Bitchy Transition–Who Said The Gender Revolution Would Be A Piece Of Cake?

Lorena Bobbin had come out many years before her gender reassignment.  She – or rather he, a football player named Larry, had realized that he was gay when, sitting by the pool at his parents’ Larchmont house, noticed Dr. Hendricks’ erection, and rather than turn away, he couldn’t take his eyes off it.  It was clearly meant for him.  Hendricks was a dentist who, bucking the implant trend, specialized in dentures, the kind that didn’t slip. His specially-made, state-of-the-art teeth were the talk of the retirement homes for miles around..  The broad smiles of his patients dispelled any old-fashioned images of moldy sets of teeth steeping in an overnight jelly jar; and there were enough of them to make him a moderately wealthy man.

All that flashed through the mind of Larry Bobbin as he and Dr. Hendricks lounged by the pool sipping his father’s famous pina coladas.  What did he care about teeth and dentures, when the man clearly wanted him?  In an instant all pretense of prom dates, corsages, and necking in the back seat of his family’s Oldsmobile disappeared.  Erection matched erection and the affair was arranged. 

Larry came out not long after his fling with Dr. Hendricks.  It was about time that he danced with wolves, and he moved to Cedar Rapids which, surprisingly for a conservative Midwestern town, had a hot gay scene.  He was in his element and the belle of the ball – which, not coincidentally started him thinking about gender transformation.  It was not enough to be belle of a gay ball, he thought.  Why not be the belle, the sexy, sinuous, irresistible woman that he knew he could be?  

In today’s happy-go-lucky, come what may climate of sexual ease and tolerance, there would be no sneaking around.  And so he began transition therapy and scheduled himself for the final cut in June.

However, he kept that part of it quiet.  Both men and women were a bit squeamish about the final solution; but not Laurence, now Lorena, who welcomed the knife.  He never asked to be a man after all. Larry had taken to it all very, very well; and because of his original fine features, lustrous eyes, and very pretty demeanor he became an enviable woman.  He had been photoshopped as it were – his best features accentuated and his few bad ones airbrushed so that he in his new incarnation was a femme fatale, runway model, and gorgeous Hollywood starlet all in one go. 

Which, not surprisingly, made him the object of catty bitchiness in every trans woman he met.  Gender reassignment meant getting the whole package.  There were spontaneous tears, feelings of insecurity, and hard-bitten, inconsolable feelings of envy.  Larry had become a woman in all her frailty, submissiveness, and jealousies like every other trans woman on the block.

And so she entered, kicking and screaming, into the new world of transgender jealousy.  Top dog was one thing for men – he had been a social climber, a super-achiever, and a step-over-dead bodies executive – but little did he know that a woman’s world was far more bloody and unforgiving.  

As a man, he simply fought dirty.  There were winners who simply took victory for granted and losers who lost and moved on.  Not so for women.  Since there were no pools of blood in women’s combat, only flesh wounds and scratches, the real damage done was internal. Women belittled, humiliated, demeaned, and dismissed.   Their attacks were never out in the open.  A pound of flesh, death by a thousand cuts was their modus operandi. 

Imagine the carnage at the White House when the President began his search for transgender aides.  It was not enough to hire gay men and women, nor even to expand the gene pool to people of color.  Only transgenders would do. 

As a nod to his progressive aides, he agreed to interview all applicants, usually the job of the Chief of Staff or at best the Director of Diversity.  But truth be told the President had a prurient interest in the task.  “What could they be like?”, he wondered.  “Like my Aunt Millie or my Uncle Bob?”  Neither as it turned out for the likes of Lorena, LaShonda, Belle, Hyperia, and Blaze did everything in their power to disparage, spread rumors, and suggest improprieties about each other.  The dossiers of the Chief of Staff were little more than rap sheets – allegations of every wrong doing from slander to shoplifting.  “Not a real woman”, was one entry about Lorena.  

The senior aide asked the President if he could demur, or at least use another form of vetting.  Was it all really worth the bitching he had to put up with?

“Yes”, said the President.  “We must select the best and the brightest”; but nothing of that caliber every came through the doors.  

Lorena got the job because she was a hot ticket, pure and simple.  What would have been gross misconduct, misogyny, and patriarchal abuse if a straight man had used such criteria when hiring a straight woman, was perfectly acceptable when vetting transgender women.  In fact, the degree to which they looked and acted like women was exactly the criterion for selection.  The transition had been perfectly arranged.

So Lorena Bobbin became an aide to the White House Director of Diversity and Inclusivity.  Her only job was to come out on stage and stand behind the President whenever he addressed the public or the press.  A token woman/man in the picture window, the storefront glass, the Bank window. 

The bitchiness and catty innuendoes stopped once Lorena was selected.  Her competitors were now her suitors, sucking up for consideration and appointment.  

The moral of the story? None in particular.  Women behaving like women, God bless ‘em, and what would we do without them?