Welcome to the Trans Initiative!
This blog is going to serve as a bit of a soapbox for Trent the Transman (public figure, activist). I am Trent the Transman, and I am on a journey of breaking down barriers and protecting the rights and lives of LGBT people everywhere. While I will write some articles that will go straight to FTM Magazine, a lot of my more personal writings will be delivered here to this blog and posted to my Facebook page for the public.
Here is my first soapbox. Enjoy.
As we know Trump became President-Elect of America. This has shaken up the LGBT community, as can be imagined. It shook me to my very core. I won't lie, I cried when I read the news on Wednesday morning. I tossed and turned all night, and kept telling myself that when I woke, Hillary Clinton would be president. That wasn't the case though. My son cried when he was told the news. Even at almost seven years old, he knew that it wasn't a good thing. I was scared. I still am, but I was more afraid that morning. I immediately thought about going back into the closet. I thought life would just be easier if I put on my cis face and ignored what I was. I had done it before, I could surely do it again.
Then I got on Facebook, and I saw the panic. I saw so much fear. I saw people so afraid that they were contemplating suicide, and some actually did complete that contemplation. It was too much. I refused to give into my fear. I decided to fight. I wrote a short bit about it, about my own fear, the fear of the community and gave a rallying call for people to not give into that fear. I submitted the article to FTM Magazine. I went to my therapy appointment the next morning with a renewed sense of pride. I am a trans man, and am freaking happy to be who I am! Trump isn't going to put me back in the closet.
The problem is though, that he is going to try. People are scared. I want to help them. I have this need to help, to protect, to fight. It is like a fire that has been lit inside and it isn't going out. I don't know how to become an advocate. I don't know how to get my words heard, but I am trying. My first step was creating a Facebook page. Trent the Transman was born. A public figure, no real face to show, but one to stand up for the LGBT community against hatred and bigotry. I have vowed, to myself, to fight against it all. The page is my first step, but it isn't my last.
I have a meeting with the leader of LTA, or Louisiana Trans Advocates on Monday. I am going to be talking to her to figure out what all I can do on a local scale. I want to help people here especially. I know there are transgender people in this city, I know there are gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in this city. I know there are people in minorities that are scared, that need a voice to protect them, and Trent the Transman is that voice!
I came out on my personal Facebook on Wednesday. Several of my friends had announced their vote for Trump, and it shook me. How could a friend of mine vote for him? Then I realized something. I wasn't out to most of them. The one friend that I told I was trans to, and still voted for Trump, had hurt me of course, but her words floated back to me. Only days before the election she was asking me about my transition. She said to me that she accepted me, but that it was hard to believe someone she knew was trans. Trans people were people she would hear about in the media, or something another distant friend of hers knew, it was never someone she knew personally. That lit another fire in me.
The fire to make everyone in my life realize the reality. They knew a trans person. They were friends, family, acquaintances, with a trans man. So I came out. I put my face out there, told them all who I was. No one has unfriended me, so I feel that not everyone has seen it yet. I am awaiting my mother telling my grandmother so I can change my Facebook name. Then everyone will know. As they should too. I wanted my coming out to be silent, but then Trump changed everything. I WILL NOT BE SILENT.
I had all these plans of just quietly changing my name to Trent sometime next year after I started HRT (hormone replacement therapy). In my mind, it was the better idea. Change my name, don't be dramatic, don't draw attention. People like to believe that transgenders do all of this for attention, so I didn't want to draw that attention. I didn't want anyone to believe that that is all that I was doing. Changing my name wouldn't have made it some big public thing. I assumed people would come and ask, at which point I would tell them, and it would spare the dramatics.
Obviously, as I already said, that didn't happen. The dramatics had to be done in my eyes. Why? Because of Trump. Transgender people, and the LGBT community at large, hide behind their closet doors, and many of them that had just started to open those doors, fled back inside because of our next president. I can't. I won't. I will be loud. I will roar. I will show everyone who I am, and not be afraid. The barriers that have been keeping me back, are breaking. Soon there will be nothing left, and I will stand proudly in the middle of the splintered closet doors that dared to keep me hidden. I am not ashamed of who I am, what I am, so nothing will hide me again.
