ME!: The gift of being Transgender

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If there is a contrast between the person you look and sound like, and the person you feel, experience and know yourself to be, you may believe you are different from everyone else in your life—and very likely different from everyone else in your community, your country, and even the world.

It may come as a surprise that there are hundreds of thousands of teens, young adults and kids throughout the world who experience their lives in just the way you do. Some of us are born gifted, creative, or disabled—but all of us share something in common: we were all born Transgender girls and boys. Despite this evolving understanding, most of us have lived fearfully and have suffered without reason, because those who have come to know us at school, or who have encountered us
socially, have misunderstood us, and have disliked us because we seemed different when they compared each of us to themselves.

As a direct result of such misunderstanding, far too many Transgender kids know other kids who have teased, bullied, shamed and excluded them for a very long time. As Transgender kids like us grow into teenagers and young adults, far too many die—either from physical assault which results in death, or from shame, anxiety, depression and hopelessness which lead to thoughts and acts of suicide.

Deaths of both kinds may occur at an especially high rate for Transgender girls, teens and young women of colour whose peers have singled them out for social isolation, public shame, and criminal levels of aggression—rather than with the respect and dignity all persons need and deserve from one another.

In ME! The gift of being Transgender, Trans women and men share personal experiences of what being Trans has really been like at various stages of their journeys—from early childhood through maturity. By reading the stories that Trans women and men have shared in this book, both family members and members of the public may more accurately perceive and understand the humanity they share in common with us—and, by extension, with all those who seem “uncomfortably different”.

By learning to recognize the many similarities we all share in common—the Common Ground of our shared Humanity—individuals, family members and communities may put an end to the suffering of those of us who seem “different”.