A love/hate affair with disco
Being somewhere between non-binary and trans, I have ambivalent feelings about disco. People love the trans/queer part of me, but they don’t particularly like, or relate to the Straight White Dude part of me, which is dying and on his last legs — now he’s only useful for making money so I (Maria) can live my fabulous trans life. Because Straight White Dudes have tremendous privileges, people have a tendency to discount the fact that we are humans too, and have our own feelings and struggles. They also don’t grok that we are not all the same privileged, macho, misogynist, sports obsessed militant assholes. When I think back to how I ended up trans, I think about how emotionally brutal it was for me to grow up as a Straight White Dude, and how I became trans.
As a kid I was a thoroughbred Straight White Dude (I wasn’t in the closet or anything). I was a typical Straight White Dude. I was a huge Star Trek fan, loved science, loved Charlies Angels (Jacqueline and Kate in particular), loved playing the electric guitar and loved Rock Music — Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Jeff Beck, Jethro Tull, Yes, and especially heavy metal (My fave was Black Sabbath, where I got my balls and learned through the perfect blend of lyrics and music how the world really works). But I also loved playing jazz and blues piano — I was obsessed with Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, and then eventually Steely Dan (the merging of jazz and rock).
I lived overseas for long periods of time as a result of my father’s business, spending a lot of time in the UK, East Africa, and the Middle East before I was 13 years old (My father ran tours and then ecotourism safaris). I was exposed to a huge array of cultures. I was curious about all of them. I saw my first trans women in London when I was 10, that was an eye opener. I was exposed to African music, where I was also exposed to Bebop — black jazz musicians such as Oscar Peterson and Thelonious Monk. Fortunately, the hotel in Nairobi we lived in had a grand piano I could use, where I would spend so many hours working out jazz voicings.
Although I loved all the diversity I saw, I was still at the core a straight guy interested in traditional straight romance and how science could create an exciting and positive future. When I was in my early teens, we stopped travelling and I was back living full time in NYC/NJ right at the peak of disco. Disco wasn’t my bag, but it was good, positive music. I thought Earth Wind and Fire in particular, were so talented and positive. I hated the Bee Gee’s, but I recognized their talent and liked some of their music.
Why did I HATE the Bee Gee’s, and disco? Because they were shoved down my throat and I was basically told that if you don’t disco dance and learn to love it, no girl will ever want you. The fact that I had so many other interests, and had been exposed to so much living overseas was totally irrelevant — it’s like everything I had learned, everything I valued, was being wiped out and replaced with commercial programming. I was forced to watch the movie Saturday Night Fever and I was humiliated every time I was forced to disco dance at a dance party or bar/bat-mitzvah when I was 13. I wanted to talk with girls and get to know them, before I started making overt sexual moves on the dance floor with people I didn’t know, and doing it to gay music like YMCA. I mean, come on, making a 13 year old straight white boy dance with girls to a song about hooking up at a gay venue? I love gay people, I love trans people, but forcing a 13 year old straight boy to identify with this music, to make it the core of the mating ritual, and then marginalizing him and humiliating him when he complained? Stripping me of my uniqueness, my identity, and then making me look the same as everybody else, and WORSHIP the same commercial creed as everybody. I wasn’t like everybody else, that was a fact. I liked watching other people dance and having fun, I just preferred to do something else when it came to showing my stuff. But NO!!!!! I was a NOBODY, and I was to be ashamed for being different, for wanting romance, for wanting to express my passions and creativity, for being interested in science. The thrusting of a commercial homogenous culture on a young man such as me, from my perspective at the time was a soul crushing crime, it was nothing less than emotional rape.
This set me on a really bad path as a young man. I eventually found my soul by becoming trans, because I couldn’t identify with the commercial definition of being a straight man, that so many people, women included seemed to buy into. When I became trans, that worked a lot better for me. Because I could act any way I wanted to — being passionate, creative, expressing myself. People loved me for exactly who I was, but only if was trans. The straight romantic white dude started to slowly die. Some think I was trans all along. But I think I was a regular straight white dude in a world that didn’t allow a straight white dude to be more than what society defined us to be. And this painful reality can be seen in so many maladjusted young men today. Was I fundamentally straight or trans from the beginning? Well, I guess I’ll never know, because the straight white dude in me was never given a chance, because disco was a pivotal part of what killed him.
I ran across a really well done video on the history of disco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_c2dCO5WLo
There are so many things about it I didn’t know. I only knew what harm it did to me personally. I didn’t know about the positive impact it had on other people, in particular empowering the opressed queer community, and brightening up people’s lives during the difficult 1970’s (A tough time economically, the cold war, etc.). And also the cultural impact on the economics of clubs/bars, and the influence on popular music.
I also didn’t realize that it was over commercialized. I sensed it at the time, but I was young, I thought I was the only person who felt this way. This situation brutally hurt me, right at the time I was maturing into a young man, in large part because the adults around me were too weak to see what was happening, respect how I was feeling, and allow/encourage me to go on my own path. They were brainwashed by the commercial machine — something I refer to as the Monoculture Virus — something that will encourage a parent to destroy their children’s soul in order to conform. Without the parent even realizing what happened.
Today I love disco when I’m in that mood, but I’m mature enough to know it doesn’t define me. Back then I didn’t know. I think of it now as a cautionary tale to allow young people to be themselves and to not force deep emotional behaviors on them. Just because you like something, or many other people like it, doesn’t mean somebody is an ignorant piece of shit because they don’t. This is obvious…or is it to some people?
For more about this journey, which ironically probably led me to have a better life than I would have as a straight boring suburban white man, check out my book: “Girl Shock! I dressed as a girl for Halloween and then she took over my life”: https://www.mariakonner.com/new-book.
