From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/the-closet-and-bradley-manning_b_3777554.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices
Dana Beyer
08/19/2013
The recent publication of some of Bradley Manning’s personal emails and photos about his gender dysphoria, including admissions from his psychiatrist during the sentencing phase of his trial for espionage, once again raise the issue of the “closet” and the pathology created within it.
For purposes of discussion, let’s posit that Manning’s story is generally true; it is neither a ruse to evoke compassion pre-sentencing nor an attempt by the prosecution to damage the LGBT community by disparaging Manning. And let’s accept on face value that being trans had nothing directly to do with the actions that brought about his conviction. Those acts are related to his idealism, or to his personality and character defects, or both, however you choose to view his leaking classified documents.
So what does it say about the state of LGBT acceptance in the small towns of America?
Manning’s therapist related that his client joined the military in an attempt to overcome his gender dysphoria. He was not the first — recent public figures such as Diane Schroer and Kristin Beck come to mind — nor will he be the last. Many others have joined relatively macho professions or attempted risky behaviors, such as reaching the summit of Mt. Everest for the first time on Coronation Day in 1953. Their purpose was a form of self-administered reparative therapy.
This self-repair can be cloaked in a religious vestment, as was my experience, or it can be completely secular in nature, but the key point lies in the attempt to cure oneself of the feelings, the profoundly intimate knowledge that you’re female, even though everyone else perceives you as male, or vice versa. The process usually proceeds for years, often decades, before the erosion of one’s resistance to the truth has been completed and you’re left with nothing but the raw truth. At that point, should you reach it, you either engage with your truth or take your life. Some people never get to that point and are able to run and hide forever; others come up short in childhood or adolescence. The majority have made it to adulthood, with all the trappings that that involves, before the executive decision must be confronted. As an aside, my motivation for my advocacy is to prevent those decades from being lived with a mask, at best, or fraudulently, at worst, by today’s generation of trans children. To allow children to be who they are, with their lives ahead of them.
The waste generated by the closet is primarily personal: the waste of a life lived inauthentically. Gay persons know this just as well as others who’ve pretended to be someone they really aren’t. It’s remarkable how universal the closet is, and how familiar the experience. I know people whose fathers wanted them in the family business so badly that they gave up on their dreams to become teachers, and others whose parents wanted them to become doctors when all they wanted was to write or paint. The years pass, you get tired of fighting the familial and social pressures (“the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice”), and before you know it you’ve convinced yourself that you’re right where you belong, or worse, right where you deserve to be.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/the-closet-and-bradley-manning_b_3777554.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices
