Trans Deaths, White Privilege
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/opinion/trans-deaths-white-privilege.html?smid=fb-share
Jennifer Finney Boylan, Aug 21, 2015, New York Times Op-Ed

IT was snowing in Maine on Jan. 9. I'd been to the dentist's the day before. The staff there were pleasant enough when I changed genders 12 years ago. "We'll just change your forms," the receptionist had said, cheerfully. "It's no problem."

That night, Papi Edwards, 20, a transgender woman of color, was shot to death outside a hotel in Louisville, Ky.

If you'd told me in 2000, as a transgender woman just coming out, that I was a person of privilege, I'd have angrily lectured you about exactly how heavy the burden I'd been carrying was. It had nearly done me in: the shame, the secrecy, the loneliness. It had not yet occurred to me that other burdens, carried by other women, could be weightier.

[...]

I agree with this.  I am having it easy compared to some of the trans women of color I know.

This is heartbreaking. I know two trans woman of color and both have been threatened with violence and one was assaulted, whereas very few issues for the white transgender friends I know (and I know a lot.)

Both of my roommates are black men.  One of them pulled me out of homelessness and gave me a roof over my head and the couch he had available to sleep on.  I was not out at that time, but him and his friends were loving and accepting when I did eventually come out, and I live today only by the charity he gave me.

My other roommate is my oldest friend in this town, and that makes him one of the closest people to me.  I don't really have family to rely on, and although he didn't take my transitioning well at first, I figured out later he was very afraid I'd change into someone completely different.  Once I established I'm still me he has gotten much better.

I have heard stories of them growing up that make everything I've gone through in childhood pale in comparison.  The treatment they have received, often for no reason but skin color, is horrible, and these things need to end.  When you compound the two issues you have a very isolated, very endangered group of the population, and until we help them, we are simply living in Omelas.

Sorry, reference to an old short story.  I simply mean that we can't call our society great until we are great to everyone.

Quote from: Everbrooke on August 23, 2015, 02:16:07 AM
Both of my roommates are black men.  One of them pulled me out of homelessness and gave me a roof over my head and the couch he had available to sleep on.  I was not out at that time, but him and his friends were loving and accepting when I did eventually come out, and I live today only by the charity he gave me.

My other roommate is my oldest friend in this town, and that makes him one of the closest people to me.  I don't really have family to rely on, and although he didn't take my transitioning well at first, I figured out later he was very afraid I'd change into someone completely different.  Once I established I'm still me he has gotten much better.

I have heard stories of them growing up that make everything I've gone through in childhood pale in comparison.  The treatment they have received, often for no reason but skin color, is horrible, and these things need to end.  When you compound the two issues you have a very isolated, very endangered group of the population, and until we help them, we are simply living in Omelas.

Sorry, reference to an old short story. I simply mean that we can't call our society great until we are great to everyone.

This ^^^

This article brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. It is easy to forget how far we (as a species) still have to go.