But be ready to pay the price and the price that you pay can be steep… your life.
Every time we step out the door we are being an activist; you are saying I’m trans and I’m proud!
In the class that I taught Tuesday and today I said if you cannot tell I’m trans get a hearing aid and glasses!
Someone said that I should go a class on voice training and famine body language and wear more make-up. I said for sixty years I pretended to be a man and I am not going to start to pretend to be a woman, I am going to be myself. And you know what? People do not care if I’m trans.
I hear other trans people say that they “pass” and I think do they really pass or do people just don’t care?
Every time we step out the door we are being an activist; you are saying I’m trans and I’m proud!
The Price of VisibilityI am an out trans woman.
Transgender Universe
By Clara Barnhurst
October 28, 2017
How much do we risk for being visibly transgender? Unfortunately, far too much - but can we afford invisibility?
“That’s a controversial thing to wear,” a friend of mine told me. She was one of the community support officers for the local police in charge of reaching out to the LGBT+ community: dealing with hate crime, outreach etc. She was giving me a lift home from a party, not acting in an official capacity.
[…]
Fear of visibility permeates the transgender community. People who were invisible find themselves more visible, and they are afraid. Some who still are invisible are staring at visibility with trepidation; worried about what will happen to them if their lives cross over to a point where they can’t remain invisible. There is a whole section of the transgender community that lives entirely separate from their fellows. It’s their choice, but they should feel free to come back out and rejoin us if they wish to and they are too afraid to consider that an option - or they choose to live with that fear as they connect with other transgender people.
[…]
I say in my articles again and again that I will remain visible as a political act, and it is, as paltry as it sounds. In this climate, visibility is a revolutionary thing; a dangerous thing. Area woman attacked by a passer by, woman found guilty of being herself in public.
In the class that I taught Tuesday and today I said if you cannot tell I’m trans get a hearing aid and glasses!
Someone said that I should go a class on voice training and famine body language and wear more make-up. I said for sixty years I pretended to be a man and I am not going to start to pretend to be a woman, I am going to be myself. And you know what? People do not care if I’m trans.
I hear other trans people say that they “pass” and I think do they really pass or do people just don’t care?
The number one rule is be safe. I do not want to tell anyone to come out, it is your personal decision and no one should force anyone out.
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