A letter to my sister, to all our sisters.
I am so sorry.
How lucky, I thought, to be alive in a time with so much change. So many medical advances, so much more education and understanding; hormone replacement drugs and gender reassignment surgery, specialist doctors and therapy and support networks; social media platforms and inclusivity programmes. But the wait lists are long and the financials are crippling and the bigotry just keeps coming.
I am so sorry, my sister, but I am so proud to call you that. The effort you have to make and the courage you have to have simply to exist as yourself is something I will never fully be able to comprehend. I am in awe of your strength and enraged that you have to summon it day after day. It must be exhausting.
I am so sorry you have to live in a world that refuses to recognise you but also won’t allow itself to simply ignore you and let you get on with your life. I am sorry that these people cannot see you, and that in turn you feel scared to show yourself. To see you shrink and suffer after all you’ve already been through is painfully unfair.
I am so sorry that so much of this energy is coming from other women. What an absolute let down. What a waste it is to spend so much energy caring about how another leads their life when it has no effect on your own. What a waste it is of the courage of the women that came before us. How short-sighted it is to believe they’re rallying against an enemy, when really they’re opening the door to our collective enemy and bowing down before them. It feels like an enormous step back and one that we will all suffer from, as abusers are given the opportunity to march into our safe spaces and touch our safe places and throw their hands up to say ‘I thought she was trans’. How vile a sentence. How horrid to use you, dear sister, as an excuse for causing harm.
But the harm that this causes you, it’s immeasurable. The choices you have to make every day, they’re impossible. It must be so frightening to feel as though you may not ‘pass’, to be consistently judged and assessed by some undefined level of femininity or womanliness. Once again, a judgement that so many of our sisters before us have fought so hard against. How do you physically define a ‘woman’? Seems to me most people’s definitions would have very little to do with chromosomes and a lot more to do with outdated expectations of how we should look, what we should wear and how we should behave.
Faced with the impossible, what do you do now? Stand tall, hold your head up and take your chances walking out in the world, fearfully waiting for the accusation that you do not pass? I am not sure that I could feel that brave. I’m sorry, my sister, to ask that of you. It should be a right, not a privilege to be able to leave your house without fear. You should not have to muster courage like this all of the time.
I will walk with you, my sister. I am sure you feel the responsibility to stand shoulder to shoulder with your trans family, the same as I do, now more than ever. And I’m sure that adds to an undeserving pile of guilt every time you find you don’t have it in you to fight. And now there is an added fear of the fight itself, because if you do fight back and try to protect yourself, you risk being treated as male and the situation becomes far more threatening.
I will fight back, darling sisters. I want you to have the freedom to live. I want you to have a world where the simple things are just that. Where you can just use the bathroom or try on the clothes or get changed at the gym; where no one is trying to work out if you are trans or not; where you are not judged or assessed or feared.
I want a world where people are able to see the truth and beauty of all that you are. Because that is all I see, beautiful sister. I only see you.
I see you as strongly as I see your need not to be seen right now.
We will fight for you, my sisters. Your allies are many, and we bring our strength and our voices. Our compassion and our rage, it’s all yours.
All my love,
Your sister x
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