F

Playing Pinball
A Common Ground Column
by Loree Cook-Daniels

There is a fable wherein a wise man greets each life event, horrendous or wonderful, with the same phrase: It may be good or it may be bad; it's too soon to tell. One of my paths has had that pinball feel. Each new development, good or bad, has ricocheted into something else.

Since every path can be traced back generations, we'll arbitrarily pick up this story four years ago, when a good thing happened: I published an article in a small newsletter on how I was trying to cope with my partner Marcelle's desire to live as a man.

That act led to something bad: without permission or notice, a nationally-distributed magazine reprinted the piece. A colleague in my field of elder abuse saw the magazine and so learned about my "other life." She, too, had a transgendered partner and immediately decided that since there were two of us, it was time to start talking about how elder abuse affects sexual and gender minorities.

She knew exactly where she wanted to start: at a ground-breaking national conference on minority communities' experience of elder abuse. To ensure the organizers couldn't ignore our proposal, in front of dozens of witnesses she embarrassed them into expanding their definition of "minority" to include sexual and gender minorities.

All that turned out to be bad for me: the national aging organization I worked for was upset at the idea. After an extremely painful set of negotiations, they asked me to do the workshop as a "private citizen." Since lots of people attending the conference knew whom I worked for, this
condition meant spending an excruciating amount of time awkwardly, repeatedly explaining no, I hadn't quit or been fired, I was just attending the conference as an individual.

The workshop itself led to a good thing: more people decided they wanted their staff to learn how elder abuse affects Lesbian, Gay male, Bisexual, and Transgendered elders. Unfortunately, these training invitations carried more pain: my employer continued to require me to disavow my connection with the agency, forcing me to fund the work out of my family budget and continually
wrestle with being employed by people who apparently didn't care whether queer elders were abused. After three years of trying to change their minds or find a way to reconcile my conscience and my income, I finally resigned and became a full-time freelance consultant. It's too soon to tell whether that turns out to have been a good or bad move.

Another ball was shot into play when I realized that I couldn't talk about the abuse of transgendered elders when I knew nothing about transgender aging. Almost no one else did, either, I soon learned. That led to something positive: the founding of the Transgender Aging Network (TAN), to find and link people working on transgender aging issues. TAN's creation
spawned more balls. With an organizational name (at least) behind us, we've begun sponsoring transgender aging workshops at various conferences. Which led directly to the latest bad thing.

Remember the woman who got me started on these workshops in the first place? I recently recruited her to be on a transgender aging panel. Suddenly *her* employer got cold feet. Her agency is already embroiled in a controversy over placing foster kids with Lesbian and Gay parents; they don't want any connection with transgendered elders. Even the don't-mention- your-employer conditions I piloted weren't good enough for them. However, her immediate
supervisor is extremely embarrassed by the homophobia and transphobia being manifested here, so I'm hoping her guilt will lead this particular ball to ricochet into something good....

Meanwhile, transgendered elders began approaching TAN to ask detailed questions we couldn't answer because the research doesn't exist and because we aren't set up to provide individual support. So we created another ball: ElderTG, an e-mail support list for transgendered persons aged 50 and older and their significant others, friends, family and allies. Because of yet another bad thing - a shortage of transgendered elders with online access - we sponsored just one list, welcoming both male-to-female and female-to-male transgendered persons. That risky compromise turned into something unforeseen but very good. It permits people who are -- at age 50 or 60 or 70 -- trying to learn how to live life in the "opposite" gender to safely ask
each other questions like: Is it true men don't speak to each other in restrooms? Is it true mammograms are extremely painful?

It also led to something I find truly remarkable and amazingly sweet. The ElderTGers have created an alternate universe where they are all 12 to 14, going through the adolescence they always wanted, together. They've created a storyline each of them contributes to, a world involving baseball games, trips to the mall, gym class, math class, parents, tree houses, Sadie Hawkins Day dances and lots and lots and lots of flirting. Perhaps not surprisingly, the gay boys were the first to consummate their flirting, but the bi and heterosexual girls and boys are seeing some action, too. All this play represents more than just fun: the participants say it's giving them
confidence in their "real life" ability to start interacting with others their own age, in their preferred gender.

I haven't always enjoyed this ricochet path. When my colleague's agency panicked, I spent days in an angry depression reliving my own employment struggles. But no matter how upset I get at the homophobia and transphobia, I have to admit that in this case it ultimately led to something that is undeniably good and that never fails to make me smile: the image of all these flirty, playful, loving old men and women giving each other gifts of the adolescence they always dreamed of.

FORGE PO Box 1272 Milwaukee, WI 53201 | phone: 414-278-6031 | email tgwarrior@forge-forward.org
Revised: 03/21/02