My Two Cents (And Then Some) About Chase Culpepper

For those that aren't familiar with that name, Chase Culpepper is a 16 year old living in South Carolina.  His name came into the news a while back when the South Carolina DMV required him to remove his makeup for his drivers license photo.  He's back in the news this week due to a lawsuit that has been filed over this.  Here is a link to a CNN article about it, if you don't like CNN a simple search will turn up plenty of other pieces on the subject.  Now before I go on, let me get a few things out of the way:

While some/many/most people who might read this may think that there are plenty of bigger issues that I could be writing about and perhaps those people would be right.  However, this is in the news right now and I do think that there is some relevance to more people than some might initially realize.  This by no means is to minimize any other issues, this particular subject just struck a nerve with me, and really not even so much the issue itself as many people's reaction to it and that's why I'm writing about it now.

With that out of the way a little background for those that are not familiar with the issue and didn't want to read the linked article above.  The young person in question considers himself "gender non-conforming", and often chooses to wear makeup and dresses.  He passed his drivers exam in March (apparently with a perfect score), but when it came time to take the photo for his license he was told that he had to remove his makeup because he was not allowed to "wear a disguise" and he "didn't look like a boy should".  I think those comments from the DMV employee(s) in question are bad enough on their own.  If you've seen any of his pictures, I personally feel the makeup is very tasteful and well done - it doesn't appear to me that he was trying to "disguise" himself in any manner.  And for the DMV to feel they should tell anyone how they should look - I simply don't get that at all.

But what really gets me are the large amount of mean, hateful, and simply nasty comments I've seen on the various articles.  It seems to run about 50/50 as far as support.  Hey, if people don't want to condone his lifestyle choices (or mine, or anyone else's for that matter) - hey that's their choice.  But to say the things that are being said - well it really pains me to such a segment of our society feels the need to do that.  Maybe I'm a little touchier on this kind of thing than some would be simply because of my own gender issues, but even before I made the decision to transition this would have bothered me.  I disagree with people, ideas, etc., all the time, but I try to do it constructively and without resorting to the kind of vitriol I've seen come up here.

And you know what?  Even if the portion of people acting like this don't agree with his lifestyle choices, perhaps they should take a step back and think about the bigger picture here.  If South Carolina can enforce this, it's really not that far a leap for them to tell somebody to shave their beard or mustache, to cut their hair, to take off a wig/toupee, change their clothing, and so on.  Perhaps some people would be fine with those things, but I'm guessing a significant portion of these people spewing the hate would be upset if one of those things happened to them.  If the young person was a cis-woman, is there anyone here who thinks that the picture taker would have required the makeup to be removed?  I know I don't and I really don't know that anyone else would be able to argue that with a straight face.

So yes, there are plenty of "bigger issues" to be upset about, and for that matter plenty of "smaller issues" to worry about.  But this issue struck a chord with me - because of the actual issue, but more because of the way so many people are reacting to it...  Off my soapbox (for now). :)

- M