I don't know how to start this, but you might need some context. Know that this post isn't about me or my health. It's about a conversation I had with my doctor.
I've known him for some time. He's my dermatology surgeon. He removes basal cell cancers and I have a lot of them, so he knows me well and I know him too. So we trust each other. I have his cell phone number!
Yesterday I saw him and he asked me about the lesion he removed from my breast last month, as he was taking a biopsy of a very likely site on my belly. I said it was fine but a little lumpy, and he said it was because of the movement of the skin of the breast.
"Yeah, I've heard from trans friends who have to wear tape for a few months after removing breasts because of how that tissue moves."
He paused a beat and asked, "How do you know trans people."
"Um, I'm queer and in community and have friends who are trans?"
I talked about folks in a faith community I was in, the queer org I worked at in the early 90s, the queer homeless youth host home program we were in. Then he launched.
"What do you think about the explosion of trans people right now?"
Woah, I thought. Is this what cis people think?
"Well, is it an explosion or is it just that it's safer to be out about it than it was 20 years ago? I bet people thought there was an explosion of gay and lesbian folks in the 90s and 2000s."
Then he was done with the biopsy (they never take much time) and he left. I'd brought my knitting because it's usually 15-20 minutes before he comes back to either take out more or to sew me up. So I picked up knitting and turned on some music on my phone.
Within two minutes he was back. Instead of waiting elsewhere for the slide to be read and analyzed, he wanted to talk. He seemed curious and he had opinions.
"I think it was a mistake to push for trans kids to be on sports teams."
I talk about how movements form and react to pushback and learn.
"It's easy to look at that in hindsight and judge it, but what if it created enough pushback for these issues to be a national dialogue and balloon the movement?" Then I talked about Bayard Rustin's freedom ride in the 1940s that in many ways was a disaster. But it taught folks in the civil rights movement, including Bayard Rustin, the architect of the March on Washington, how to do it better. How the violent pushback from southern institutions emboldened even more people to want to do something about racism.
I also talked about the history of sex verification at the Olympics and all the times they've tried, it's been problematic. How hormones and genetic testing reveal that there aren't standard norms for "women" and "men" and how gender is a social construct.
We moved onto his own experience of his kids and their experience of young people. "It feels like an epidemic," he said. "No, not a disease...but a lot of my kids friends are changing their gender. I asked my kids if any of their friends changed their pronouns back and they say no."
Then we returned to how it's safer now for kids to express who they are in a way folks in our generation (we're close to the same age--he has kids in college, so maybe a little younger). He said he had trans patients but not many. I pushed back.
"That you know of. Lots and lots of people hide who they really are for a long time. I did. It took me a long time to come out to people in my life, let alone doctors."
We talked about safe places. He talked about New York City and The Castro. I talked about how Pride is a place where I feel more completely myself than I feel anywhere else.
"I'm just afraid the pushback to trans people will get [REDACTED] elected again."
This. This is what he's afraid of. Fascism. I wanted to tell him that fascism isn't caused by movements for justice. I wanted to tell him that fascism breeds well in fear. But then the slides were done and he had to go check them.
He returned to sew me up, which also doesn't take long, and wanted to know about surgical stuff, which I know little about, other than it's out of reach, financially, for so many people. Then he was done.
I think I'm going to text him this article about the first NOTSEE book burning at the Institute on Sexology, how attacks on queer and trans folks was an easy rallying cry and testing ground for fascism. I wonder what he's going to ask me about when he takes the stitches out.
