The First Steps To Trans Liberation Are...

Self Love and Pride.

As Mary McLeod Bethune once wrote in the Journal of Negro History in January 1938, "If our people are to fight their way out of bondage, we must arm them with the sword and the shield and the buckler of pride--belief in themselves and their possibilities based upon a sure knowledge of the past.   That knowledge and pride we must give them--if it breaks every back in the kingdom.

The enemy of self love is one of the banes of a transperson's existence in the unholy trinity of shame, guilt and fear.  For us to love ourselves, we must vanquish that three headed monster.

Shame, guilt and fear work in tandem to paralyze us into inaction.   The unholy trio makes us afraid to acknowledge who we are as transgender human beings.   It causes us to want to retreat into another closet and not be open about who we are.   It causes us to question our trans lives, fear moving around in society, and acquiesce to disrespect and discrimination aimed at us.

It's hard to develop that self love and pride when we are hated by society for simply daring to openly live our lives to the best of our ability.    But develop it we must in order to become the tough minded individuals and people we will need to be to break free of the shame, guilt and fear in order to fight for our trans liberation. 

You're A Superhero

"Because having the power to love yourself and others enough to fight for better in a world that fears and hates you, is nothing short of a superheroic feat in and of itself."-- Denny Upkins
 
I have some pretty smart people I hang around with don't I?

Denny's comment has some serious truth to it as well.  As a marginalized person we deal with on an almost daily basis microaggressive and macroaggressive discrimination aimed at us and the challenge of living in a world that is mostly hostile to us.

But yet many of us get out of bed every morning, look in the mirror, smile at it, and get ready to face the self-esteem challenging day ahead of us.

Some of us have developed over time and through facing many trials and obstacles in our lives such an unshakeable self love for ourselves that it does enable us to confidently go about our daily lives and defeat whatever challenges come our way. 

Yes, we have superheroes walking amongst us.  They have superstrengthened character.  They have the vision to imagine a better world.  They have the endurance to run the race and fight the battles that will change society for the better.  They whip out the utility belt of justice to combat injustice and unjust laws.   They break out the Lasso of Truth when necessary to stamp out lies and disinformation spread about our trans lives.  They have the steely determination to win when others in their community express fading hope that it will ever happen for girls and guys like us.

Those superheroes have decided they want a better world for the people who come behind them, and are willing to rise up and do what it takes to make that world a reality.   Sometimes those people may fail in that lofty task  Sometimes they show signs they are oh so human in terms of being frustrated with the pace of change or rocked by events beyond their control. 

But they continue to fight for themselves and the community they love until they win. 

But superhero status isn't just reserved for the people who stand up and fight for truth, justice and human rights for all.  You are a superhero for just getting up every day to live your authentic lives against the odds.  For telling the world this is who I am and I will have the last word on who the person is that I project to the world.  

And we have our superhero sidekicks and allies who aid us in our mission of being the best people we can be and fighting for a decent, just and humane world. 

Yes, you're a superhero.  And don't ever let anyone tell you you're not or allow someone to make you feel like you are less than human.. 
 

Lets Talk About Shame And Guilt Again

If you are a woman, if you’re a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are a person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.

…And it’s going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere. Especially women’s and gay men’s culture. It’s all about how you have to look a certain way or else you’re worthless. You know when you look in the mirror and you think ‘oh, I’m so fat, I’m so old, I’m so ugly’, don’t you know, that’s not your authentic self? But that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around creme that doesn’t turn around shit.

When you don’t have self-esteem you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for, you will hesitate to ask for a raise, you will hesitate to call yourself an American, you will hesitate to report a rape, you will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote, you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution and our revolution is long overdue.

Margaret Cho

And she's absolutely on point about that.   To have self-esteem as a trans person (and a trans woman) is a revolutionary act because people seem to think they have a God given right to hate us and aim violence and vitriolic hate speech at us whenever they feel like it.   And if you dare show that you are a proud trans person, the haters take pride in trying to bring you down or sucking the joy out of your life.


To borrow a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.  I refuse to allow cisgender hatters to make me feel like I'm less than a human being or feel ashamed or guilty about being trans. 

I've been there and done that in terms of the hesitation that Cho talked about in the opening comment.  I hesitated to dream. I hesitated to go for my transition knowing it was what I needed to do to make me happy and be the person I needed to be.  And I was unhappy until I finally said enough and dealt with it

But once I did transition and was finally comfortable in my own body, the self-esteem increased, the fears lessened, the unfounded guilt melted away and I began to live my life.

We have to be consistently on guard about allowing shame and guilt to insidiously intrude upon our lives.  There is nothing wrong with being trans masculine or trans feminine people, and we are part of the diverse mosaic of human life.  If cis people can't deal with that reality, it's their problem to sort out, not yours.
   

Stop Looking At Being Trans As A Curse

One of the memes I get tired of seeing and hearing is transpeople calling being trans a curse. That's problematic right there and plays into the shame and guilt issues about trans people being part of the diverse mosaic of human life. 

I look at being trans as a blessing, not a curse.

You think I wouldn't have loved to have been female from birth? Yes. Am I envious of younglings like Kim Petras and Jazz who either got to or are growing up as girls and have loving parents who helped them do so? Yes.  You think I wouldn't love to go through a day without hearing about a transperson being disrespected or killed somewhere on the planet?  Yes.   You don't think that some days I would love to just be another 6'2" statuesque Black woman on the planet blithely going about her day and not having to constantly do hard solid thinking about her own and everybody else's gender identity and civil rights? 

But at the same time I realize that if I'd been born female from Day One I'd be missing out on this amazing life I have now.

I have this blog.  I get to interface on a regular basis with academics, politicians, thought leaders, college students, activists and amazing allies. 

The people who I call my friends I have no doubts they will have my back when I need it because all the poseurs, psuedo-friends and associates bounced when I transitioned   I have the knowledge of what it's actually like to live on the other side of the gender fence, an international network of friends thanks to over a decade of fighting for trans human rights and the blessing of getting to know some amazing people in the trans community

And how many people cis or trans can say they actually lobbied their congressmembers?

Frederick Douglass wrote in North American Review in 1881 that "Neither we, nor any other people will ever be respected till we respect ourselves and we will never respect ourselves till we have the means to live respectfully." 

In a nutshell, we transpeople not only have to get busy loving ourselves and keep working 24/7/365 (366 in a leap year) at it, we must work just as diligently to create the positive conditions in our lives so that we have the means to live respectfully .  

That means we must challenge the meme that being trans is a curse and root it out of our community.   We must fight tooth and nail to obtain trans human rights and fight even harder once they are achieved to zealously defend and expand them. 

We must emphasize self-love over self-hatred and constantly strive to live quality lives.  If that means surrounding yourself with people who role model that behavior on a consistent basis so that you can overcome the shame and guilt issues, by all means do so.

It's past time that transpeople stop viewing being us as a curse.  If we want people to love and respect us, it may sound simplistic, but we have to start first with loving and respecting ourselves.