Daniella's Ramblings

I recently saw this http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/04/acceptable-trans-narratives/ posted on Facebook and I thought it was well worth a read. I think we in the trans* community are sometimes so afraid of being perceived in a negative light that we sometimes forget that we are primarily people before we are trans-people or indeed anything else.

Being people means that our lives are just as fraught, complicated and sometimes difficult, only perhaps more so because we are trans*. We cannot expect ourselves or indeed other trans* people to be perfect. We will all have some foibles. These foibles may be more or less significant, pronounced or serious depending on the person concerned and their personal circumstances.

The only way to deal with these foibles is for us to accept them in ourselves and be prepared to accept them in others. We need to recognise that as we are all real people, we live real lives and real lives are never perfect. Our marriages (and other relationships) will be strained from time to time, some of us will have ‘alternative’ sexualities and prefer ‘alternative’ sexual lifestyles. So what if a trans* person is bi, likes leather and the odd bit of bondage? This is a person with real needs and the fact that they are trans* does not mean that they do not have these needs.

We should also accept all our trans* sisters and brothers for who they are. accept their diversity, their beautiful characters and recognise the basic humanity in everyone. This will ultimately help us to accept ourselves better.

Id we are more honest about the difficulties we as a community face we will also be able to better articulate the solutions to these challenges. We may also realise that we have more allies than we think once we realise that we are not all that different to those around us.