? Maybe. But in both of my friends' cases, their avalanche of suffering has been triggered by the actions of a family member!

"Tough love" or not, that isn't how love is supposed to work!

But as bad as these situations may be, I can't help but think of those who have it so much worse. A recent report by Transgender Europe (TGEU), a non-profit organization that monitors these things, stated that by their count, at least 265 trans folk have been murdered in the past 12 months alone (and that count is likely low, due to unreported or under-reported cases)!

That breaks my heart.

There may come a day when transwomen and transmen alike can navigate the world with the confidence of relative safety afforded most cis folk. Where even if someone disagrees with your worldview, they respect you enough not to kill you over it. (honestly, that seems like a such a LOW bar to clear! Has humanity progressed so little since Cain and Abel?). I pray that day will come soon.

Perspective from a Spouse

So while I was slaving away at how to write my "coming out to D.W." posts, a new voice appeared on the blogging scene, one who I'm really excited to share with you, my dear readers. Her name is Elizabeth, she blogs at A Purple Picket Fence (love the name), and she's the young LDS wife of a transgendered spouse!

Unlike the occasional post by a loving, supportive spouse on a t-person's blog (which I appreciate too, don't get me wrong!), this is the reverse: it's HER blog, and she's telling things from HER perspective. So far I'm really enjoying it. Go. Read.

Telling my Sweetheart (part 2)

So last Friday night, D.W. surprised me by picking me up at work for a really sweet date night out! It was fun and spontaneous and romantic and very thoughtful. She knew exactly what we needed as a couple, and it was wonderful.

As our date was in the "big city," we had a lot of time in the car to talk, and at one point she asked me when I was going to finish telling the story of my coming out to her. "Even though I know how it ends," she said, "I still want to read it!"

The fact that she asked me that, and the fact that we were even able to talk about it on a date, should tell you something about how things are going. ;)

Anyway, like I said last time, I wasn't really surprised by her initial reaction to my emailed "hey, I'm trans" letter (ouch, it still bothers me that it happened that way), but it hurt all the same.

She felt lied to. She felt like I'd been dishonest with her all these years, which in a way I guess I have, at least concerning this one thing that I've been keeping from her. (Although in fairness, that's because I was denying my own transgender nature as well, basically putting my fingers in my ears and going "LALALALALALALA," like that could actually drown it out)

She told me she wasn't entirely surprised. As I mentioned last time, she'd caught me dressing a few times early on in our marriage, and of course she knew I shave my legs, so she'd always kind of wondered if things weren't really over.

She was angry. She was worried about what was going to happen to our marriage, to our kids. All her future plans for growing old together seemed in jeopardy.

All of these are fears I shared, of course.

After her initial email reply, we went back and forth a couple of times through email, but I suggested that we really needed to talk about it face to face, and she agreed. Meanwhile, I encouraged her to go visit my blog and my friends' blogs (thanks, you three!), and cautioned her against looking at too many other things on the Internet, because there were so many different ways of looking at our situation, and most of them wouldn't be very helpful to her.

I don't really remember the rest of that work day. I just remember being worried about what was going to happen to us and our family.

That evening was pretty tricky too, because we had to act like nothing was going on until the kids were asleep. Finally, we got time to sit down on the bed together and talk face to face.

That afternoon, in spite of my warning, D.W. had done some Internet research, and as I feared, a lot of what she read freaked her out. Rightly so: trans folk tend to have a much higher suicide rate, divorce rate, and a raft of other challenges no one in their right minds would willingly take up. Fortunately, she'd also read Laurie's, Christi's, and giantC's blogs, so she saw that the two of us weren't alone in the darkness, and she saw three people with very different life circumstances but surprisingly similar approaches to our common challenge. So to my friends with the courage and willingness to blog difficult things: thank you!

(well, honestly, at first she wondered why I'd tell my troubles to perfect strangers and not to her. But when I explained that I needed a safe haven where I could work through my feelings and figure things out first, thus saving her undue stress, she understood)

Now, a quick aside... right about the time I started this blog, when I first began to recognize that it was possible to reconcile my transgenderism with my faith and family, I started trying to "Metro" up my appearance a little. I put more effort into skin care and shaving, got some new (guy) clothes in brighter colors / softer fabrics, and - this was a big one - I started growing my hair out. I've worn my hair super short for years — military short, pretty much — and I felt like it was important to the overall image I wanted to convey that I have more nicely-styled hair, perhaps a tetch on the long-for-a-guy side (think Josh Groban or Orlando Bloom). When I told her that this was what I was aiming for, she didn't yet know about Arcee, but she went along with it, because I think by that point she knew I was having a midlife crisis or something.

