Trans Pride 2022 Speech

Trans people in this country are often tolerated by society, our friends and community. However, we are rarely accepted by the very society we live in. Toleration is being “put up” with, not being actively hated by many, being liked as long as you’re “not rubbing your transness” in people’s faces. However this is so far from what we actually want.

Being confined to the neatly set boxes of a cisgendered, binary, heterosexual society is not trans liberation. Being limited to a third bathroom if at all, having to choose between an M or an F on your passport, being forced out of elite sporting events because you didn’t have the fortune of knowing who you were when you were 12 years old—do any of these things sound like trans liberation to you?

What I want for me, what I want for all of us, is acceptance. Government recognising that gender and sex aren’t just binaries and rules of best fit, that they are gamuts of so many different identities and bodies. Not being forced into an overlooked and underfunded “trans” category of sports, but entirely redefining what “mens and womens” sport looks like. Accepting and loving of disabled people and building infrastructure with their needs first.

Tolerance and acceptance feels especially pertinent for me this week. Since coming out a year ago my family were absolutely tolerant of me, using my new name and letting me come visit them. However, this was after a month of being ghosted by my parents. They never addressed the elephant in the room that was my transition. They never wanted to know details about my life, and I got told that me having a girlfriend was my “private life” and not something they needed to know about. They tolerated my presence but I never felt accepted. Wanted. Loved. And that’s ultimately what I want for all of us. This week I told my family to stop contacting me. And that won’t change until they accept me for who I am.

Assimilation is our destruction.