Why We Fight

If I could give a speech on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, this would be it:

Last night I had a dream. In it, a trans woman was given a chance to go back in time and live for a day in a world where her birth gender had been female. The day was her birthday and she was being encouraged by her parents to embrace some of the very gender binary ways of being a girl. Having lived her entire life being rejected by her family, she was confused and scared, clinging tightly onto the old basketball hoop they had on the patio. She didn't understand at first that she was free here to embrace all the possibilities of who she could be. Slowly she opened up and enjoyed this one day where her mother treated her as a daughter who would someday grow into a woman, a woman who would experience all the trials and all the joys that come of being female.

Suddenly, a long, black car arrived and a man in a suit whisked the little girl away. They drove silently until they came to a quiet street corner in a place the girl did not recognize. The man offered the girl a choice: "When you set foot outside of this car", he said "you'll either return to your old life or you can stay as you are now. If you choose the latter you will lose everyone you have ever cared about, you will have to start your life over completely without the support of anyone but yourself. You'll be alone but your mind and the vessel that contains it will finally match."

Having been merely a spectator in the dream, I suddenly found myself the third passenger in the car. I railed against the man. What kind of choice was he offering? How could anyone ever be expected to make that kind of decision? "It's not right. It isn't fair. No one should ever be asked to make such a horrible choice" I yelled. The car door opened and just as I was about to get out, I woke up.

As I rubbed the week's old scruff on my face, I realized that the basketball hoop was the one from my childhood. In fact, the setting was my parent's backyard from when I was a kid. During the dream, I thought the little girl represented another member of the community I used to know but, in the light of day, I realized that she was me.

I left transition behind over a year ago when I was diagnosed with crohn's disease. Losing all the ground I had worked for over the course of that year was one of the most agonizing experiences of my entire life. For a long time I told myself that I had no choice, that the disease had robbed me of my ability to choose between expressing my gender authentically or remaining in this male shell I find myself in now.

In reality though, I know now that I did choose. I could have continued transitioning in ways that would have been less effective but instead I just let go completely. It was more than just my desire to shoot the moon and have it all. It was because, as I had transitioned, I had lost so many of the people I cared about. My family, my friends; they just couldn't handle my transition. I lost my job. I felt alienated from everyone around me.

When I got sick, I had a perfect excuse to abandon this dream of finally casting off my gender dissonance. It felt, at the time, that it wasn't worth it. As it happens, my family did welcome me back with open arms and my friends felt more comfortable around me again. I have work. I feel like a functioning member of society.

But the pain is still with me and I realize, had I gone the other way, had I continued transitioning, I would still be in pain, it would just be different. I would still have no family, those relationships I'd built for years would still be strained at best. The dream represented the choice I made, the choice we all make.

Transitioning is a choice. Many of us cling to the idea that we simply must go through this process but that isn't true. That we are trans is undeniable no matter how we deal with it but taking hormones, having surgeries, and going through the complicated legal battles of having the world recognize us for who we feel we are is a choice.

All of are forced to make the kinds of decisions that no one should ever have to make. Our choices come with the kinds of consequences that no one should ever have to face: loss of family and friends, being fired, kicked out of one's home, and those are the easy ones. We face so much violence and so much death, more than any other group of people in the world. So many of us don't make it. Whether we do it to ourselves or are the victims of rage and fear, or even if we just give up and hide in the shadows, we lose more and more of our community each year.

I'm just a man these days. Most of the people I interact with day to day now will never know who I was not so long ago, who a part of me always will be. In spite of that though I can't help but keep fighting for that little girl, for this community, for all of us, the ones who are still here and the ones we've lost. That's the one choice I don't ever have to regret, the one thing in this world I have the luxury of knowing is right. That's why I fight. How about you?