Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

by Sarah McBride

When I served as student body president at AU and began working on the issues I had always cared about—gender equity, racial justice, opportunity regardless of economic background, and, yes, LGBTQ equality—it became clear that making a difference in the world wouldn’t diminish or dilute my own pain and incompleteness.

For closeted young people, the Internet had been a critical outlet and a window into the lives of the few trans people whose stories or profiles were available. But it also gave me an unvarnished glimpse into the challenges and barriers.

And 41 percent had attempted suicide at some point in their lives. Nearly half had tried to end their lives, in many cases because the world was too hateful to bear.

I had spent the previous year telling AU students, who were often more interested in interning on Capitol Hill than in improving their own campus, that they should not ignore the opportunities for change right in front of them. I told them that our campus should reflect the world we want to build in ten or fifteen years. After all, we were a student body uniquely skilled in political change, and we should invest some of our talents in our campus. I’d ask them, “If we cannot change our college, then how can we expect to change our country?”

When I came out, I never anticipated just how far the LGBTQ community and movement would come in so short a time. Inheriting a legacy of advocates, activists, and everyday people who, through the flames of violence and the ashes of hatred, toiled and fought for a different world, we’ve grown into one of the most effective movements for social justice in history. And even as we’ve faced some crushing defeats, transgender people—and all LGBTQ individuals—have made historic advancements.

the knowledge that change is possible, the hope of a better day, is the fuel that drives us.

My favorite was a shiny blue Cinderella dress. Putting it on and looking down, I felt the longing go away. A completeness instantly came over me, and a dull pain that I didn’t fully understand was gone.

But nothing inspired me more than the fights for equal rights at the center of our history. Each generation, it became clear, was defined by whether they expanded equality, welcoming and including people who had once been excluded or rejected.

Being me appeared so impossible that changing the world seemed like the more realistic bet.

Jack made me believe that my dreams were possible. But I still knew there was a trade-off. I had known it since childhood: I needed to hide and conform. I feared that if I deviated from the norm too much, my world would come crashing down.

I learned about the diversity of the trans community. That it does not just include trans women and trans men, but also gender nonconforming, genderqueer, or gender-expansive people. Gender identities beyond the binary of men and women have existed and, in many cases, have been rightly celebrated throughout cultures.

I used to rationalize staying in the closet wouldn’t actually bring me the wholeness I hoped for. It was becoming clear that as rewarding as making a difference in my community was, it wouldn’t compensate for a life in the closet. Far from it.

I gave up on politics. I was so exhausted by my own internal struggle that it was clear I wouldn’t have the strength for it. The tension between my dreams and my identity had always resulted in my dreams winning out.

And as I stared at the stained-glass window on the final night of Epiphany, I had my own realization. I can’t do this anymore. I cannot continue to miss this beauty. My life is passing me by, and I am done wasting it as someone I am not.

The shirt and tie felt like a symbol of the stark contrast between where I was and where I wanted to be, between how I was perceived and who I knew I was, and between my parents’ hopes for the future—a happy, successful child—and what I knew they would fear with my news: rejection. Rejection by friends, by neighbors, and, most certainly, by jobs.

Through her fingers and already on the verge of tears, she asked, “So you want to be a girl?” I was prepared for them to use inaccurate terminology and phrasing. I didn’t want to be a girl. I was a girl. And I wanted to be seen as me.

“I feel like my life is over. I feel like you are dying,” my mom repeatedly cried. I had read during my years of research online that my parents would likely feel this way. After all, I was telling them that someone they loved might soon look very different, and they must have felt as if the life they’d imagined for their child was in peril. I’d never find a partner. I’d never find a job. I’d never be welcomed back in our home state. “I’m still the same person with the same interests, intelligence, sense of humor, and the same smile,” I said, referencing my nearly constant trademark expression.

As the questions went on, it became clear that my parents were struggling with the same empathy gap that I later would realize was one of the main barriers to trans equality among progressive voters: They couldn’t wrap their minds around how it might feel to have a gender identity that differs from one’s assigned sex at birth.

“The best way I can describe it for myself,” I told them, “is a constant feeling of homesickness. An unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach that only goes away when I can be seen and affirmed in the gender I’ve always felt myself to be. And unlike homesickness with location, which eventually diminishes as you get used to the new home, this homesickness only grows with time and separation.”

And just as with happiness—for which there are varying words, expressions, and actions that demonstrate that same feeling—gender can have an infinite number of expressions. We can respect that people can have a very real gender identity while also acknowledging that gender is fluid and that gender-based stereotypes are not an accurate representation of the rich diversity within any gender identity.

What would come of my future? The only reference point my parents had for transgender people were punch lines in comedies or dead bodies in dramas. They had no references for success, something that had provided them significant comfort when my brother came out as gay.

I had never worried that I would be rejected by my parents or kicked out of the house. Like a lot of children, my biggest fear was much simpler. I didn’t want to disappoint them. Statistically speaking, that made me very lucky.

While 41 percent of transgender people had attempted suicide, that number dropped by half when the transgender person was supported by their family. And it dropped even further when they were also embraced by their community.

Nothing I had ever done had caused them so much pain, and it ate at me to know that my life was making their lives harder. But there wasn’t a choice here, and I knew the alternative was far worse for all of us. I knew I had made the right choice. The only choice.

But for the next few days, I witnessed my parents mourn the “death” of their son, alternating between the different stages of grief, as my mom stared at pictures of me as a child. It was surreal, and all I could do was continue to tell them I wasn’t going anywhere. I told them over and over again that they were keeping me, while gaining a daughter.

