Monday January 2, 2017 - I told my brother-in-law about my transition

I was in Baltimore for the past week. While there, my brother-in-law and I usually check out some movies. So on both Tuesday and Thursday we went to the movies.

We saw Star Wars and Passenger. Both are our kind of movies. So we had a good time.

After the movies, we usually do dinner and talk. He is a Doctor with a pain clinic and he has a second business, which is a spa. He is about my age and reminds me of my Dad in that he was the first in his family to go to college and become a Dr. That's is an amazing feat.

Over the decades, he has leaned on me for business advise and I get medical advise from him.

Our politics do not match as he is a little to republican for me. But I have quite a few good friends like that and I enjoy the political discussions. We did not talk much during the Presidential Elections, but I suspect he was a Trump guy.

Also his religious views on LGBTQ issues differ from mine. He is caught up in the bathroom issue. So I decided while at dinner to discuss my transition with him.

I started by telling him that in the past year or so, two important things have happened to me. One was meeting my friend Karen at the exact time my Mother died and she has been a great sounding board. Two, was I started HRT in my transition and that I was a Transwoman.

Being a Doctor, he knows how to remain stoic and ask questions. I did not expect any major physical reaction.

So I gave him my crossdressing history and that now I am at a great place mentally, physical and even spiritually.

He asked a few basic questions about my HRT meds and that he did not know I was trans. I showed him a few recent pictures. His response was muted, which I expected. I also suspect he has transpeople in his pain clinic. I just wanted him to know, that he has a family member who he has known over 25 years, who is part of that community.

But I really wanted to use this time to move to the bathroom issue and the new Trump Administration.

He does not believe men should be in woman's bathrooms. I get that.

So I attempted to side step the main issue by saying that in the end the solution will benefit everyone. That solution is family bathrooms. Since he has one daughter, we both agreed that family bathrooms would have been nice during our children rearing days. We both agreed that we do not know how women with young boys handle bathroom issues. I stated that if men can not go into a woman's bathroom, then one option for woman with young boys could be legally cut off. That is taking the boy in the woman's bathroom.

I showed him my refuge restroom app that helps transpeople find safe bathrooms.

The whole bathroom issue is a cover for the overall discrimination that is hidden in the law. I showed him the youtube video from the Daily Show in which the North Carolina food truck randomly discriminates by refusing service to LGBTQ people based the owners' decision.

I stated that as African American males, we should understand random discrimination and that we should not stand for it against anyone.

I told him that the upcoming bathroom laws and religious freedom laws are nothing more that Jim Crow in a dress. He needs to support common sense laws that make all single stall bathrooms, family bathrooms. Or that fast food restaurants can have one family bathroom as an option instead of two gender specific bathrooms, if the bathroom has a single stall.

He stated that he saw my point and that my recommendations were reasonable.

He is coming to Atlanta later this week, to visit his daughter. We are going to talk some more about this.

One way I am going to fight the upcoming anti-LGBTQ laws, is to discuss the issue by discussing my transition with my friends. It will be one person at a time. I am going to start with my Republican friends.