Having zero tolerance for intolerance is the only way.  Do trans people have a right to exist?

Of course, we do.  That was a rhetorical question.

But it is very, very apt.  

One of the main topics amongst transgender circles is discrimination, intolerance, facing hate.  It can be mild or quite severe.  Common themes have crept into political discourse like the use of pronouns, which is really just a way of saying does this person have a “right to claim this space?”

Back before my wife began gaslighting me, the first thing she said to me when I told her I could no longer pretend to be a man, and that I had to come out was how she admired my courage.  Many people say that to me.  It is always jarring, as I don’t think of what I do as courageous.  Courage feels as if it is linked to choice.  Just as you would not say to a black or a Jew or a Latinx or an Asian or an anyone, how ‘courageous you are’, nor should you say it to a trans person.

If you believe there is a difference, then you need to examine your views and your values.  Most people would describe themselves as tolerant, maybe even enlightened.  But when you cannot accept someone because of a fact of birth, then you need to seriously examine what it is that exists inside of you that makes it all right to judge others.  You take for yourself a sense of belonging whilst you appropriate that same sense for others.

The Civil Rights Movement is not over.  It is beautiful that it began, tragic that it had to happen.  When looking back at how, in particular, black America had to find its voice, and how much resistance existed, I know that so much of what I am now able to claim as space as a trans-woman was earned on the back of the sacrifice of the predominantly black freedom fighters who paved the way.  And the sacrifices and headwinds they faced!

It is true that there is not yet a gene test for trans people.  And while science searches for some definitive proof—that the developing foetus was flushed with a particular chemical during a certain period of gestation, that some hormone-regulating brain gland is smaller in trans women than in cis men, or its opposite for trans men. I know that there is a human lust for explanation and meaning.  But I also know that the search for this simplistic answer is not always coming from a healthy motivating place.

I know that I was born trans.  My first waking thoughts were of being a girl.  I knew from the moment the moment that I first understood that girls existed and that boys existed, that I was attached to the wrong tribe. Most, many, trans people experience something similar.  There are many, too, who don’t realise until later in life.  

For those late “dawners” (in the sense of realisation), I feel no difference in their evolution from my own.  Whether we have a gift or a curse of self-insight at a particular age is neither here nor there.  Reconstructing some path back to legitimacy is also not relevant, the “it all suddenly made sense to me.”  Many cross-dressers who eventually realise they are trans, describe something like this.

None of it matters.  The power of socialisation is so strong, that it is a form of intense and all-encompassing delusion-inducing hypnosis.  What do I mean?  I mean that my best guess is that every trans person would realise that they were trans at a very young age were they living in an environment where an exploration or a discussion of gender was accepted.  Queue mass hysteria.

So many people of the establishment, the silent and not-so silent vast majority, are threatened by this idea.  The fear around the absurd notion that trans people are “groomers” is rooted in this.  That somehow trans people are recruiting the young, or that exposure to trans people, that if there is a trans person who is someone to look up to, that we will end up creating a situation where people want to become trans.

This is sick.  The parallels to any oppressed minority are very real.  Tell me that finding black role models is not important to any black person growing up in America, that a figure like Barack Obama (politics aside) is not an inspiration to every black person in the country.  To achieve the ultimate prize despite the adversity, the bigotry, the very real obstacles put in that person’s place is an inspiration.  It might be hard to understand the importance of this if you are child of total privilege, a wealthy white male.  Society does its best to make us forget.

But you need to start by looking at outcomes.  Let’s take women for example.  Higher unemployment rates, substantially lower pay for equivalent work.  And this is now, and this is in countries where equality supposedly matters.  Let’s leave out for the moment those countries of the world, more than half, where women don’t have the right to drive, don’t have the right to an education, experience genital mutilation, can be killed for being raped, are policed by their own virtue, treated like slaves by their own families.  No reasonable person could think that is anything other than sick.  I know these countries as a trans woman too, they are places where I would be jailed or executed for simply existing.

