Patrick Keller

Help received:  movie and personal experiences

Robert Eads is the transgender man from rural Georgia which the documentary Southern Comfort  focused on. He was originally born a girl and even got married to a man as a woman but felt deep down that he was really a man so he got a divorce from his husband and underwent the process to become a man. He then began attending Southern Comfort Conferences (A National Meeting of Transgenders) every year. As a result of this he gained a new family a family of transgenders. He even met his partner Lola (ironic name) and they began living together. He however had a stroke of bad luck and developed ovarian cancer, Ironically the one part of him that was still female was going to kill him.  He ended up attending one last conference and speaking at it before passing away.

The film talks about the challenges that the transgender community faces in their families, public, and in politics. I covers personal challenges of the characters and what they had to do when they came out. It says that most transgenders get abandoned by their biological family. This makes their non-biological family even more important. This rejections has huge psychological ramifications which include depression, drug and alcohol abuse as well as suicide. So my family actually has experience in dealing with this. My moms side of the family are the Malones and are very Irish which means we are already more prone to substance abuse. So all of the males on my moms side are alcoholics and or drug addicts. Most will not admit to it and after my uncle showed up drunk and high to a family gathering and OD-ed outside my mom forced him to go to rehab which was tough for him because he hadn’t been sober since he was 15 and he was now 56. He was rehab for a total of 9 months and I would go down with my mom to visit him. Now historically Uncle Dennis had been a jerk to my mom so I was not a huge fan of him anyway. But one day she had to break the news to him that he was going to have to be in rehab for 6 more months he got up and ran across the room and tried to attack my mom and I had to punch him in the face to get him to stop. I was 15.

So he ended up staying in rehab for another 6 months and sobering up and became nicer to my mom. Keep in mind that my mom was the only one who gave a shit about him and tried to help him she sacrificed many months of her time away from us down in California trying to help him through his issues without any thanks. My mom finally felt like she had the brother she never had. Things started finally going really well and we finally got our mom back. we thought she would never have to deal with that again. My mom was so inspired by what she did with my uncle that she helped start the local youth rehab center so that “nobody in our community would end up like my uncle”. I could never put my finger on it but he always acted really strange I thought it was the 40 years of drug abuse but I wrong.

So last year spring semester I studied abroad in Costa Rica so I didn’t talk to my family very much during that time at all. One day I called my mom just to check in, the conversation was pretty typical until my mom nonchalantly said “oh by the way uncle Dennis in now aunt Denise” I though she was kidding so I started laughing (my mom has a habit of playing sick jokes on me). She said she wan’t kidding but I didn’t believe her. It was not until a month later when I talked to my brother John, I mentioned what my mom said and he said it was true… I was dumbfounded but it make a lot of sense and explained the 40 years of drug abuse. While I thought that was really weird, I typically have no problem with people like transgenders or gays unless they flaunt it in my face then I get annoyed. So it was whatever, and I didn’t really hear much about it again until earlier this year when he started drinking again… and being a piece of crap to my mom again. He sent her all sorts of horrible emails and phone calls. He broke my moms heart, and threw all her efforts down the drain and claimed he was not trans anymore. We have since cut off all communication with him or her or whatever. He’s dead to me as far as I’m concerned. I think he is severely mentally ill and I don’t think it can be fixed. Maybe this has affected my view of this community as a whole but we have been dealing with this for years, I think these people are mentally ill, and thats what causes them to be confused the way they are. It is NOT natural for men to become women and women to become men and quite frankly I think it is gross and wrong. So that has been my experience with the trans community. I don’t think that someone born a female is actually a dude.. they are a chick, they might not even like that fact but thats what it is .. a fact.. I can see how people could be mentally ill and be confused or thin that they are something they are not. I have a rock and a leaf and no matter how much the rock wants to be a leaf it is still a rock. end of story.