My favourite singer became a woman

(how to continue to love who you love, even though they change sex)

My car radio almost refuses to read her records, since they’re so consumed.

He is Tom Gabel, class of 1980 and frontman of American punk-rock Against Me!, active since almost twenty years and produced, among the various labels, even by NOFX Fat Mike’s Fat Wreck Records; and at the age of five he begins, looking at himself in the mirror, to not recognize himself.

These are the first signals of what is called gender dysphoria: he identifies himself with the opposite sex.
But he doesn’t know it.
Considering his age, clarifying what is happening to him is not easy.
Not to mention giving it a name.

After all, after the imitations of Madonna, some mockery at school, as it happened to a lot of non-excessively manly young boys, there comes punk rock, a sentimental and sexual life which we would define typical of the alpha male, the music of Against Me!, which since 1997 the solo project became a proper band and then a job which turned him into a celebrity.

And around him, nobody notices anything.
But gender dysphoria doesn’t abandon you, even though you are a punkrocker and you travel around the world singing you are an anarchic teenager.

Not even when you fall in love with Heather and not even when she gets pregnant.
And it is exactly in this moment when Tom starts to become conscious.
The crisis, if we want to summarize it in one word, from which we can put our head out and catch some fresh air just with a massive dose of courage and will to change.
Everything.
So, some time after the birth of his little girl, he decides to talk about it with his wife, with his band, and with his fans.

It’s called coming out.

Tom changed sex in 2012 and is now named Laura Jane Grace.
He has followed, and still follows, a therapeutic pathway. He has been subjected to different surgical interventions and fully lives that procedure that transexuals go through when they decide to change sex, and which lasts years.

In 2014, Against Me! published Transgender Dysphoria Blues, a concept album in which Laura totally bares herself, telling the difficulties of her acceptance of her own identity.

The anger, that thing in the belly of the times when Tom was singing is, however, the same. After all, they still play punk rock, maybe now there is a wonderful total freedom of expression in what is the lyrics part.

However, this is not the gossipy story of a rockstar who can afford to change sex, and the therapeutical/hospital support he likes the most, “just because he has money, while nobody talks about the poorer ones who are in the same boat”.

This is not just a story of compassion, simpathy, smiles, awareness, fear, and all the other certainly not enjoyable aspects which are part of the long transformation procedure.

This is not a story of compassion, sympathy and forced smiles “you talk about because it’s a trendy topic”.

This is a story of Love.

A story of understanding in which who is, and has been close to Laura, hasn’t put a spanner in her works and hasn’t complicated what could be complicated.

A story in which courage has been fundamental even for who loves her. It has not been easy to accept Tom for who he would have become.

This is a story in which love is not just a verb, a word. But a fact.

There are fans who have been buying records since 2012, who have been filling the venues, who have been supporting Laura and who have been covering her with compliments about her hair evolution, her makeup, her permanents and her miniskirts.

And who understand a bit more about what were the lyrics of Against Me! before the transformation.

There is Heather who has never gone anywhere and who has never left neither Tom nor Laura alone.
Despite what could have been fears, worries, doubts a woman can live in the moment when her husband tells her he is a transexual and wants to change sex. And which we don’t even imagine.
But she has stated more times that she was there.
And she remained there.

We get used to thinking about ourselves, not about being by ourselves.
We focus on having someone beside us to fill our emptinesses, spaces, inabilities.
We reassure ourselves that at the first problem we don’t know how to solve, how to metabolize, we can always go away, change friend, partner, colleague. Like if it was a mobile phone cover.

After all, we repeat ourselves, even tolerance has a boundary.
But people are not made of rubber and patience to stand us. Do we ever ask ourselves how much patience does it take?

And we forget that there is that feeling called love, unconditional love.
Which rhymes with comprehension, elaboration, squaring with who we are, what we have in front of us and maybe we still don’t 100 percent understand, or will never understand.

Which crosses the blanket of comfort, which peacefully gets used to setting the pace, not to demanding someone to inhumanly walk with our same step.

Which brings you to continue to go and see the concert of your favourite singer, even though he exhibits on the stage wearing a miniskirt.

Which doesn’t make you run away with another man if your husband starts wearing a bra.

PS: Laura and her Against Me! are performing on the18th of August in Brescia, at the Festa di Radio Onda d’Urto. Free enter, o five Euros, depending on when you arrive.
Whoever has an ear to hear, go and listen.

PPS: Ah, yes.
I well know that it seems, as stated by Laura in the fall, that they have divorced.
This doesn’t change the sense and the meaning of the article. The aim is to crystallize on all the wonderful things that surrounded her in that period.
Whoever has an ear to hear, let him hear, the other ones can go on some scandal-style website.