A long time ago, when we thought about all the stories we wanted to tell on Texas Standard, we knew there would be some people whose stories would be too scandalous, too intimate, or too dangerous to be told out in the open.
That’s why we created a safe space called The Whole Truth. Think of it as a confession booth of sorts. What you are about to hear is a story that no one knows about. It’s a secret.
“I guess the best way to describe myself would be a large economy-size Olive Oyl. I’m tall and thin, I have no figure, and my hands and my feet are too big. A common metaphor used to describe the transgender is a woman trapped in a man’s body. I do not see myself as a woman trapped in a man’s body. I see myself as a girl locked in a house, watching other children play outside. She doesn’t play with them because they don’t play with her. They don’t play with her because the other girls regard her as a boy, and the boys regard her as a sissy.”
“I once made an attempt to come out of the closet. It was at a costume party back in the 1990s. And I wasn’t breaking any new ground by doing this. Men dressed as women at these things before. I wasn’t going to shock anybody. It went very badly. One partygoer took a look at me and then suppressed laughter. This other partygoer told me on three separate occasions how butch I looked. That one still hurts. After I went home, I crawled back into my closet and I’ve not been out since.”
“I’ve had a couple of sexual relationships. I’ll confess right now, they were with women. They didn’t think very much of me. One thought I should be a lot more forceful and a lot more masculine and the other just simply went out and found somebody like that. I think I do have a life partner. I don’t want to have anything sexual with him because he is the best friend I have ever had, and he is probably the best friend I ever will have. And I don’t want to screw that up.”
“Well, I really just hate the idea of being expected to be a man when I’m not a man. I think if I could have the answer to a wish – if you remember the show The Little House On The Prairie, the way nearly every episode ended with Melissa Gilbert running through a sunny meadow, her arms out at her side, her hair streaming back from her head, her skirt whipping around her legs, I wish I could be her. And that’s the whole truth.”
If you have a story beating in your chest waiting to come out – we won’t reveal your name, but we will reveal your secret.
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