(This is a guest post by valued commenter Sister Golden Bear.) As I mentioned in the comments, today is Transgender Day of Visibility, held every March 31, intended to honor and celebrate transgender and gender non-conforming people (GNC) — both those visible and those invisible. It started a decade ago but only took off a …
Guest Post: Transgender Day of VisibilityPost + Comments (88)
OTOH, there are definitely trans people who are out and proud, and don’t care about that. There are GNC folks — who may also refer to themselves as non-binary or genderqueer — who are proud to be out and visible. (As well as those GNC people who struggle with being visibly “betwixt and between” which can be an enormously hard place to be.) There’s also trans people who can’t be invisible even if they wanted to, because they physically can’t blend in — most of us weren’t blessed by the androgyny fairy — and being “visibly trans” can be an exceedingly hard life. And some of us trans/GNC folks have had no choice but to be visible and fight like hell for our rights and humanity (to quote from the fierce and fearless Black trans advocate, Monica Roberts, whose blog is well worth following).
Personally, this TDOV, I’m feeling quite ambivalent about being visible — even if for years my motto has been “visible for those who can’t be” — for personal reasons that I go into at my blog. The tl:dr version is that 1) while my divorce from masculinity may have been amicable, the past three years still have been hugely stressful with trans issues dominating my life, and I’d like to a break from that; 2) I’m facing a Catch-22 where the more I writing and activism I do, the more “being trans” becomes the thing that defines me, when I’d rather it be the third or fourth most interesting thing about me.
I’m not quite sure how to square that circle, but this Teen Vogue article by 11-year-old trans girl about how visibility has changed her life inspires me to figure a way to do so. 11-year-old me didn’t even know that trans — or trans people — existed. I just knew that I was “different” and thought I was the only one in the world. I don’t want trans kids today to know that feeling. My hope is that we “late-life transitioners” are the last of a lost generation, that the younger generations will have the freedom and support to find themselves without wasting decades of their lives.
Unfortunately, we still have a long ways to go — a 2018 study found that up to half of trans/GNC teens attempt suicide. It’s hard to swim in a sea of poison without swallowing some. And so we fight.
Anyway…. this originally was going to be more of a Trans/GNC 101, but as the writers among the jackaltariat know, sometimes stories decide on their own where they’ll go. I’m still happy to do a trans 101/ask me anything in the comments. I need to go out for a bit, but I’ll do my best to reply.
(Huge thanks to Sister Golden Bear for this!)