I’m scared that some of the most wonderful people I’ve come to know won’t be here in five years.
They share stories of abuse and I bear witness to a creeping apathy to life. I see them become numb to the words of kindness from those who love them. I see those who love them feel so small because they know they lack the power to make it right.
Life is slowly bled out through mundane interactions, each seemingly too insignificant to act upon.
Simple tasks are hindered at every step. Walking outside. Attending school. Going to work. Seeing family. Hanging out with friends. Shopping for clothes. Going to the washroom. Interacting on social media.
Looking between myself and my friends in the last year, there’s been regular street harassment, multiple assaults, continued parental non-acceptance, denied medical care, denied access to education and employment discrimination. I live in a world that hurts some of the sweetest most gentle people I’ve ever known because of the minority to whom they belong.
You don’t have to know my friends to know this is going on. Just look at the environment we live in. Our government likens us to sexual predators. Both national newspapers blast our acceptance. Multiple provinces force trans people to undergo sterilization. Our local publicly funded schools ban projects that talk about us. Our religious leaders publicly admonish tolerance of our existence. Entertainment ridicules us regularly; I see transphobic remarks in television and film about every two weeks. This is all right now in 2014 and it informs how people are to treat us. The result, the predictable outcome of life being made impossible to live, is that we’re dying in large numbers in Canada.
I’m tired. I’m tired of seeing individuals use their authority to encourage this violence towards us. Not that they’d even recognize it as such. Our gender was never real to them so any harm that comes to us from undermining that is seen as self-inflicted. I’m tired of these actors being so quick to wish hardships on others that they’ve never known themselves. I’m tired of all the fellow party members, editors, family members, administrative staff along the way who could have stopped them but chose not to. An action unto itself.
I’m tired of seeing them spew their deadly vitriol under the pretense of fair debate and religious freedoms and find everyone be seemingly satisfied by these empty arguments. I’m tired of all those who stand silent now knowing they will one day turn around and insist that they stood with my friends all along. Who will believe it’s coincidence that they only spoke out once it became fashionable and a boost to their social standing to do so.
We’re taught to expect evil to be draped in hate. It’s not. It’s far more banal. Those who do this evil to us don’t hate us. They don’t even know us. All they’re running on is this image they’ve made up of us. Their prejudice is such that they have no interest in amending that image with reality. When conservatives want to find out about trans people, they don’t attend trans community events, consult those who work with trans people, or ask trans people about their lives. They turn to known hate groups who don’t know anything about trans people other than their own unrealized fears. They act against this imaginary foe. The fictitious nature of their opponent leaves no place to appreciate how real people are then harmed. They continue to engage in evil because imaginary foes never go away. Imaginary foes are always strong and immune to harm, not the weakened gentle souls of my friends.
Sometimes evil is even more mundane. It takes the form of apathy. Where people with power over our lives believe their own life experience to be universal and therefore regard any particular action on account of our differences as an unreasonable imposition. They wouldn’t have such needs, so why would we. Existing barriers consequently remain firmly in place; to employment, to education, to medical care.
I feel so powerless. After all, what can I realistically achieve. I can just pick up the pieces after the harm’s been filtered down to the realities of the every day. Console my friends, visit them in hospital, make them dinners at home, talk to already sympathetic politicians, write blog posts to the audience that needs it least, and chant in marches that only those who attend will remember.
I just love my friends so much and I’m tired of seeing them hurt over and over. I guess saying “please stop hurting these wonderful kind people” wouldn’t mean anything huh.