explicit bias

Do you remember being at, say, the dentist, and seeing a piece of art above a threshold: a framed and matted photograph of many children's handprints in different colors of paint, captioned something like "DIVERSITY - We celebrate our differences." ?

Even as a child, I can vividly remember, I had been conditioned by my parents to view that idea of celebration as frivolous, trivial, nonsensical. What do they need to celebrate? We're different, yes. That's the end of it.

But not only was that not the end of it as concerned the very idea of diversity, it was not the end of my encounters with frivolous celebration.

Years later, I am fully no-contact with my biological family, for reasons concerning their refusal to celebrate among others. Instead, I am part of a large group of musicians who form a family of choice not just for me but for each other. These musicians display all spectra of politics, but they're largely apolitical.

My partner is a trans woman, and I fell into implicitly trusting my orchestra family just before she began to realize this about herself. So, they recognized a "nice young man" in the boyfriend I was suddenly showing around, and I drove myself crazy trying to figure out how I could nail in that fit to the mould - how could I come about to have a partner that they loved as much as I did, and as much as they loved me?

Both impossible, for love and time are complicated. But the complication only twisted up further as I realized eventually they would have to be given something even farther afield from conventional than a stick-thin reticent non-musician with long curly hair and no beer nor beard.

Surely, I told myself, eventually they'll notice that she has a chest, now, and one that cannot be assumed pecs. Surely it would be wrong for my teacher to live out the next-last ten, fifteen, twenty years of her life referring to a name that I hadn't used for fifteen, ten, five.

And surely when they were told, they'd say things like "Oh, the pronouns are confusing" and "Oh, I'll just use the old name, it's all the same, you know who I mean" and carry a silent disbelief that someone they cared for so deeply was so committally entertaining this course of action.

No, I didn't expect vitriol. But neither did I expect the universal refrain: "Okay. Whatever. Doesn't matter to me."

I've come to resent the idea of repeating "whatever" as a response to compunction you aren't personally experiencing, or information you find impossibly useless. Can they rebuke my preemptive defensiveness? I suppose they can, so I try with each next turn to be a little cooler, a little more unbothered myself. Can they advise me just to be myself, and that no one is going to be as hateful as my parents? Probably.

But would it kill them to say "Thanks for telling me." instead of an insistent chorus: "Nobody cares." ?

It's repackaged "don't ask don't tell", when my teacher fondly reminisces on the first time someone came out to her and she replied with a roundly rendered "Whatever."

It's a damning divide, when my grandpa uses the pronoun and corrects himself on the name but follows it up with "or whatever she calls herself." Not that I haven't received a "whatever you call yourself" about my own cadre of nicknames based on a blossoming middle name (of course, secretly, a chosen name) that I cast about to see upon whom it'll stick.

I wanted to be seen as a lesbian, as one of the intercommunity of Kim and Lisa and certainly not Bill, but Neeta and Rachel and Randi and Claire, beloved Caryn, and even James and Robert, but I'd never tell them, because what care have they for my social currency of deviation?

By coming out, I lost the status of having a partner. The deadname I still had to use for those who didn't know was a null pointer. That person didn't, doesn't exist. The person that does exist favors all black, and when my colleague handing out honorarium envelopes almost gave her one by mistake, I grabbed her hand and said, "Yeah, give her money for being my wife!" The producer, standing a few feet away, proclaimed, for the general benefit of the hallway, "She's a FRIEND!"

She's a friend. She's my friend. Sure, she's my friend. That's where it started. But she was never my best friend, in the slot that that implies - they've seen pictures of my best friend, and some have even met her, and I talk about her whenever opportune, and they love Erin. But they don't really care about Ashe. I'm not sure they cared about the old name, either.

And is that wrong? To expect that my family should care about my partner?

All context. I was never hounded to get a partner because it turned out, once I moved fully into the fold, I already came with one. And you expect young people to come with friends, too, so when they mention them, for context (I'm going to the beach with my friend, I'm having dinner with my friend, my friend got me this, my friend's mom loves me, my friend would be an excellent recommendation for piano teacher at your studio, I can't remember, have you met my friend?), they don't have to impress upon you names that you'll never remember.

So maybe they'll never remember her name, because I'll never mention it. Because it doesn't matter. Whatever. Doesn't change anything about you, they said. And no, it doesn't. Telling you doesn't. The change has already happened. And if you insist on not caring, then I'll never tell you if anything changes again.