Archive for August 12, 2006

Expectation, normativity, a guy, and a dwarf

There’s this guy I know, J. I’ve known him about a year, I guess. Likeable, a little shy, very sweet. Something about him always bothered me, though. His too-high voice seemed like an affectation, his curled-in posture seemed diffident. He just struck me as off somehow.

So a few weeks ago, he mentions, in the course of explaining this situation he’s in, that he’s transgendered. And I thought, “Oh!”

It was like, whoosh, the air went out. J. became normal to me. “Normal” because there was nothing off about a transsexual having a high voice or a chest that looked, well, post-op. The perception of abnormality came from not knowing, not being able to put the pieces together.

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