If you are not a transgender nor nonbinary person, I want you to take a moment to consider the following: In all of my life, there has never been a time when being transgender has been seen as acceptable, and yet I am — and remain — a trans woman.
I first heard of the existence of trans people when I had a single digit in my age. The moment I first heard about it was on a radio talk show, and a voice by a distraught parent who had just learned their child was trans. The whole notion was that she was a victim, having to deal with the shame of their child taking such a drastic step with their life. At the same time, my parents — also listening to this tale — were experiencing their own fears, discussing how hard that would be on them.
Perhaps they sensed something even then.
In spite of everything, I think of that moment as when I realized there were words to describe how I felt, that being told I was a boy may not mean I always would have to be one.
As I grew older, I began to keep an eye out for any news about transgender people. I noticed that our lives were played out in my mother’s tabloids, portraying us as objects of scorn, or as freaks to be pitied. I saw us discussed on television, mocked on sitcoms, or portrayed as violent monsters in movies. I also noticed that we were an object of lust, portrayed in the tawdry movie houses or the back pages of the dirtier magazines. We were something to keep hidden — and while we could be loved, it was most certainly not romance.
I also watched the mockery of Renee Richards as she fought to be in the US Open as a female tennis player in the 1970s. That’s a battle that we’re still fighting decades later, I might add.
When I started to seek out community, it could only be found in the back rooms of hotels where small support groups existed. It played out in clandestine visits to the homes and private stores of others. The notion of anything mainstream about our existence was unheard of, as everyone lived in fear of discovery. Lives could be ruined in an instant, everyone made clear through word and deed. We were told not to be seen together in public, that our existence in multiples would only put us at risk.
In the 1990s, we started to press for change. We fought for acceptance among a thin pool of allies, struggling to be seen as a part of the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual movement, often with mixed success. We created community online, too, but even that often needed to be battled for, or often hidden away behind safe euphemism and discrete word of mouth.
You might think we’d have just gone away. It was clear that this was a world that did not want us, and all we could dream of was a semblance of a normal life where we might at least be tolerated. That, perhaps, we would be lucky, and could remain under the radar. Surely, one might think, we could just as easily opt to just live in accordance with our supposed “biological reality,” and carve out a living that was far more “traditional” or, dare I say, “normal” in the eyes of those who were not transgender.
Yet in all this, through all the back rooms, all the fights, all the pain and mockery, and harassment, I — and so many other transgender people — continued to exist. Facing all the challenges we faced, we still chose to be ourselves in the only way we could — and the only way we could and still survive. Being transgender was — is — our “normal.”
I recently wrote about Dora Richter, a trans woman who survived Nazi Germany. I think, too, of those who came out in the decades after her, from Christine Jorgensen, Billy Tipton, and Alan Hart, to Wendy Carlos, Michael Dillon, Jan Morris, Lou Sullivan and countless more. There are even more now who, as we have found each other and built our community, are pushing back, living their lives and thriving even in a world that can be so toxic to trans lives.
Today, we live in a time where anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQ+ politics are dominating political discourse. A majority of states have passed laws against transgender and nonbinary people in one way or another, from sports bans to bathroom bills. Our stories — no, our very existence — is being written out of schools and libraries. Meanwhile, politicians continue to screech about us as a faceless “ideology” that needs to be crushed out as a great ill of modern society.
These are the people who wish to run the United States after this November, and for some horrific reason actually have a shot at it. These times are bleak — maybe their bleakest.
These are times of great trouble and fear, and many of us may feel they cannot survive all of this. Regrettably, I really do understand. Understand one thing, however: No matter what, they cannot truly stop people from being transgender or nonbinary. We have faced decades of hardship. We faced centuries before that, too — and yet, we remain.
The reason we have is a simple one: We cannot deny who we are, and no amount of hardship piled up on us can stop a trans soul from existing. We cannot all be extinguished, and we shall always live on.
Gwen Smith is now entering her 57th rotation around the sun. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com.