I Repeat: Stop Using The Oppressor's Word 'Lifestyle' To Describe Our Lives

Using the word "lifestyle" is an attempt to diminish the essential nature of who we are. It's dismissive and reduces core identity to a merely whimsical choice which can be reversed or undone at will.

It was a comment that appeared on my Facebook page a few months ago that inspired a post on a subject that irritates me to no end.

One of the things I'm sick of seeing is conservafools and cis people using the word 'lifestyle' to either disrespectfully discuss or denigrate our TBLG lives or cluelessly doing so.   I'm getting tired of repeating this point ad nauseum in TBLG spaces, and especially in TBLG spaces of color.   

So let me make this abundantly clear once again.: It's past time we stop using the oppressor's language to describe our lives.   We do not live a trans 'lifestyle', we live trans lives.

So stop using the oppressor's language to describe our lives.   

You choose your friends, choose what clothes you're going to wear, choose what political party or sports teams you support or even what church you're going to attend.   You don't choose to be trans. You just are.

We need to be pointing out that trans rights are human rights.   We are human beings and citizens of this country and the various nations of the world that we inhabit, and we had about as much 'choice' in being trans as you detractors and haters had in being cis or heterosexual.

One of the things incumbent upon us trans people is to get over the shame and guilt issues about being trans men and women.  There is nothing wrong or sinful with us being transgender human beings.   We are part of the diverse mosaic of human life and it was part of the genetic cards we were dealt. 

So yes, let's start celebrating, showing pride and loving ourselves enough to proclaim that we live trans lives, not a 'lifestyle'.  Those people in our community who use that word in intra community conversation or on the Net we need to say this to them with all the Kingian love we can muster until they stop doing so.  

For those people outside our community who maliciously aim that lifestyle' word at us, they get called out and verbally pimp slapped for it.  Inside our community, the onus is on us to cease and desist in describing our trans lives as a 'lifestyle.