I carry a lot of privilege. I am a white settler in a country that devalues black and indigenous lives. I am able-bodied in a country that puts barriers for those who are not. I have been perceived as a boy in a country that pushes down girls. I grew up with affluent parents in a country that punishes the children of poor parents. I work as a software developer in an economic system that removes opportunity, diminishes time with close ones, facilitates bad housing situations, denies health care, restricts mobility, and otherwise punishes those in other lines of work. An economic system even more cruel to those without employment. I have been lucky in an environment where that luck is largely determined by privilege.
I’m also a transgender woman. Men shout at me from cars and mock me from the streets. I’ve been assaulted for being visibly trans after a date. I’ve been yelled at in a change room and outside a washroom. I have been harassed walking on a sidewalk, shopping for clothes, getting my brows done, and attending a concert. My family didn’t support me: my sister refused to use my name and pronouns because it would “confuse” her children while my step-dad also refused telling me it would harm my mom. The Globe & Mail and National Post regularly publish op-eds portraying people like me as threats to children, as have politicians and Canadian television personalities. It’s emotionally draining. A quarter of Canadian men are uncomfortable with a trans person moving next door and about half don’t support access to washrooms and these people get to decide if I get hired. I am afraid to use washrooms especially when there are children there. I am afraid to go to the gym or buy underwear.
In short, I experience discrimination. But I also came out as pansexual in 2007 and transitioned in 2013. That matters, because while I’ve endured some violence, it is nothing compared to the losses that have been incurred by those before me. Every trans person I know has been penalized for opening up to the world with those losses diminishing as both the age and year in which they came out increased. My privilege has insulated me from much of that violence. The violence they endured like all violence is self-perpetuating, continuing despite a more accepting world. A more accepting world won’t change the cumulative effects of decades of denied opportunities and poverty. A more accepting world won’t remove trauma from undergoing conversion therapy, being homeless, being sexually assaulted doing sex work, or being fired. It won’t remove criminal records.
But because I experienced discrimination, I thought it was right to take the space created for advocacy in the name of trans people to speak. I gave workshops. I spoke at various events. I lobbied. I participated in a panel on trans health care for a year. I was wrong. I am not sure what is the right amount of space to take, but it is much less than the space I have taken.
My forebears faced the most violence and fought hard to create a place in this world. Their success in turn created greater room for advocacy. That space has become filled with people such as myself, who mistake our own experiences of discrimination as making us qualified to take that space. We are not. Our voices have been elevated above more marginalized voices by design from a system that always prizes those with most privilege. Meanwhile, the pioneers who created that space to advocate aren’t desired in that space because the privilege they lack makes them unpalatable. I have wondered as to the mechanisms that create the transition from advocating for those most on the edges to elevating those closest to assimilation.
I suspect, perhaps, ignorance has been the engine of this shift. Increased acceptance reduced the losses for those with more privilege and helped them preserve that privilege. They then did what those with privilege almost always do – take space and elevate that privilege while ignoring those without it.