Dillan DiGiovanni shares how reading about late author Matt Kailey’s sexual orientation made his mind explode.
I read a book in 2006 that forever changed the way I thought about gender, sexual orientation and sexuality.
I learned a profound lesson about social norms and language and the ways they can often limit and restrict us or liberate us and set us free–or some combination of all of those.
The book that practically blew my mind wide open was Just Add Hormones: An Insiders Guide to the Transsexual Experience by transgender activist, speaker and teacher, Matt Kailey, who passed away last weekend from sudden heart failure.
Matt was funny, witty and selfless. He worked tirelessly, writing, speaking, teaching and offering support to anyone who had a question to ask. He was a personal mentor and virtual acquaintance of mine and generously offered to let me interview him last year. You can read that published article, just posted on May 10th, on GMP right here.
But for the purposes of this article, I wanted to share a profound a-ha moment that I had when I read his book. It really impacted me in a way that left me forever changed.
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Since Matt transitioned later in life, he possessed a perspective that younger individuals may not have, particularly around one’s solidified sense of sexuality (if any of us ever really achieve that). He shared the process of his experience as a series of articles he wrote for the Gender Identity Center in Colorado. He took those articles and condensed them, along with some additional material, to create his book.
The most striking part of his book for me wasn’t his midlife awareness of his real and true gender identity. It wasn’t the obstacles he overcame or conversations he endured with ignorant people along the way. My brain exploded when I read about the impact of his transition on his sexual orientation, but not as he, himself, defined it but as others did. This was a watershed moment for me and forever changed my perspective on who we are and how we are perceived by society. Despite being deeply complex beings, we become easily categorized because we all need a shared vocabulary to communicate. It is worth considering what is gained and what gets lost in that process.
My brain exploded when I read about the impact of his transition on his sexual orientation, but not as he, himself, defined it but as others did.
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This revelation, it’s about words and how powerful they can be. In his book, Kailey shared his sexual preference before transitioning from female to male. He was strongly attracted to men when he identified as a woman and remained attracted to men after transition. This was an unchanging variable in his personality and identity. For some people who transition, their sexual orientation or preference does change. Heck, that happens for cisgender (not transgender) individuals as well! What changed wasn’t who he was but how he was perceived and labeled by others. As a woman, he was straight. As a man, he was now gay.
His entire identity changed, even when it didn’t change at all.
I know. I needed a moment, too.
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We need labels or words to communicate and express ourselves. We need something to be able to differentiate from nothing. But have we reached a time in history (or have we always been here) where the words we have and use actually communicate less and not more of what is true and real? Matt’s sexual preference and identity never changed internally, but the labels used to describe him did. And he was now forced to live with those labels and the impact of them for the rest of his life.
His choice to change his gender identity was a gain in one way and a significant loss in another. Because of the way we’ve drawn lines around gender identity and sexual orientation in this country, Matt lost his straight identity and now had to learn to adjust to being identified another way as a part of another community.
Words are things, indeed. They have a life of their own. I wanted to share Matt’s story as one example of the ways in which we use words to define people often in ways that they don’t even define themselves.
Matt’s story and the somewhat silly and arbitrary nature of this experience, forever changed the way I will think about gender, sexual orientation, sexuality and identity in general. It brought into full focus with deep clarity the way we put people into boxes that are often ill-fitting and inaccurate at best.
Matt left us too soon but not before leaving a significant impact on me in this one small way and in many other ways for so many people. I am so grateful that he shared his story to inspire generations, members of the LGBTQ community or not, to think outside the box(es) and choose our words more carefully.
Visit Matt’s site to read and review more of his life’s work by clicking here: Matt Kailey
Connect with Dillan on twitter and instagram. Follow and he’ll follow back and all that jazz.
Photo credit: Books by Matt Kailey on Amazon