To Transgender People: You Matter

To Transgender People: You Matter

Keep fighting to live another day.

Sade Andria ZabalaJanuary 23, 2017

Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.

— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

LGBTQ+Parenting Children Identity

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They ask me if I was born in the wrong body. As if gender is that simple… I am not trapped in my body. I am trapped in other people’s perceptions of my body… I don’t want to hate my body for this. My body is not wrong. The way people talk about my body is wrong. But my body is the only thing I can change… I am more than my body… I was not born into the wrong body. I was born into a world that does not know what my body means.

— Ollie Schminkey, Boobs

Transsexual Transgender LGBTQ+Gender Identity

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It had nothing to do with hating my body,
I just love it enough to let it go,
I treat it like a house,
and when your house is falling apart,
you do not evacuate,
you make it comfortable enough to house all your insides,
you make it pretty enough to invite guests over,
you make the floorboards strong enough to stand on.

— Lee Mokobe, Transcript of "A powerful poem about what it feels like to be transgender"

LGBTQ+ Poetry Transgender Body Positive

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Trans* people are exactly who they say they are — no matter what the culture or media would lead us to believe

— Janet Mock, Transgender Activist

Transgender Transsexual

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My hope is that you can seek a body presentation that supports your life and creates a sense of overall well-being. You deserve to feel self-love and to feel safe and at home in the body that you inhabit.

— Dr. Melody Moore, Dear Melody: Can I Separate My Gender Identity from My Body Image Issues?

Transgender Body Positive

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Here’s to women with prominent Adam’s apples, five o’clock shadows and deep voices.
Here’s to women like me.

— Laura Kate, On Being a Trans Woman … Who Doesn’t Pass – Defiant

Transsexual MTF

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People changed lots of other personal things all the time. They dyed their hair and dieted themselves to near death. They took steroids to build muscles and got breast implants and nose jobs so they'd resemble their favorite movie stars. They changed names and majors and jobs and husbands and wives. They changed religions and political parties. They moved across the country or the world — even changed nationalities. Why was gender the one sacred thing we weren’t supposed to change? Who made that rule?

— Ellen Wittlinger, Parrotfish

gender LGBTQ+Transgender

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Nobody knows as yet what is normal - we only know what is customary.

— Dr. Harry Benjamin, via Tumblr

Gender Norms Transgender LGBTQ+normal

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Do you dwell on everyone’s junk when you meet them? Like, all you do all day long is think about dicks and janes? Is that your thing, Bailey? You can’t stop thinking about what’s in everyone’s pants?

— Brie Spangler, Beast

LGBTQ+Transsexual Transgender

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I would like them to understand that we (transgender) are people. We’re human beings, and this is a human life. This is reality for us, and all we ask for is acceptance and validation for what we say that we are. It’s a basic human right.

— Andreja Pejic, Exclusive: Read Aaron Sorkin's Moving Email To His Daughter After Trump's Win

Transgender LGBTQ+Acceptance

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Sometimes I forget that sidewalks can be safe.
Sometimes I confuse their shooting eyes for the bullet that met yours.
Sometimes I imagine the phone call my mother would get.
Can almost hear my sobbing friends.
Smell the lillies on my casket.
Touch my girlfriend’s black dress.
But brother, I am trying to be brave.

— Miles Walser, Nebraska

LGBTQ+ Poetry Transgender

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I believe when we love someone, we respect them, and we listen to them; we feel that their voice matters. And — and we let them dictate the terms of who they are and what their story is.

— Laverne Cox, Laverne Cox at Creating Change 2014

Anti-Hate LGBTQ+Transgender Respect

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Include everyone, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, race or religion. We are all human beings and we are part of society.

— Lea T, This Model Made History At The Rio Opening Ceremony

Transsexual Inclusion Acceptance Tolerance Anti-Hate

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But you can only lie about who you are for so long without going crazy.

— Ellen Wittlinger, Parrotfish

gender LGBTQ+Transgender

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This pervasive idea that trans women deserve violence needs to be abolished. It's a socially sanctioned practice of blaming the victim. We must begin blaming our culture, which stigmatizes, demeans and strips trans women of their humanity.

— Janet Mock, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

Transsexual Domestic Violence Victim Blaming Transphobia

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I understand you named me while I was unable to speak, but I have found my true voice. Now it’s my turn to tell everyone what my name is.

— hyunilsbf, via Tumblr

Transgender Transsexual

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I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.

— Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography

Reinvent Yourself reinvention Tired Existential Crisis

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There is a man with pamphlets talking about a God.
I ask him if God loves his Children.
He gives me a confident ‘Yes’
I ask him if God loves homosexuals.
He tells me ‘No’.
I ask him if homosexuals are God’s Children.
He said nothing.
I do not believe he has heard the Question.

— Atlanta Team, "Public Trans" - 2014 Brave New Voices (Finals)

LGBTQ+Religion Spoken Word

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Transgender people have used public restrooms for the last sixty years, and a mass epidemic of trans*-related sexual assault has not occurred. You may not realize that you’ve very possibly already shared a restroom with one of us. We just want to live our lives, enjoy the pursuit of happiness and empty our bladders in peace like everyone else.

