Prejudice at Oshkosh, Experienced: We

[Auburntsts]

Ditto.

[eaajen]

Thank you all for your kind responses.

Yes, it is difficult to be what I am, transsexual, in a world of aviation. I'm different, and I've been treated harshly quite often. The EAA and the USA are both a compilation of various peoples. We depend on our numbers and community to thrive—and glorious thriving it is. Digressing for a sec, I remember how the EAA helped save our bacon at Camarillo, once, back in the 1990s, when the airport said we couldn't build airplanes in hangars any more, saying it was dangerous, that hangars were only to store airworthy aircraft, etc. We were quite alarmed. And I was there when the EAA sent us an emissary. At the Airport Authority meeting—it felt like I was watching a taping of "Boston Legal," or Alan Shore wheeling eloquent commentary, while maneuvering for success. At the Airport Authority meeting, the EAA representative from Oshkosh spoke kindly about various things, while he had copies of the EAA's position, law, and national standards passed by paper to each of the Authority members. Amazingly, the Authority's interest in restricting Experimental Aircraft building just...evaporated. Yoda might say of the EAA, "Smooth, they were."

That Airport Authority had problems. Joe had been a prior member of that Authority. We were both FAA Aviation Safety Counselors. After Joe, they elected me to their Board, but that was so hated they, at the same time, changed their rules per number and elected another new member, as well. Ah!

But I thought I'd comment on FREE SPEECH. We in the USA rely on such values, 1st Amendment, not only for communication but also for DISSENT, clarification, to hold leaders to account, to help maintain a free society—to be used, like other values, not in an extreme sense for the benefit just of one position, and not when designed to hurt. Liberty for all means we all get it, so how can we be ourselves while still getting along?

I tend to share from my own life:

1. To our own selves be true? How can we be ourselves and still get along with people who are different? Can we truly like or love someone who is different in a way vital to our soul? I tend to use Joe and myself as an example, because he was a Christian and I am a Jew—Freedom of Religion, also in the 1st Amendment—and we loved each other. He passed in 2012, and I still love him, he was so amazing. It's not just about being ourselves; it's also about NOT INSULTING the other for who or what they are or what they believe, about NOT PRESSURING the other to change to our ways. It's also about RESPECTING the other person, even if their ways are different. I can love and respect him, regardless of us each being different from the other, and we did have other things of common interest.

2. Like you, I also depend on FREE SPEECH, and am in a dilemma of my own, per me. I'm believed, in society, to be other than I am, and people take me differently, in part because the meanings of the words have changed through the decades since my switch back in 1981. I actually have a conservative or independent set of values that people expect me not to have, and I can't shake them of their beliefs because they "know" I'm whatever they think, stereotyping. Other examples: Christine Jorgensen was not a fellow pilot, I think, was the more experienced sage, compared to me, but I think she liked me. Caitlyn Jenner is a fellow pilot, and relating to her, I was the more experienced sage, but—though she was always kind, nice to me—I'd guess she was not so pleased with me. The difference, I think, is that the meanings of words/terms changed through decades, from the 20th century to the 21st, and now, concepts and language relate to gender, where then they related to both sex and gender. My need is to be the other actual physical sex, something I can not be in this life. So I can never be myself. And now, thanks to the narrative of others applied falsely to me, even my doctors think I'm offensive. This is affecting my medical care.

So when people get to know me, they tend to assume I'm of the narrative that is popular these days, for a larger minority, and they don't even remember the vital issues of my much smaller phenomenon.

This affects everything from volunteering to friendships. When I interact with others, I not only need to attend to the issues of our interaction, I also need to navigate their awareness of the narrative they're using to falsely "understand" me, i need to navigate my own narrative as well—without actually saying what my own narrative is, because it's these days considered offensive to even mention. People think they know about me, when they don't, and I'm not allowed to set them straight, so we wind up in conflict over the false phantoms of someone else's narrative applied to me. I do not get the FREEDOM OF SPEECH others use to suppress me.

Airplanes are soooo much easier to be around than people, these days.

I do my best to be equitable about my speech, to find a balance between being truthful about what I am, my own needs, and also not in offending sensitive others. I support others in their way of living or being. I advocate for them, even, daily, and I have come to their defense when able. Just to make clear: I accept others with their needs; I just think that same consideration should go to me, as well.

—There I am, struggling with free speech and being myself, as do others, even if my needs are different.