Am I Ready?

Yesterday I started teaching a summer class.  It’s the first such course I’m teaching in three years.  In the past, I’ve had good experiences with them:  Students who take them are usually committed or, at least, are working on a different clock from other people.  Maybe the latter is what I like about them.

Perhaps it’s the reason I’ve found myself becoming friendly with a particular faculty member.  This person is a self-described “odd person out”; at the very least, the route this person took to become a professor is very different from others.  This prof—I am doing everything I can not to reveal her/his identity—graduated near the bottom of hiz/hir high school class and didn’t start college until almost the age of 30.

The person of whom I’m speaking conducted a workshop in which I participated before spring break.  That’s how we met.  Actually, I passed this prof any number of times in the hallways and lounges but we never exchanged anything more than a “hello”.  I didn’t have any particular impression of the instructor I’ve mentioned, except for one of suffering.  Maybe that’s the reason I didn’t initiate a conversation:  I knew one or both of us would be telling or hearing a very long story and I wasn’t ready for it.

I’ve found out a bit about this prof’s circumstances and earlier life.  I’ve shared a bit about mine, but of course only in so much detail.  Part of the reason is that we have a professional relationship, but I also knew that anyone who has that person’s sense probably would not talk or listen to anyone who shared any more than I did in the brief time we’ve come to know each other.

What I know is that it won’t be an intimate or romantic relationship.  It has nothing to do with gender identity, sexual proclivities or even either of our relationship status (or lack thereof).  It’s not even a matter of our professional relationship or, at more precisely, my principle (which I’ve broken at least once) of not getting involved with anyone with whom I work.  Rather, I simply sense that sort of energy or chemistry or whatever you want to call it doesn’t exist—and that, if it did, I wouldn’t want to act on it.  In fact, I’m not sure I want to be in that sort of relationship with anybody, even though more than a few people have told me I should “find somebody”. 

If I become friends with the prof in question, that could be a good thing.  But I’m not quite ready to make a new friend anywhere, especially in a workplace.  A friendly acquaintance or colleague would be fine, though.

A Dilemma

Today I got an e-mail from another prof at my main job.  She and I have completely different schedules this semester, so I haven't seen her.  And, she is as busy as she says she is because, among other things, she heads an interdisciplinary program at the college, and is the college's representative on the university senate and to the union.


Even though some of our opinions and ideas are very different, I have always liked  and, more important, trusted her. While she is a late-middle-aged version of the sort of tweed-clad hippie the University of Wisconsin in Madison was graduating around 1972, she does not have that terrible quality that so many leftist academics (or those who fancy themselves as liberals) display:  that curious sort of hypocrisy that causes them to, sometimes misguidedly, take up the causes of people they will never meet and issues that they understand only in abstract ways while they neglect their children (if indeed they have them) or anyone or anything else they encounter every day.  Tranio in The Taming of the Shrew could have had them (or their 16th-century equivalents) in mind when he said, "In brief, sir, study what you most affect."


Anyway...I had asked this prof if she would write a letter of reference for me.  It would actually be more of a character than a professional reference, as she works in a different department and has only passing familiarity with my work.  She agreed, and that presents a dilemma.


You see, she feels that the strongest endorsement she can make of me comes from what students in her classes say about me.  She teaches a course that's part of the college's core requirements, so her students have had courses with nearly every other instructor in the college--including me.  And, she says, her students often make unsolicited comments--all of them positive--about me.  According to her, the students say they like and respect me as a teacher and admire me for my courage.  She has told me that her students have made comments "I want to be like her." and "She makes me realize I can do what I want to do."


Mind you, she's willing to write a reference that doesn't mention those things.  But, she says, she could write something even more powerful--even more powerful than anything she's ever written for anybody--if she could mention what her students said.


What that would do, of course, is to reveal that I'm transgendered.  And I feel that if I were to go elsewhere, I don't want to go in as the "token trannie" or as someone who's a transgendered prof or transgendered whatever.  I'm liking the fact that on my part-time job, I have not talked about it and have felt no pressure to do so.


Now here's another part of the dilemma:  The college to which I want to apply for a job has a reputation for openness to , and acceptance of, LGBT people.   It has a very large and active gay-straight alliance, and, from what I've heard, I wouldn't be the only trans faculty member there.  So it's no surprise that while most people there accept members of the LGBT spectrum, they also understand the differences between us.


On one hand, it's tempting to let the prof talk about what her students say and the workshops and guest lectures I've given on the topic.  On the other, I don't want my identity to be the basis of acceptance any more than I want it to be the cause of rejection.


So...Here's another case of "What's A Girl To Do?"