Cracking The Gender Barrier In The Deep South–Good Ol’ Boys Go Gay

Lainey Harrison, previously Fulham Harrison, had always known that the South would be a tough gender nut to crack.  She had spent enough of her early life spitting and scratching on bass boats and turkey runs to know that good ol’ boys would be the last to accept the gender spectrum.  They were the most raw, unevolved, bullheaded cis-gender Americans in the country, and she did not have to survey them to know this. 

Maleness everywhere has its memes and icons.  From dress to sports, to camaraderie, to water cooler tall tales, men were pretty much the same.  In the South the traditional signifiers of maleness – pickup trucks, bass boats, and gun racks – were fighting symbols of both the Old South and machismo, only a little less obvious than the Stars and Bars.   No self-respecting man in Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia would never be without at least one of the three. 

Of course there were pockets of progressivism in the major cities; and a men’s group or two popped up in the some of the tonier, woke suburbs of Atlanta; but in general the South was not a woke place, and any hope of encouraging a more tolerant, inclusive attitude towards sexual diversity would indeed be whistlin’ Dixie.

Lainey was a transitioning woman, and before her decision to transgender she was Fulham Harrison from Blakely, Alabama, a small red dirt town near the Mississippi border.  He had grown up with cotton, tillers, tractors, and black men and was the apple of his father’s eye, certain to follow in his footsteps to start but then become a landowner like his uncles who owned thousands of acres of rich bottom land near the Alabama River. 

Hiram Harrison was a man’s man, as spitting, scratching, foul-mouthed, and whore-mongering as anyone within a hundred miles.  His circle of friends were no different, and so Fulham knew nothing other than this brand of maleness.  In fact because his father was generous with his time, Fulham went fishing and hunting with him and his buddies and was given a full dose of pure, unalloyed Southern men.

How this boy ever got a transgender idea in his head was a mystery to all, especially to his new alter ego, Lainey.  She wondered how in God’s green earth she ever even considered becoming a woman.  If fact she – he – had already been to Star Mooney’s and had gone upstairs with a cute young blonde girl from the hills.  

So what accounted for this desire to all of a sudden to become frilly, made up, and pretty? She laid the decision to her Aunt Philomena, her mother’s sister who had long ago left Alabama for school in Pennsylvania, where she had been ‘infected’ by the perversion of Northern liberals.  She was the smart one in the family, bound and determined to get a real education, to leave the swamps, cotton, and bayous of the South, and become her own woman.

She never abandoned her family, however, and visited them infrequently but regularly and took the opportunity to inject some modernism into the backwater mentality of her brother-in-law.  No dice, of course, but little Fulham was all ears about anything to do with sex, and found the thought of sexual transformation titillating and then exciting.  

Aunt Philomena immediately recognized the boy’s interest, and took him on as her special project.  Far out of Hiram’s reach and hearing, she gave the boy lessons about the gender spectrum, and how even a young man from his background could evolve to a higher state of sexual reality. 

At first the youngster had no idea what she was talking about, but when she got down to brass tacks, he soon caught on; and in his youthful imaginings, he thought that by being both male and female he could have double the sexual pleasure of any one woman or man.  It was this far from unusual idea that prompted him to go to Philadelphia to live with his aunt, and the rest is history.  For the next five years he was schooled in gender diversity, transitioning, and the delights of femaleness, and when he was of legal age, he began the more serious process of sex change. 

Fulham, now Lainey Harrison, never fully embraced such change, and never decided to cut off, so to speak, her options.  There was enough man in her to warrant some circumspection, so she went on a trial run – everything feminine on the outside, and mostly male on the inside, a solid money-back return policy.  Rushing into things, especially when there was a point of no return, was  not on the table.

Thanks to her aunt, Lainey became politicized and radical – a return to his macho roots and evangelizing among the last crackers in the South would not only be a test of his political mettle but would satisfy his still doubtful commitment to transition.  From the perspective of a transitioning woman he would be able to have an objective look at the male society from which he came.  Although he had been indoctrinated enough to believe that his father and those men like him were among the last to come down from the trees, he owed it to himself and to them to give a closer look.

Of course he did not begin his evangelical journey in his home town.  Showing up in tights and high heels would end up in tarring and feathering, and besides it wouldn’t really be fair to his father; so Aunt Philomena concocted an end run, an indirect approach rather than a full frontal.  She enrolled Lainey in a school for nurses aides, a short six weeks course about bedpans, adult diapers, caring and compassion after which he would be able to introduce the community to this new type of woman, one with extremely feminine sensitivities but with the heart and soul of a man.

His fellow nurses aides at Blair General Hospital loved him.  He was so attentive and in a strange way, very attractive.  Despite his every effort to submerge if not expunge his male side, he could not help himself.  He was not girly girly friendly, but very horny male friendly, and so he danced to different tunes whenever it suited him.  The nurses knew what he was and what he intended to become, but they could not resist his particular attractiveness.

Aunt Philomena thought this was a good thing, for if girls could fall for him/her, they were falling for the new gender reality, and her mission was successful.

The breakout – the move from nurses to orderlies and doctors – was difficult.  Although Fulham was able to befriend, through the women’s auxiliary, wives of the bass boat guys she wanted to ‘help’, the men were as ornery and rude as ever.  “Why’d you bring that thing into the house, Darlene?”, said Bobby Ray Burnside after the three of them had tea on the verandah. “Why, Bobby Ray, she’s just as dainty and cute as the real thing”.

“He ain’t nothing of the sort”, said Bobby Ray.  That thing’s got a cock and balls he wants gelded and trimmed, and if he doesn’t watch his step, it’ll happen faster than he ever expected”. 

“There’s no cause for talk like that”, said Bella Burnside.  “Who cares what’s below the waist when everything else is a pure, lovely, sweet woman”.

Needless to say, Fulham went back to Philadelphia, gave up the transformation he never fully endorsed, gave it a few months, and returned to Alabama where he signed on as a field manager – the reincarnation of a plantation overseer of the old days – and easily picked up his father’s spitting, scratching, and hawking ways.  

More Catholic than the Pope, was what people said about converts; and the old adage applied in spades to men who became women for a day and then returned to their roots.  Fulham  talked the talk and walked the walk like no other.  The odyssey was complete.