My Experience with Becoming a Straight Ally with Lamar

Disclaimer: I am a straight person talking about my own experience. I do understand my privilege as a straight person talking about the LGBTQ+ community. In this article I talk about a friend and her transition and I understand that is a bit of a taboo thing to do because it is ultimately her story to tell, but I believe I do her justice by not mentioning her by name in my article. My hope with this article is to share my insight and own personal journey as I learned about the LGBTQ+ community as well as my relationship with it. While it is my truth, I understand that some of this material could be triggering and may cause people to have more questions and/or need to talk about it further. I will link a separate article at the bottom of this one as well as my email if anyone wants to ask me questions or just have a further discussion about topics brought up in the article. And now…without further ado…

It wasn’t until around two years ago that I met with and had to regularly interact with someone who went by “they, them, theirs.” It was a hard time identifying them properly and there were plenty of times that I used a pronoun that was based on their appearance rather than what they preferred. However, they understood that this was new to me and they were patient with me, as long as I caught myself when I slipped up. I also made sure to ask questions so that I could better understand their pronouns and where the decision came from.

With this process came a lot of unlearning of things that I had come to believe as fact, like someone’s gender. Before this time in my life, I only had to worry about calling someone either she if they were female passing or he if they were male passing and it was usually directly correlated with their appearance. However, this was just an assumption I was making about people I had never met. I had to unlearn the a person’s gender and sex were one in the same and I knew that if I couldn’t overcome this, I wouldn’t be able to fully accept and appreciate my friend.

There were others who were close to me that were also learning about the LGBTQ+ community so didn’t feel like I was the only one going through this process. A key part of this process is knowing people who are a part of the community and who don’t mind sharing their knowledge and patience with you.

A long time friend of mine came out as being transgender just as I was going into college and there was a little bit of a learning curve for me to identify them correctly because I had always seen them as a certain gender. Even though I knew they now went by “she” instead of “he” I couldn’t not think of them as their old selves. However, she was very patient with me and the other people in her life as she went through the transition and I believe that really helped me to appreciate her and her individuality.

I don’t think this process would have had the same impact if I was just absorbing knowledge that I couldn’t apply to real life. It’s similar to how people take a high level math class, like calculus, and start to resist the learning because it is hard to apply calculus to real life scenarios. Learning about the LGBTQ+ without having any real life application can be a steep uphill battle, but it isn’t impossible. Now, I’m not saying go out an find yourself a transgender person. I’m just saying that in my experience, it was easier to learn about the community because I knew many people in the community that I could approach and talk to about things I wanted to know more about and understand.

Anytime you try to learn something new, patience is your best friend. In order to be a straight ally, you have to be okay with making and owning your mistakes. This doesn’t mean make a huge scene out of it every time you do slip up. Just correct yourself and move on.

Here is a link to a great article that defines some key concepts regarding LGBTQ+: https://engage.youth.gov/resources/what-does-lgbt-mean-know-basics

Also, here is my email with anyone who has feedback or wants to further a conversation: lamar.v.smith@gmail.com