What do we do?

I’m afraid that Ms Brighter has, in her article, put her finger on people like me. I'm afraid I don’t believe that it is up to me to do anything. At least not anything active.

Ms Brighter has used a word - “anecdoche” - where people are talking but nobody’s listening. I am afraid that one of the things I’ve learned is that I am not a good public speaker, that, for many reasons (perhaps it's because of my manner, or my tiny voice, or my looks, or my height or maybe it's something else), people find it easy to ignore me or to not notice me. That has changed a bit since, in the real world, I have been fortunate enough that I am in a professional position that people in my office have to listen to me. But robbed of that position - that in day-to-day non-professional situations, like when I’m walking on the sidewalk or going to the supermarket or having a snack at a fastfood place, I am not too attention-worthy, or at least not worthy of the kind of attention that’s needed for me to make any sort of call to action - atm, the attention I get isn’t that kind of attention.

So, no, I am not one of those that Ms Brighter refers to when she talks of her agents of change.

In her article, she said “many would argue it’s not our job to educate folks. I say, for now, it is. We are a generation of activism. We are pioneers.”

I totally agree, but I am not not the kind of pioneer you would think of like you would with Rosa Parks or Emmeline Parkhurst, or to break trail like a Captain Cook would, or to exhort people to action via his speeches like President Kennedy or Reverend King would. No, I am like the quiet suburban eco-warrior that helps protect the environment by separating her recyclables from the rest of the garbage, or go without a straw the next time she’s at McDonald’s, or bring her own reusable bag instead of asking for plastic shopping bags the next time she’s at the supermarket.

So, all I will ever be is that, when I go to those spaces that I will share with cisgender women, I will, as Ms Brighter said, “show up with a good amount of empathy, a good amount of patience, and buckets of sense of humor.” I agree with her, that it’s like integration all over again, and that “it’ll take a couple of decades to break the cis/trans apartheid.” But I will not be pitching, myself, and would just be catching, instead - I will not be an instigator of change the way the outspoken LGBTQ extrovert-advocates are, but I will certainly support them in my own quiet by-the-sidelines way.

I have had some encounters here and in other sites, and in real life, where I was stridently told that I must be such an agent of change - and I say bullcrap to those people: they have no right to demand, that they have lost the point. I have gone through the many things I’ve gone through in my life and all I am asking now is to be given a measure of security and happiness, and I will not voluntarily enter that world of anger, fear heartache and pain again just because. Not if I can help it. And no one can demand that I do.

I will support people like me, and support the movement, but only in my by-the-sidelines way.

(To clarify, btw, I've had a full surgical transition way back in '05. So when I say "like me," I mean fellow transgender people.)

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