Now I don’t claim to be the biggest activist in the LGBT community but I’m really considering it, if only to show the ignorant people that they’re ignorant. The other day in one my lessons, a guy was talking about transvestites and transexuals (and no, he didn’t know the difference between the two), and he was saying that he thinks that people who transition from one gender to another are, in his words, “just doing it for attention”. I was actually astounded by how narrow minded one person can be. I don’t expect everyone to understand everything. People are entitled to their own opinions. But when I tried to explain to him that sometimes people feel like they’re born in the wrong bodies, he just dismissed it, saying they were doing it for the attention again. This kind of narrow minded attitude is what stops the “minorities” of this generation breaking through. I don’t claim to know everything about transgender people – I may not understand the HOWS and the WHYS. But I do know that I know (or know of) many amazing transgender people who are so much more than some of those ignorant fools.

People are just so wrapped up in themselves and in their beliefs that they aren’t willing to step outside of them and experience/understand things from another point of view. I’m not racist or prejudice against anyone. I believe that each person should be treated and respected individually (that isn’t to say I think all people are the same. That’s a different point entirely. No person is the same as another) and I find it so hard to understand when some people don’t treat others this way. Yes, you may not understand why a person has chose to transition from one gender to another, and you may not understand how they feel, or how it’s possible to feel that way, but you don’t need to understand those things to just accept it. When I come across something I don’t understand, I research it. I look it up. I meet people who have experienced that and try to understand. My mother used to work in a transvestite bar somewhere in London and I didn’t understand why people wanted to dress up as one gender but live their life as another. So I looked up stuff about transgendered people and transvestite people, saw they were different things, require a different mentality, and came to understand.

It just makes me… sad, in a sense, to think that we live in an age with so many advances, both technically and culturally, yet we still have some people who are living their lives like they’re from the stone age.

This is a quote I found from a New York Times article by David France about Calpernia Addams‘ life. Calpernia is… a beautiful woman who is active in the Trans community, and I’d suggest her website – http://www.calpernia.com for anyone interested in her or the trans-community. She’s opened my eyes to so much.

“For me I choose to cling to the thought that I am a woman… That’s what I want to be. And that’s my goal. I know I wasn’t born that way, but I think I have to have some kind of guiding light to move toward. If I personally were to embrace a theory that gender were meaningless or fluid, then I would just be lost at sea.”

I’d like to say that this woman is amazing. She’s been through so much, and she offers even more to the world. Love her, respect her, admire her.