EPTBeing trans is the best thing to ever happen to me.
I was able to find answers as to what was different about me after 23 years of life. I found an absolutely wonderful community in person and online. They've supported me and cared for me as I've been going through the transition process over the past year and a half. I found so much love and understanding and acceptance from non-cisgender partners and they've pushed me to be the best woman I possibly can be. I even found my ultimate purpose in life, which is to make life better for all the trans people that come out after me, no matter their ages or locations.
Being trans is also one of the most difficult things I've ever faced.
Cis people don't know 99% of the things we go through in person and online. The gender dysphoria many of us feel is absolutely fucking debilitating. I and many other trans people wake up everyday and have a different kind of hatred of our bodies compared to cis people. We deal with deep voices, or facial and body hair, or large Adam's apples, or receding hairlines (if you're a trans woman or transfeminine person) or we deal with breasts, body curves, or high voices (if you're a trans man or transmasculine person).
When it comes to family, we deal with overwhelmingly large amounts of rejection by them. I can't even begin to tell you how many people I personally know that have been kicked out by family or disowned. We get sent to the streets where we're forced to survive on nothing in a society that absolutely hates our very existence. For hard numbers, our homeless rate among trans youth is as much as 40%. We also have to deal with super horrible parents who will forcibly isolate their trans children to prevent them from transitioning.
When it comes to friends and partners, we often lose them when coming out. I lost my girlfriend when I started transitioning (but she was a transphobic piece of shit so she can go fuck herself). So many older trans people I know lose their spouses or their kids or their friend networks too.
When it comes to the US, where things are shit for trans people but a lot better than places like the UK, and Poland, and Brazil, we have to deal with Republican pieces of shit trying to criminalize access to care specifically for transgender people, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT) while also trying to ensure that we have no federal protections against workplace discrimination, or access to restrooms, or housing. We're not even allowed to serve in the US military anymore (but that is strangely enough a net good because I don't want my trans siblings dying in the name of the evil US imperialism that plagues the world).
We have to slog through so much fucking shit online. Conservative Christian groups, so-called trans-exclusionary radical "feminists", and far-right white nationalists work hand in hand (and are often the same people) to keep up harassment of us in every online space whenever we dare to try to be visible and assert ourselves and often times, the social media companies are on their side. We get death threats and harassment constantly from every possible angle of attack by all sorts of people and it's so fucking much. And it's not just right-wingers and these supposed liberals. I've had to deal with so many self-proclaimed leftists saying that trans people's concerns are bourgeoisie and that we will "get the wall" in the upcoming revolution.
So many of us have to survive with sex work. Employers can and do fire us for being trans or deny our applications if we're visibly trans during an interview. Sex work is the only way to make any money in this capitalistic hellscape for some of us and it can be extremely dangerous.
In 40 US states, it is completely legal for a person to murder a trans person and then claim that it's the trans person's fault you murdered them (the horrible "trans panic" defense). All of this provides context for the worst part of it all.
Black and brown trans people often get murdered on the streets. Dozens in just the US this year, in fact, with way more worldwide, especially in places like Brazil. It's a fucking epidemic of death that only we seem to care about. No one outside of us wants to do anything for them while they're still alive, but cis liberals people will gladly share stories of them being murdered and then go back to doing fuck all for them the next day. It's pretty much the equivalent of thoughts and prayers and serves no purpose but to make being trans and a person of color seem like a death sentence. I don't even want to think about how many trans PoC see these stories and stay in the closet because they don't see the happy stories of succeeding in life and being accepted.
In the US, the police hate us. Those pigs frequently harass us, assault us, and rape us. They arrest us without any cause and throw us in men's prisons if we're trans women to be raped and abused there so they can live out their sadistic power fantasies, or women's prisons if we're trans men, and it's sure a hell nothing like Orange is the New Black. When we get murdered, they do nothing whatsoever to help find our killers. And then the media frequently misgenders us and deadnames us for everyone to see, and our families dress our bodies up in the wrong gender and that's the last anyone ever sees of us before we enter the ground.
This leads to our suicide attempt rates hitting anywhere from 30% to 50%. I know of dozens of trans people this year alone that have committed suicide. Some of the kindest, most caring, most wonderful people I knew just... gone forever one day, for so many different reasons. And the worst part is, it never gets any easier. I am so fucking tired and depressed having to grieve and memorialize my friends and siblings. Any trans suicide is a murder by proxy, with the responsible party being this godawful society that actively hates our very existence.
Today, I remember everyone in the transgender community whose lives were tragically cut short by the evils of this cisgender society. I will never forget their memories and I will always do whatever I can to ensure that the horrible society that caused their deaths changes.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/b8VxulW.jpg)
