When conservative Christians and other social conservatives talk about the “homosexual agenda,” it seems they often come up with outlandish ideas of what it would be. You know, stuff like trying to recruit teenagers into “the homosexual lifestyle,” lesson plans on “homosexual sex” in kindergartner classrooms and scary “men in dresses” invading public female restrooms to terrorize helpless women and children.
Of course, the real LGBT community agenda is more about anti-discrimination policies, hate crime protections and marriage equality for its community members. More simply, it’s about freedom, equality, justice, human rights and human dignity.
But our individual LGBT agendas are often just about living our lives undisturbed – left alone – by society around us while we engage in mundane activities.
My own transgender agenda these past couple of weeks has been pretty much directed at just plain ol’ straightforward existence and much of it has actually been about the common and mundane.
For example, a couple of months ago, I had a filling fall out of one of my molars. There wasn’t enough of the tooth left to refill, so my molar – number two in the dental numbering system – needed removal. About two weeks ago, what was left of my number two molar was extracted.
Well, I did everything the take home instructions from the Veterans Administration Dental Office told me to do to avoid getting dry socket, but I got dry socket anyway. It hurt something fierce. My dentist, Doctor Gordon, told me that my case of dry socket was one of the two worst cases of it he’d seen in the past year.
Super! In one more way, I’m one of the point 5 percent of society. Woo-hoo!
But in another sense, lots of people get dry socket when they have a tooth removed. My being transgender had nothing to do with my dental issue, just as a lesbian getting dry socket has nothing to do with her being lesbian. Having a dental issue is just life. Getting through the pain to the healing is just a life agenda item.
So in a sense, having dry socket was a transgender agenda item – but only in the sense I’m transgender and had the experience.
Other items in my transgender agenda, or “transgenda” as I like to call it, have been caring for my two cats. When I took Kitty Bon-Bon and Maggie to their veterinarian six months ago, she put them on a “wet food diet.” That’s because: 1) My cats were overweight; and 2) Kitty Bon-Bon had a kidney infection from not taking in enough liquid. So, I have to feed my cats more expensive cat food than I’d like to, and I have to feed them more frequently than I used too. And of course, there are the cat boxes that need frequent cleaning.
I can’t forget that grocery shopping is part of my “transgenda.”
My primary care physician wants me to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, fish, as well as beef, twice a week, and eat and/or drink two to four low fat servings of dairy.
Other mundane activities include making sure I keep up the daily walks I do for exercise. I usually walk from North Park to Kensington on Adams Avenue and back again, sometimes twice a day.
And then there’s keeping up with my laundry. I wear a lot of colorful clothing. There’s a lot of laundry involved in keeping up that distinctive, artsy look.
I could go on, but I believe you probably have already got my point. My life has been both interesting and mundane in the past couple of weeks, and that mirrors many other lives in the LGBT community. Call those our personal, LGBT agendas. I’m sure our collective, personal LGBT agendas have been just as interesting and/or as mundane as the “heterosexual agendas” of many others in broader society.
How very unspectacular our daily agendas often are, but having unspectacular lives aren’t a good or bad thing in themselves. Having interesting and/or mundane experiences are so much of being human, and LGBT community members are fully human.
And I think that’s the real point of my personal “transgenda.” My personal “transgenda” is full of common, American, human experiences.
