Yesterday I read a story posted here by Emma Anne Tate, For Us, the Living. Like all of her work, as well as the work of many others on this site, it had me crying. But more importantly, it had me reflecting on my life, my family, and the lives of others.

I have been dealing with a serious bout of depression the past several months, not the least bit aided by the holidays or the weather. I will get through it, but it has been a challenge. Needless to say, my own issues have added to the impact of many of the stories I have read here recently, including the latest from Emma.

As I am wont to do at times like this, I reached out to my middle son (who is a Supervising Sergeant Investigator for the Sheriff’s Department) and made an appointment to borrow the Sheriff’s Department shooting range this morning. Putting a few hundred rounds down range has always helped me to clear my head; don’t ask me why, it just does - a fact I discovered while in the service. Perhaps it has to do with the simple act of concentrating on an outside act that frees my thoughts, or perhaps that is all mumbo-jumbo and I just like doing it - all I know is it works.

So, after spending an hour on the 500 meter rifle range, and another hour on the 50 meter pistol range, I sat down to clean my weapons before packing them up and leaving. I worked through my 9mm Enfield and my Stoner Carbine, and then my Colt .45 Semiauto (which was my service weapon in the Navy - I inherited it from my father and carried it throughout my active duty career), before starting on the Colt .32 Semiauto which I inherited from my grandfather. The .32 is the weapon I carry nowadays in my purse, when I feel the need to carry, as it fits much nicer than the .45.

While cleaning the .32, I couldn’t help but remember it’s history. My grandfather purchased it in 1905 (it is a 1903 model), and eventually used it to commit suicide in 1960 - ten days before I was born. His wife, my grandmother, insisted that it go to me. As such, my father held it for me until I was a teenager, and then passed it down to me upon my 13th birthday. It was in fact my fourth firearm, but my first handgun.

During my rough days, when my dysphoria and depression nearly overwhelmed me, I came very close to killing myself on multiple occasions. But for some reason, it never once occurred to me to use the Colt .32. On those times where I sat staring at a pistol trying to find a reason not to put the barrel in my mouth and pull the trigger, it was always my .45 - never the .32. Luckily for me, the thought of my wife and children being left to cope with my death always managed to stop me from taking the easy way out. It was extremely close a few times, but alas, I am still here.

The point of all this morbid thought is that it occurred to me that here I sit, a decade or so into my transition. I also have a second cousin on my father’s side of the family who is also transgender - she was born the son of my cousin, the grandchild of my father’s brother. I also know now that my father had a cousin who was, at the very least, a cross dresser, something that I don’t remember (although apparently we met when I was very young), but my mother brought to my attention a few years ago.

So, within three generations, we have a cross dresser (perhaps more, but we’ll never know) and two transgender women. On top of that, if we go back one more generation, we have my grandfather who “accidentally shot himself in the head” while cleaning a loaded pistol; a pistol he had owned for decades and was fully familiar with. Bottom line, he shot himself, and that was the story used to cover it up. Was he perhaps also gender dysphoric and couldn’t deal with it any longer? We’ll never know.

The prevailing scientific wisdom is that gender dysphoria is not an inherited trait. But I wonder. If it is in fact a genetic trait, and as there is arguable evidence of at least the last three generations within my family showing evidence of the trait, could my grandfather have been a fourth generation? As I never had the opportunity to know him I can only speculate.

Those people who bury their heads in the sand and believe that transgender individuals are a new phenomenon, the result of some idiotic conspiracy theory being perpetrated on the world, should do a little research. We are not a new fad, nor is being trans a choice. The medical field has established the fact that gender dysphoria or gender incongruity is a medical fact. Only more research will help to determine the causes, but it is my feeling that based on my family alone there is some hereditary causality.

Ignoring facts has never been an answer, and we are not going away.

Oh, by the way, I made $250 at the range. Sooner or later those macho assholes will learn that this Naval officer can outshoot all of them, lol.