EPTTrans people, especially in mainstream cinema, don't get to be people. Almost no one in Hollywood cares about our stories or us as people. Our stories get told at a rate of once or twice or even none a year, even now in 2021. The writers, directors, producers, and staff that make films that feature trans characters pretty much want to see us suffer. That's all we are to them. It's indicative of cis society as a whole, where more conservative people view us as evil monsters, liberals view us as depressing, suffering people that need to be told how brave and valid we are (while not doing anything to improve our lives), and leftists far too often view our concerns as bourgeoisie or as being against the working-class issues, and thus our rights are expendable. But now I want to get away from the shit parts of being trans and get more into why I'm writing this blog.
We deserve to be treated as fully-rounded human beings. We don't deserve to be reduced to hashtags on Twitter whenever one of us, especially a trans person of color, is murdered. We don't deserve to have our stories be despairing, pitiful affairs made by cis people for cis people to watch and go, "Oh, those poor trans people," and then forget about us. So what do we deserve, then?
We deserve to have our lives celebrated while we're still alive.
We deserve to have people share stories of the pure bliss that comes from realizing that you're trans and finally figuring out one of the most important things you'll ever experience.
We deserve to have people see how happy being trans can be. The newfound love we have for ourselves. The joy we experience when we interact with other trans people. The euphoria we get from presenting as who we really are. It's incomparable.
We deserve to be able to see ourselves as the human beings we are, with our love, our thoughts, our experiences being represented in media.
Have you ever seen people's transition timelines? I encourage you to look at a few dozen. Everyone's transitions are different, but an almost universal constant is seeing the light come into our eyes for the first time. I cannot tell you how many trans people, myself included, gained the ability to truly live.
Have you ever seen a trans person be able to feel emotions for the first time in their life? And I mean the full gauntlet of them. Seeing us experience true joy, true happiness, true love, and true peace is one of the greatest and most hopeful things on this planet.
What about the absolute joy that comes from a trans person hearing their name and pronouns said by someone else for the first time? I can't think of much else that gives me as much happiness.
And if you saw trans people pre-transition, when so many of us had no desire to live, compared to coming out and gaining the desire to not just go through life as a husk of a person but actually live life to its fullest, you would want that to be celebrated and shared with the world.
For reference, here is what transitioning did to me. I will never be able to get over how I went from extreme suicidal ideation to finally being alive and wanting to live. It took decades to get to this point, but I am so happy that I can feel emotions correctly and feel more than numbness.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/HWLK2Uy.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/kuSHhRD.jpg)
