=Trans Envy=

What is it about hearing that someone has transitioned from male to female or female to male that seems to outrage people so much? I think it's the prefix "trans." I think it frightens people when instead it should inspire them. Most people, I've come to believe, are actually quite terrified of change. Although they pay lip service to it, when it comes right down to it, they want things to remain exactly the same. Especially when it comes to other people. They want the other people in their lives to be predictable and static, even if they don't particularly like the other person or their behavior! They like people to be like objects, like a stapler for instance. You don't want to put a stapler in a desk drawer and come back two days later and find that it's turned itself into a perfume atomizer. Not when you need a stapler! The nerve of that stapler!

Sadly, I've come to discover that even the closest people in your life, especially those closest to you,  really don't want you to change, not even for the better, not even if the change makes you happier and healthier. "What…all of a sudden you're a vegetarian now?! Where did that come from?!" They're personally threatened by even the smallest changes you might make. You're making their world that much more unpredictable. When a person changes sex it's tantamount to bringing death into their world—the greatest of all changes.  You're dying and being reborn into another person isn't the hopeful sign of resurrection that it could be—instead it's a sign of chaos and disorder.

"So if I say I'm a lion," they'll argue by false analogy, "that means I can be a lion? Just saying I'm something doesn't make it so!"

But false analogy or not...why not? Why shouldn't, at least in theory, we allow ourselves such imaginative freedom to be what and who we want? Isn't that the basis of all hope? Of all redemption? Of all resurrection? That we have the possibility to change. To be reborn? Why should anything be taken off the table? Why should anything be categorically impossible?

People are scared to be who and what they dream of becoming. So they act as if it's impossible for them to even try.
That makes it easier not to make the effort, to remain in unsatisfactory and limited lives, where they don't have to dare, where they don't have to risk anything. I'm convinced that people aren't so much ignorant and hateful, as they are resentful and jealous of people who have the courage to transition, no matter what the transition.

Transpeople are just easier targets than most to ridicule. What I think we're seeing lately, though, is that day by day that's changing.

At least I'd like to hope so.

Knowing how much I've been able to change my life, gives me a more positive outlook that the world can change, too.