Let a Bitch Live

Years ago, I visited a friend after work. He asked how I was doing, but before I could answer, he qualified his question by asking me to respond without saying that I was tired.

“You’re always tired. That’s how you always answer that question.”

Annnnd he was right. But I was also right. I was/am always tired. However, that innocuous comment made me pause and from that moment on I have always tried to respond to that question with a different answer.

It’s funny how such a casual comment has made such an impact on my thinking. I wonder if he even remembers saying it.

I try to dance around this little rule by saying I am exhausted, but that’s just semantics.

But I am tired.

And right now it’s social media that is impacting me the most. It’s not like I am on Twitter 20 hours a day, it’s just that it doesn’t take much for my energy to get depleted. I am tired of the anti-trans users, I am tired of the lies, I am tired of being demonized, I am tired of horrible people showing up on my feed. I don’t expect anything different from certain users, but I am starting to see a pattern develop.

And it’s this pattern that is exhausting me. It’s not unlike seeing a very messy garage and knowing that you’re the one who has to clean it. Just the thought of such an overwhelming task can cause your energy to plummet.

Whether you identify as a crossdresser or as transgender or as non-binary, you probably have experienced others being, well, confused by your gender identity or wardrobe preferences.

Perhaps confusion isn’t the right phrase. Feeling like the gender you were assigned at birth isn’t quite correct isn’t something that everyone can relate to. Wearing five inch stilettos and a corset are not wardrobe options that everyone would choose to wear. Essentially, how we feel and what we choose to wear (or dream about wearing) can be surprising to others.

And that’s okay! I don’t expect others to understand how I feel or what I wear. After all, I don’t understand how some boys would rather wear ugly loose fitting plaid boxer shorts instead of cute panties.

The world is populated by so many amazing people. I love listening to my colleagues from other countries talk about their holiday traditions. I love listening to my students talk about their lives. Different ethnicities and different generations have such different experiences and perspectives that I am not able to relate to, but I am fascinated and charmed by how unique we all are.

I don’t need to understand WHY my colleague and her family open presents at midnight on Christmas Eve, I don’t have to relate to that tradition, and what she does has zero impact on me. She’s not asking me to accept or understand it or adapt my life around it.

I feel that almost everything in all of our lives can be like that.

You may not understand WHY I wear what I wear or WHY identifying as male isn’t right for me, but these aspects have no impact on your life. You don’t need to come at me… in real life, on social media, or in legislation.

Let a bitch live.

I have resigned myself to expecting things to get worse for anyone who is not cisgender over the next few years. Probably even longer than that.

A classic political tactic is to turn citizens and communities against one another. Whether this is based on race, economic status, religious beliefs, gender, or sexuality, it has been happening since time out of my mind and on my more pessimistic days, it will continue. The idea is to encourage people into thinking that it’s someone else’s fault that your life is difficult.

I don’t think my life is challenging when compared to others. There are aspects to it that I wish were different, but these aspects are not caused by people who are on food assistance or the Hispanic family that lives two houses away. I love that my neighbors and I look out for each other. I will continue to shovel my elderly neighbor’s driveway, even if she stops making me her amazing egg rolls as a thank you. The students who graduate from the college I work for that have their student loans forgiven do not impact me at all. I’m actually happy for them.

Again, I have resigned myself to the challenges that non cisgender people will likely endure in the foreseeable future. I don’t expect everyone to tolerate us and certain politicians calling us rapists and perverts is par for the course for many people in the government.

Certain people in charge, whether politically or in the media, have done a sufficient job of influencing many people to hate us. This effectiveness is jarring, at times. I am taken aback when someone I know, someone who I once thought of as an ally to the LGBTQ+ community, comes out of nowhere repeating something hurtful towards us that they probably saw on Facebook or wherever.

Part of me thinks “they got to you, too.”

One reason I am so reluctant to come out to others, is that I want to, well, control the narrative of who I am. I don’t like it when people make assumptions about me and it’s easy for people to form opinions based off inaccurate information. Sometimes things can get out of hand and damage control becomes impossible.

Misinformation promoted in the media is like that. SOMETHING happens. SOMEONE speculates on the situation. Soon that speculation is THE TRUTH (even if it’s not or it has been disproved), and the effects have done their damage. The impacted people suffer from the public’s belief.

