Death of a Transgender Person

11/13/2023

In October, I posted an essay blog post about Christianity (and pastors) and crossdresssing titled, The Church and Transgender People: A Hopefully Less-Biased Collection of Thoughts. I do not feel like I declared any solutions in the essay. I just gave perspectives about ideas to consider concerning situations like pastors who come out or are exposed as transgender. About one month later, a pastor was exposed as being a crossdresser/transgender person, and he ultimately (two days later) killed himself.

I am not going to provide names or links primarily because I do not want to attract much attention (especially from hateful people) to my blog. Yet, I do want to talk about this briefly. I first learned about this story when I saw an article on the AP News website. I like their news because they are described as being intentionally not biased toward the left or right politically, and they also tend to present more facts and less opinions than other news sources.

Background

The AP news article said that a Nov. 1 article by a conservative online news source revealed that the pastor had posted pictures online of himself presenting female, and mentioned that he had posted some erotic fiction. The AP article stated that a Nov. 3 article by the same conservative news source exposed that the pastor had used the names of real people from his community in his “posts” (without permission). The same day that this article came out, the pastor ended his own life.

I told my wife about this story. I realized that I did not know what was actually posted by the pastor. I started thinking that there may be a darker side to the story. I searched the next day and found that there were articles about this story on every major news source. There were also reaction videos, etc. posted by people on reddit, and tiktok. I looked at a couple of those. The people who posted these videos seemed to be kind toward the pastor. However, in the comments, there were vague statements by people who suggested they were from the town, and those statements suggested that the full story was much darker. In one or two sentences, enough was said in these comments to make me think that something horrible might be true.

I eventually found the original articles about him. The conservative news source posted one article about the pastor each day. I cannot imagine the horror he must have felt. It sounds like they reached out to him for comment before the article came out. He immediately took down all of his online content. The first article included pictures of him in boy mode and in girl mode. Some pictures were bra and [presumably] panty pictures (the abdomen was blacked out). The third article contained snippets of one of the fiction stories that reportedly told the story of a guy who became obsessed with a woman, became a copy of her, and then killed her and took her identity, including being intimate with her husband. (I say “reportedly” because I did not read the actual fiction stories — not my thing.) The woman in the story was named after a real woman in his community. That is the worst thing that I am aware of that was revealed.

My Reactions

I was sad to hear that someone was exposed like that. I was more sad to hear he killed himself. When I was a child, I said that I would kill myself if everyone ever found out about me. I no longer feel that way.

I felt like the original articles by the “conservative online news source” were written with an attitude of “Yay, we get to hurt this crosdressing pastor.” I felt like the AP news article that I read was trying to discuss the truth, without hurting or embarrassing the family of the deceased pastor, while discussing the harm in publicly outing an LGBTQ+ person.

I feel like it is not any of my business to know this person’s secrets. Maybe his church would deserve to know some things. Probably his co-workers did not need to know his secrets. Certainly, the whole Internet did not need to know. Therefore, news sources revealing embarrassing things about people is morally questionable. It seems to be understood that news sources should blur out the faces and license plates of people who are in the background of some pictures/videos. Yet, in a situation like this, there appears to be no interest in protecting the target of the story from any future harm. It is like the news source had to choose between doing the morally right thing, or selling commercials…

Introspective Thoughts

Long ago, I discovered a blog by someone who was transitioning to publicly living as a full-time woman. I discovered this blog just a few days after she started going to work as a woman. I was very interested to hear what happens when one does this. Then, a couple days later, all of the content on the blog disappeared. She later posted that people in her real life started finding her online content, now that she was using her female name in real life. She took down the content because she did not want her co-workers to hear about every trans thought/action she had ever written about. I understood.

That influenced me to think about everything that I write online. Would I mind if everything I wrote were to be read by my real life friends/family/acquaintances/co-workers? I do not post underwear pictures. I do not go to bad places. I do not have sexual experiences. I do not write fiction. I was not at much risk, but I still felt very introspective.

I did not mention it before, but the pastor and the church started receiving messages and reactions from people on the Internet. I assume that some was supportive, but other content was hateful. I would imagine that the idea of facing his church on Sunday was anxiety-inducing. I also imagine that going in to work at his job as mayor of the city was horrifying. I assume that every day felt like a good day to run away and disappear. This started on a Wednesday, and he died on Friday, two days later.

