I don’t feel safe to be a part of any community outside my own.
Of all the words spoken at last month’s Rally for Trans Justice | Brattleboro, these are the ones that most pierced my oblivion.
How affronting my hubris. How careless. How dangerous even. To dismiss another simply because he/she doesn’t look the way I expect she/he to look.
Acceptance is protection, declared one of the rally signs. I nodded my head in sobriety.
I have a responsibility here.
Hate is a choice. Trans is not, expressed another.
I felt that inside.
“Do better,” the speaker offered to those of us who identified as the sex to which we were born. “Talk to each other. Educate yourselves.”
I am and was so grateful to all those who were courageous enough and vulnerable enough to gather with people like me who want to be allies, but who have so much to learn.
I hope there are more and more spaces where people who identify as Trans feel safe and accepted and most of all feel that they—belong.
At one time I felt awkward around “them,” and then confused, and over time curious, and finally accepting, but now my heart is made glad when I see the woman at the register who kinda looks like a man but who is clearly a woman inside.
She’s always been warm and funny with me even when I accidently use the pronoun, He.
This Vermont Life 
I think that’s all the more reason to reach outside your community. Or leave and get a breather. It was nice being in NY last week and eating in a restaurant that was filled with diversity and was so normal, that I was the only one taking notice.
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