Recently there was another school shooting, this time in Wisconsin. It didn’t take long for my Twitter feed to be filled with users saying that the killer was transgender. I have no idea what the basis for this was, but it wasn’t true. Soon it became “fact”, demonizing the transcommunity and using a horrible attack as an excuse and opportunity to turn others against non-binary people.

Falsehoods like these just add additional reasons and justification for others to hate us. These falsehoods can also cause someone who was an ally to turn against us.

I believe that humans need to look out for one another. I know that’s naive but I can’t believe we live in a world where billionaires own what they own but school teachers have to purchase their own supplies to teach children. I have a hard time living in a country with so many citizens who say that we are a Christian nation and we should adhere to what the Bible says, but are hypocritical in our actions.

I have family members who call themselves Christian but haven’t gone to church in years. That’s not to say that going to church is the only requirement to be a Chrisitan, but it’s the bare minimum. When someone calls themselves a Christian I am tempted to ask how much time each week they spend caring for the homeless. You know, things that Christ told us to do.

I am not a Chrisitan but I loathe hypocrisy. I suppose I wonder why people who identify as Christians do not follow the teachings of the Bible. I know this is a very black and white perspective, but I feel that if you are a member of a faith, then you must follow all the teachings of your faith’s holy book and you cannot be selective about what missives you choose to adhere to.

I also believe that members of a community must stick together, especially if those members are marginalized, such as the LGBTQ+ community. What prompted this post is seeing a trend of queer people demonizing other queer people. When I use the term “queer” here, I am referring to people who are not straight and people who are not cis gender.

I follow a lot of transgender people on Twitter so the algorithm suggests other non-binary people to follow. The algorithm expands to suggest other queer people, not just others who identify as non-binary.

Lately I have been seeing a very small number of queer people attacking transgender people in a very vicious way. A lot of these attacks use a lot of the same verbiage that are used by a lot of very right-leaning voices. Posts about “men in women’s restrooms” and “men wearing dresses playing women’s sports” and the like.

I know that being part of the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t automatically mean that everyone in that acronym is going to blindly support one another, but it seems that this division is getting worse and more aggressive. I don’t expect people to understand me, regardless of whether or not a person isn’t straight, but I feel that all queer people can relate to each other in the sense that we all know what it’s like to feel attacked and misunderstood and demonized for being who we are.

I am not sure of the reason for this seemingly increased hostil rhetoric. Perhaps this level of discord and violity has always been there but it’s just more visible now and is being promoted by the current owner of Twitter who has attacked the transgender community over time.

Perhaps not.

Attacking the transgender community has been a popular and, well, successful method in the last few years. Even being an ally of the non-binary community opens one up to being a target. I am getting the impression that it’s safer to refrain from publically being our ally. I am getting the impression that some people are aligning themselves with those who are attacking transgender people because it may put them in their favor.

What I mean is that my non-straight friends are very worried about the future. Could the Supreme Court rule that marriage equality is no longer the law? Sure, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago when we all thought that Roe V Wade was established law and was safe. These days nothing is safe.

I am afraid that the next few years will be very difficult for the transgender community. I feel that allies of the transgender community will continue to be ostracized. I feel that some people will distance themselves from transgender people because it’s safer for themselves to not be affiliated with us.

And I am afraid that this is the thinking of some people in the queer community. Perhaps by having the same common enemy of the people in power that they will be safe when it comes to their own rights.

If so, well, it will probably work. For a while.

It won’t be as simple as “it’s illegal to be transgender or a crossdresser”, rather we will be impacted in very specific ways. We could lose access to medical care, such as gender affirming care, we could lose the right to legally change our gender, therapists could legally be required to report to the police if their patients disclosed that they aren’t as cis gender as they appear to be.

These actions would be intended to push us out of society and back into hiding. The purpose is to make us afraid. And it would work on a few levels.

You might be thinking that you’re safe because you’re a crossdresser and not transgender but keep in mind that for some people in charge there is no difference between a man who wears panties and someone who is on HRT.

But that would not be the end of it. It wouldn’t take long for legislation to be aimed at non-straight people. I mentioned marriage equality being struck down, but laws banning gay people from adopting could happen. Title VII could be reversed and firing someone for being a lesbian would then be legal.

Hurting the transgender community is not the last goal. It’s simply the first one.

Love, Hannah