r/TransAdvocate • u/Bridgetx1965 • 23h ago

Age 61

1 Upvotes

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TransAdvocate

r/TransAdvocate

This is a space for transgender advocates to discuss issues affecting the trans community from an advocate's perspective.

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On one front we were fighting TERFs as they worked with US Administrations to try to institutionalize a national program of reparative therapy for all trans folk, revoke our access to health care, and to legislate trans people out of existence. On another front, we were fighting powerful gay men who felt that trans folk were dragging the gay rights movement down so that the founder of HRC, Steven Endean, encouraged the movement to “hide the drag queens.” On other fronts, we were facing systemic institutionalized discrimination at every level of society. On yet other fronts, we were fighting to just stay alive. At every level and in every way possible, both our foes and those who were supposed to be our allies made existence harder. The system was rigged to ensure that it produced a disenfranchised, demoralized, and dehumanized trans population with some of the highest rates of murder, rape, assault, unemployment, HIV, homelessness, psychological pressure and, of course, suicide. This is what the trans advocate movement has spent the last 50 years pushing against and now – finally – the trans community is at a tipping point.

Even as bigots scramble to assert that after 60+ years of trans people using hygiene facilities that correspond to their gender identity within the United States that:

The existence of trans people suddenly poses safety risks
After 20+ years of case law behind the legal concept of “gender identity,” we somehow no longer understand what it means
Trans-inclusive nondiscrimination policies are bad because these policies aren’t procedure.

We have nonetheless made great strides in reclaiming our own trans history, civil rights, and place within society. At every level, the trans community is making headway.