I tell you that to tell you that once she knew what was going on in my head, this apparently sudden shift in my attitude made more sense to her. And for the most part, she was understanding, except for one little detail: dressing en femme.

To be blunt, the idea of me dressing skeeves her out. As we talked through all the ins and outs of what the reality of my transness means to us as a couple, this was the one thing on which she wouldn't budge: no more dressing like a girl. Go as Metrosexual as I want, sure... but dress like a man! (whatever that means these days... I mean, you can't really say Russell Brand and Sean Connery have anything even remotely in common, yet they're both "dressing as men") Anyway, that was her concern: could I give that up?

Well... yeah. I love her and the kids more than I love myself (which I guess means I'm not a "true" Metrosexual, since one of their defining characteristics is narcissism). But would it be easy to give that up? Don't count on it! That said, I've found some strategies that are working okay so far, which I'll be blogging about soon. This is very much a case of us feeling our way through the dark together, and it's going to take time.

The important thing is, now D.W. knows, and we're working through all the implications of my transgenderism, however it solidifies, together. Over the past few months since our initial conversation, we've had several others like it, and she's beginning to understand what I told her that first night: I'm still the same person she married, now I'm just a little more free to express my whole self.

Occasionally when we're alone, she'll get really serious and ask me, "how are you?" — most of the time I can say I'm doing okay. I've had a few dysphoric episodes (my friend giantC calls them "gender freakouts", which fits), but overall, I think things are beginning to level out a bit into a new sense or normalcy. I'll talk more soon about exactly what that means and where I think it may lead, but for now, I've probably said enough.

I'm so grateful for my dear wife's love, patience, and efforts to understand something she never asked for, and probably never in a million years would have imagined would fall in her lap. I pray I never let her down.

Telling my Sweetheart (part 1)

I've been wrestling with how best to approach this post. Ever since I started blogging here, my online friends have been urging me to share my transgenderism with my dear wife (let's call her "D.W." for the purposes of this post). I knew that I wanted to share all of this with her, and that she deserved to know, but I could never seem to find exactly the right time, due to a whole pile of other stresses in our lives. Well, a little while ago something happened that forced my hand, ready or not. It's kind of involved, and is taking me a painful amount of time to articulate well, so I'm going to split it up into parts. Here's Part 1.

I was getting ready to go on a work-related trip for a few days, and had been pulling a couple of late nights trying to get ready to go. One night, as sometimes happens, I felt the strong need to dress en femme (I hate the term "cross-dress" — it just carries too many negative connotations for me, and doesn't feel like a good match for why I do what I do). I can't put my finger on any specific triggers for these feelings — they just come on strongly sometimes, while at other times it's a barely-noticeable undercurrent in my stream of consciousness. Not that dressing really "solves" anything for me, anyway — it just seems to make the dysphoria more bearable, taking the edge off things, so to speak.

Sorry, tangent. I'm like a dog in a park full of squirrels sometimes.

Anyway, I threw on an old pair of D.W.'s jeans that she'd tossed out, a comfy silk shirt from my small stash of girl clothes, and on a whim, I grabbed a pair of my sweetheart's strappy heels from our closet. Usually I wouldn't bother with shoes... after all, I'm not actually going anywhere. But, I'd recently shaved my legs, and I wanted to see how they looked on my feet (answer: meh). Once changed, I bent my mind toward my evening's tasks.

At some point while working, I kicked off the shoes, because my feet are a little too big for them anyway and, like I said, I wasn't actually going anywhere, and barefoot was more comfy. A little after that, I went into the downstairs bathroom to answer a call of nature... and fell asleep! Usually not a big deal — it happens from time to time when I'm pulling a lot of late nights in a row. Usually when it does, my alarm clock will ring upstairs in our bedroom, D.W. will realize I'm not there, and come downstairs to wake me up. I'll look a little sheepish, she'll roll her eyes at me and go back to bed, and the day proceeds as if it hadn't happened.

This time was a little different.

When the alarm went off, I heard it, realized I was still en femme, and quickly changed into my pajamas before D.W. came downstairs to wake me. I assured her that I was up, and she went back to bed. I stashed my girl clothes, returned the heels to their place, got ready for work, and left, feeling guilty that I still hadn't told her about what was going on with Arcee.

