Dear progressive cis people,

A lot of you are great allies to the trans community. Quite a few of you have helped me survive my transition. For that, I am very appreciative.

However, many of you need to be doing better. Much, much better.

Sure, you all are better than right-wing bigots. You probably don't think trans people are abominations. You probably aren't interested in criminalizing my bathroom usage. You might even think trans people deserve to be referred to by their chosen names. But that's honestly not nearly enough.

This is a very dangerous time for trans people. Trans people are four times more likely to live in poverty. Forty percent of trans people have attempted suicide. Trans women of color continue to be murdered at alarmingly high rates.

But yet, our cries for justice fall on deaf ears. Despite the tremendous challenges trans people face, there is hardly any discussion about trans issues. For instance, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have talked a lot about gay rights, but they have barely mentioned trans issues. That is because trans issues are simply not a priority for most of the population.

If you call yourself an ally to trans people, this should not be acceptable to you. However, so many progressive cis people do largely ignore trans issues. They think that acknowledging the existence of trans people is enough. But it isn't. Being a good ally means fighting for trans people's voices to be heard. It means making sure issues facing trans people aren't ignored like they so often are.

Another thing to keep in mind is, supporting trans people does not mean you can't be transphobic. And when you do get called out for being transphobic, you should listen and revise your actions. Unfortunately, this doesn't tend to happen. In fact, a lot of times "progressive" cis people take their anger out on the trans person calling them out.

One example of this happened a few years ago. Trans woman of color activist Janet Mock appeared on Piers Morgan's show to promote her autobiography. In the interview, Piers Morgan completely sensationalized Janet Mock's life. For example, during the interview, her on-screen description read that she was "a boy until age 18" which was the year she received sexual reassessment surgery. This was incredibly transphobic as it implied Janet Mock wasn't a woman until she had "the surgery." After Janet Mock called Piers Morgan out on Twitter for being transphobic, instead of apologizing, he took out his anger out at Mock and the trans community. He at one point tweeted, "As for all the enraged transgender supporters, look at how STUPID you're being. I'm on your side, you dimwits."

Eventually, he agreed to have Janet Mock on the show again. But instead of using that as an opportunity to learn what he did wrong, he used it to continue to berate Janet Mock for daring to call him out. He argued that she shouldn't have called him out because he "supported trans rights." A few weeks after that interview, Janet Mock appeared on Stephen Colbert's show, which caused Morgan to accuse Colbert of "enabling" Janet Mock's "whining."

I've dealt with this in my personal life as well. Last week, I wrote an article about why trans people don't have to come out to potential partners before dating them. Almost immediately after sharing it on my social media page, multiple cis people started making incredibly transphobic comments. One person compared being trans to having an STI, another said that all trans women had male bodies, and others argued that a trans person not coming out is an act of deceit and a violation of consent (often the justification for trans murders in the first place).

What was incredibly striking to me is that even after multiple other trans people and I called them out for being transphobic, they did not back off. Their argument was that they supported trans rights, so they couldn't be transphobic. One person even made the rather bizarre claim that he wasn't transphobic because he had taken "multiple gender studies courses." After some back and forth, the responses got more and more angry. I was told that that by calling people out I was just, "reinforcing stereotypes about my community."

The problem with both of these situations is that trans people inherently know much more about transphobia than cis people. Unlike cis people, we've actually experienced it. So if a trans person tells you that you are being transphobic, listen to them. Use it as an opportunity to learn, instead of being antagonistic.

I can imagine many of you reading this are probably thinking that I just hate all cis people. But I really don't. Like I said, I know many progressive cis people that are really awesome when it comes to trans issues. But a lot of you have a ton of work to do.

Trans people are experiencing a crisis. In order to get through it, we need allies that will stand with us, not against us. And if you are going to call yourself an ally, you should make sure you're actually being one.