January 7

My poor, poor husband :(

He is a transgender male. He has been in transition for a year now. He has been taking hormone replacement therapy for about 5 months. His appearance has changed a bit, but he was already kind of androgynous (leaning toward masculine) to begin with, so it's nothing drastic. I say that to make the point that the picture on his drivers license is NOT that far off from what he looks like now. He goes by the name Michael, even though all of his legal identification still has his birth name on it.

On his way home from work last night, there was a Highway Patrol checkpoint. So when it's his turn, and he pulls up to the Trooper, the guy greets him with a "Hello sir. May I see your license?" Michael hands over the license, which identifies him with a female name & gender marker. This takes the Trooper off guard, and he questions Michael. "Are you sure this is you?" Yes. Trooper looks again, closely. "You sure about that?" Yes. "Hang on." He consults with another Trooper and they both come back to his truck and ask him to pull over to the side of the road.

Now - I understand that they are simply doing their job. They saw a man with a masculine voice and a name tag on with a masculine name (he still had it on from work), but this man gave them a license that had a different name and identified him as a female. This is a red flag. They were right to double-check. But for any transgender person, being questioned about your identity can be traumatic. So once Michael got pulled over, he explained that he is a transgender male, and he has only been in transition for a year now, and that he has not yet gone through the lengthy legal process to change his name and gender marker. (He can never get an amended birth certificate. Tennessee is one of the states that refuses to do that.) They questioned him a bit more, and the Troopers conferred with each other. I honestly think, from the way Michael described it, this was their first ever encounter with an FTM (Female-to-Male) person. In the end, the Trooper took down all of Michael's information and told him they "would be checking up on this".

Sigh.

My heart broke for him. It really rattled his cage. By the time he got home, he was pretty torn up about the encounter. It's bad enough that he feels rejection from his children. They are 27 and 21. The older, his daughter, has maintained contact but is completely uncomfortable with the transition and has not yet begun using Michael's preferred pronouns. She told Michael that the biggest reason she is upset with the whole thing is because Michael didn't disclose his gender identity earlier in life. She feels like it was a secret that was kept from her all her life. Which.... it kind of was. But Michael didn't open up about this to ANYONE until just over a year ago. He struggled with it his whole life. And he definitely didn't want anything taking away from his children. He put them first and made sure they had what they needed instead of focusing on making himself happy. His son, the younger, was completely irate when he found out, and has not spoken to Michael since that day. :( Out of all the various repercussions that have been experienced in the past year, that is the one that hurts Michael the most. I have no idea how long it will take before that resolves itself.

I wish so much that I could do more to make Michael's transition smooth. I want to take away all the hurt and frustration and intolerance. But I can't. All I can do is stand by his side and let him know how proud I am of him and be his loudest cheerleader. I just hope that is enough to make him realize how wonderful he is and how much he is loved for exactly who he is.