When you realize you are trans everything changes. There is no going back. There is no unknowing.
When you come out things change again. When you start living as yourself things get both easier and harder. You become happier, more comfortable, more easy going among close friends. But all other aspects of your life have new challenges.
Will I feel safe using the restroom? How will they react when I change my name on my account? Will this person think I am a man or woman? How will they treat me based on which ever assumption they come to? If they dead name me is it worth correcting them? Can I just go to a new shop next time and abandon this account? Is it worth connecting with that old friend just to explain who I am? Should I bother telling anyone here my pronouns? Which pronouns will they default to? Is this a place where they call people “Ma’am” or “Sir”? If I try to pitch my voice a bit will I pass better? Do I have the right paper work and ID to make the changes I need? Will they understand what is even happening?
Will I be safe?
Every interaction in public has a new layer of danger added. It’s exhausting.
You will lose friends. Some over outright transphobia and many more over subtle transphobia, transphobia they swear they don’t even have, but they do.
We all have transphobia, well, at least all of us white Americans do. We are raised with it. We are raised in a gender binary that doesn’t teach us to cross or deviate from those binaries except in very specific ways, mostly that women are allowed to be masculine…at times… as long as they understand underneath they are still women and act feminine at the times men deem it most important.
It is the same as racism and sexism, it is so deeply embedded in our culture that it can only be dealt with by looking it head on, and most people don’t take time to do that until someone very close to them comes out. By that point it may be too late to save that relationship with that trans person who in your life.
There are some downsides to the LGBTQIA+ community being lumped together and thats that many people see LGBTQ as simply “LG”. They don’t really think about any of those other letters. They are still thinking in strict binaries and only thinking of sexual attraction. They think that now that gay marriage is legal things are pretty ok for all those “alphabet folks.” When really there is so much work to do for all queer folks, but right now especially trans people.
Most allies don’t think all that much about what they are doing to counter their transphobia. So it left to us trans people and our parents, spouses, and children, to do the work. To educate, to lobby, to bear the brunt of the constant comments and little micro aggressions. To have your life constantly the but of jokes, and to also be in charge of fixing that.
We carry it with us every day after we realize who we are. That we are different from most of you, that we have to give up our safety to find our freedom, in a way those of you are not trans will never understand.
If you are reading this and you haven’t educated yourself deeply on our commonly held transphobic attitudes in this country take the time to do so. This is your wake up call, go learn some stuff. Google some resources.
I want to add that I recognize that many other in our society, especially Black people in America, face the same struggles, without the possibility of “passing” as a way to keep safe in white America. And those at the intersection of Blackness and transness bare this burden even more deeply.
This is why we all need to continually work to dismantle our internalized racism, ableism, transphobia, sexism, as well as working to dismantle our systems designed to keep all marginalized people from experiencing their best lives.