Last year, I visited a small insular college in the West to hold a bunch of Socrates Cafes and give a more formal presentation about my work these last twenty years gallivanting around the globe holding philosophical exchanges.
Kailey, the student who introduced me to the four hundred or so folks in attendance at the state-of-the-art auditorium on campus, had through sheer determination convinced the powers that be at her college to invite me. Kailey had read my Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy as an assigned class reading for her Liberal Studies program. She was just assigned a couple of chapters, but told me she ended up reading it from cover to cover.
Kailey wrote me in the course of that semester and asked if I’d come spend a day at her college. I wrote back to say how happy I’d be to do just that, and she set to work to make it happen. When she was told there wasn’t enough sufficient funding in the budget, she arranged fund raisers, including a car wash. This got the dean’s attention; the rest of the money was contributed from college coffers.
I met Kailey shortly after arriving on campus. We exchanged a big hug, as if long lost friends, and had a few chances over the course of the intensive day to have good conversation. After my visit, we stayed in touch.
Kailey wrote me recently to share “some exciting news,” that she is an official contributor to a popular blog that covers issues of popular culture that are of particular interest to people who are transgender, and she shared with me her first, excellent contribution.
Kailey’s contribution was under a pen name: Jonathan Alexis. Kailey’s message went on: “That name brings me to another point of interest in my life recently that I’m not sure how you’ll feel hearing. But, I figure I’ll tell you and let you, like any philosopher, think and feel however you do with the information.”
And then: “Recently I came out to my parents and some close friends as transgender and I plan to come out to everyone else in July. The name I feel most comfortable with now is Jonathan Alexis (first and middle name) and therefore that changes my writer name to J. Alexis. So, the articles that [the blog] is going to publish are about my figuring out that I am transgender.”
Jonathan Alexis closed in this way: “Anyway, that’s the news for the past while. I hope that doesn’t make anything awkward or the like. I hope life has been good on your side, let me know of anything great and interesting that’s been happening when you have the time.”
I wrote him at once a congratulations on the exceptional blog post and also, among other things, to say that the news wasn’t awkward for me in the least.
We had a couple more correspondences since then. In one, Jonathan Alexis shared, “I planned on coming out last week but was delayed by some fear that I might be fired from my RA [Resident Advisor] job in an all-girls dorm and not be able to afford second semester but I have done a lot of research and [state] law says that I cannot be fired for being transgender, and the college states on its website that they follow the state laws. So, tomorrow is my big day basically!”
I have not heard back from him since his big day, try as I might to be in touch. I wonder if things didn’t go well at all. A conservative college, alas, might technically have to abide by state laws, yet find a way to skirt them, to break the rules and conventions to which it is supposed to be bound. I don’t know. Hopefully I will hear again soon from him.
In The Philosophy of Childing, I write:
In an essay published in Words Without Borders, Vaishali Raode, a transgender-rights activist in India and a hijra, a term for someone who is transgender, relates how at first he observed all the intricate rules imposed by his community, including one forbidding him to speak to the media. But Raode eventually rebelled: ‘I began to give interviews to the media. I appeared on television… The community fined me for these transgressions. I paid the fine and committed the ‘offenses’ again. I was all but ostracized from the community.’ But Raode remained unbowed. ‘I was educated and had a mind of my own. So what if I broke all the rules?’—especially if doing so shatters stereotypes in ways that might enable an excluded group to emerge from the shadows.
I’m reminded of a play Jonathan Alexis told me he’d read the same semester he’d been assigned Socrates Cafe – the Greek playwright Sophocles’ Antigone. Antigone stood up to Cleon, the ruler of Thebes, who forbid a burial for her brother Polynices. She saw to it that Polynices had a proper burial, though Cleon decreed it would be against society’s laws, which are enforced rules. Antigone was willing to break the rules if they take away someone’s dignity.
Jonathan Alexis of course isn’t breaking the rules; to the contrary. If anyone is among those who can and will see to it that the promise and practice of our more progressive laws are followed to the letter, I am confident that Jonathan Alexis is one of them. He has tenacity, social conscience, the courage of his convictions, and a keen and strong sense of what’s right, and of who he is.
[Note: A few descriptive items have been altered in order to protect privacy.]