[Commentary] [USA] Paying it forward for future generations of trans people

[Stephanie Stevens]

San Diego LGBT Weekly, CA, USA


Commentary: Trans Progressive

by Autumn Sandeen

Paying it forward for future generations of trans people

Posted by LGBT Weekly in Latest Issue, Trans Progressive on Thursday,
May 23rd, 2013


Why should I personally go forward as a trans activist pushing for
change? Why do anything for trans and LGBT community members when I
have received a significant amount of pushback through the years from
the religious right, LGBT community members, radical lesbian feminist
separatists and even transsexual separatists?

I’ve written in the past about why there is trans activism and what
are the major goals of trans activism, but have never really spelled
out what motivates me personally.

I began by blogging and archiving LGBT stories for the SD-GLBT and
transgendernews Yahoo groups. At the time I was studying for an
information systems undergraduate degree – that degree being a feeder
degree for a library science graduate degree. Archiving articles that
dealt with gay and transgender issues was a way to combine my
interests in current events and library work, and combining these with
my then recent coming out as trans.

I then began blogging for the Ex Gay Watch back in the mid-2000s, and
later for Pam’s House Blend. For me, the blogging at these LGBT blogs
was centered on teaching T to L, G, and B community members, since at
the time there were no trans bloggers in the most visible LGBT
blogosphere. I wanted to highlight commonalities between the trans
portion of the LGBT community and other community members.

At Pam’s House Blend, I began being more personal in what I wrote
because it dawned on me that many lesbian, gay and bisexual people had
never met a transperson in the brick-and-mortar world, so I wanted to
humanize T-experience for my peers in the LGBT community

Well, that was how it started. Fairly soon after blogging at Pam’s
House Blend, I realized that humanization of trans people and
experience was more for me than for my LGB peers. I began thinking in
terms of what many of my trans activist peers and I wanted for our
next generations of trans community members – to include transsexual
adults who would come out needing the means to change their gender
identification markers, and that needed antidiscrimination protections
based on gender identity in housing, employment and public
accommodations.

Then I was confronted with the reality of trans youth. And, I remember
being a child that couldn’t put a finger on why I felt different from
other children. But now, through therapy, I discovered that I
identified more with the little blond girl Susan than the little boy
Tom in those old elementary school Ginn Basic Readers of the 1950s and
’60s. I also realized that one of my motivations for activism was
found in earnestly desiring to create a better, loving world for trans
youth.

My community’s children, as well as my community’s next generations,
are great, precious gifts to the world, and I prefer to give them hope
and not hopelessness.

In small part, I’ve worked to give them tools to live their lives in
such a way that they may never waste what little time they have; to be
able to legally establish their gender identities and more easily
obtain housing and employment.

There are always going to be people who are going to see my life, and
the lives of other trans people as lies; yet I see my life as an
opportunity to pay forward love and hope to a community that I love.

Any action I might take that may help even one other trans person see
and live in hope that the world will recognize them for the boys,
girls, men, women and genderqueer people they know themselves to be,
then my actions in my brief moments here on earth will have been more
than worth it.


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