Who are the real boobs here?
I got something in my craw this morning, and like a feline hair ball, I have to cough it up. In this case I am using my column as a literary Heimlich maneuver.
What’s with people? It’s 2010 and a vicious double standard exists—so much that even our allies fall prey to it when discussing LGBT equality. And I’m not even talking about big subjects like gay marriage or gays in the military.
No, I’m talking about an everyday reaction to something like boobs on the beach. From what I understand, a group of transitioning transgender females—in this case that would be men who are transitioning to women, but who have only gotten top procedures so far. Still with me?
Well apparently, these transitioning women decided to show off their new tits at Poodle Beach last weekend. And, as they should have done, the Rehoboth summer police requested that the exhibitionists put their bathing suit tops back on. That’s because under Rehoboth ordinances, it is illegal to show female breasts on the beach, no matter who is wearing them on their chests.
Fair enough, I say, although the attitudes in Europe regarding this issue are more progressive and more to my liking. Frankly, since the ordinance relates to female boobs only, I hope those trans women know they will be getting their male privilege lopped off along with their privates.
Besides, judging from some of the man boobs I saw on the beach this weekend, there are quite a few guys out there who could use a gym membership. I’m sure there are lots of folks who would rather see some perky female breasts than the jugs on some male tourist jiggling down the boardwalk. Just sayin’.
But female boobs are to stay covered on our beaches. It’s the law. And that should go for trans women with female breasts as well as any other woman with female breasts. After a bit of a boob-haha on the beach, the show-offs did put their clothes back on and that was that.
But it wasn’t. In a phone call to CAMP Rehoboth, someone made the comment, “Well, this doesn’t help our cause,” referring to the continuing quest for LGBT equality in Delaware.
Excuuuuuse me??????? Okay, I know what the caller meant. Homophobes will have a field day with the story and it’s already been the talk of Rehoboth talk radio and a great howler for bigots everywhere throughout the county.
But it really pisses me off (can you tell?) that the cause of heterosexuals everywhere was not damaged by a coinciding news report of a group of drunken straight people vomiting off hotel balconies and trashing lodging establishments. No, no, their cause, the reputation of straight people, was not denigrated a bit. While just the boob story made talk radio, I heard nothing about the straight people urinating in the street, the drunken idiot who led police on a dangerous high speed chase through almost all of Ocean City or the goofball who got tired of walking and stole a bike. You are not going to hear TV’s talking heads shouting, “Damn heterosexuals!”
And as if this didn’t gag me enough, a second caller complained that two women were spotted in the surf at Olive Avenue behaving like randy teenagers in the backseat of a car. Frankly, I’m as nauseous as the next person over especially enthusiastic public displays of affection, and I don’t want to see frantic groping and a human rutting season played out in front of me, gay or straight. Don’t want to see it.
But don’t you dare tell me that while you are not prejudiced, one is worse than the other.
I am sick and tired of having gay people who misbehave used as a cudgel against our civil rights efforts. I am sick of having our morons (and we have them) used against us while their morons (and they have them) get a pass. Joey Buttafucco did not set back anybody’s civil rights but his own. Don’t gay people have the right to have our own nincompoops without putting our human rights in jeopardy? I think it just goes to our forefathers’ expectation of Americans having the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There should be a codicil—the right to make a complete ass of yourself, whatever your orientation, gender, religion or ethnicity without taking your whole minority group with you. Either that or we have to make sure that majority groups take it on the chin for their lowest common denominators too.
It reminds me of the story I heard from the Cape Henlopen State Police one time. Two gals were at North Shores with their bathing suit tops off. A park officer asked them to put the tops back on as there was an ordinance against being topless.
The girls obeyed, but quickly disrobed again when the officer was out of sight. He returned to warn them a second time and they obeyed but gave the officer a lot of lip, threatening to claim anti-gay discrimination. The third time the officer showed up, he ordered the women to put their clothes on and escorted the pair off the beach—to the cheers of the rest of the lesbians on the sand.
Rules are rules, gay or straight, and please don’t blame me for the flawed judgment of my brothers and sisters. My fitness for equality should not be an issue at all, but since it is, do not judge me by the actions of a few of clownish kids who just happen to be transgender. That’s as wrong as my entire womanhood being judged because there’s a murderous woman on death row, or my Jewishness denigrated because of that cruel bastard Bernie Madoff.
Discuss.
There. I can swallow better now.
Fay Jacobs is the author of As I Lay Frying—a Rehoboth Beach Memoir and Fried & True—Tales from Rehoboth Beach. Contact her at www.fayjacobs.com.