:EA DATA. SF:
As a #transgender person, I have thought about what it means to be a gender more than any cis person can imagine thinking about it.
I cried, prayed, and agonized about for years.
I got so introspective, I had a council of voices in my head to debate with.
I wanted to die for a long time because I thought that would be easier than wrestling with my own identity.
When I read about all this anti-trans legislation being passed across the country, across the world, I think about how fragile my sense of self really was when I was just a kid. I think about kids out there, right now, questioning and terrified to say anything, thinking they must be wrong or broken because adults know what's best, thinking they are less deserving of love and acceptance.
These kids.
These beautiful, sensitive, remarkable kids.
They are being taught to hate themselves.
Self-hate leads to self-harm; it leads to accepting the worst because you feel like you deserve it.
We can't let this continue.
If I knew how to fix it, I would.
I would have already.
But I don't.
@jrdepriest
I felt the same thing as the only gay teenager in the entire world (or so I thought, growing up in a small town in Utah in the 70s).
But the kids today have the internet, and places like this, and TV shows that show them what's possible, and the truth that they're exactly how and who they should be. Our job as the people who lived through it is to make sure these things are still available.