“What are the chances? I mean, what are the chances I have both a gay son and a transgender child?” my mom asked Sean. “Mom, what are the chances a parent finds out that their child has terminal cancer?” Sean, a radiation oncologist, replied. “Your child isn’t going anywhere. No one is dying.”

hoped we would all come to the place where she could ask that same question, “What are the chances?,” out of awe and not out of self-pity—a place where my parents could see that they had raised children who were confident and strong enough to live their truths and whose different perspectives enhanced our family’s beauty.

Indeed, family rejection of a child coming out is one of the leading factors in the high rate of homelessness among LGBTQ young people, who make up as many as 40 percent of all homeless youth.

Most people are good, no doubt, but when we are faced with issues we haven’t yet thought about or interacted with, we often look to one another for how we should respond. Our behavior models for others the acceptable reaction; acceptance creates an expectation, while rejection provides an excuse.

By now, our fears of rejection were slowly diminishing, and while my parents had come to know that I wasn’t going away, they were still a long way from truly feeling that way. With each hug, I could feel that they were squeezing just a little longer and harder. With each look, I could tell they were taking me in “one last time.” And whenever I’d hang out with a different friend, my mom would ask hopefully, “You aren’t going to tell them, are you?”

I had constantly told them that I was still the same person, but I was starting to feel like I was competing with myself. The sense of living someone else’s life that had become so unbearable persisted. I wanted them to love me as their daughter, not as the person they thought was their son. I wanted them to see and love me as me.

Each of us has a deep and profound desire to be seen, to be acknowledged, and to be respected in our totality. There is a unique kind of pain in being unseen. It’s a pain that cuts deep by diminishing and disempowering, and whether done intentionally or unintentionally, it’s an experience that leaves real scars.

Even for the most well-intentioned person, it may be difficult to separate an individual’s gender identity from the sex assigned to them based on the appearance of external anatomy. We’ve been taught and raised to believe that these two concepts are inextricably joined, that one not only leads to the other, but that they are actually one and the same.

It is this trend that links the fight for gender equity with the fight for gay rights with the fight for trans equality: ending the notion that one perception at birth, the sex we are assigned, should dictate how we act, what we do, whom we love, and who we are.

This effort—coupled with the overlapping fights for racial justice, disability rights, and equality for religious minorities—shares a similar thread. We are fighting to be seen in our personhood, in our worth, in our love, and as ourselves.

I hadn’t come out to create a positive, but to remove a negative and to alleviate that nearly constant pain and incompleteness. Transitioning wouldn’t inherently bring me happiness, but it had allowed me to be free to pursue every emotion: to think more clearly; to live more fully; to survive.

Like many young women, my first burst of individual gender expression was a kind of hyperfemininity—pink dresses, more makeup than I needed, and jewelry. Part of this was a release of the pent-up femininity that I had not felt free to express before, and part of it was the imperfect actions of an imperfect human living in an imperfect world that so often demands conformity from everyone.

I finally had come out of the closet, only to find myself stuck in the kitchen.

As a woman, I was scared for my safety and I just wanted to get to my destination as quickly as possible. And as a trans person, I was profoundly afraid that he’d realize I was trans. There are few things more dangerous to a transgender woman than the risk of a straight man not totally comfortable in his sexuality or masculinity realizing he is attracted to her.

Having certain privileges does not mean that your life is easy or that you do not face challenges. It just means that you don’t experience specific kinds of obstacles or barriers faced by someone with a different identity or background. And our empathy should require us to acknowledge the plight of others in both its similarities to ours and in its differences.

With every step, as with all my public adventures, it felt like a thousand eyes were staring at me, wondering the same question: Is that a man? Much of it was in my own mind, but some looks were undeniable.

Our server approached from behind Andy, catching a glimpse of me and making a face I had grown to know all too well, a look that might as well have included the verbal confirmation “Oh, you’re transgender.”

I was still struggling with the same insecurities that a lot of transgender women face. The message we so often receive from society is that to be “read,” as we call it in the trans community, as transgender is an implicit and negative statement about your beauty.

Names are important. Not just in the transgender community but everywhere. It’s the first thing a parent gives to a baby. It’s how our society bestows personhood, recognizes individuality, and affirms the humanity in each one of us. That’s why one of the first steps in marginalizing someone is to remove their name. It communicates that you are unimportant and unseen. When governments seek to oppress, they often replace names with impersonal numbers. When an individual seeks to bully or commit violence, they replace names with dehumanizing slurs or insults.

In fact, up until the Clinton administration, LGBTQ people were routinely denied security clearances simply because of who they were.

Perhaps more important, identification provides a vital layer of security and protection for us. IDs that still reflect a transgender person’s sex assigned at birth can out the carrier, exposing them to discrimination, harassment, and, potentially, violence. Imagine having to reveal a deeply personal piece of information that could put you in danger every single time you fly on a plane, go to a bar, or use your credit card.

While it was only a baby step into a world filled with progressive Democrats, I had quickly learned that such bona fides were no guarantee that a person would be comfortable with and supportive of trans people.

It’s easy to express—and genuinely feel—empathy for a young, white, conventional-looking trans girl; it’s another to maintain that empathy when your differences are compounded by race, gender expression, class, religion, or circumstance.

Our identities matter. They help make us who we are and shape our outlook. Existing in them is a radical act, one that requires, in many instances, courage, hard work, and determination. I am a better person because of the experiences and insights that I’ve had because I’m transgender. I’m a more compassionate person than I was before I accepted that part of my identity.

I’ve joined a community of people who have made the empowering decision to live whole, complete lives. We have stood up to a society that tells us that we are wrong to live our lives to the fullest. It’s a daring act of authenticity. There is no doubt that society places unfair and unjust barriers in front of transgender people, but that is a flaw in society, not a problem with being transgender.