TRANS: Fear, Freedom, and the Fight for Identity

The Multiple Facets of Trans*

So, what do you think of when you hear the word TRANS?

Maybe it's the Trans-Siberian Railway racing across frozen landscapes, the endless transit problems in your city, or even the transcription services your smartphone still can't quite get right.

Or maybe — just maybe — it’s something deeper.
Something human, reshaping our understanding of identity itself.

So much has happened since the turn of the century. A lot of effort has gone into giving minorities the voice and rights they so richly deserve.

We see women — the bearers of our offspring, once relegated to second-class citizens — rising up and showing the ignorant just how much more competent they can be.

We see people of color, still swimming up from the depths of oppression, now dominating more and more of the fields that were once bleached white.

And closets have opened; the stigma of HIV has faded, replaced by a deeper understanding of orientations that differ from the so-called norm.

Yet, has this actually happened?

In spurts and faltering steps, yes. A lot has been achieved. But not enough. It seems that for every two steps forward, there’s always one step back.

When Fogy was young, his mother came home after a busy day's work and told us that one of her colleagues had separated from her husband to live with another woman. Shock and horror all around — except, in our family, we saw little wrong with it. We had grown up, to that point, in a healthy environment where dogma had been left at the door and tolerance reigned supreme.

Now, 60 years later, many regions still cling to those dogmas of the past. Will nothing ever change?

But I digress. What is the TRANS that is the subject of this rant?

It’s the realization that among us are people who were never born into the ironclad stereotypes that prejudice insists on imposing.

In as much as we can each feel happy, angry, sad — and yes, even gay — so too do many feel they were born into the wrong gender. A complex blend of genes and hormones creating a mismatch across the physical, mental, and emotional fibers of otherwise ordinary people.

Still they are denied the right to exist, to be recognized by the true identity that their nature has given them.

Who can forget the American Civil War, and the vile claims:
"That there black man cannot be trusted with your womenfolk. They's animals and will just as soon kill you and rape your women. Thems females is only good for mating purposes..."
— and the drift was clear: do NOT educate them, for they will rise up and destroy you.

What a lot of poppycock.

We are all different. And we must be given the right to live that difference without fear.

True leaders understand that life is not static; change must come — and so often, for the better.

The color of a person's skin does not rub off on us any more than a gender swing, a sexual orientation swing, or even the team we were born to support.

We can choose to change everything in our lives if we want to.
Why not this too?

Fear and prejudice continue to destroy an otherwise great nation — a nation that holds significant importance for the world as a whole — self-destructing under the weight of executive orders and ignorant power plays, all for the sake of more and more power and wealth.

If you listen closely,
beneath the noise, beneath the fear,
a voice still rises, clear and sure:

"It's been a long, a long time coming,
But I know a change gonna come —
Oh yes it will."

👁️ Views (0)

Press the play button to listen to the first part of this song by Sam Cooke

"Some sit clutching dolls. Some clutch guns. Some clutch fear.
But the song still plays."

The song was inspired by various events in Cooke's life, most prominently when he and his entourage were turned away from a whites-only motel in Louisiana. Cooke felt compelled to write a song that spoke to his struggle and of those around him, and that pertained to the Civil Rights Movement and African Americans.