There’s a burden of responsibility for me to show up correct – in my head, if I don’t do it right, then I’ll get shut out, and then other trans women of color will be shut out.
I get invited to a lot of college campuses, and administrators think it’s going to be a lecture on ‘trans-ness’ or whatever. But when young people get there, their questions are about just life.
I just am trans. That’s just the way it is. I knew this as a child. But I was told that because I expressed femininity in a boy’s body, I needed to be silent about it. To be ashamed. That led to isolation, which then made it easier for me to be prey to a predator in my own home.
For me, as an activist and a storyteller, I’m very centered in ensuring that we show the complicatedness of the human experience that happens to be rooted in my community’s trans experiences.
Once, when I was 5 years old, a little girl who lived next door to my grandmother dared me to put on a muumuu and run across a nearby parking lot. So I did. I threw it on, hiked it up in one hand, and ran like hell. It felt amazing to be in a dress. But suddenly my grandmother appeared, a look of horror on her face.
If we want to enlighten people or give them new thoughts and ideas, we have to be willing to do the work of educating them.
When I feel that burden of representation in public spaces, it helps to recognize that it’s a duty – a job, really. As with any job that you want to do well, you have to ensure that first and foremost you are energized and in the right head space to take on that task.
I think millennials are the most woke generation because they understand that differences are just in the fabric of who we are.
As someone who wasn’t heavily supported or resourced as a young person when I was going through the hardest times of my life, I’m used to operating outside of systems. The trans movement has always been that way.
Being trans, I’ve grown up with the understanding that most women are born girls, yet some are born boys. And most men are born boys, yet some are born girls. And if you’re ready for this, some people are born girls or boys and choose to identify outside our society’s binary system, making them genderqueer.
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