Bravery, Values, and Raising Yr Kids Right
On the Trans Day of Visibility, March 31st, 2021, I made a post on Facebook. I said,
Secretly, I don’t like it when you call me “brave.” Bravery requires choice, and I never felt like I “chose” anything.
On Saturday, I went hiking with a friend. Instead of going up a mountain, we went down into a valley. We got down to the bottom, lost track of time, and suddenly went, “aw crap, we have to do the up part now.” It kinda sucked (in many of the best ways). It was very, very hard.
I see coming out, transitioning, hormones, etc. the same way. I was in a canyon, and what was I supposed to do? I was able to get out, so I got out. It still was hard sometimes. I’m very glad I can plan projects, because it was a hell of a project. But it wasn’t “brave,” in my estimation. It was just… hiking out of the valley.
I’m not Brave for being Trans
I want to explain this a bit more. When people call me Brave for coming out, I wonder if you’ll next call me Brave for breathing. To breathe is not a choice, it’s simply the will to live. When I transitioned, the decisions on next steps were as natural and obvious to me as breathing, and just as imperative. It was nearly reflexive. Transitioning, once I realized I was trans, was no more a thing I could stop than I could stop my own heart beating.
Now, why is this? There’re certainly trans people who stay in the closet, sometimes until they die of natural causes in old age, never telling anybody. Why then, for me, was it as natural as breathing? Partly, I suppose, it’s the privilege of having come out in 2015, rather than in even 2005, 1995, 1985, 1975, or 1965. Each decade for the past several decades has been probably demonstrably better for trans people than the one prior. I also came out while living in Boston, with ties to San Francisco and not to Mississippi. Also, I’m white. These things each made it easier.
But there are also plenty of people in San Francisco, in Boston, who are white and who are still in the closet. So why, for me, would I say there was nothing Brave about it?
TDoV AMA, and Openness
Also on the Day of Visibility, I did an AMA — an “Ask Me Anything” where I openly answered questions that made me vulnerable, that are not normally the sorts of questions I would answer — they would be rudely prying and invasive under other circumstances. But I thought “hell, why not? One day, no rules.” So I did it. A friend of mine texted me later,
“It’s so lovely that you’re so open about these questions.”
Many of my friends told me I was Brave for answering these questions, that I would make myself vulnerable. And this, I suppose, was a type of Bravery, more so for me than it was to come out — to be vulnerable and open about it. It’s more akin to the Bravery of getting on stage in front of hundreds of people. More akin to the Bravery of moving across the country. Those were choices, and terrified me. Considering all this, I wondered — “Why am I so Brave about these things?”
The quickest answer is, “Eagle Scout, bitches!!” Best character education ever, I’m still convinced. I once heard that the difference between good and and bad character is that those with good character have simply developed the habit — the reflex, even — to do the right thing, before even thinking about it. In my years as a Scout, I developed the character habits and reflexes that would guide me the rest of my life. To be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedience, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent — a kind of masculinity that is all too rare in the world.
More than that, though, I also came into myself in an amazing community of fire spinners and burners. The overwhelming compassion and community orientation of these groups — along with a fierce devotion to honesty and reality and to breaking down the old barriers — left a deep imprint on me, that is no longer cautious. In those circles, it seems we talk about just about everything. We become vulnerable with each other, especially because so many of us have so much to be vulnerable about, so many of us have felt so on the fringes of society for so long — at least in New England, anyway.
But ultimately, I think the way I navigate the world with openness started long, long before that.
An Open Family
One cousin, upon hearing that I’d be doing a Transgender Day of Visibility AMA, remarked to her husband,
“Is there anything that I want to ask Lex anonymously that I can’t already ask her?”
“Are there things you need anonymity to ask? Do you have boundaries now? Does your family have boundaries?” her husband replied.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that anything you wouldn’t ask,” I said, “are the things you don’t want the answers to.”
Where did I learn my openness? Where did I learn my compassion? Where did I learn to be vulnerable, to be bold, to be myself? Well, I lay it at the feet of my mother (my dad passed when I was very young), and of the collective family in which I was raised. Yeah, that’s right. I learned it from you. I learned it from watching YOU!
I’m so very thankful to have grown up in a family where bodies, sex, and sexuality were never a thing to be ashamed of. Bodies were not gross, profane, sinful or icky. They were just bodies — everyone has one. It was the sort of house where “Rated R for Violence” was not fit for viewing — but enh, seeing someone naked on a screen was normal. “I mean, if you wind up seeing things with sex in them, whatever, you’ll have it someday.” And so even now, bodies are just… bodies. Don’t get me wrong, bodies are weird, but like… cool weird. Consider that every one of our cells is host to alien RNA, which we require in order to live (I’m talking about mitochondria, they’re baffling, weird and cool, folks).
I grew up in a family where compassion was the norm, the default, the expectation. I’ll always be extraordinarily thankful to my family for that. I’m not gonna claim they’re perfect — we all have our foibles. No single one of us was some magical, endless font of compassion. But it was, as I said — the norm, the default, the expectation. Kindness, humility, trust.
We weren’t taught to be good just because sky-daddy was watching us and if we did something bad, we’d be consigned to the fires of hell; or that if we were good, then sky-daddy would give us sky-cake. We were just taught that Good is a Reality, and that we should be Good for the sake of being Good. Without that integrity, without honesty, without compassion, without love, what the hell else would we be here for? To be monsters to each other?
The Blecatsis clan (my mom’s side that I was raised with), I can only presume, got this from their own parents, because the seven cousins and our parents are all pretty outstanding human beings, and I’d trust each one of them to the ends of the earth. The ones they’ve brought into the clan are pretty awesome, too. When you fan out further, I could name even more that I’m honored to know, for they are unbelievably cool (I mean, how many of us get our name in a Muppet book, and then get an updated version years later with your new nephews’ and nieces’ names in the book too and your updated name post-transition?). I’m extraordinarily lucky to be related to such amazing, unique, talented, compassionate, staggeringly admirable humans. I blame them for who I am today.
Raise your kids right, folks. If you want pointers, I know some folks.
