Happy Valentine's Day 2018

Happy Valentine's Day people!

For those of you who are happily married, engaged, or booed up on this day for lovers I'm not mad at you.  I'll just be buying my own chocolate instead of having someone get it for me. 

I've seen many of my family, friends and acquaintances fall in love, and in some cases gotten married.  I've even been the bridesmaid in one friend;s weeding back in 2004. Some of those relationships are ongoing, others fell by the wayside for various reasons.

While I have a lot of talents in various areas, there are some things that have been difficult for me to have happen for me in my life.  One of those difficult things for me is being in a sustained long term relationship.   Maybe it was because I missed the signs early or the right person still hasn't come into my life yet, but I'm still single.  I envy you peeps who are happily coupled, with or without a marriage license.

I knew when I transitioned in 1994 that one of the things that could possibly happen is I could possibly be spending the rest of my life by myself and never be in a committed relationship again because it's hard for a trans women, and especially Black trans women to find love.

More often than not in the early years of my transition I saw marriages contentiously break up because one partner transitioned.

But over the last few years I've been seeing it happen for more than a few trans people who are either hooked up with a cis partner or what has been happening more frequently here and around the world, two trans people marrying each other.  .I'm even seeing it happen more often of people staying together and living up to the 'till death do us part' portion of their wedding vows when one person transitions.

I was also blessed to have a ringside seat as Nikki Loyd found love with Will while simultaneously fighting for and winning her landmark Araguz v. Delgado case that cemented the right for Texas trans people to get legally married   It's been fun to see how their fab life has transpired since that court victory, because it's obvious when I'm spending quality time around them they are still madly in love with each other.

But love in Trans, Bi and SGL World is not necessarily heteronormative.  There are bi couples, same gender loving couple and even polyamorous ones.  Some of them have lasted for decades, some till death do us part, while others broke apart because of drama.

To borrow the words of the comedian J. Anthony Brown, 'same sex marriage, same relationship drama'.

One of the things I also want to ponder on this Valentine's Day is what is happening in the ranks of trans attracted men   These are the cis men who see trans women as viable long term relationship and lifetime partners, but in many cases have to come to grips first with the idea they are attracted to trans women. 

Once they get past that hurdle, they then have to get past the genitalia issue and deal with the attacks on their masculinity for daring to love a transgender woman be she pre-op, post-op or non operative.

But those conversations are going to have to be had and led by trans attracted men. 

As much as we trans women would like that set of 'they unapologetically love trans women' epiphanies to happen like yesterday, just as we trans people have had to give people time to come to grips with our trans evolutionary process, we must do the same for trans attracted men. 

Once the trans attracted men evolve, one of the things that must happen in the wake of that is they will need to come out of the shadows and unequivocally state that they love us, there's nothing wrong with that, and society can kiss their azzes if they don't like it.

And that might take a celebrity doing that to break that psychic door down or our younger generations making that happen.

When will that day happen?   Damned good question.   But it does need to happen soon because we need to expeditiously erase the stigma surrounding trans relationships involving cisgender people, because that stigma I believe is a factor driving some of the anti-trans intimate partner violence that can lead to our deaths.

So to all of you peeps who are booed up on this day or well on your way to jumping the broom into the land of matrimony, congratulations.    I'll be on the sideline cheering you on and hoping for all of you to have long, healthy and happy relationships, no matter what it looks like to the outside world or what genitalia is concealed in your underwear.

.Happy Valentine's Day people!