By Veronica Zerrer
Editor’s Note: Connor Maddocks has taken a leave of absence for personal reasons, but in his stead will be local trans community leader, Veronica “Ronnie” Zerrer.
I’ve only ever been fired from one job, and that was for telling customers to eat at a competitor’s diner after being ordered to change the roadside marquee to read “2 Pork Fritters for a $1.” Meh, that time didn’t bother me. I was going to quit anyway. Yet being thrown out of a writer’s group once did hurt.
Aspiring novelists, poets, and other interdisciplinary creatives often come together to support one another’s artistic endeavors. Upon just having moved to San Diego, I was unsure if anything I wrote was compelling enough to labor on with. So, seeking feedback, I joined two local groups. The first one was led by a former San Diego cop. The other by a true blue liberal.
As a trans woman, I was nervous about being accepted in either group. After all, visibility is often the hardest thing for a trans person to live – uncertain how we will be treated.
People in the cop’s group were standoffish at first. Unsure how to interact with me, they were curt to the point of rudeness. Yet after a while, they seemed to brighten at my critiques of their work, as I listed both the admirable things they did as well as their misses. There came, in time, not necessarily acceptance, but respect.
The more artistically-oriented group leader accepted me with broad smiles and open arms at the prospect of welcoming an “out” transwoman. She was generous in her praise of my writing, as well, oohing and ahhing over many passages of a story read.
Both groups were good. I learned a lot. One was hard-boiled storytelling devoted to a brawling, street-schooled realism regarding the human condition, while the other was a high-brow examination of theme, prose, and literary complexity.
The cop’s group was filled with stories emanating from the desperation of those most left out in society: the homeless resorting to smash and grabs; addicts suppling their highs through burglary; street urchins running fentanyl; and LGBT kids doing sex work after being kicked out of homes. The ex-cop criticized my heroine, a murder investigator for the Topeka Kansas Police. He groused that she only carried a revolver (she was a cop – not a soldier) and had a penchant for haute couture at crime scenes (brain bits are sticky and don’t mix well with Dior). But other than those trifling nit-noids, he liked the story of a New Yorker’s self-exile to the Kansas Prairie where she solved the murders of a group of prairie longshoremen.
The aforementioned creative was a liberally-minded, latte-sipping free-thinker, devoted to progressive causes. She prided herself on positive body-imagery, devotion to Black Lives, Medicare for all, a Green New Deal, Modern Monetary Theory, No-Nukes, and a belief that if we ate less beef we would live longer, have healthy colons, and less flatulence.
Guess which one threw me out of their writing group?
The whiplash I experienced from the liberal was so severe I was afraid I would need therapy from a chiropractor. From the level of her invective the evening she ordered me out, there was a lot of pent-up anger, and it had obviously been building.
Stung at first, I got over it. I concluded the issue was hers, not mine. I reexamined all my interactions within the group and with her. I had been as honest and open with praise and criticism as I knew how. Later, I found out others had left her group.
Ultimately, I took down my copy of Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. In his novel, he describes how The Brotherhood, a group of white middle-class folks were really not serious about solving the problems of blacks in Harlem. They only cared to appear that way. All while not letting go of their white supremacy. Like them, my liberal literati wasn’t really serious about inclusion of a trans woman in a group. She only wanted a demonstrative appearance of acceptance – until she realized she could no longer keep up the charade.
So, my message to my trans sisters and brothers is to be visible. You may not be able to always earn acceptance. But you can earn respect.
–Veronica Zerrer is the author of “Memoirs of a Cold Warrior, a Novel.” She is retired from the US Army and active in the local LGBTQ community. In 2023, she was appointed to the California Veterans Board by Gov. Newsom. She can be reached at [email protected].
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