Real Boys Don't Die
In the early sixties I spent a lot of time, like most teens, trying to figure out who I was. My best resource was the library. The section where I found the most relevant information was Criminology.
New York, where I lived, considered me a juvenile delinquent because I was a gay kid. Never mind that I was well brought up, didn't skip school and or carry a switchblade like some of the non-gay girls.
Nevertheless, I was a young criminal and the studies of female "deviants" in prison were all I had of literature about myself. Often, their criminality was attributed to their variant natures. Occasionally they were granted a kind of forgiveness. After all, the women studied were in jail, without men, poor things, so they had to make do. I was suspicious of these studies -- if researchers studied women in prison then all the lesbians they studied would be, guess what? Criminals!
I admired these "bad" women. It never occurred to me that they might actually be criminals. They were gay; if they stole it was because they couldn't get decent jobs and if they assaulted it was because they couldn't control the circumstances of their lives.
Living happily ever after was not to be for them. Inside, they fell in love with and fought for straight women who might go back to men. I can't imagine why I was so proud and happy that I was queer like these women, or why reading about them gave me such a thrill. If I was sick, then it was an illness I treasured. If I had to survive in their world then I would -- and by my wits, not by my fists, although I was perfectly ready to use those if I had to.
My brother, as if sensing the vulnerability of my difference, had taught me long before how to box.
Despite my queer attraction to these lesbians, I knew I'd never be quite like them. Sure, I could talk kind of tough, but I was better at keeping my mouth shut and getting teased about being the strong silent type. Sure, I had to walk like I had no fear, but I'd never exactly mastered a girlish sashay in the first place. And of course I had to learn to drink, a talent for which my genes showed great promise.
Oh, and I was a criminal. I'd fallen in love with my best friend -- that made me a menace to society, right?
Since the film "Boys Don't Cry" opened, several women I know have come back looking shell-shocked. I can't bear to see the movie, but I guess they got a bigger dose of reality than they'd paid for.
Brandon Teena may have been trans, or may have been a lesbian in drag, or may not have used those terms at all. However he identified, all that I've read and heard has taken me right back to my baby butch days. It's important that this film is out there because it apparently graphically demonstrates that nothing's really changed – there are still women who are attracted to other women, act on it, and are punished by society one way or another, sometimes by vicious men like Teena's accused murderers.
I certainly had gender issues as a kid, but I didn't want to be a male. I found them foreign creatures, too large, too loud and so arrogant. Why should they always get the last say, I remember thinking. And they did get the last say – at least the last Teena ever heard.
When I came out some of us were really into drag or even into passing -- at age 14 and earlier. This wasn't the same as wanting to live as a man. For a little while each week or each day we felt strong in our boy clothes. We didn't get stared at when we put an arm around our girlfriends. We walked more freely in the world.
Somehow, my friends and I managed to stay out of major trouble -- and to stay alive. I remember lying on a bed fully clothed, a fascinating young woman beside me, when her boyfriend came upon us. He started physically bullying me. I was good at the squirm and run maneuver and managed to plunge into the thick of the ongoing party where he couldn't get at me. How many of us have had these close encounters?
It may now be legal for women to wear men's clothing and to make love with women. but it can still get one killed. If Teena had done male hormones and surgery he might be still be alive.
Who knows what will be standard forty years from Brandon Teena's death and after forty years of gender exploration. Maybe we're evolving toward blended genders. Or will kids, trans or gay, still be reading criminology texts to find themselves – as victims?
Copyright Lee Lynch 2000
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