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Working to ensure equal opportunity for all youth, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

True Colors

by a. simon bassett

What is grey? Is it neutrality? Is it apathy? What is grey? It is the eternity between black and white. Grey is the no-man's land. Grey is the uncertain. Grey is the spanning mystery which fails to be defined.

Black. White. Male. Female. Gender. Social construct, some yell. Innate nature, others proclaim. Pain in the ass is what I call it. No one ever told me there was a world between black and white. Nobody alerted me to the presence of this wardrobe leading to the magical grey world of gender Narnia. I was a child of the 90s. Black. White.

Now, sometime along the line, somewhere around the mid-late 90s, black and white ceased to be the only colours. The rainbow showed up. Gay. Straight. Bisexual. Queer. Bright colours to spruce up the duo-chromatic world. Black. White. Red, orange, yellow green, blue, purple. The world was vibrant. But there was still no grey.

So what happens to someone like me? Someone who is lost between black and white? Gender definition is so tricky. People so often take gender for granted. Because, really, how often do you think about your gender role? If you're born biologically female, you tend to follow, no matter how vaguely, the role society dictates for girls. Same for being born biologically male. Gay, lesbian, it doesn't really matter. There's the aspect of gender that seems so solid, even when removed from sexuality. Black and white, even without the rainbow. So what about the grey?

I have never fit a mold. I never really wanted to. There's something sexy about being a rebel, isn't there? I was some sort of gender-bending James Dean with a cigarette in my mouth, walking the span of infinite grey, all cocky and devil-may-care. That's what being transgender is all about, isn't it? Feeling at home in the grey. Feeling secure, even without a cozy definition. So why was it so hard to get to that pint?

Since attending my first Seacoast Outright meeting four years ago, my label has changed dozens of times. I was bisexual, gay, male, female, transsexual, transgender, preferring girls, preferring boys. I did it all. No one was safe from me. There was a comfort in knowing I could be a chameleon; I could change at any time, and no one would judge me. It was easier to be all those other things, and the hardest thing of all to be just one thing: myself. Because there's no easy label for what or who I am. How do you define grey?

Even among other trannies, I feel out of place. I feel like I'm too feminine, too masculine, don't pass well enough, not political enough. I feel like there's some secret transsexual checklist that I'm missing. There are no rules for this strange and rebellious new subculture. The rules are made up as we go along, and it's disconcerting. The spanning, shapeless, ill-defined world of transsexuality, and transgender is has yet to be conquered. There are too many directions to go in, too many individuals to perfectly summarize what it's all about.

There is one constant, however. No matter how college is going, no matter what the transgender folks in the weird grey world are doing, I know I can come home and I can find myself. Seacoast Outright has been there with me through every step of my journey. Seacoast Outright has provided me with the support and friendship I needed to get me through a time in my life that would have otherwise crushed me. I am not transgender or transsexual when I come to group. I am simply Simon. That's all I need to be. That's al anyone wants me to be. And because of that, I have the strength and confidence to reach out to the transgender or transsexual youths who are going through what I once did.

This past year, I was privileged to take part in a play called "The Naked I: Beyond the Binary," the transsexual and transgender response to the famous Vagina Monologues. It was written by a senior at Smith College who, like me, was a non-operative gay man. The play was a huge success at the college, to the point where we almost went to Boston with it. Several monologues from the piece have been picked up by producers all around New England and are still be performed this summer. It was a project that reached hundreds and I was so grateful to be a part of it. But even more significant than my role in that production was my day-to-day life at an all female school as a transsexual. People came up to me all the time, shyly murmuring, 'I have a question...' And that was fine. I realized that I could handle that. I am no longer the one with all the questions about gender identity.

I want people to feel okay about not being sure. I want people to realize that confusion is part of the process. There is a world beyond black and white. I want to help people get to understand that there isn't just the extremes. I don't know how to do that other than to be open about my own struggle, my own confusion. The transition from black and white is both exciting and frightening, but I can stand up as proof that it is an ordeal and a journey that you can survive. I want to let other transgender and transsexual youths know that although there might not be many of us in a given area, we are here. None of us are alone. We are all colours of the rainbow, but most of all, we are grey. Grey is a part of the rainbow and it can exist all by itself. Grey doesn't have to be terrifying.

So what is grey? Grey is the way a sky looks before a warm summer thunderstorm. Grey is the cigarette ashes clinging to your best friend's sweater. Grey is the colour of smoke rising from a winter's fire. Grey is a kitten's fur. Grey is the streaks in your mother's hair. Grey is everywhere. I am beginning to embrace that grey. I am beginning to accept that it isn't so easily defined. Not everything can be explained in a sentence. Not everyone fits into one box or the next. I am grey. And grey is beautiful.

Simon is a sophomore at Smith College

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last updated: 08/09/2004
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