The Children of Harvey Milk by Andrew Reynolds

Author:Andrew Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mel says there was pushback from local voters: not transphobia per se but an uneasiness, a sense of avoidance. “There was an awkward silence around my journey when it came to face-to-face conversations. The gender two-box system is so ingrained—it’s the first thing we ask before we are already born, before we breathe air.” Mel describes a neighborhood that prides itself on being liberal and progressive: “So post-gender they don’t have to deal with you as a trans person. So liberal that gender identity is irrelevant.” But that means the issue is not engaged or embraced. Every conversation is made more difficult—an “extraordinary sense of otherness.” Mel describes a typical event. “You can feel the awkwardness when you meet people for the first time: ‘Is that a man or a woman?’ Flashed in front of you is a huge challenge to your sense of identity and belonging. An androgynous person elicits discomfort. I understand it because that was my experience as a young woman—‘Is that a boy or a girl.’ ” Mel laughs. “A hundred people thinking ‘What’s wrong with that dude?’ ” He brings up Pat, the Saturday Night Live character from the 1990s played by Julia Sweeney. The joke was the inability of others to determine the character’s gender. “I was Pat,” says Mel. “A soft demeanor, but masculine clothing and haircut.”

Looking back on his 2013 run for office, Mel recalls, “I wanted to take that unease out of the room by addressing it. ‘I’m a transgender person, I’m a mom of two kids.’ But that was not our strategy. It sat in the air as something left unsaid. Because of that what I said wasn’t landing. My words were going through this filter—‘Who is this person?’ I now start speeches by saying, ‘I want to tell you something about me. I was born female, I present as a white guy but I was born female. I tell you that not because I want you to be thinking about it but because I don’t want you to be thinking about it. And now let’s talk.’ This take a few minutes to for folks to process. You have to create space to allow the person to have their reaction.”

The New York Democratic primary was held on September 10, 2013. Twenty-seven thousand votes were cast. With 6,149 (22.2%), Mel Wymore beat all candidates bar one. He was 1,400 votes behind the winner, Helen Rosenthal. If Wymore had won in 2013 it would have been the most significant electoral victory by a trans man in history; even within the rarefied ranks of transgender and gender variant candidates, transmen are a rare and exotic breed. In 2013 only one trans man had ever been elected to any office, anywhere in the world, and one had come out while in office.

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