Rhino Ramblings

Rhino Hard Cider = Happiness

EBE (Easiest Blog Ever).  I met with several folks at Kennedy Space Center this past week in preparation for my return to participate in events in March and June.  The June event might have me telling part of my story on NASA TV. More on this when the time is closer. The wonderful folks I met with had some really good questions. I vastly appreciated them including one about if my transitioning made me happy.  I stumbled a bit in responding with a nit in the back of my head saying “I know the answer” but unable to fully articulate it.  Two days later I woke up and remembered that 30 years ago I had a fantastic answer and hoped I still had the article I wrote.  I did.  And so this blog is a full reprint (I decided not to edit much more than a few words) by permission of the author (me) from a MAGIC newsletter I wrote in the mid-90s (MAGIC was and still is a Trans support group in Northern Virginia.  For several years in the mid 90s I co-led the group and wrote a number of articles).

One last pre-note: For you youngsters out there, NYPD Blues was a ground-breaking cop show.  The red-haired actor I mention is David Caruso – known more recently for CSI: Miami.  Besides great acting and writing it is known for the first nude male behind on network TV.

I’ll add a post-note at the end of the article.

*****

As many of you know (since I try to mention it at least every other MAGIC meeting, especially for the newcomers to the group) one of the quintessential statements concerning the ultimate outcome of the TS (Transsexual) journey comes from the TV show “NYPD Blues”.  In the first season two cops are talking.  Cop A (the “red-haired one”) is divorced and Cop B is considering getting a divorce.  Cop B asks Cop A “Did divorce make you happy?”  And in one of the few scenes from TV etched in my memory as a great TV moment, Cop A takes a long pause, considers and then says, “No, but it made me eligible to be happy”. 

Back in the cave days of the 1970’s Johns Hopkin’s was the leading center for transgender (TG) research.  But along with that fame, came the backlash.  As a step to rid Hopkin’s of the TG program, an adversary to the program did a study to “verify” if living full-time as a female (FtMs were basically an unknown quantity to the research world at that time) and having Gender Reassignment Surgery (GRS) resulted in a happier life.  What struck me about this study is some of the standards used to define a “happier life” including a better job and less time spent in jail.  In what was obviously a slanted study, the TG supporters unsurprisingly lost.  This study tried to prove, or disprove as the case may be, the happiness quotient but never considered the eligibility question.  The fact that a post-op TS was not necessarily leading a socially defined happier life really had nothing to do with the validity of seeking and taking that path. In any case, the study concluded that post-op TS’s were no more happier than those who never lived full time as a woman or had surgery and, therefore the program was disbanded.

At the other extreme, I have occasionally met and more commonly seen on TV, people who “want to be a TS” because that will make them happy.  This makes for excellent talk show fodder: “I was an unhappy homosexual, decided becoming a woman would make me happy, had GRS, did not find acres of happiness awaiting me and therefore GRS is wrong for everyone” (don’t you just love individual, anecdotal stories generalized to cover all situations).  Among other fallacies is that the ultimate goal is happiness. 

The previous two paragraphs may give the impression that I do not consider happiness and the TS process to be compatible or that it is wrong to ultimately want to be happy.  My point, and why I love the “eligibility” phrase, is that in taking the TS path, as with any life-changing path such as divorce or coming out of the closet, the right path to take cannot be measured by how happy one is in the end.  There is much more to life than measures of happiness.  The right path for an individual will provide one with the ability and eligibility to go through life rejoicing in the good times, while learning, growing, or simply surviving the bad times.  To find happiness in life, one must first make themselves eligible for that happiness.  If one is locked in a life that is not their own or is controlled by forces beyond one’s control, then good times bring no relief and bad times only add to one’s burden.  Breaking from that prison, in the TS case the prison of gender dysphoria, does not guarantee happiness.  In fact it is almost guaranteed to include difficult, painful periods and is often full of risks and loss.  But the path, if the right one for the traveler, opens up to a world of possibilities for growth, joy and happiness.

Consider an individual, anecdotal tale (which I’ll try not to generalize too much).  I have had a relatively easy transition through the TS path up to and including surgery.  I have kept my job and have increased my responsibilities there, I have a good relationship with my children, I’ve joined and been very active in the local Church and I have gained some very good friendships.  I have also in recent times felt the shackles of my 30+years of struggling with my gender identity being taken away and freeing me to truly live life.  On the other hand, I have never felt so alone or cried so hard or felt so miserable as I have at times since I transitioned.  I freed myself both from internal struggles and from the ability and desire to shut off the world.  Now when life has thrown me a curve, I feel it fully.  But that’s okay – in fact that is what I think the best outcome can be – to be fully alive to all that life brings.  I am also now fully eligible to experience the good times:  the joys of my children, the good friends, the good feeling of a job well-done, interaction with people whom I would have in the past hidden away from, etc. 

Do not be discouraged when the bad times roll along – that is not a sign that the path you are taking is wrong.  On the other hand, do not expect happiness to be a constant state of mind.  Rather, consider if this path includes a wall between you and the world in all of its glories and bleakness; or is the path an ever widening one which allows you to – makes you eligible to – experience that world and be and embrace happiness when the opportunity appears on that path.

*****

Post-note.  If I do say so myself, the author of that article was pretty darn good.  I have not read it in the past 30 years and thought I would need to do a re-write.  But it really struck a chord when I wrote it and is equally relevant today.  That phrase: “eligible to be happy.”  I wish I had coined it instead of a TV cop show.  But I embrace it all the same.