The link and excerpt below is in response to a Transphobic rant published in the Guardian this week.
It clarifies why I am the way I am about injustice. Not because I'm a busy body wanting to create havoc for our corporate overlords. But because I can see in myself the abject waste of a life and mind simply because I was a square peg with a round hole. How when I was a child and was tested for intelligence along with pych tests to determine why I refused to wear a dress. They could of asked me but my "I'm a boy" response was not acceptable. I was told then I should be placed in advanced instruction or even college. My parents refused on the advice of the Fundaloon shrinks that I still needed to socialize properly.
Or all those jobs I was qualified for and I was turned down or simply told we don't like your kind. Or my favorite having my application and credentials circular filed in front of me because the jerk claimed my credentials were counterfeit. Never mind they were certified by a national agency that handles that career path. And he could have easily confirmed the certifications. But no, it was my absence of a penis that was the deciding factor of whether I could keep my child fed and housed.
Or how the Social Security Administration gave me never ending grief to get my insurance because I changed my name and gender on my ID's
These simple acts that many take for granted to not happen are daily problems for Transgender people. Our average income is $11,000 a year. I wish I brought in that much.
But how could I thrive if every time I turned around I was being accused of criminal acts by simply walking down the street? Or being told I was a liar because the Social Security Administration takes great joy in outing Transpeople to prospective employers?
Or how I would have to refile every semester the same forms that are initially required for student aid because one Transphobe kept flagging my applications. I had to literally present my application to the schools financial aid administrator to get around the soft subversion of our lives.
If you don't think I was thrown away as with many of my peers I don't know what to tell you. I do know I can tell you I have a failing body but my mind is still sharp if erratic and I could if given just a modicum of social support instead of constant sabotage I too would have had at least a chance at maintaining housing as an adult. If not do actually something great.
Here’s why I take transgender issues personally…
Because I or someone I love might get cancer at some point, and a trans person who is capable of discovering the cure is otherwise occupied defending their right to exist.
I live in a world that needs leadership, and a smart, tireless trans person who should maybe be President is busy arguing that they deserve basic human respect.
I want to drive a fucking flying car someday, and the trans person who might invent it is stuck responding to Guardian editorials that treat them like they’re subhuman.
All of which is to say that this is about more than compassion. Compassion is important, and straight, white cisgender dudes like me ought to have a very strong sense of it, since everyone else tends to treat us pretty well (at least when compared to people from similar backgrounds who aren’t those things). If you’re a compassionate person, the fact that transgender people live under a constant threat of violence should stir you. The stories of the challenges even the more privileged trans people face when they come out should move you. The fear that accompanies the moment when they tell their story to the people they love should bring out your compassion. But it goes beyond compassion. Compassion is good, but compassion also means that it’s always someone else’s struggle.
So why is it exactly that society has determined my contribution is to be smothered?
FYI: If there is editing to be done I will not be reading the comments so you will just have to kosmail them to me.