Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week’s topic is one that’s really important and involves the cis folks out there just as much as it involves any transgender person. We’re talking about WHAT REAL CIS ACCEPTANCE LOOKS LIKE. Cis folks, PLEASE spread the word on this.
So what am I talking about when I say “acceptance”? It’s not just being okay or fine or even just “accepting” that trans people exist. It’s about seeing us for who we tell you we are, and BELIEVING us, and then the most important part… letting us know.
Again I do not claim to speak for all trans folks or all trans women, but for many of us we’ve spent our entire lives not feeling seen. I referenced this a bit in the Trans Tuesday on GENDER DYSPHORIA.
Specifically I’ve described my dysphoria as feeling like you’re behind a six foot thick concrete wall, separating you from the rest of the world. We can see out, and can see you, but you can’t see us.
Or being underwater, drowning, and everyone we care about can’t see that we need help, or that society and other cis people are the ones holding us underwater. Hopefully more of you are waking up to that, but that’s another topic entirely.
If you’d like more information on that, please see the trans Tuesday on TRANS RAGE.
And its companion and follow-up, TRANS RAGE 2: CIS APATHY.
True acceptance is being seen for who we really are, and then (surprise) actually BEING ACCEPTED AS THAT PERSON. As our true selves.
The most important part of this for me was my amazing wife @susanlbridges, and our son, and all of our good friends. The people we’re closest to are the ones most important to get that validation from. But I want to focus on the rest of the world.
Here’s but one of the thousands of examples you can easily find of the kind of thing trans people are up against, simply for being… human beings who want to live our lives in peace, I guess? The audacity.
Here’s an article from the Washington Post about anti-trans bills in 2022. It was written in October of 2022, about how more anti-trans legislation had been filed last year than any other year on record. The same happened in 2021, but 2022 topped it.
And guess where we’re at in 2023? We’ve ALREADY BEATEN THE NUMBER FROM ALL OF 2022, AND IT’S ONLY JANUARY!
The antithesis of that kind of hate isn’t just you being “okay” with my existence. It’s about acknowledging it and letting me know (I’m not looking for personal affirmation from any of you right now, don’t flood my inbox).
And it has to be legit. You can’t say you’re “okay” with me existing and then spout incredibly horrible, incorrect lies about trans people, and then when gently corrected shout “Stop telling me what to think!”
That literally just happened to me with a cis woman who honestly believed she was “fine” with trans people, which I suppose is just something you somehow find a way to convince yourself of even in spite of trans people saying “what you’re doing is harmful.”
If you can’t listen and learn, to someone from ANY marginalized community, you’re not an ally and you’re not even “okay” with us. You’re a direct part of the problem that makes life so difficult for us.
One of the things I was worried about with coming out was the potential of it ruining any shot Susan and I have of a career in screenwriting and comics. I certainly don’t want to work for bigots, I’m not lamenting that loss. But we’re WRITERS and we want to WRITE.
When I came out publicly, I thanked a lot of people for making it possible… trans people who inspired me, and CIS PEOPLE WHO I KNEW WOULD ACCEPT ME because they were loud and proud about their acceptance of trans people.
I was absolutely serious when I said the support of those people, editors and writers and producers, helped me be able to transition, helped me to feel there was a place for me to be myself in this world AND still have a writing career.
If I felt like transitioning was truly going to be career death, it would have been so much harder for me. Maybe even impossible. That’s how important writing is to us, to me. It’s as much a part of who I am as being a wife, a mom, a friend, and a trans woman.
I promise you, if you’ve publicly posted your support of trans people, WE NOTICE. IT MATTERS. It can change our entire worlds.
Present estimates seem to put 2-5% of the US population as trans. In easier to understand terms, that’s somewhere between 1 in 50 and 1 in 20 people. Now think about how many people you know from all areas of your life.
How many of them are out and open about being trans? I can almost GUARANTEE you there are trans people in your life that you don’t yet know are trans. They might not yet know themselves. It took me years to figure out. Everyone discovers it in their own time.
