by Kurt Devol
Almost asleep, I heard a loud caterwauling. I stumbled downstairs and identified the noise as a mix of screaming and crying, and I picked up the pace to head to my teenage daughter’s room in the basement. Two of her friends were there, and they sheepishly admitted that they had imported liquor into the house. They were slightly intoxicated; my daughter, Jennie, was more so. She was at UT-butt-chugging levels of intoxication, though she had consumed her liquor in the traditional way.
Great. Drunk teenager and her merry band in my basement.
I opened her bedroom door, trying to arrange my thoughts. She was curled in a fetal position, crying and screaming in a guttural, wordless way. Then she registered that her father was present, and she screamed the only words I remember from that night.
“I’M AN ABOMINATION! I’M AN ABOMINATION!”
And that was the moment a few years ago when my heart broke.
***
In September, Knoxville reprised its episodic role as a national punchline when the University of Tennessee’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion posted a clumsy exhortation that faculty consider using gender-neutral pronouns with students, or at least ask students what pronoun they prefer. Butt chugging, eliminating the Lady Vols name, and rape allegations against athletes did not generate the same volume of outraged calls to President Joe DiPietro’s office.
When UT removed the website post, Breitbart.com trumpeted the news, and more than 1,500 fans weighed in, including one wit who suggested, bizarrely, that the Volunteers would be renamed the Volunqueers.
Tennesseans are clearly concerned about more than just the sanctity and tradition of English grammar.
***
When Jennie was a toddler, we called her Smiler, because a wide grin and giggling were the outfits she wore. My older brother, who died when she was 2, painted a portrait of her standing in my hiking boots, holding a baby photo of me standing in cowboy boots—two generations of children tied to a shoe store that my father owned in a small town.
She hates that photo. For me it is a touching reminder of her as a toddler and a meaningful link to a deceased brother and father. I hang it in my work office where she can’t see it.
Our Smiler did not keep her smile, and as she made her way through elementary and junior high, she kept getting a little more withdrawn. She was intelligent and witty with her parents and select friends, but to the world she was opaque—closed off.
My wife and I teased her about being borderline autistic; she laughed and thought it was funny. Her older sister, our social butterfly, was frustrated with her. Jennie got so depressed that she agreed to see a counselor. It took a bit for her to open up—getting an interior shot into her mind required just the right lighting.
“Gavin is transgender,” the therapist eventually told us, referring to the scared teenage boy we now know as Jennie. Our girl had been keeping a secret for many years. The name change came later. For Jennie, my brother’s painting is a painful reminder that she spent the first dozen-plus years of her life feeling lost and different, and had no vocabulary to express it. And when she did find the vocabulary, she learned from every society clue she received that she was an abomination.
For her parents, however, the revelation that our child was transgender was a narrow escape. I would have felt helpless as a parent with a child on the autism spectrum.
***
This week, a colleague in UT’s graduate school and a Facebook friend shared a piece from Breitbart headlined “Women Cry Foul as Glamour Magazine names Bruce Jenner as ‘Woman of the Year.’” I gently challenged a friend of a friend’s comment that “HE didn’t do anything special this year to deserve this.” Those comments make me a little resigned and a lot sad.
Caitlyn Jenner is not the perfect role model for the transgender community—a little too privileged and a little too bathed in Kardashian weirdness. And yet, to my daughter, she is a symbol of change. My daughter is not a pioneer. She doesn’t want to lecture you on bathroom rights—she just wants to pee in the girls’ room without any fuss. She doesn’t have time to hate people who think she is an abomination—she just wants to earn a degree, find someone to love, have a good-paying job, and live authentically as the woman she is.
I will have to admit, though, that every time I hear someone say that being transgender is a lifestyle choice, I have violent urges. Until my road-rage moment passes, I just want to scream “YOU HAVE NO CLUE, ASSHOLE!”
Despite feeling she is hated by many, she is beginning to thrive. She is in college, has a boyfriend, and is trying to find her place in the world within her own skin. My UT student health coverage for her doesn’t meet a lot of her medical needs, and the vigilant pronoun grammarians in the Tennessee Legislature will probably make sure it stays that way.
Not too long ago, I apologized to her. When I thought my children consisted of a boy and a girl, I remember telling my youngest how lucky I was to have one of each. She remembered. I told her that she must have felt terrible when I said that. Meh, she replied. She said her parents hadn’t turned out too badly.
Relieved, I picked up on this self-praise theme: “Yeah. You were pretty lucky to have us as parents, weren’t you? What would your life had been like with different parents?”
She laughed. “I would have been a homeless dude.”
My daughter was clearly wrong about one thing. She is not the abomination.
Kurt Devol is a pseudonym for a UT doctorate candidate in the humanities. The name of his daughter is also changed.
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