Only... remember when I said I'd kicked off her heels before going to the bathroom?

On her way to wake me up, she saw them.

... Oops.

A few hours into my workday, I get an email from D.W., asking if it was just her imagination, or if she had indeed seen her shoes downstairs, and if that meant I was getting into her things again...? You see, early in our marriage, before I'd really come to terms with my gender dysphoria, she'd caught me dressing once or twice. I'd feel guilty about it, we'd both cry a lot, then I would promise not to do it anymore, because of course we both "knew" that this was just some weird, sinful thing that I shouldn't be doing (spoiler alert: after a lot of fasting and prayer, I don't feel that way anymore... but it still skeeves D.W. out just as much as ever). So here I was, caught in the act, and being asked about it over email, no less (which is, I have to say, a terrible communication medium for this sort of conversation if ever there was such a thing)! What to do?

As it happened, I had been working on a letter to D.W. for a little while, based in small part on a similar letter my blog-friend Laurie had shared with her wife. I excused myself from work for an early (and longer-than-usual) lunch break, then shlepped my laptop over to the nearest McDonald's to partake of a salad and their free wi-fi. There, I finished the letter and emailed it in reply, all scared and nervous about what her reaction would be, then I went back to work. What else could I do?

Two hours later, she sent me back a reply. Even though I'd anticipated her reaction, it still hit me like a punch in the stomach.

To be continued in part 2...

On blanket answers

Earlier today, my friend Laurie posted a new entry to her blog, talking about how great it is that recently she, Christian Taylor, and I have all seemingly arrived at a similar place in our transgender-tinged walks with Heavenly Father:

1. Each of us has some measure of gender dysphoria / feelings of feminine gender identity.
2. Each of us was born & raised male, received the priesthood, married a woman, had kids, and is active in the Church.
3. Each of us would likely lose all of these things if we were to pursue gender transition to live as a female.
4. Therefore, we have each decided to remain with our spouses, remain in the Church, and remain primarily male, finding ways to embrace and express our femininity from this side of the gender divide.

I agree with this characterization of my thoughts and feelings today, as well as my agreement with my wife (I know, I still haven't blogged about how I came out to her! Next post, I promise!). But I confess to feeling a little bit uneasy with the overall message that appears to be coming from Laurie's post (I'm not going to ascribe this to her directly, because this may not be her intent at all, and just my interpretation * I'm positive that this wasn't her intent, and she has since said as much, but someone might still get that impression in reading over our blogs without the proper context).

It reminded me of a conversation going on over on Josh Weed's blog right now. The gist of it goes like this:

1. Josh Weed is a self-declared homosexual man.
2. Josh Weed is happily married to a straight woman.
3. Therefore, some argue, these so-called "mixed-orientation marriages" can work and are the solution for all gay men (and women) of faith.
4. "Not so," reply others -- Josh & Lolly's situation is unique. It works for them, and though there are other charter members of Club Unicorn for whom mixed-orientation marriages work, saying "wow, I can't wait to show this blog to my gay friend!" is harmful, because there are many gay Mormons (perhaps most?) for whom such a marriage wouldn't work at all (or who have tried one and failed).

I think the same can be said of our mutual position on our transgenderism. It works for the three of us, and we can rightly rejoice in having found a way forward in our lives that preserves the things we hold most dear, but there are other transgender Mormons for whom this wouldn't be a solution at all. Like Christi said a few weeks ago, our thoughts and ideas should NOT be taken as the official position of the Church, or the One True Way(™) for transgender Mormons to live their lives. Just as gender identity and expression is along a continuum, so too I think are the ways each of us has to come to grips with it.

* I edited this parenthetical to clarify my intent. I'm not trying to criticize Laurie here at all, I just wanted to make sure not to make things harder on transwomen for whom our solution isn't the right one.

The Incredible Hulk and the Transgendered Mind (an Avengers Review. No, Really!)

So I want to see the Avengers movie with my kids a couple of weekends ago. To say we loved it would be a significant understatement... It. Was. Awesome!

