["Courage From Necessity
Mr. Barb Greve
Mr. Barb Greve is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist. He is a New Englander, godparent, classical bassist, and home brewer. He enjoys watching Babylon 5, meditating, doing cross-stitch, and experiencing the sunrise on Cape Cod. He and his spouse live in Marlborough, Mass.
"Are you going to change your name?" he asked.
I know he meant it as a compliment but I had a hard time accepting it as such until a friend of mine reminded me that sometimes courage is born of necessity. That is certainly the case here. "Courage" is the last word I would have used to describe my actions.
My decision to ask people to use masculine pronouns in reference to me comes from a feeling of need. I need to be honest about my whole self and am not willing to put part of me aside to make others feel comfortable. I realize this will challenge and scare a lot of people and that it already has.
As a friend so aptly wrote after I told hir about my pronoun change, "I have to admit, I felt kind of unsettled by this news when I was thinking about it last night. I thought about it a lot, actually. I came to the conclusion that it feels this way because it's kind of scary. I mean, before, your transgenderism seemed like a totally internal thing. Now you're challenging the rest of us to completely change our mind-sets, to step outside our safe boxes and see the world completely different from what is as ingrained in us as responding to our own names. And that's scary… you bet it's scary."
I think the most frustrating part for me and probably the scariest for you is that I can't clearly explain the "why." I can tell you this change feels right, and for me, this is enough. But I fear that by using my masculine pronouns and keeping the name Barb, I will confuse the issue for you and make life harder for others who identify as transgendered. I know human instinct is to try to group like people together, but like so much of my life, two people who appear to be alike on the outside may be so entirely different. For this reason I want to say clearly that I am speaking only about my experience and no one else's. I've found the most comfortable combination I can imagine for myself but there are many people, transgendered or not, who will make other choices.
I choose to keep the name Barb because it has great significance to me. I was named Barbara because my adoptive mother always wanted the name for herself. The meaning used in our family is "stranger in a foreign land." As an adoptee, I can't think of any name with a more appropriate meaning. While I have tailored the original name to fit my personality, I still consider it a precious gift from my parents.
My father asked if I was intentionally trying to confuse people by keeping my name. The simple answer is no. But I've come to the realization that in order to be comfortable with myself, I may need to confuse others.
Many people have asked me why I can't just identify as a butch woman since that is what I am…. really. But they fail to realize I don't understand myself as a woman. When I was younger, I thought I was really a boy and some mistake had been made with my body. Ever since kindergarten I've understood that I would grow up to be a guy.
When I hit puberty in junior high, I discovered I was attracted to girls. One day a girl in my class called me a lesbian. I went home from school that day and looked up the word in the dictionary to discover it meant "women who love women." I decided this must be who I am. After all, I had the same type of body the other girls in my class had, so I must have just gotten confused somewhere along the line.
I came out publicly as a lesbian in college. My friends encouraged me to join women-only meetings. They thought I would enjoy being in women-only spaces more than hanging out with the guys. I tried hard to find my place during those years. I surrounded myself with all types of women, many who were working to redefine women's roles in the world. Yet the more I hung out with them, the less I felt I belonged. Other than our attraction to women, we had very little in common.
I've since learned that gender is not as simple as biological sex (which can be altered); nor can we simplify and limit gender's definition to social constructs. I believe gender to be a combination between biology and social roles. We all choose to express our gender in different ways— our styles of dress, how we show emotions, what hobbies we enjoy, and who we hang out with are just some of them. For some people, this means limiting how they are in the world; for others, it means challenging stereotypes.
I struggled with my gender for years. I wanted more than anything to blend in and fit a stereotype. My only problem was, I couldn't find one. I looked to the men of my life to be role models. I accepted their standards of behavior as my own. As I grew older, I discovered some of the limitations I had put on my behavior were uncomfortable. I then began to look to the women of my life for help. But I ran into the same types of problems. I realized I wasn't comfortable expressing my gender as either one.
Most people thing gender expression is the same as gender identity, but for me, it isn't. My understanding of my gender identity is the same today as it was 20 years ago. The differences between then and now are (1) the words I use to describe myself and (2) the way they express my identity. As I child I never heard the world transgender. No one ever told me it was OK to identify as something other than male or female. Alone, I struggled with how to describe what I knew inside was a truth: I was not going to grow up to be either a man or a woman. I had already spent many years trying to make myself into one or the other and had been unsuccessful.
Society's need to make gender one or the other sacrifices the life experiences of people like me. We are forced to choose between a man or a woman. My journey is not about transitioning into one of the two acceptable genders. It is not about making a political statement. My journey is about becoming a whole person. It is about being the best person I can be: a transgendered guy named Barb."]
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