I once heard a man say that if he sees his friend in a fight, that he would jump into the fight and help his friend. Then, after the fight, he said he would confront his friend and ask, “Now, why am I having to beat up people for you?!?” He was speaking metaphorically. (I did not get the impression that he is actually getting into fights.) Perhaps this is a situation where I should follow that philosophy. If someone I know gets exposed and humiliated for some reason, I should come along side them and tell people to back off.

Fundamentalism seems to say, “I am on your side as long as you behave how I want you to. Otherwise, I am your enemy.” I do not want to behave like that. I do not want to be the opposite and say, “It does not matter what you do, I affirm you.” I feel like the sweet spot is, “I love you. I am your friend. I will stand up for you. However, afterward we need to have a serious talk about a few tough things.”

Practical Thoughts

I wonder how they found out about his secret. A few thoughts come to mind. Some search engine may have associated his face between his guy and girl pictures and presented both when someone searched for his name. Someone might have searched for the name of one of the people whose name he used in his erotic fiction writings. Those are two things that one could reasonably avoid doing online. I decided to discuss practical things that one can do to A) help avoid getting discovered, and B) be less embarrassed if everything is found out.

No face pictures: I personally do not post my face because I assumed that eventually, search engines would make it easy for someone to find me through automated facial recognition. I anticipated that the day would come that you could search for my name, and the search engine would give results for pages containing my name, and and also results for pages containing pictures that look like my pictures from other pages. For roughly the same reason, I also do not include the faces of others in my pictures — and it is also the right thing to do. There was a time when I worried about teenagers snapping a picture of me when I was in public. These days, however, it seems that I need to avoid people in their 40’s who are snapping selfies where I might happen to be in the background. Perhaps facial recognition software could determine one’s identity by using head geometry or even other aspects of one’s body, even if the face is blurred. There are unknown risks in the future.

No real names: I try to avoid using the real names of myself or anyone else in my blog posts. Search engines can make these associations easily.

No locations: I try to avoid mentioning locations when I write about my outings because little-by-little, they reveal where I live. I sometimes feel like this is overkill. Yet, I presume that everyone lives near the center of all of the locations to which they commonly go.

No conspicuously recognizable backgrounds: If there are recognizable buildings or sites in my pictures, or if there are business names in the pictures, then a resourceful person can determine my location from that. Therefore, I try to avoid posting anything very recognizable. I assume that I will eventually receive a message stating, “Hey, I know where that was taken! I’ve been there.”

* * *

If one’s crossdressing web presence were to be discovered, that would be uncomfortable enough! However, some things that someone posts could make it worse.

No underwear pics: I have no attraction to posting underwear pictures. (I am not interested in seeing yours either.) I am not interested in being sexy. I do not want to be attractive. I do want to be beautiful, but in a way that a woman would appreciate. So, I have never taken nor posted pictures of me in my underwear. If one’s crossdressing online content were to be seen by their co-workers, family, and friends, I think underwear pictures would be very regrettable. I personally do not even mention underwear. I would be pleased if no one knows what gender underwear I wear, or whether I even wear them at all.

No porn: Likewise, naked or pornographic pictures or stories would be very uncomfortable things to have on one’s online content in such a situation. I feel like it is a bad decision regardless of whether one gets caught. I personally have no interest in creating/posting such content.

No other intimate/embarrassing/awkward content: This is a vague category. For the same reasons, one should consider what other things they would not want their non-crossdressing world to know about themselves. I have seen people talk about about what positive ways their spouse has reacted to their crossdressing (in the bedroom). I have seen people talk about using feminine sanitary products when they are crossdressing. I have seen where people have admitted to stealing underwear, or other clothing. I could probably come up with more things that would fit in this category… and that makes me think, “I should go re-read everything that I have posted, just to be sure I am still OK with everything I have written.”

Final Thoughts

We should all think, “If I am exposed, or if I come out, what online content would I not like for people to find about me?”

We should remember that our control is temporary. “What do I want out there after I die?”

Perhaps it would be a good strategy to change one’s name occasionally? If there is no connection between the name/content that one uses on one website vs. another, then breaches might be less thorough. If the name one uses changes over time, and there is no information connecting these eras together, then your history on the Internet might not be easily turned into one timeline.

Be careful. Do not assume that your secret will stay a secret forever. Be ready for the unknown.

Finally, be good. It is not impossible that if the people that know you found out about your crossdressing secret that they might say, “Wow. He is a better person than I realized.” Be just as good in secret as you are in public. Be good.