The Worst We Have To Offer
A Confrontation In Chicago

I want to share an incident that happened while in Chicago during my visit there for the Gay Games.  Actually, I'd rather not share it, but I think there are some important things to learn from it.

Elizabeth and I arranged to meet some people from the local Chicago-area transgender community at a Meet & Greet for Wrestlers who competed at the Gay Games.  I really enjoy meeting people locally who have emailed me, and I wanted to make time to ensure that happened.  The plan was to meet, and then to go someplace for dinner to chat before getting home early to pack in preparation for Elizabeth's early morning flight.  That's what we did.

A group of five of us went to a small restaurant that one of the gals recommended.  We were chatting and enjoying ourselves, when in walks this "person". 

This person was transgender of some flavor.  But, to be honest, this person was the closest to the stereotypes that many of us work to change, or to pretend don't exist, as anyone I've ever seen.  This person was dressed as female, but there was nothing whatsoever feminine about him.  He was loud, and big, and drunk, and obnoxious.  He lumbered over to our table, pulled up a chair, and plopped himself down.  The most immediate problem was that he had a cigarette, and I don't enjoy being around cigarette smoke - especially when I'm eating.  So, before he got too comfortable I politely said something to the effect that I'd appreciate that he not smoke at our table - and others there seconded that.  Apparently, he wasn't to happy about this initial reception - he glared at me for a couple of seconds, got up, and went over to the bar area behind us.

About half an hour later, after we had finished eating, he had tanked up a bit more and decided to make a second pass at us.  He came back around again, pulled up the chair, sat down, took a long drag from his cigarette, and blew the smoke across the table directed at me.  It reminded me of a time in high school in chemistry class, when the guy across from me kept reaching over and turning on the Bunsen burner gas thing that was right in front of me.  Each time he did it, I'd reach over and turn it back off.  He did it several times.  Finally, I looked him straight in the eye and warned him not to do it again.  He slowly reached over and turned it on again - daring me to do something about it.  Before he could move an inch backwards I loaded up and punched him right in the side of the head.  We both got in trouble for fighting, but he was the one who had a split lip and a shiner.

Anyway, I digress.  So here we are - this drunken oaf with a wig on the top of his loud, obnoxious head, looking at me after blowing smoke as a challenge to me, and rather than over-reacting or becoming aggressive I stared directly in his eyes and slowly said 2 carefully chosen words - each one said independently from the other .  "F*ck You".

That's all it took.  This person wanted a piece of me.  I stood up as he got up and the people around him restrained him and dragged him the the back of the restaurant.  I sat back down. I still had my athlete's lanyard around my neck and carefully took it off and put it in my purse.  I expected that he'd be back, and I didn't want to give anything to pull on.  I made sure I knew where the steak knives were on the table, and made sure the bottle of wine was within reach if I needed it as a weapon.  At one point in my life I was a bouncer so I knew how this game was played.  I never expected to need to use those skills again, but life can be funny like that sometimes.  I wasn't going to get goaded into this jerk's drunken aggression, but I wasn't about to allow him to touch any one of us, either. 

They didn't do a very good job of keeping this idiot at bay.  This guy had worked himself into quite the lather, and it was only a couple of minutes before he was back for a third go.  "BLONDIE!" he bellows.  "I'M CALLING YOU OUT!  LET'S TAKE THIS OUTSIDE!!" he says as he strides towards the table to get at me.  I stand up again.  The most surprising thing from this entire incident is the fact that Elizabeth got up to protect me - put herself in harm's way between me and this clown.  The owners were there trying to get him out.  Some of the people in our group were pushing him away and to the door.  He wasn't very happy about not getting a piece of me and said something about waiting for me outside.  Whatever.

I really wasn't upset by any of this.  In fact, I'm more disappointed about it than anything.  To find that there are people who represent the worst that we are is very frustrating.  All this outreach, and all this education, and all this work to show that we're more than that - but the reality is that some of us really ARE that.  The fact that the first time I've come close to having to defend myself comes at the hands of a guy in a dress is actually pretty ironic - almost funny if it weren't so sad. 

As a community we have our fair share of idiots - we are not immune.  We have our fair share of people you wouldn't want to know or hang out with in the "real" world, so why would you want to be around them simply because you both have something in common?  I don't feel compelled to like everyone in our community, and frankly I don't feel at all guilty about that.  Too many times we look the other way or make excuses - calling these morons "fun loving" or "wild and crazy" when actually they're just idiots.  I think it's time to call it what it is.  And, I think as individuals we need to let them know that their behavior affects our lives.  If their oafishness was contained to their own little lives - who's to complain?  There's no law against being an ass.  But when these people somehow become representative for the transgender community in general - that's when there's a problem.  The thing that entire restaurant full of people will remember from that night was the loud, obnoxious, belligerent, drunk man in a dress who tried to pick a fight with another one of them. 

Each of us has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and to making a fool of ourselves in public.  What one person considers simple fun, another considers brutish or offensive.  Certainly, there are no absolutes here.  But the fact of the matter is that each of us needs to be aware of how we're acting and what we're doing.  Being transgender does not automatically give license to forget all social graces, to trample other people's rights, to make our entire community look like idiots.  There is a line past which decency has gone out the window - where the gray area is no longer gray. 

In my mind, the key attribute missing in these people is Dignity.  They have no dignity.  They have no self-respect.  They have no sense of worth.  Is this my problem?  Of course not.  I wonder if they ever had dignity in the first place, so losing something you never had becomes problematic.  However, because others lower themselves is no reason for the rest of us to think it's okay - in ourselves or in others.  We need to maintain high standards of behavior - in the workplace, in public, in the media, wherever we are.  Each of us is a little representative for the transgender community for the people we encounter, and the more of us who can affect them in a positive way the more we'll find the overall empathy and respect that has been missing for so long.

Eventually many of us outgrow the unhappy, angry, people in our lives as we find our own path - as we move towards our own happiness.  The fact that these people are stuck and simply hold us back because they simply can't or won't find their own way isn't about sex or gender.  It's just about living.  Or, in this case, NOT living.
 

Posted July 22, 2006