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What are the biggest hurdles trans* culture has to get over right now?
“For trans* folks in general, I believe the biggest obstacle are points of view that disavow our identities; points of view that suggest that we are only the gender we are assigned at birth. That is really what underlies so much of the cultural stigma. It’s what underlies the policy and discriminatory criminal injustices; those ideas that suggest we really aren’t who we say we are. I heard a story of a young trans man named Brian, who went swimming in a pool last year in New York City. He went to locker room to change, and he’s a trans man, and he was asked to leave the men’s locker room. He was told he had to change in the women’s locker room. Now, he’s a guy with facial hair. He’s a guy, but he’s trans. It’s ridiculous. If you saw Brian — people would freak out if he was in the women’s locker room!
So, what would be a quality of a great ally?
“Before I answer the ally question, I want to say there’s another element to your first question: race and class. I think when trans* phobia and trans* misogyny intersect with classism and racism, we find the people who are most at risk in our trans* community.
Where, then, do you think we’ll be in a year? Five years? Versus where do you want us to be?
“I don’t know where we’ll be. My therapist told me years ago that making positive or negative predictions of the future is not living in reality. But, where I’d like us to be is in a place where everybody can determine their gender on their own terms. I think, at the end of the day, it’s really about gender self-determination so that there’s no monolith of trans* experience.