Choosing Sides

Hi! I'm Alexis, and I'm here to steal a little bit of your time, but in return, I hope my posts will offer a little perspective on what life is like for a Trans Woman living in the United States. I'm 31 years old, Pre-Op, and I've been on Hormone Replacement Therapy for a little over six months. Are you captivated by my beauty yet? Well, you should be. Have I mentioned I'm just a little cocky (No pun intended) and maybe a little too full of myself. Just a little. Unless you ask somebody else, so it's best to just take my word for it.

So, why am I here?  At this point Transgender Blogs are a dime a dozen. That's not to say that they're not unique in their own right. All of us have something to say, and my recommendation would be to check out as many as possible. Failing that, you should read mine. (Sorry, my over inflated ego made me say that. It's true, but normally I try to practice a little more modesty.) So, I could spend a lot of time introducing myself, but I promise you'll be given the opportunity to get to know me over the course of my posts, but for now I'd like to dive right in.

 The Trans Fight for Equal Rights

There is a war on, and it's a war we fight every day. Whether somebody is Male to Female, Female to Male, or any of the other infinite shades of grey in the Transgender Spectrum, there's one thing we all crave. It's acceptance. We all want the ability to live our lives as we see fit and not be looked down upon or shunned by society for it. The world is becoming more progressive, but it's moving too slowly for my taste. Yes we're starting to have our day in the sun as far as the media is concerned with Chelsea Manning, and all of the recent bathroom legislation, but answer me this; How sad is it that one of the basic rights we're fighting for is simply the right to go to the bathroom in peace? How unbelievably sad is that? It's America, the So called home of the free and some people are scared to use a public bathroom!

Some outlets like Fox News make no attempt to cover their prejudice. They ridicule us and spin their own backward opinions as legitimate journalism. And people watch them and cheer them on. For all of the feces they've thrown at us, and the LGBTQ community at large, not once have they brought on a Transgender person, or anybody remotely  qualified to discuss our plight. They even had the nerve to have some bearded guy, dressed completely male, stand outside of a women's bathroom, claim to be Transgender, and ask if they would be comfortable sharing their facilities with him. That was simply offensive. Unfortunately Fox News has a lot of support, and so a lot of people take their cues from this supposedly fair and balanced network.

Eventually we will have our rights. The day is coming when we'll be treated no differently than any other group of people on this small blue orb. Look at the strides that the gay and lesbian community has made in recent years. Yes, they still have some distance to cover and they're far from free of prejudice, but today is a better time for them to be alive in this country than any other time in history. The Transgender community cannot ride the LGBTQ wave though. Society views us in an extremely different light than the "L" and the "G", and we need to act accordingly.

Again, I say our day is coming, and there's nothing anybody can do to stop it. We're gaining momentum every day. What we need to do is act on that momentum. When the marriage protection act failed to pass in my home state of Minnesota, more or less making it legal to potentially pass a law allowing same sex marriage, the gay and lesbian community here didn't take a break, decide they'd done enough for now and rest. They immediately set to work putting a bill together and in almost no time at all in the world of politics, their bill was passed.

We're not going anywhere. We're coming out of the wood work now to claim out place in society. What's important is that we need to stand together in the Trans community, along with our non-Trans allies. Regardless of what we do, the train has left the station. We won't be stopped. We alone can determine how quickly we reach our destination. We can continue to live in our own little worlds and let the occasional standout amongst us guide that train at a nice steady pace, or we can all stand together and reach our destination quicker. That choice is ours and ours alone.

Today, the people who choose to persecute us are the same breed that opposed equal rights for African Americans only decades ago, and look how that turned out. Those who are against our rights should think about how they'll be remembered in decades to come.