Not Read, Recognized

By Emily Alford

Most of us probably remember feeling "different" as small children. If we do remember that we probably remember that others picked it up. In my case they just plain knew, though I tried my hardest to be a normal boy. It's not at all pleasant to remember. Playgrounds can be pretty terrible places if you don't fit in.

But over the past few years, people (especially women) have been picking it up in another way. It has happened so often that I think they do see Emily within my male presence, though without quite being aware of what they perceive. What's more, unlike the kids on the playground, they like her and they say so. If I'm not dressed I don't affect any particularly feminine ways, not, at least, consciously. So it has to be from within.

I'll tell a few stories to illustrate the point. My spouse has told me that she picked up something about me even before I told her, which was very early in our time together. Sensitivity that way seems to run in her family. One of our two grown daughters does actually know. The other is a troubled young woman who needs for her own sake not to know. But she has always realized that there is something womanly about me, and she has speculated many times to her mother that I might be "a frustrated TV." As a young teenager she would ask me about it jokingly, and I would jokingly reply "of course." Now we agree if she asks me straight, I'll tell her, straight.

Families are one thing. Mere friends and professional colleagues are quite another. When I was first on the point of accepting myself, I spent a long, long evening talking to a woman friend whose marriage was breaking up. I knew I couldn't do anything but listen, so I listened. At the end she told me how much she valued our talk, and that "talking to you isn't like talking to a man. It's like talking to another woman." She was close, but I wasn't quite self-accepting enough to tell her the truth.

I'm a professor, and I'm on the governing council of the women's studies program where I teach. I learned quickly that it operated differently from the cut-and-thrust of most university committees, and I tried to act accordingly. Twice now I've been recognized there in ways that have astonished me. On both occasions, the council was hosting a distinguished guest for lunch, and I was the only apparent male present. On each occasion, the talk turned to deeply womanly things: the pain of having an abortion, menopause, a daughter's lesbianism, adolescent girlhood, and the hassling that men can give. Both times the conversation just went forward, despite my presence. One of the guests--who had barely met me--commented that she had said things in my presence which she would never say to the men she worked with. The council chair pronounced me an "honorary woman." Two of the other members said privately that they saw a lot of womanhood about me, and that they hoped I took it as a compliment. I responded that I surely did.

It has just happened again, though not quite as directly. A student taking my graduate seminar, whom I had barely come to know, asked me if she could talk after class. She wanted fashion advice--should she wear a dress or a suit to a reception that evening! Perhaps she thought I knew the elite town club where the reception was being held (which I didn't). But whatever she consciously thought, she clearly perceived more.

What's the net effect? If I do go out as Emily, I feel pretty confident about myself now. I've got some distance to go, I know. I don't try to talk, which makes me a silent shadow of a woman. But I'm aware of feeling loose, easy, not stiff and afraid. After all, if people perceive Emily (and like her) when they are looking at Edward, she must really be there. And if she is really there, all the time, she has every right to be herself out in the world.

I also find myself wondering--am I the only person to whom this happens? Or do a lot of us get recognized happily, as adults, just as we used to be recognized to our terrible pain in the cruel world of kids?