Transgender Awareness Week

If I seem to be on a transgender kick recently, it’s because I’ve been aware that Transgender Awareness Week was on its way.

 

And now it’s here.

 

So I’m posting germane YouTube interviews on my Facebook timeline for people who are wondering what it’s like to be in the wrong body.

 

Some of the videos show the lengths to which so many are willing to go to show who they are on the inside by surgically and medically (via hormones) transforming their outward appearance so they appear on the outside the same as they are inside their brains and souls.

 

Gender dysphoria is the acute, chronic, troubling discomfort that occurs when a person feels they’re in the wrong body because their primary and secondary sex characteristics (genitals, breasts, physique, etc.) don’t match their internal (mental and emotional) sense of who they are. 

 

I know LGBTQI stuff scares the stuffing out of a lot of people–hence the term homophobia and transphobia. And because it seems scary to folks who have never known (or falsely believe that they have never known) a member of the LGBTQI  (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning or intersex) community, it usually isn’t brought up as a general topic of discussion, leaving people to think that there is something dangerous, awful or icky about it. Most people mention LGBTQI topics in public with whispers or snickers, as if they’re discussing masturbation or becoming cannibals.

 

And that’s a damned shame.

 

As I wrote in my book Womb Man, we generally don’t sit around pondering what straight cisgender couples do behind closed doors, but whenever people think of LGBTQI people, just about all we think about (not everyone does this, but I think most homophobic and transphobic people do) is what goes on between the sheets. It’s as if we think LGBTQI people are humping every waking minute of every single day.

 

Of course, that’s nonsense.

 

Love is sexual just a small fraction of everyone’s waking hours time.

 

Love most often consists of showing kindness, courtesy, compassion and companionship, having someone’s back, being a soft place to fall when the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune assail the people we care about.

 

Love is about developing a commitment to another person that is so strong we want to be bound to them in a significant way for as long as we both live–as marriage partners or exclusive lovers.

 

If we’d get off the kick that LGBTQI people are hedonistic thrill-seekers 24/7/365, I think it would go a long way toward ending the violence (verbal, written and actual) that threatens transgender people’s lives day in and day out in unenlightened areas of the country.

 

At least 33 American citizens have been murdered so far this year simply because they were transgender. A similar number were killed last year, and the year before, and the year before that.

And we can only count the victims who were “out” publicly as trans; there are probably scores of others who were still in the closet, so their deaths aren’t on the list.

And all because they loved another consenting adult.

 

It’s insane!

 

We should be getting in the faces of the people who hate, not the people who love!

 

I’m glad to see the tide shifting and transgender people getting the staunch support they need from trans allies.

 

With any luck at all, fewer TG teenagers will commit suicide this year as the stigma lessens and they realize that “It Gets Better” the older they get.

 

Society is changing fast.

 

For the better, in this case.

 

It just can’t happen fast enough.

 

I want it to be okay NOW to proclaim oneself transgender (or gay, or lesbian, or bi, or queer, or questioning, or intersex) without eliciting horrified gasps or the reaction of shrinking rearward as if the proclaiming person’s “condition” is contagious or revolting.

 

THAT would be wonderful.

 

Think we can make that happen real soon?

 

Let’s do our best, shall we?