By SCOTIA MACGILLIVRAY

 

I read with great disappointment, but not without surprise, Karen Bercovici’s Gazette column, “LGBTQ and the erasure of true female identity” [Gazette, March 5]. I was surprised but glad the Gazette put Karen’s opinion piece on its pages. It does give the opportunity to express differing opinions in the public domain.

However, my disappointment stems from its stunted and pseudoscientific ramblings. So instead of tearing the opinion article apart bit by non-scientific bit, I’ll present a counter opinion by putting a face against the hateful rant the column presents.

I am from Northampton. I grew up here. I recently moved back several years ago after decades away. I’m glad to have discovered my hometown again. It’s refreshing that it is more accepting than I can ever remember of my LGBTQI+ community. It’s mostly changed for the good. It was not that way growing up here. I often got called “faggot” in public school because I was a different kind of kid. I had schoolyard fights and had to excel in athletics to avoid being called out or beat up.

Mayor David Musante was my baseball coach and I was an all-star baseball player. My best teammate was the first female athlete to play Little League in Massachusetts. When I had nowhere to live at one point in the late 1970s, family friends who were a lesbian couple with children (not very normal in those days) help put up a different kind of teenager, so I could finish Hamp High.

I remember early Pride marches in Hamp that were not “parades,” but marches to fight for our common civil rights. I supported my lesbian, butch and dyke sisters then, as I still do today. In all regards, I am an older woman of transgender experience who has returned home.

I am a lesbian and a feminist. I am employed in an emergency department as a registered nurse. I often see trans boys and trans girls come into my department depressed and suicidal. They are often bullied at their schools, and commonly have parents who do not accept them. It is heartbreaking.

As a professional nurse, I am a role model. One that they can see as successful against hateful rhetoric, exclusionary practices, bullying, potential violence and trans-misogyny. A role model I wish I had when I was their age, a long time ago.

As for Bercovici and her opinion piece, my hunch is the writer has never met a transgender man, or woman. Nor do I assume she ever spent much effort trying to know who we are and our lived experiences. Especially in lieu of the very hateful media references that the writer presents us as in her piece. I rejoice the day when this writer’s exclusionary and hateful rhetoric will die out, along with the people who espouse it.

Scotia MacGillivray lives in Northampton.