Scheduling a dinner with a friend is not always the easiest thing to do. The other day, I finally was able to meet Sarah in Chinatown for dinner. We've met before, and it was nice to see her again.
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As you can tell, Sarah is a bit tall for a woman. If I'm 5'10" or so, then she stands at least an inch or two above me. We certainly look like "Mutt and Jeff" in this picture, with me being the homely woman. But that's because I have a lot of fat in the wrong places, and that I have yet to go on hormones.
Trekking into Chinatown is not the easiest thing to do. This area of NYC is not served well by mass transit, as the subway lines stop about 1/2 mile away from any of the good restaurants. On a weekday, or if the sun was out, I'd consider getting off at the Brooklyn Bridge station on the IRT, then walk the "maze" passing by the city office building, the police headquarters, a church, and the federal courthouse over to Chinatown. This path becomes desolated at off hours, and at these times, I prefer to walk along Canal Street because there are people on the street at all hours of the day. At least, I get a mile or two of walking in whenever I go to Chinatown to eat.
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One of the things a person might not expect about the TG community is that not all of us are Liberals. There are some of us who are much more conservative than I am, and that's because they do not live in a Liberal News bubble. (I try to read information from both sides of the current political debate, but I draw the line at misleading reactionary opinions coming from the right.) As much as I despise our current president, I can respect those people who tolerate him for extending the economic recovery, or those people who wanted a monkey wrench thrown into the political system. I can even respect those people in the hinterlands, the mill towns where the mills have closed, who feel that the urban liberal elites have abandoned them. But what offends me is willful ignorance, a belief in the propaganda being spewed by the likes of "Fox News" that they echo as if they were the daily orations of 1984's "Big Brother". The longer I participate in maintaining contact with TG's of all political positions, the more I'm convinced that just as many of us TG's are making the same mistakes that the larger society makes as a whole - the mistakes which cause us to support our political tribes, even when their actions hurt us as individuals.
Why do I mention this?
Sarah and I come from different backgrounds and have different values. And yet, we are able to have pleasant and intelligent conversations. We listen to each other, no matter how much noise is in the background (as there was in the Chinese restaurant we ate at the other day.) All too many of us look at each other as the enemy, and we don't make the effort to be civil any more. Yes, I am guilty of this when I lay awake, alone in my room. But in public, I try to make that effort to be as civil as possible - it's the best way of having a chance of helping another person's opinions to change in and of his/her own volition.
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