Let’s get real for a second. I wanted to talk about this headline on this article I saw t

Let’s get real for a second. I wanted to talk about this headline on this article I saw the other day. It reads: “More American’s Claim to Have Seen a Ghost Than Have Met a Trans Person.” I read the article and disappointingly, it doesn’t discuss what I thought it would. And people I’ve showed this headline too also seem to have the wrong idea. Most people are taking this headline to mean that trans people are so rare that ghosts (or supposed ghosts) outnumber us. This is simply not true.Now, although it is impossible to get a true count of how many trans people are in America, since the government simply ignores us and refuses to put us on population surveys, it is estimated that we make up anywhere between 0.5%-1% of the population. I would argue it’s a lot greater than that, but I digress. At the higher end of that number, that means there is one transgender person per every 100 people you meet.I’d like to hope that every human being alive has met AT LEAST 100 people in their life time. Guess what? That means you’ve met a transgender person. The HUGE problem that faces our community is that no one KNOWS that they know a trans person. Many of us are completely finished transitioning, which means we blend in nicely with everyone else.That’s the goal after all. To live being treated as normal human being in the bodies we need in order to excel at every day life. And obviously, we don’t go around announcing ourselves to everyone around us since…you know…we’re getting murdered and beat up by all the transphobes, homophones, racists and bigots out there.This puts us in quite a pickle! Because people apparently believe in fucking GHOSTS more than us! Also, the general population seems to have this crazy idea that trans people are easily spottable. As if we have purple skin, antlers, or are some other kind of freak or monster that they can pick out of a crowd.This is apparent by the infamous and ridiculous bathroom bill that’s STILL being enforced in North Carolina today. The idea that you can tell a trans person which bathroom to use is absurd. How can you tell who is trans and who isn’t? Does the general population think that can just…pick us out of a crowd?All that bathroom bill does is discriminate against the transgender people who are in the MIDDLE of transitioning. The in-betweeners who aren’t quite there yet. And quite frankly, even they aren’t too easy to spot a lot of the time, because a person will look at them and assume they are either a boy or a girl and not think anything of it.I JUST went through this in my in between stages which I’m JUST now starting to come out of. NO ONE looked at me and was like “YOU’RE ONE OF THOSE TRANSGENDERS!” No! They either assumed I was male or female, made their assumptions and then moved on. My point is, that this headline indicates that most American’s still assume that we look different somehow. That we are freaks or monsters or somehow “weird” looking.We’re not.We look just like everyone else! So much so that no one even understands that they’ve already met us, already talked to us, already work with us or have been in the same bathroom with us. They’d rather say they’ve seen a ghost than think for one second that they’ve probably met MULTIPLE trans people throughout their lifetime, at the very least in passing.I honestly don’t know how to combat this problem. Many in the trans community advocate for announcing yourself to everyone everywhere you go so that people understand they’re looking at a trans person. But I tell everyone to do what is SAFE! Safety should always be first. And because of that, many of us are stealth. And so, because we’re so good at hiding ourselves so we don’t get bullied, discriminated against, harassed or even killed, we remain invisible. And because we’re invisible, the general population continues to misunderstand and ostracize us. It’s a vicious cycle that seems impossible to break. -- source link

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