— Laura A. Jacobs, Peeing While Trans*

Transgender Trans WOC

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America needs more trans people who are open about their transitions. Who don’t try to pass. Who insist that beautiful can mean a lot of different things.

— Laura Kate, On Being a Trans Woman … Who Doesn’t Pass – Defiant

Transsexual beauty

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You are not any less of a man just because you have to take your binder off at night.

— trans-dysphoria-blues, via Tumblr

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At the beginning there was a lot of fear, but I came to the point of knowing I can't be that fearful or let that fear traumatize me or prevent me from doing the work I want to do.

— Geena Rocero, The Trans 100

Fear Courage LGBTQ+Bravery

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It is revolutionary for any trans person to choose to be seen & visible in a world that tells us we should not exist.

— Laverne Cox, via Instagram

Transsexual Transgender

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I wonder how long it will be
before the trans suicide notes start to feel redundant,
before we realize that our bodies become lessons about sin
way before we learn how to love them.
Like God didn't save all this breath and mercy,
like my blood is not the wine that washed over Jesus' feet.

— Lee Mokobe, Transcript of "A powerful poem about what it feels like to be transgender"

LGBTQ+ Poetry Transgender Suicide Awareness

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Most trans women don’t look like Laverne Cox or Caitlyn Jenner. Most of us look … well, like trans women. We might have a visible Adam’s apple. We might have real trouble hiding that five o’clock shadow. We might have broad shoulders or big hands and feet. We might be really tall or have a deep voice. We might have a penis.

We’re non-passing. As trans women, we are told that to gain acceptance, we have to pass for cisgender. We have to be invisible. We have to be indistinguishable from someone who was born a woman... When the media portray non-passing trans women, it’s usually non-trans men who play them. Male actors win awards for their courage in playing trans women. In truth, they’re just reflecting back at the world what the world assumes trans women are. We’re not women. We’re just men in dresses. The media wrongly depicts us as makeup-obsessed little boys who made a choice one day to become women. We’re never just women who happen to possess some untraditionally feminine attributes.

— Laura Kate, On Being a Trans Woman … Who Doesn’t Pass – Defiant

Transsexual beauty

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I asked Jesus to fix me,
and when he did not answer
I befriended silence in the hopes that my sin would burn.

— Lee Mokobe, Transcript of "A powerful poem about what it feels like to be transgender"

Spoken Word LGBTQ+ Poetry God Losing Faith

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I absolutely do not accept the insistence that my trans body is grotesque and dangerous or that my health care is unnecessary or that I should simply not go to the bathroom. If challenging those narratives costs us elections, then those are elections I will gladly lose. We cannot be patient in our demand to lift up the humanity of our siblings in struggle.

— chase strangio, The Politics of my Trans Identity

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my mother told me of the miracle I was,
said I could grow up to be anything I want.
I decided to be a boy...
I was the mystery of an anatomy,
a question asked but not answered,
tightroping between awkward boy and apologetic girl.

— Lee Mokobe, Transcript of "A powerful poem about what it feels like to be transgender"

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We take a breath, wipe off the spit
And keep fighting to live another day

— Lj Mark, Up for the fight

Resilience LGBTQ+Adversity

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I am the coolest oppressed kid in the room—
my oppression out-oppresses all the normal gay boys.
My gay boy friends are bathroom bouncers,
guarding the men's room door while I pee.

— Miles Walser, Hierarchy

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I don’t know about you but I don’t really think about the genitals of a person who’s peeing next to me. That’s kind of weird and private.

— Kat Blaque, 8 Helpful Comebacks to Use When Someone Is Being Transphobic - Everyday Feminism

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We are carcasses.
Untouched boxes of condoms.
We are public secrets, playground jokes, and horror films.
We are costumes, stuffing, binding and makeup.
We aren’t real men to them.
Invisible til we’re screaming.
They don’t remember our names until they read them on our tombstones.

— Miles Walser, Nebraska

LGBTQ+ Poetry Transgender

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It's your story. You get to name it.

— make-me-your-king, via Tumblr

LGBTQ+Transgender

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The body expresses the person. The relation between ‘us’ and our flesh is never accidental or incidental. Our souls and our bodies are partners, never—as gender theory asserts—strangers or even enemies.

— Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body in Simple Language

LGBTQ+Transgender

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‘Our results support the notion that transgender children are not confused, delayed, showing gender-atypical responding, pretending, or oppositional,’ says the study being published in Psychological Science. ‘These results provide evidence that, early in development, transgender youths are nearly indistinguishable from cisgender children of the same gender identity.

— Dominic Holden, Transgender Kids Are Not Confused Or Pretending, Study Finds

LGBTQ+Transgender

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Someone will love me regardless of my anatomy.

— Unknown, Someone will love me regardless of my anatomy.

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And I am sorry that this process is so slow and all you can do is wonder if you ever had a place
You did
You still do
Don’t forget that
Yours, Ethan
P.S. I never hated you

— Ethan Smith, A Letter to the Girl I Used to Be

LGBTQ+ Poetry Transgender

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