This post is brought to you by the letters LGBT and the numbers April 1-6, 2013.
What that means is there's an LGBT blog hop going on, and Donuts & Desires is taking part. Right here. Right now. Do you get a prize? Of course you do! More on that later.
As you know if you know me, I write a lot of romance and erotic fiction featuring transgender characters. If you know me well, you know I have a very personal connection to my trans fiction. I've had trans and genderqueer friends since high school.
Five years ago, my heart hooked up with an incredible woman. She's a certified geek who owns not one but
two Star Trek collector's plates, she looks great in green, she's called "quirky" as
often as I am, and she gets my random references to Pinky and the Brain. To me, Sweet is the most gorgeous girl in the world. She makes my heart flutter, even five years in. And she's trans.
On waaaaaay too many occasions, I've encountered the common and callous misconception that trans women are all the same--they're ugly, they're jokes, they're sub-human, they're drag queens, they're perverts, they're mentally ill, they're
men. The sad thing is, it's often lesbian, gay, and bisexual people spouting this bullshit. The LGBT "community" is hardly a cohesive unit. It's sad. I mean, it's
really sad.
We're lucky, here in Canada. Just recently, legislation was passed ensuring the rights of trans people under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In Ontario, a lot of progress has been made over the past, oh, year or two? Most notably, it's no longer necessary for trans people to go through "bottom surgery"/Sex Reassignment Surgery/Gender Reassignment Surgery/Gender Affirmation Surgery (there are sooo many names, and everybody has their favourite) before the government will change the gender marker on their ID.
And all that is great. It is. But what's even MORE important to me is how my trans friends, my trans partner, and all trans people are treated in real life, not just in legislation. That's where the whole world lags behind, I'd say. Trans people (and trans women in particular) are really the last portion of the population that can be openly picked on ANYWHERE with absolutely no reprecussions. Start a tally of how many times the word "tranny" is used in sitcoms, and you'll understand what I mean. It's okay to poke fun at those ugly, stupid, misguided perverts. They're not real people anyway. Who really cares?
Well... I do. I care. I'm sick of seeing trans people denigrated all around me, and when I witness it, I speak out.
That doesn't always go so well.
I've blogged before about losing friends when I started dating a trans woman. In fact, I lost my BEST friend, the guy I talked to on the phone 4 times a day. We used to watch TV together, eat meals together, do pretty much everything together. I couldn't believe what a dickface he turned into when I fell in love with a girl who happened to be trans. Her trans-ness was ALL he would talk about. He said the meanest things, constantly. I couldn't take it. I told him how much he was hurting me, but he basically said TOO BAD. He chose transphobia over our friendship.
And that was that.
One thing I haven't mentioned publicly is that I've encountered professional problems, too, for refusing to sit idly by while someone spouted hatred about trans people. I had a client who sent me a constant stream of work for years. And then that person made a few comments negatively stereotyping trans women. I was gentle, I swear! I didn't go off the deep end. I tried to educate this client about trans and genderqueer people in the most casual, non-patronizing way possible.
I haven't seen a scrap of work from that client since. Nothing.
So, I've lost friends and I've lost work for my adament alliance with the trans population, and...
Okay, obviously I'm still a little peeved, but it's not going to keep me from standing tall beside my girlfriend. The personal and professional reprecussions haven't stopped me yet, and they won't any time soon. A lot of people are reluctant to admit to their privileges, but being cisgender (meaning not trans) is a huge privilege. I don't get the same shit thrown at me that my girlfriend does. Yeah, I get some splatter, standing beside her, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm here, and I'm holding her hand.
Whoo... that grew into a pretty long blog post, didn't it? It's an important topic to me, in case you hadn't noticed.
UPDATE: The hop is now closed
Now on to the fun stuff: EVERYBODY WINS!
That's right, kids. I'm really glad you've stopped by and I want to give you a free copy of one of my ebooks that happens to star a trans woman. It's a sweet little reunion story from my Wedding Heat series called "If the Shoes Fit." To get your free copy, just hop on over to ARe: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-weddingheatiftheshoesfit-862328-172.html
And once you've hopped over there, hop on with the hop:
But wait... there's more! Enter to win a $25 gift card to an ebook retailer of your choice, here:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
