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

by Sarah McBride

I tried to be an ally to the LGBTQ community when so many think that the only way to prove they aren’t queer is with bullying and machismo.

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.

Somehow society manages to treat women like both a delicate infant and a sexualized idol in the same moment. Our thoughts are dismissed and our emotions minimized.

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.

Transphobia tells these straight, cisgender men that being attracted to a transgender woman makes them gay (it does not). Society’s homophobia tells them that being gay is bad (it is not).

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.

Even if we’re six feet underground I know that we’ll be safe and sound.

Every relationship is the result of a series of events and coincidences that lead people to one another.

“Yes, hypocrisy is bad, but if exposing that hypocrisy requires us to commit an even greater evil, then we shouldn’t do it.

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.

None of us know how long we have, but we do have a choice in whether we love or hate. And every day that we rob people of the ability to live their lives to the fullest, we are undermining the most precious gift we are given as humans.

It’s trite to say that many of the biggest bullies are often LGBTQ themselves and in the closet. It may be true in some cases, but it glosses over a more universal truth that underlies the pervasiveness of anti-LGBTQ hate.

Surely, not everyone who bullies is in the closet. But everyone does hold some kind of insecurity. Whether it’s your sexual orientation, your gender identity, how you look, what you sound like, what you do for a living, or any multitude of characteristics, everyone struggles with something that society has told them is wrong.