Suddenly it’s not quite so safe out there…

Well that’s how it feels right at the moment. I am told regularly that I pass well, that people who have not met or known me in the past would never suspect I was trans. I try to take these comments at face value and trust them, because, mostly they are spoken by people I love and respect. But, there is always that doubt, always that internal sense that as soon as someone looks at me, something about my appearance, my stance, my manner, anything outs me immediately as a trans woman.

And that’s okay, because, passing in the end is not the goal, the goal is to be able to be the real me, the true me. To express the me that has always been hiding away inside too scared to come out. I don’t think a cis person, certainly not a cis straight white person, can ever appreciate how one can turn every look, glance, quietly spoken word, laugh, movement of others into a micro aggression, or an act of non-acceptance, a sign of not being safe.

Because it’s what I do, and I suspect my so many of my trans tribe do it as well. Add to that the fact of being autistic and additionally having some issues in interpreting and understanding social communication and body language and you have for yourself a recipe for second guessing how well I pass. For me it feels like something good to be told I pass, though, in reality the whole concept of passing is a cis normative thing, and well, who really gives a fuck if you do or do not pass, because the freedom is not in that, it’s in being true to oneself and expressing one’s actual gender identity rather than the one forcefully assigned.

It’s been about a year now since I came out publicly and began to transition, and in all of that time, I have overwhelmingly felt safe the majority of the time. Of course there has been exceptions but those exceptions have been, thankfully few and far between. Of course, I am always hyper vigilant as I try to simply go about my business of living, just in case.

My country had been thrown into a state of flux by government too concerned with its own internal issues to actually govern. Instead it has thrown open a public debate on marriage equality. Suddenly in this country I have always called home and for the most part loved intensely I don’t feel quite so safe anymore.

Those furtive glances, those looks that I can’t quite interpret suddenly seem a little more sinister. And it is little wonder. Suddenly the public debate and discourse is full of anti LGBTIQ+ material. In my city this morning posters were put up in the CBD with hateful slogans stating “Stop the fags”. Not only was such a hateful statement emblazoned on the walls of a city laneway, but it made spurious claims about the children of Rainbow Families.

That look on the train, the sideways glance as I walk to my car. The sheer volume of material aimed at discounting the validity of LGBTIQA+ people as equal human beings, has the result of a feeling of not being quite as safe as I had felt I was.

When the very small hateful minority is given license to spread its hate publicly and with tait approval due to an inept government, it seems that violence against those the hate is spewed about increases. As though, somehow, because someone states a hateful thing, it somehow gives people to enact that hate against actual people with real actual physical violence.

Before I began to transition I never really had a sense of feeling safe in public spaces, I am convinced this is due to the living a life of pretending to be something I wasn’t. I have in fact felt safer in general in public spaces since coming out as trans than when I lived pretending to be a cis male.

Suddenly this is not the case. I don’t feel so safe anymore. My hyper vigalence must rise. It shouldn’t be that way, but when you have politicians talking about how men will pretend to be women and assault children in public bathrooms, when they claim over 90% of our children are abused, when they declare that the agenda is destroying gender difference in the guise of anti-bullying, it has an effect, and let me tell you it’s not a positive one.

Many many people warned the government this would happen, the idea of casting open for a great big public argument about whether or not marriage equality should be brought into reality that the hate would be spewed. No not at all the government insisted, they insisted that the people of our country were capable of a respectful debate. And to be fair, in the vast majority, this is actually correct, but of course it is not the vast majority that spew hate, it is the hateful bigoted minority that want to cast me, my tribe, my family, my friends as some kind of not quite really human reality.

Well we are human, it seems those lacking humanity are those spewing horrid and hateful things about my community.

The LGBTIQA+ community are standing strong in the face of horrid and hateful discourse. We will achieve equality, hopefully it will be before this year is out, but whenever it is, it doesn’t change that we are already equal, in terms of being proper actual, thinking feeling human persons, who laugh, cry, think, feel, and love.

Maybe not today, tomorrow, next month, or next year, but someday soon, some day before too long we will rise up in celebration of being granted the right of daring to be given the same rights as the rest of the human population enjoy.

It is important, I believe, that we hang on to that future, take it deep into our hearts, hold it close to our souls, share it with each other, believe it will be a reality, and we will celebrate with much joy.

Until then we must not, never ever allow ourselves to descend into the hate thrown at us, to sink to the level of trying to detract some part of the humanity of other human persons. They may not accept us, they may not like us, they may want to tell themselves we are somehow deficient and dysfunctional, but nevertheless, like us, they too are human persons, and they too must be treated with the dignity and respect with which we ourselves seek to be treated with.

Let’s not go to hate, let’s hold on to love. Let’s hold on to hope. Hope and knowing that here in Australia, just as it has in other countries, New Zealand, Germany, USA, Taiwan, Canada and others.

Love Conquers All.