Allies bring more change than we can, voices in our support sway more people than a trans people. When we talk about injustices and discrimination we have an axe to grind but allies speak from the heart.
Opinion: Here’s how you can support the respect, dignity and freedom of transgender people
In recent years, trans and nonbinary people have become scapegoats for far right culture wars and targets of discriminatory legislation
The San Diego Union-Tribune
By Mica Grace Miragliotta
November 25, 2022
In recent years, there seems to have been an ominous hyper-awareness of trans people, and not in the way imagined by Transgender Day of Remembrance organizers. Instead, trans and nonbinary people have become scapegoats for far right culture wars and targets of discriminatory legislation, as I outlined in an essay in The San Diego Union-Tribune in September. Most recently, queer people were killed in a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs gay bar on Nov. 19.[…]
Spearheaded by the San Diego Regional Anti-Hate Crime Coalition and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, San Diego County leaders joined a growing national campaign on Nov. 14-Nov. 20, calling attention to “United Against Hate Week.” If we truly want to truly stop these horrifying events, it will take a multipronged approach of education, community building and healing, preventative services, and legislation.
We must cultivate allies.
The question is how?
And it is very simple, we have magic words, and they are simple words that carry a lot of power!
“How can I help?”
In my younger days I attended women rights rallies.
Black Lives Matter rallies.
Marriage Equality rallies.
If there was a cause I was there, what that does is build bridges by showing that we are not just one issue protesters we care about others.
Did you ever hear of the Great White Fleet?
It was created by President Teddy Roosevelt to “make friendly courtesy visits to numerous countries while displaying new U.S. naval power to the world.”
Well that is what we have to do.
PBS wrote;
In a recent poll, the Pew Research Center found that 42 percent of Americans personally know a transgender person, a marked jump from five years ago when that number hovered at just 30 percent.
In the survey, most Americans — 56 percent — said that gender was determined by sex assigned at birth, a number that has barely changed since 2017, when 54 percent of Americans said the same thing. That belief contradicts the experiences of an estimated 1.4 million transgender Americans and the findings of major groups like the American Medical Association, which classifies trans and nonbinary genders “as normal variations of human identity and expression.”
We have to change those numbers!
I am a very out trans person and every time I step up to a counter to buy something. Every time I sit waiting in a doctor’s office. Every time I go buy shoes or have them repaired I a new person meets a trans person.
This Tuesday I have an appointment to go to a kitchen designer guess what she is going to meet a trans person for the first time. We have been corresponding by email so we have never meet but hopefully we will have another ally.
We need to build bridges.
Just after I wrote this I came across this article…
Editorial: LGBTQ Americans need public support against efforts to erase them
By The Virginian-Pilot & Daily Press Editorial Board
The Virginian-Pilot
November 26, 2022
Groomers, they shout. Freaks. Pedophiles.The names and slurs are familiar. Their intent? To demean and belittle, to intimidate and threaten.
The implications are unmistakable: People who identify as LGBTQ aren’t entitled to share the same spaces as other Americans. They don’t deserve the same legal protections. They shouldn’t exist.
Far from being at the margins of our national political discourse, these sorts of insults and attacks are now at the center of fierce arguments. You can hear them everywhere from the halls of Congress to the school board meeting rooms here in Hampton Roads.
Those delivering such hateful and dangerous drivel are people who believe that LGBTQ people have no right to be part of society — and they have no reservations about saying so, often loudly. They are committed to stripping away legal protections for these Americans, restricting them to fewer spaces in our communities and, ultimately, chasing them from public life.
We can’t remain silent, we have to speak up and speak out!
The commonwealth isn’t immune to this sickness infecting the country. Earlier this year, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration proposed rules that would harm and possibly endanger transgender youth in public schools.
[...]
These are far from the only examples but they offer the type of exhausting and relentless opposition that LGBTQ Americans face daily. And those who stand up to this onslaught, who dare to defend these Americans or who rightly believe communities should be welcoming for all? They are subjected to similar attacks in an attempt to discourage them from speaking out.
Groomers, they shout. Freaks. Pedophiles.
We must speak out, we can no longer remain a spectator. It is our lives and way of life that is being threaten!
A friend has a saying that I like… “If you hear mean, intervene.”
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