Commencement address delivered to the graduating class of Harvey Milk High School,
a New York City school created for LGBT students
and others whose home schools are not safe
June 25, 2015
I'm supposed to tell you that with hard work and persistence, you can do anything. But you know that already. If you didn't, you wouldn't be graduating. So I want to tell you something different: that you can become the person you wish you were.
When I was your age, I didn't know that. In fact, till I was in my mid-forties, I believed that because I was born into a male body, I could never become the person -- the woman -- I wished I was.
When I was growing up, there were no transgender people on TV, no openly trans people holding jobs, being teachers, running for public office, being models or talk show hosts or Navy SEALS or famous athletes. Everyone I saw was either male or female. Every teacher. Every doctor. Every politician (actually, back then, they were mostly male). Every famous person in history. When I was young, I didn't even know there were other transgender people. I felt like an alien, a monster, a mistake. I wanted, and tried, to die.
When I stumbled across a magazine article by a woman whose son had become her daughter, I learned that I wasn't the only trans person in the world, and that there was a way for me someone born male to change my body and live as a woman. I longed to do that, but I was was terrified that my family and friends would reject me, that I would be homeless, alone and unloved and unlovable. I could become the person I wished I were, but I was sure that my family, my neighborhood, my country, my world, had no place for anyone like me.
So I kept pretending I was the boy, then man, that people thought I was, pretending I wasn't always thinking about dying, pretending I was really alive when most of time, I felt dead.
As trans kids go, I was lucky. I made it through high school, and then through college. A few months after graduation, I married a woman I had starting seeing in my freshman year. I had feared no one would love me if I revealed that I was transgender. But I had told her I was trans when we were sophomores, and she said she didn't mind that I felt female inside, that she would stay with me as long as I acted like a man.
It was a terrible mistake to commit to a relationship in which I would only be loved as long as I agreed not to become the person I wanted -- needed -- to be, but when I lived as a man, all my relationships were like that. My job, my friendships -- everything depended on me giving up on living my gender identity.
By the time I got married, I had completely surrendered to the prejudice against transgender people that surrounded me. If people were going to hate me for being who I was, well, I would do my best to pretend I was someone else. I didn't stand up for my rights, or anyone else's; I kept quiet when I saw injustice and oppression. And above all, I stayed hidden, avoiding anything -- any activity, opinion, clothing, even tone of voice -- that might reveal my female gender identity.
Prejudice and fear not only ruled my life; they ruled my heart. I hated myself for being trans, and I hated myself for being afraid to become the person I wanted to be: the honest person, the brave person, the kind person, the joyful, grateful, generous person, the person who didn't make excuses or blame others for my decisions, the person who would stand up and make a difference.
I knew I couldn't become that person as long as I was pretending to be a man. But gender was only part of the problem. I couldn't become the person I wished I were by hating myself, or by telling myself I had no power over my life or by running away from my responsibility to make the world a better place. I had to stop giving in to prejudice and fear, and dedicate myself to the hard work of becoming the person I wanted to be.
Unlike me, you aren't waiting till you are middle-aged to take on that work. You wouldn't be here, graduating, if you let your lives be dictated by prejudice and fear. You wouldn't be here if you weren't ready and able to do whatever it takes to become the best people you can be.
But when we grow up in a world that hates us for being who we are, it can be hard to imagine ourselves becoming who we want to be. We don't turn on the TV and see people like us, whatever "like us" may mean, achieving great things. Even when people like us aren't being hated or mocked or excluded or beaten up or killed, we rarely see signs that we are valued -- and that makes it hard to value ourselves. The great James Baldwin, a gay African American writer, explained this problem to his young nephew half a century ago:
You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity. (The Fire Next Time)
For too many people, this is as true today as it was in the middle of the twentieth century. When "society" tells us we are worthless, it can seem impossible to "aspire to excellence." But Baldwin says that we shouldn't let impossibility stop us. "In our time, as in every time," he writes, ".... the spectacle of human history in general, and [African American] history in particular, ... testifies to ... the perpetual achievement of the impossible."
That's our mission, whether or not we choose to accept it: to add to the history of people like us achieving the impossible, by becoming the people we wish were.
Since I was a kid, I've loved stories about comic-book superheroes -- not the ones about all-powerful aliens like Superman, but the ones about people whose differences from others enable them to do the impossible. You know the stories I mean. People get bitten by spiders, or or are struck by lightning or develop mutant powers, and suddenly they are different from everyone around them. They know what no one else knows; they feel what no one else feels; they do what no one else does.
Sometimes, they are hated for being different; often, they are lonely, and sometimes they are afraid. But no matter how hard their lives may be, in these stories, being different is a source of strength that enables them to respond to hatred and overcome fear -- to become heroes.
Last fall, I started watching a TV show about a superhero called the Flash, who witnessed his mother's murder when he was young, and grew up as a foster child because his father was wrongly imprisoned for killing her. In his early 20's, he's struck by lightning and develops super speed. Every week, the show starts with him saying, "When I was a child, I saw my mother murdered by something impossible. Then I became the impossible."
When I finally stopped hiding and started living as a woman, I also "became the impossible," a kind of person my family, my students, my Orthodox Jewish university didn't think could exist.
I wasn't the first trans person the world had seen. Trans activists have been blazing trails and fighting for human rights since James Baldwin was a kid, and I wouldn't be standing here with you today if it weren't for the battles they fought and and the victories they won and sometimes died for. But I was the first trans person to come out in my family, and the first openly trans person to work for an Orthodox Jewish institution, the first trans person my students and colleagues had met.
When I came out as trans, the university told me that I would never teach there again, that it was impossible for Orthodox Jewish students to accept a trans professor. I was forbidden to set foot on school property, even to return my library books. But nine months later, the impossible happened: I returned to teaching at Yeshiva University as a woman -- as myself.
My transition from living as a man to living as a woman didn't have a fairy tale ending. My family broke up, my wife divorced me, my best friend turned his back on me and I went through more loneliness and heartbreak than I thought I could endure. But I did endure. I found strength and courage I had never had before, formed new friendships, found someone who loved me for who I really was.
When I became the impossible -- when I became person I wished I were instead of settling for being the person the world told me I could be -- other people also did what I thought was impossible. Some responded with the hatred and rejection I'd always feared, but many responded with acceptance, understanding and love. My Orthodox Jewish students, many of them deeply conservative, protested that I was being banned from campus; when I returned teaching, one of my students told me that her father, an Orthodox rabbi, gave a sermon about my transition. "Uh oh," I thought, but she said he told his congregation that my story showed that we never know the pain the people around us may be in. For him, what was important wasn't that I was transgender; it was that I was a human being who had suffered alone.
When I was living in hiding, pretending to be a man, I never imagined that I could stand here like this, being who I am without shame or fear. I never imagined that becoming the person I wished I were might inspire others do what my student's father did: recognize transgender people as human, and respond to us not with hatred but with compassion. And I certainly never imagined being here, in a room full of young people who have already done the impossible, overcoming pain, loss, fear and loneliness because you refuse to be less than who you want to be.
What can I say to a room full of superheroes? All I can do is cheer you on, and urge you to keep doing and being the impossible, because when you do, you change the world -- not just for you, but for everyone.