“What the hell is that? What gender are you? Fucking abomination.”
Roughly every 45 days since I have moved to Philadelphia, I have been harassed over my gender.
"Hey you in the small shirt, come over here. Come here you fucking freak!”
It’s like clockwork.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” “I think it’s a faggot.”
And it never ends.
I never initiate the interaction. It’s never anything I’m doing, other than perhaps existing in a public space.
Once I was walking down the street. A lady looked at me and made noises like she was throwing up.
Another time, the only thing that separated me from being assaulted was that the man hesitated. He waited a second too long, and the train doors closed before he could get on. So he banged on my window and screamed at me.
On average, there is a month and a half in between every instance of harassment. It is unavoidable that it will continue, and that eventually I will be assaulted, or worse. I have to deal with this on top of the typical stressors of being a human being. I don’t know how to communicate how many tears I’ve shed, how many nightmares I’ve had, how much stress I’ve experienced just about the way people treat me over my gender.
I am lucky.
I live in a progressive city in one of the most trans-friendly countries in the world. I am white and have housing and employment. I’m pretty fortunate compared to many trans people.
So why don’t you fucking get it?
If I can barely scrape by with “haven’t yet been assaulted, will likely eventually; until then I will be perpetually verbally accosted,” and that’s pretty good for trans people, then why don’t you realize the dire situation we’re in? Do the massive surveys indicating the high levels of oppression we face not work for you? Do the studies showing that we are goddamned miserable because of how people treat us not suffice? Is it not good enough that almost any trans person can tell you that they are suffering immensely because of the way society treats them?
I promise you, cis people are not treated like this because they’re cis. Can you imagine? Can you imagine trying to live your life and be happy, but knowing full well that you are going to be called slurs hundreds more times before you die? That you are going to be harassed and assaulted, that people are going to shut you out of communities before giving you any chance, and that when you try to speak up about this, people are going to dismiss you, call you too emotional, and instead refer to a guy who calmly treats you like a nuisance at best?
Why the fuck don’t you get it? What’s there not to get?
I have spilled so many words, so many thousands and thousands of words, on trans issues, on so many different trans issues, on conversion therapy and youth and sports and violence and identification and on and on. I have spilled so many words on so many things and even so many people who read it still don’t get it. They don’t understand; we’re suffering. Some of us, we’re literally dying because people don’t care. Because you don’t care. Why don’t you care?
Why do you sweep us aside like a nuisance?
Why do you say “keep dying for a little while longer, I don’t want to hurt our polling”?
Why do you say “there aren’t that many of you, so it doesn’t matter”?
Why do you say “I don’t quite understand it, so I’ll stay out of it”?
What is there not to understand? I am trying to do the same thing you are: I am trying to be happy. I am trying to live a happy life, to eek out some existence that feels meaningful and worth living, just like every other human on this planet. I am not an alien! I am a person just like you, and I am being told that the most basic freedoms and the most simple happiness is entirely unacceptable, or just too hard to provide.
Do you get it yet?