Public schools are now sprinkled with transexuals, I suppose in part because of the extensive civil rights/union protections to keep them there. I now have two trans friends, and I consider them in the outer sphere of my work-friends. They’re both nicer than many of the "CIS-gender"—even heterosexual "CIS-gender"—people in public schools (a low bar).
One is a new teacher who’s very dedicated. He's a former 5'9" bearded, barrel-chested, burly martial arts guy (he showed me a photo), who now has lasered away his facial hair and is on estrogen. I asked him what he wanted to be called (he uses a guy's name, although one of those male names you could imagine artsy upper middle class Americans or Brits naming a daughter). He said he doesn't use any pronouns he just asks the kids to call him "-----." He dresses like a lesbian who wants to dress like a guy—anime t-shirts, loose jeans. He's kind of doughy. Overall he’s relatively sane, though he did once come into my classroom before the kids appeared and announced that “I just got my hormones for the month and they make me feel a little crazy!” (I was glad it was estrogen and not testosterone.)
The other is a kid (20) who graduated high school and hasn’t started college. I keep meaning to take him a flyer about Kentucky's Berea College (I think he has no money and isn’t academically-oriented enough for some schools). For several years he’s worked as a lifeguard. He has those pathologies all the kids have now, e.g., he’s never learned to drive and so bikes to work. He lives with a brother and father. He has long hair and though very tall and a lifeguard he's unathletic, and kind of flabby. He doesn’t have the making of a good-looking guy, but as a woman he may be less fortunate. He likes to talk to me. Maybe he doesn't have friends, maybe he was gay and he has a crush. (I'm three times as old, so I’m not trying to find out.)
He said he wanted to grow his hair very long (a pre-teen girl at our swim camp overheard and chimed in, "I want to grow my hair down to my butt!”). I advised that unless he was going into rock music as a career he shouldn’t do that. He replied: "You know I'm transitioning." I hadn't known that for sure. I told him he really can't discuss that in front of the kids and he said that they wouldn't understand what he’s saying.
I’m gay but don’t really understand trans people nor do I feel an uncomplicated identification with their plight, and feel none for their social or political movement. Some Like it Hot, but not me. If I could take a pill and live—reversibly—as the other sex (sexual orientation, race, religion, age), like Ursala Le Guin’s gender-switching race in The Left Hand of Darkness, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
If these trans people are going to keep coming at me, if the Fates send them (for you Christians read this as "If the Lord is going to keep sending me these trans people"), I want to know how to "minister" to them. I asked the guy, "Do you think this will make you happy?" I know there are well-respected writers, like Abigail Shrier, Deborah Soh, and Ryan Anderson, who’ve written on the downsides of transexual procedures and counseling. But has anyone written anything, especially for people other than parents of “trans” obsessed children, about what to say to friends going down this road? Maybe I should, as my mom would say when she began to lose her faculties, "pray on it."