(At least for those of us who like superhero bash-ups)

A lot of the conversation about the movie has involved Mark Ruffalo's role as Bruce Banner, alter-ego of the Incredible Hulk — rightly so, it was really great, both in person and via the Gollum-style motion capture that drove the CGI character. The script, written by geek icon Joss Whedon, is really great at balancing a lot of characters, giving everyone's favorite their chance to shine — I love Captain America's line about flying monkeys, for example, and of course Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man is something of a smart-alec. That said, I think Hulk did get some of the best/funniest lines. One in particular really jumped out at me, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Okay, first a brief comics history lesson for those of you who aren't up on your Marvel history. The Incredible Hulk is Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's take on the old "Jekyll and Hyde" dichotomy: a peaceful man of science trapped inside the brutish body of a man of action, updated for the atomic age. In most incarnations, Bruce Banner is a genius scientist who gets accidentally exposed to massive amounts of gamma radiation, which has the effect of turning him into a rampaging monster (unchecked id, basically) when he gets angry. Over the years, the comic has covered this basic premise from a bunch of different angles, from psychological horror to straight up superhero action. It's always at its most interesting, though, when the stories do something to contrast the man inside versus "the other guy," as he refers to his hulkish alter ego in the recent film.

Through most of Avengers, Banner almost always refers to his brutish alter-ego only indirectly, only actually calling him by name once, before immediately correcting himself. This mirrors the "Jekyll and Hyde" theme commonly seen in the comics, where Banner and the Hulk were two distinct personalities, mistrustful of one another, only rarely working toward common goals. The last two feature films to focus on the Hulk have tread this ground, but began to hint that Banner was trying to use meditation and other self-mastery techniques to get control over his "anger issues." This bears fruit in the movie's climactic battle scene:

(pay special attention around the 0:35 mark)

So (spoiler alert!) the big secret is that Banner has learned to control his anger, and thus control his transformation into the Hulk! Pretty heady stuff, and a great 11th-hour reveal. Here again, the comics actually went down this road for a while, with a psychotherapist helping Banner integrate the various splintered aspects of his psyche into what the fans typically call the "Professor Hulk," which reconciled the Hulk's strength and pride with Banner's intelligence and compassion. (full disclosure: the "Professor" era's stories were my favorite to read, so I may be gushing a bit)

So what does all of this have to do with being transgendered? I'm glad you asked, Dear Reader. :)

For a very long time (most of my life, actually), I've seen my feminine side as my Hulk, my "other gal." For quite a while I paraphrased King Benjamin, calling her my "natural (wo)man" (and, therefore, an "enemy to God"). None of this was healthy, and it led to a lot of cognitive dissonance and years of emotional whiplash as I swung wildly between indulging and ignoring that voice inside me. It has really only been these past few months, when I finally realized that Arcee is a part of who I am, and accepted that there were positive ways to listen to and validate that part of myself, that I've found something approaching inner peace.

Are there still metaphorical supervillians in my life that need fighting? Of course there are. But I feel like, having made peace with myself, I'm finally equipped to meet life's challenges head-on. For me, beyond the epic superhero fights and struggle for freedom against a seemingly unbeatable foe, my enduring memory of the Avengers will be that scene: Bruce Banner, calmly accepting the duality of his nature, and turning to face his challenges with confidence. I hope to do the same.

LDS Transgenders' Voices Needed

One of the first blogs I found when I had my "hey, maybe transgenderism isn't evil after all!" epiphany was The Exponent, an LDS Women's blog that spends a fair amount of time talking about gender roles. Lots of interesting threads, not all of them directly related to my own situation, but all of them from sisters in our faith who are trying to find the will of God in their lives. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, the Exponent publishes a quarterly magazine, Exponent II, and they devoted the whole of their most recent issue, which was just released a few weeks ago, to LGBTQ saints. I enjoyed what I read, but when I got to the end I was disappointed to note that they couldn't find any T or Q members willing to share their stories!

Even as our faith community seems to be becoming more accepting of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, methinks transpeople don't yet feel quite so welcome...? Or maybe we just aren't as willing to share? Or, maybe, people just didn't know about the Exponent at all before the submission deadline? I don't know. I don't want to be judgmental of others, but I can't help but feel like there's room for improvement here.

I say this, fully aware of the irony that I'm still anonymous here, not even out to my own family yet. And yet I still feel like there should be transgendered members of the Church who have come to terms with themselves and have chosen to remain active and in full fellowship. Where are their voices? Maybe this ever-increasing group of our gay and lesbian fellowsaints have been able to come forth and talk about their experiences because someone first stepped out in the darkness and blazed the trail before them.

So my question is: who's going to be the brave one and make those first steps so that the rest of us aren't so afraid to follow?