Where there is an imbalance of outcomes, there is a problem.  You would not say that a woman is courageous for being a woman.  You would say that she is courageous for standing up against this.  It is tiring to fight.  But it is also about survival.  The right to exist.  An equal right to take up space.  To have your voice heard.  I have never met a woman who does not acknowledge that being a woman means having to fight harder to simply “be” on an equal footing.

That this is wrong should be self-evident.  What do you do to fix it, to fight it?  We can certainly tackle it head-on, and all of us should.  I do this more and more, and yes, I want people to know me as an angry bitch, because if you’re not angry about discrimination, then there is something with you.  What else do I do.  I only ever hire women or minorities.  Period.  And any white man can bitch and moan, or call me a hypocrite, but you know what, I am just one person facing a discriminatory world, and so damn right, if you are a white man, don’t apply.

And this is not meant to be a post to alienate people with privilege.  I am not angry in that sense.  You can be an ally.  You should be an ally.  But you sure as heck shouldn’t be someone who is virtue-signalling.  What do I mean?  Expecting something or some kind of special treatment just because you supposedly understand or support us.

Just as an aside, I am finding that being discriminated against is one of the most ultimately uplifting things about being trans.  I earn my stripes, it makes me understand that being trans, making this transition is not just a bed of roses.  But best of all, I begin to understand in a very visceral way what it feels like to be discriminated against.  I no longer need to be a bleeding-heart liberal and “feel” for those who are discriminated against.  I can be on the inside and fight.  And yes, at times it is tiring, but for the most part, it just feels good.

When I think of what gender identity is, for most people it is something that is totally indistinguishable from a sense of self.  It feels as if one would never even consider it.  Why would one?  No reason at all.  Unless you’re trans, when thinking about how this core sense of self is off.

And that is what the whole debate around trans people has it all wrong.  It isn’t a choice.  It is therefore also not courageous.  What do we do?  Choose to live or choose to die.  That’s the only choice.  But being trans is not a choice.  Never was, never will be.  It is who we are, and it is true no matter when the trans person realises it, if at birth like me, or when you are 80.

These debates around trans people are toxic and misinformed and laced with political nonsense.  Let’s take a look.  Topics such as access to healthcare, at what age transition should be permitted, whether a trans woman should be allowed to use a women’s bathroom, participation in sports, have nothing to do with the underlying issue.  The underlying issue is more fundamental, do we even have a right to exist?

Think about it.  If the state of being, “I am”, is central to who we are, and is the foundation of all universal human rights, then why would anyone discriminate against us or anyone for that matter.  If it was a question of race, would anyone dare anymore to bar my use of the bathroom?  To participate in sports?  Do drink from the same water fountain?  You get the parallel.  And this is from our not too distant history.  

The hard won rights which put that kind of discrimination behind us took the world to finally stand up against systems of apartheid, but we still have them.  The actors have changed, but the drama continues to unfold with toxic consequences.  Despite the intolerant lurch of society at the moment, I have faith that most educated people do not support hate, and that over time, and with generational change, we will see things happen.

In my own micro-life, the people who unfailingly gender me correctly are young people.  But I am also finding that as I have learned to speak in Italian as a woman, gender myself correctly, that everyone I come across picks up on it without a need for prompting and begin to gender me correctly too.

One way to be an ally is to ask for pronouns and to not just respect them, but to carry some of the burden for us by speaking up, so we don’t have to be the harridan.  I really appreciate it when a friend or a stranger corrects someone else.

And yes, the answer to this post is exactly that.  Be the change by refusing to stay silent.

It isn’t that we are talking about pronouns.  Or that we are talking about bathroom use, or sports, or whether there is even worse gender-wage inequality for trans people than there is for women.  These distractions have to be spelled out for what they are.

What is really happening is a discussion about a trans person’s right to exist.  And any decent human shouldn’t even begin to consider that this is an acceptable debate.

And that is the stance I am finding I take in life.  So, when someone says that I have to be understanding of someone who struggles to use “they” or struggles to gender a trans person correctly, I say get over yourself.  Really.  And do some serious self-examination.  You are a bigot if that is how you think.

You decide if that is what you want to be.  But we are here, and we are not going away.