Trans-Actioning
Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio signed an executive order immediately banning all gender affirming surgeries for minors in the state of Ohio. This is just days after he vetoed a bill pushed through by the Republican Majority that would have banned gender affirming care for trans youth. Please read that again if you have to, it is NOT a typo.
I am having a very hard time wrapping my head around all the hate and vitriol around the trans community. I am a cisgender male who has always been a cisgender male. In all honesty, I have no idea what it feels like to be transgendered. I also have no idea what it is like to be sexually attracted to women. In that same regard, I have to assume that a trans individual does not know what it’s like to be cisgendered and a heterosexual male doesn’t understand why I’m attracted to men.
But that’s okay. Not understanding that which is different is the entire point of learning…and learning is pretty much the entire point of LIVING. We start learning from the moment we take our first breath. We learn who to love, who to trust, who to listen to. We learn how to speak, how to understand, how to be curious. We learn how to move, how to laugh, how to cry. But then, at some point, we learn how to conform, how to fear, how to run, how to hide. Many of us then learn to turn around and stand up. We learn how to face fear, rejection, hate. Eventually we learn now to become ourselves and for many of us that is an easy lesson to learn. Also form many of us, it’s a hard road to travel.
But that’s okay, too.
I wonder if all the hate and fear stems from just how different it seems to be transgendered. It’s as if matching your outside to your inside is just an unbelievable thing for a person to do, even though we all do it everyday of our lives. The way we dress (flashy versus conservative; fashionable versus functional), cut, color, and comb our hair (what color do I feel like this week?), and even the music we listen to. They are all internal feelings made external. We all strive to truly be ourselves, and yet, some of us are not permitted that freedom because…well, I just don’t know.
How does the Republican Party of Hate create a bill to stop people under the age of 18 (and, as I have heard, they are trying to make transitioning illegal for adults as well) while still allowing it to be legal for a 16 year old to get a boob job…or a nose job…or any kind of plastic surgery. If it’s okay for the parents of a cis teenage girl to pay for bigger boobs, but if that teen was born male at birth and wants the same procedure to aid in her transition, it’s not allowed. How is that NOT gender discrimination? If you’re going to outlaw it for trans kids, you need to outlaw it for cisgender kids as well.
Oh, and while we’re at it, you might as well outlaw makeup, too. Makeup is used to change your features, albeit temporarily, so why is it okay for kids to use makeup? How many steps away from outlawing drag queens are we? Is Halloween next? At what point do the parents have any rights anymore?
For my first screenplay that I wrote I had a trans character named Lexi. I love Lexi. She is not the person who consistently gets back up on her feet after being knocked down again and again. Nope. She’s the person who never gets knocked down in the first place. Go ahead, try, she’ll knock you out. In one of the scenes her best friend (a cisgender gay male) admits to her the hard time he had accepting her decision to fully transition, and he finally comes around when his Mother-In-Law tells him a theory about what a transgendered person is. This is a theory about spirituality and the immortality of a person’s soul.
Imagine for a moment, say in the year zero, a soul is born for the first time. She survives birth, childhood, and eventually grows into full womanhood, when she has children and grows her family. Eventually she dies, as all mortal bodies do. However, maybe a hundred years later, her soul comes back to live and to learn again. Again she is born a woman, survives birth, childhood, and grows into full womanhood and has a family with children. She dies. A few hundred more years pass, and, once again, her soul comes back to continue learning. She once more grows into full womanhood, perhaps this time never having children but instead a lesbian lover. Also, she dies. Hundreds of years pass and she is born again, this time she’s a Suffragette marching for women’s rights. She has a family, kids, grandkids, and great grandkids, all of whom mourn her eventual passing. Her spirit travels to whatever space and time spirts go to, but after a while, she feels she has more to learn, and comes back again.
So now it’s the year 2000, and she comes back, only this time, the body is male. Of course this young man has no actual memory of his/her past lives, but something deep in his spirt is wrong. What if, in order for this spirt to fully complete the journey of living and learning, they have to take a final exam. What if they have to complete the journey of becoming their one true selves one final time in the face of such extreme adversity before they can finally be deemed “complete”? To be freed from the cycle and to finally become one with the universe, or god, or nirvana, or whatever you want to call it.
If this is the case, and while I have no evidence to prove it, there is also no evidence to disprove it, either, then there are two things to consider. The first is that, eventually, many of our spirits will find themselves facing the same test. This would mean that when you know of someone transitioning, instead of hating them, vilifying them, or, as is far too often the case, harming them, you should be looking to them as a role model. Pay attention to their journey as it just might be yours in a lifetime or two, listen to what they say, heed their guidance. The second thing it means is we shouldn’t be looking down or pitying the transgendered. We should be celebrating them for their courage, their strength, their resilience. We should be respecting them as they take the steps on their final journey to…whatever happens next. Perhaps after this life, when they become “one with the universe”, their roles become what we refer to as Angels now. Could the Angel you are praying to one day for help and comfort be the brave trans woman you beat up years ago? Should you be worried that she will remember? Should you hope that she will forgive you and grant you the aid you’re requesting? Do YOU have the capacity to forgive yourself for living with such hate and negativity?
To my brothers and sisters and everyone in between in the trans community-PLEASE know that you are celebrated. That you are respected. That you are seen for the strong, imperfect souls that you are. That you have limitless strength regardless of what you’ve been told. That you are an important and essential part of the universe. I honor the path you trod upon. Everyone who comes after you will remember your journey, your fortitude, your perseverance. This is going to be a hard, hateful, horrific year of politics, posturing, and personal attacks. However, I feel that there is change in the air and, by year’s end, we’ll have made great gains in silencing those who would stand against all of us just trying to live our best lives while being the best people we can be.
Thank you for all that you bring to the world and thank you for your commitment to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.