I feel the same way as the OP, except i don't feel obligated as much as I feel a sense of pride that "yes, I am trans, and we are just as normal as you." kind of thing. In my entire life i've never really held any sort of pride in myself regardless of what I would accomplish, until i decided to transition ~ Now because I am happy and because I am proud of my decision to be myself and I say nay to all the gawkers and people who stare in disagreement while I walk with a nice big grin on my face hand in hand with my wife; when I meet curious people, i see it as a chance to open their eyes. I get asked a lot of questions (most of the time they are friendly) and sometimes the almost too obvious question that really bugs me is "are you gonna get the surgery?" or some variation of that question... sometimes they are even immature enough to say "so you gonna chop it off?!"... I try not to let it get to me but instead i explain that my transition isn't all about getting SRS... most of the time people don't understand because we live in a world where people are so use to being designated by their genitals, so people are too narrow-minded to think that genitals don't make gender.
I have very little patience for ignorance or stupidity, so I tend to avoid obnoxious people, but I'm not disinclined to people who are curious and want to know more out of sheer educational purposes. I have a friend who is going into medicine and he wanted to know EVERYTHING about my HRT regimen and what each dosage (supposedly) does. So its refreshing to see someone who is interested in pursuing not just medicine, but also has an interest in learning about transgender medicine as well.
But every now and then you run into the person who will ask questions, and just by the form of asking or the way they are expressing themselves, it becomes obvious that they lack the mental capacity to comprehend. I actually mentioned in another post on here about how I went to karaoke a few weeks ago, and as i was leaving there was this guy who recognized me from my male days and loudly and obnoxiously started saying "oh hey you dont remember me but i use to see you sing back when you were a dude!"... already i felt like ->-bleeped-<- just by hearing that because every day i feel im making more and more physical progress until someone points out "HEY YOU LOOK LIKE THE SAME DUDE I USE TO SEE!". But anyway, he continues on to say "yo no disrespect but you got a lot to do, you gotta get your titties done and (i kid you not, he literally said this) no more pee pee down there. I have a friend who actually has a sister, well, a brother but he calls her his sister and she showed me and some friends pictures of him and her together somewhere and I told him yo you shouldnt tell people thats your sister because he was born a guy, its not right." and then already after spewing this fountain of razorblade ignorance, he goes on to ask "i just gotta know, what is it that makes you wanna come dressed up like that."... i had already been so fed up with his crap that I said "its a complicated situation." i had to keep myself from saying "you don't have the intelligence to fully comprehend the situation."
He literally thought that by saying "yo yo no disrespect" before everything he said, it would change the fact that he was being incomprehensibly disrespectful, on top of outing me constantly and loudly in a place FULL of people and asking impossibly rude questions about my genitals.
Luckily my wife was there to kind of push us along to get the hell out of there and away from this guy, and he literally had the BALLS to give me a handshake and then tell me "nah don't give me that weak ->-bleeped-<-, shake my hand like a man."... I was so incredibly fuming inside that I was about to either purposely get my ass kicked or do everything I could to kick his ass. My wife slapped his hand out of the way and said "is that how you greet or say goodbye to all girls? Because then i dont want no kiss on the cheek, if you're gonna give her a handshake then you give me a handshake too, or you kiss her on the cheek." and of course he said AGAIN, "No disrespect but HELL F*** NO" and laughed like it was all a big joke. Seriously, its been a while since I was as angry as I was that night.
because of ass-hats like that, I feel its important to educate other people for the sake of anyone close they know to feel comfortable being themselves or simply for the sake of living in a world that can be less dangerous or have less ignorance in it that is aimed towards us. I do plan on maybe going stealth in the future just for public appearance and stuff like that just to see if I can (if i can manage to be that passable) but even if I end up looking totally cis, I will never deny being trans and I will never feel shame for being trans, so yes in a sense I do feel like one (of many) ambassadors to our community. Sometimes i feel like im the only transgirl in my small hispanic town, so i quite literally feel like the Ambassador of my specific area
