U B U

Bear with me here, I'm trying to complete a thought.  It's hard to put into words, but... I'm not trans because I want to fit in with women.  I'm trans because I have to try if I want to fit in with males.

I have a very vivid, but incomplete, memory: I was a kid - I don't know how young, but my parents were still married so it was probably before high school.  We were eating at a Chinese restaurant.  I don't remember any of the conversation that led up to it, but my dad said, "I believe that above all else, homosexuality is a sin.  If you can't accept what you are..." and that's all I can remember about what he said.

I do remember feeling a little confronted, though.  I didn't say anything, but inside I wondered if I was gay.  I didn't really understand what gay meant at the time, and I'd definitely never heard the word transgender.  But I knew I was feminine, and at the time I thought the two might be the same thing.

But it wasn't until years later that I thought about how backwards his statement was.  Realizing you're gay is accepting what you are.  Gay is your state of being.  Being gay and continuing to date the opposite sex, pretending everything is fine... that's refusing to accept what you are.

Same with trans people.  If I were to put on a dress and makeup and hang out with more women, that wouldn't be me rejecting my identity, but rather accepting it.  "Why can't you just be yourself?"  That is me being myself.  I spent my youth hanging out with groups of males, pretending like I fit in, faking that bond of brotherhood the rest seemed to have.  It's not comfortable, and it doesn't feel natural.

Transitioning isn't like moving to some strange new world, it's more like coming home. 

Transfinancial

In a previous blog, I made an off hand comment about most trans people being poor.  A friend asked for clarification in the comments, but I thought I would expand upon it here.

Admittedly, that was just an assumption on my part.  It's true that most of the trans folk I've met were struggling financially, but then, so are a good deal of the cis folk.  So I did a quick google search, and found several articles that back me up.  Yay, I'm vindicated.  But it seems like a no-brainer to me anyway.

Take an average person, with all the daily struggles an average person has to pay the bills.  Now add one or more of the following factors:

1. Clinical depression, making even small tasks seem like hard labor. People who don't have depression don't understand just how taxing it can be.  They say, "Cheer up!  Get over it!" and so on, but don't you think we've tried that?  It's like living life wearing a backpack full of rocks, or running on a battery that only charges to 40%.  We don't choose to be sad, and we can't just make energy happen with positive thinking.

2. Being kicked out by family, so they have to earn their own way through college or even high school.  This one never affected me, as I was already an adult when I realized I was trans.  But the abundance of information out there means people are figuring it out at an earlier age, and some of them end up on the streets because of it.

3. Difficulty finding/keeping a job that allows transgender people. 

I know, there are laws in place to protect things like that, but that doesn’t help as much as you think.  Saying, "You can't fire trans people because the ACLU would be all over it" is a bit like saying, “There’s no crime anymore because we have police.”  The ACLU doesn’t have an unlimited team of super soldiers who are dispatched whenever someone’s rights are violated.

At-will employment also means the employer can just invent a different reason the person was fired.  It's difficult to prove otherwise, and a lot of people would rather not get into a long legal battle.  And even if you don't get fired, you still may end up in a work environment so hostile that it's hard to stay at that job.

Getting hired is probably even more difficult.  I can't prove it, but if an obviously trans person comes in for an interview, their resume probably ends up at the bottom of the stack.  And just like the firing problem, it's going to be difficult to prove that that's the reason you weren't hired.

Even if you pass and are living as your preferred gender 100% of the time, you still may have problems when it comes to showing the employer your identification, that still has your old sex on it. 

This is one of the reasons I haven't come out at work.  In the past I have heard transphobic comments from a few coworkers, including our HR director.  I don't know if transitioning would get me fired, but I do know I would be uncomfortable working with these people afterward. 

Of course, let's not forget that some trans people are saving up for expensive operations, and these procedures often aren't covered by medical insurance.  Not to mention extra expenses like therapy, hormones, and dual wardrobes.  Being trans is costly.