A Trans Sermon
I’m a Trans person.
This is a fact, not a debate.
It is a reality, not a choice.
A truth without deception.
I am not Trans because I am delusional. I am not Trans because I am mentally ill. I am not Trans because I am trying to escape the disadvantages of womanhood under Patriarchy. Seems rather like swapping a newspaper for a hat when it’s raining, if you ask me it’s still not as good as having an umbrella in the first place is it?
And I am certainly not Trans because I was raped.
Why do I say this, you may ask? Well in case you have managed to avoid the narratives that are being thrown at Trans identity lately, these are things I hear as a trans person witnessing people try to rationalise away my lived experience. Of course all this is also excluding general death threats, and child grooming accusations.
As a writer, I am aware that many people and organisations lately seem to want to hear my story as a Trans, Queer person. In fact, teachers and mentors have told me this is just the sort of story that will help me to get published. Nothing like being told your marginalised identity is now marketable (within limits of course). And look, I want to write about my Trans identity. In fact, in my own way, I often do. Never as bluntly as I plan to do now.
I do not do this though for your average cis-het punter’s comfort. Even those whose interest in my work perhaps comes with an open mind. But whose desire perhaps comes not in genuine ally-ship but in wanting to pat themselves on the back for being so open-minded and tolerant. Or for others whose curiosity perhaps stems from the same place that drew people to freak shows, reality TV and an interest in serial killers.
No, I write for Trans and Queer people. It is why I wanted to write in the first place. I’m not a person whose strength lies in wonderfully told fanciful stories, or whose knack with words would create great poetry.
I just want to have a voice.
I have a deep desire to communicate and hopefully advocate for the community I love, that same community that loves me right back.
Still, now I stand on a tightrope, hoping to make it to the other side having uplifted those who might identify with me. Those who need that identification to make it through another day. But I’m worried I’ll fall spectacularly only to have sold out my essence to people who might want to exploit us even when they mean well. Because will they be there when the backlash to my words comes? These are the things you have to consider when telling your story as a Trans person. Will I represent my community well? Will I be exploited? Am I safe?
I see it all the time, those Trans people that I look up to online, in the media and the world, that helped me find identification when I couldn’t find it in my personal life. Trans people who have advocated for the rest of us voiceless out in the open. Vulnerable to the onslaught of absolute spine-tingling hate. The nicest of which goes something like “Oh, I don’t care what you do in your private life but just stay out of women’s spaces, or my bathroom, or out of my sports.” Most importantly “Away from my children.”
“Protect the children!” They cry as sixteen-year-old Non-binary, Indigenous teen Nex Benedict dies after an apparent suicide attempt following a physical assault motivated by transphobia. “Protect the children!’‘ The comment section roars as sixteen-year-old Trans girl Brianna Ghey is stabbed twenty-eight times in a premeditated attack. The motives listed as sadism, thrill and transphobia.
Protect the children they cry, just not our children, just not trans children.
The world right now wants our stories, desires our trauma but completely misses our humanity. No, we are not human, we are the new boogeyman that lives under your bed. We’re out to destroy the world and feast on your children.
Us one, to two percent of the global population. We are the downfall of society, the moral stain on humanity. Not the Churches and their priests. Not the men up top hoarding all the wealth and power, stripping away a person’s right to bodily autonomy. It’s not the police or the justice system who have no real idea how to charge, prosecute or sentence family and domestic violence or sexual assault, rape and child abuse. And certainly not your creepy uncle who always wanted you to sit on his lap.
No, it’s trans People, it’s me.
I would love to think I could just sit here and tell you my story and it would be a positive liberating experience. To hope that it would help break me from the shackles of my shame and help others do the same.
That maybe a person who has no experience with Trans and Gender Non-conforming people might discover something new about what it’s like to be us and find a way to help ease our existence. But life has taught me not to be naive enough to trust hope.
If I were to leave my beautiful trans readers with a final message, so to speak, it would be that there is pride, liberation and certainly a certain degree of self-reliance and autonomy that comes with claiming who you are. Even when limitations to its full expression exist.
At this moment there are individuals, organisations and whole governments that are working against us. While it is terrifying please know that they do this to distract from their own sins, not because of ours. There is no sin or moral stain in being Queer.
If we lived in a different world our identities could be regarded simply as a fact and not a statement.
We are a threat to no one and we need not buy into their shame.
Yet to be Queer is to be subject to a barrage of voices that become so loud and so intense they sometimes end up becoming our own. Sometimes shame follows our every step forward and that’s okay too.
Do whatever you need to do to stay safe first, but please try to keep hold of that voice in your head that knows there is nothing wrong with you, because there is nothing wrong with you. You are human and you have something to offer this world. I will be here lending my own voice against those who would see us silenced. Even if no one hears it.
Elliott Alexander also known as The Non-Binary Feminist is a Queer writer with an interest in outsiders and the subversive. They are based in Geelong, Australia where they do their best to sane in what can be a batshit crazy, mother-fucking cunt of a world.