But I promise you they see you. They’re watching and will see what you, the people they love, care about, admire, and respect think of them as human beings.
Don’t you WANT to be someone they know they can trust to tell, because they’re certain they’re going to get support from you? Don’t you WANT your friends and family to feel free to actually be themselves around you?
Acceptance. Matters. And I thought I knew how much, but it surprised even me. Story time! (I like to do those, don’t I? It’s almost like I’m a… writer, or something.)
You may have wondered what this post of mine was about:
A social media post I made at 9:56 pm on Jan 11, 2023 that reads: this afternoon I experienced something I never ever had before, something that for most of my life I thought I never would. It’s a very strange thing. Very GOOD but so complex to process. Life is strange and beautiful [purple heart emoji]
Susan and I were invited to a casual little get-together our friend was holding. It was just a bunch of geeky ladies hanging out with snacks and drinks.
Did you pick up on what I just said? Because I didn’t pick up on it until I was there and it hit me like a twelve-ton avalanche.
It was a bunch. Of geeky. LADIES.
AND. I. WAS. INVITED. AND. WELCOMED.
And yes, good! Trans women should be invited to things for ladies, trans men invited to things for men! I would stand up and shout that from the rooftops and take up arms to defend it. We ARE women and men, after all.
But when I was there, we were just chatting with friends and folks we’d not met before, and a few more people trickled in over time as happens with things like this. And every time someone new came in I’d look over and smile or wave…
And suddenly I felt the earth move. Why… why was everyone coming in a woman? Why was… why was everyone here a woman? Why was *I* here with all these women? Oh god I’m not supposed to be here.
Yes. Yes I WAS. My FRIEND invited me to an event for women and I AM A WOMAN. But I have never, ever, EVER IN MY LIFE been to an event just for women before. I’ve been out for years now, but, y’know… global pandemic.
For more information on how THAT has mucked with a lot of my plans, see the trans Tuesday on A PANDEMIC TRANSITION.
This was the first chance I got to be somewhere reserved only for people like me.
PEOPLE.
LIKE.
ME.
I am like those people! Those people have different experiences of womanhood than I do, but we’re all still part of the same broader category we use to define a type of human being.
Just like we white women have a different experience of womanhood than Black women do. Just like we non-disabled women have a different experience than disabled women. Just like young women have a different experience than senior women do.
BUT WE ARE ALL STILL WOMEN.
Trans is just another kind of woman you can be. And here I was, being me, being a TRANS WOMAN… in a group of women. And all of them treated me exactly like they did each other… just another fun geeky lady to get to know and become friends with. It was overwhelming.
Just like the first time I got to be in a group of strangers after transitioning, and finding how WILDLY different the experience was. You can find more on that in my Trans Tuesday on CONFIDENCE 2: INTO THE UNKNOWN aka WHAT IS HAPPENING aka A WHOLE NEW WORLD.
It was hard to process. I found some old nervous tics and fidgeting I used to do coming back without my consent (how dare!) because I was just struggling to process everything that was happening. And it wasn’t even anything monumental… to anyone but me.
But for ME, it was something I’ll never ever forget. Because it’s the first time I got to be with a group of only women… all of who, collectively with their actions, said “We see you. You are a woman. And you belong here with us.”
It means so much to me I could cry (no it’s not the HRT, shut up). I cannot thank my talented and brilliant friend who invited me enough for giving me something I’d never had before, and that for a long time thought I never, ever would get to have.
And that was as simple as truly, genuinely, whole-heartedly ACCEPTING me as the woman I am. THIS is the power you cis folks can have to do good in this world. To change things for the better in small ways that cost you nothing.
If you believe in the humanity of every person, if you believe in justice and equality and that EVERYONE should be free to be their true selves… MAKE SURE THE PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE KNOW. They need you to be loud about it. ACCEPT THEM.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com
PS – I was lookin’ cute AF that day
Me! I have long brown curly hair and curly bangs, dark eyeliner, pink lipstick, pink-framed glasses, and am wearing a peachy-pink sweater.