Let’s just get this out of the way.

As I write this blog, I will be using the names “Jerry” and “Liz” as interchangeably as the pronouns “he” or “she” depending on the time frame I’m referring to. 

For the record, I do not personally believe that gender played a role in the Dale Con.

Of course, I can say that looking back with a 21st century lens. Back in 1975, I do not think that people knew how to articulate what Liz’s trans identity meant to this scheme. I do not think that was devious on their part. You just don’t know what you don’t know. It is easy to judge people looking back but remember that there were no prominent LGBTQ organized groups back then. No gender-neutral pronouns. No TV show like Transparent. No Caitlyn Jenner or Elliot Page to be the poster girl or boy to open their lives online as everyone watched their transition. 

As the decades passed, it wasn’t like anyone got any better talking about it and so I think it’s important to recognize that it wasn’t until fairly recently that the trans community themselves found those voices to educate society on just how they would prefer to be recognized and addressed. 

It is 2021 and we are still learning. Still evolving. Learning what it means to be inclusive. Trying to understand how to be better at this.

But in 1975, everyone seemed to be really winging it. I do not think even those in the trans community knew how to address any of this and they certainly wanted nothing to do with a con artist like Liz Carmichael. 

The things we know about Liz today in 2021 are the things that everyone else was learning and writing about in real time in 1975, 1980, 1989, and 1991. They were working with the information they had. Information which they couldn’t look up on their iPhone through a Google search or a Wikipedia entry. Information that was often just word of mouth. We must keep this in mind when we look and judge at how her gender was reported in those days. 

I have people in my life who knew Liz personally and said they knew the moment she walked in the door that she was trans. Liz herself is reported as saying that she knew people could see that she did not always pass as female. She just asked that people “be kind”. Live and let live. I get that. 

I will talk more about how Jerry came to be Liz in another post. One that will give it the thoughtful discussion it deserves. For now, I’ll just say that I think where things get murky here with Liz’s transness is that back in the day to be trans was seen (for all the reasons mentioned above) as someone’s attempt to be something they weren’t. It was seen as a form of deception. 

To put it plainly, being trans was seen as a con.

So therein lies the problem for Liz. She was trans. She was a con artist. 

She was a trans person who happened to also be a con artist, which made this con all that much easier to pull off. As a society we don’t tend to “live and let live” when it comes to con artists. There’s no free pass based on gender or identity.

That’s why for me, the only thing that has mattered was understanding how the con happened. What makes someone so selfish? How do we find ourselves in someone else’s web of lies? How does someone flee and leave such massive wreckage behind?

Liz was a con artist. So was Jerry before her. 

But identifying as female? That may be one of the only truths Liz Carmichael ever told.