Michelle Frost is a writer and poet. Born in Africa, but now living in Scotland. She has written all sorts of things over the years, from being a newspaper agony aunt to book reviews and ghost writing. She lives in rural Scotland where her nearest neighbours are sheep.
I had a friend who seemed to have it all – the job, the looks, the brains and a strong loving long-term relationship. I met her through social media. We shared the same passions on human rights and world peace and discovered more reasons to be friends the longer we exchanged emails and read each other’s blogs.
I must admit she scared me at times, being smart and eloquent as well as highly successful in her chosen career. It could have been intimidating, but she was never the type to rub superiority in anyone’s face. She had that type of unforced modesty I’d call grace. She was a rare woman – a woman who had managed to climb up the ladder of her career without resorting to ruthlessness.
Her blog posts were as clean and sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. She dissected the stupidity and cruelty of the planet, held it up for inspection and made you long for the happier healthier world that she envisioned. She was a caring woman – passionate about making the world a better place; always ready to leap onto a social media soapbox and condemn the wrongs in the world.
Over the years I grew to love her as a friend as well as admire her. I even took some fashion tips from her, since her fashion taste was equally inspiring. She dressed for her own pleasure, which was part of the secret. She dressed her body in lovely things for HER self, aware that loving herself was the greatest aphrodisiac. She was the kind of woman men secretly daydream about; the kind they tag “out of my league.” Flawless skin, a perfect figure, and the most stunning eyes. Dark bright intelligent eyes. She was an attractive woman – drop dead gorgeous, in fact. Not that she cared – she had a life partner and as far as I knew, her home life was happy and completely fulfilling.
She was an incredible writer, a passionate woman… but she wrote about dangerous things. She wrote the truth about life and about her self. She was naïve enough to think she could make a difference; change the way people perceived other women like her. But in the end all they saw was a dangerous woman.
When someone managed to connect her media persona with her real life it all unravelled. It was when her partner received death threats that she emailed me to say goodbye. She took down her blog and left the media sites. She told me she had quit her job and was moving another place. She was a caring woman – the safety of those she loved was the most important thing to her.
I never heard from her again.
I couldn’t understand it; I still can’t. I cannot comprehend why anyone would treat her or her partner so badly. And it wasn’t because of her liberal save-the-planet politics. They weren’t angered into hate by her outspoken support of abused women and children in war zones or even brought to rage by her blog rants against nuclear weapons. No, it was none of those things. What made her a dangerous woman was the fact she was born with a penis instead of a vagina. She was a transgender woman – a threat to their view of gender reality. And that was all they saw.
Image: Wonder Woman by Tris Marie, used with permission.