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March 17 - September 20, 2024
“If we cannot change our college, then how can we expect to change our country?”
Representation in popular culture is key. It is often the first way many of us learn about different identities, cultures, and ideas.
Joe Biden was a towering figure to me. Even before he was selected as Barack Obama’s running mate, he was the hometown kid who had made it big, the Delawarean who had become a national figure with presidential ambition and buzz.
Gender identities beyond the binary of men and women have existed and, in many cases, have been rightly celebrated throughout cultures.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Somehow society manages to treat women like both a delicate infant and a sexualized idol in the same moment.
I finally had come out of the closet, only to find myself stuck in the kitchen.
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.
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.
As trans activist Faye Seidler quipped, more Americans said they had seen a ghost than knew a transgender person, according to some polls.
Principles are worth something only if you stick by them even when they feel inconvenient.
A government cannot be “of the people, by the people, and for the people” if wide swaths of the people have no seat at the table, if large parts of the country feel like there is literally no one in their government who can understand what they are going through.
A person’s safety or dignity should not depend on their state or zip code. Equal means equal.
Access to a restroom is necessary everywhere: in schools, in workplaces, and in public venues. These so-called bathroom bills are nothing more than an attempt to legislate transgender people out of public life.
I remain hopeful because I know that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing—not even death—can take away our voices and our power.
I know that it can feel like we’re almost lost as a country. But we must never forget that even with all of the hate and all of the challenges, no matter who is president, we can continue to change our world for the better.
