Trans Awareness Month, Day 13 - Bathrooms

(This is part 13 of my observance of Transgender Awareness Month, my answers to the 30 Day Trans-Challenge.)

Sheesh, further and further behind schedule... oh well, doing my best here. Here's the next question in the series:

13) Bathrooms

This isn't a question. Buuut, given recent events, it's certainly an important topic of conversation, so let's go.

I prefer gender-neutral, or so-called "family" bathrooms. When those aren't an option, I use the men's restroom, but I never use urinals if I can help it, because honestly, I'd really prefer not to focus on certain... facts of my anatomy.

I realize that trans-friendly bathroom policies are a hot button issue for many trans folks and cis folks alike. Take the current brouhaha over California's recently passed law that allows trans kids to use the locker rooms (and play on the sports teams) corresponding to their gender identity. Conversatives have gone nuts, claiming that this will lead to big bad scary boys declaring that they're "feeling transgender today" so they can go into the girls' bathroom and... do horrible things, presumably. There are at least two problems I can find with that strawman scenario, right off the top of my head:

1. I seriously doubt any school will roll over and let students change back and forth from day to day. This is intended to be more of a protection for the longsuffering trans kid that wants to permanently be associated with their identified gender.
2. If the "trans for a day" scenario wasn't already unlikely enough... what red-blooded meathead teenage boy do you know who would actually risk his reputation by declaring himself to be transgender, even temporarily? The boys that people are claiming to be so worried about are, I expect, so misogynistic that the thought of anyone seeing them as less than the manliest of men is probably terrifying.

So, yeah. This is such a strawman issue. Unfortunately, however, it's one that opponents can use to create fear and uncertainty in the electorate. Which really ticks me off.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Okay, I'm a few days late with this one. (I'm on vacation, okay?)

This past Tuesday was the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to remember all of the transfolk that have been killed by acts of anti-trans violence.

I have a couple of dear online friends who are currently experiencing tremendous distress and hardship because of their desires to live an authentic life. Not physical violence, fortunately, but vicious emotional violence that threatens to tear apart their families and destroy their professional lives.

And why, exactly? Is it ignorance? Fear of the unknown? Is it an irrational hatred born of misunderstanding what "righteous indignation" is supposed to look like, and when it's appropriate? Maybe. But in both of my friends' cases, their avalanche of suffering has been triggered by the actions of a family member!

"Tough love" or not, that isn't how love is supposed to work!

But as bad as these situations may be, I can't help but think of those who have it so much worse. A recent report by Transgender Europe (TGEU), a non-profit organization that monitors these things, stated that by their count, at least 265 trans folk have been murdered in the past 12 months alone (and that count is likely low, due to unreported or under-reported cases)!

That breaks my heart.

There may come a day when transwomen and transmen alike can navigate the world with the confidence of relative safety afforded most cis folk. Where even if someone disagrees with your worldview, they respect you enough not to kill you over it. (honestly, that seems like a such a LOW bar to clear! Has humanity progressed so little since Cain and Abel?). I pray that day will come soon.

Interesting Conversation with my Wife

So this morning I shared that BYU "It gets better" video with my wife (who, remember, doesn't yet know I'm trans).

It kinda blew her mind. And it started a conversation that I think will lead to me being able to share all of this with her.

My dear wife (from now on let's call her DW) has a good friend and former BYU roommate that she just found recently on Facebook. This friend, judging by her profile and posts there, appears to have come out as a lesbian, and is living with the consequences of that decision. Another of DW's friends, a boyfriend from high school that investigated the Church for a while in his teens, has also come out as gay, and is somewhere out in the third world serving others selflessly (just, I might add, as Christ might be doing if He were here). As someone who, like myself, grew up in the Church with President Kimball's views on gender and sexuality (such as in the Miracle of Forgiveness) very much the norm, these kinds of things tend to... well, challenge her worldview somewhat.

DW shared with me that she'd just read a press release from the Church decrying all forms of persecution (including against LGBTQs), which was apparently released in response to a teenager in northern Utah recently committing suicide over anti-gay bullying in his school. Attitudes in the Church, it seems, are changing. Perhaps too slowly for some, but they are definitely changing.

I want to make it clear that I think we need to continue to stand for truth and righteousness in a lone and often dreary world. That said, we also need to recognize the difference between real sins and those attitudes, thoughts, and actions that are sometimes wrongly perceived in our faith community as such. Until we receive further light and knowledge from the Lord through the prophet, the onus is on us as individuals and families to study it out in our minds and hearts, and love all our brethren and sisters--both LDS and otherwise--with Christ's unconditional love.

Truly, we live in interesting times.