Last weekend, I had the absolute joy of attending a drag show in downtown State College, hosted by Chronic Town.
One of my friends was performing for the very first time, and the show was absolutely stunning. One of my favorite parts of the event was the atmosphere. The entire audience was not just accepting, but cheering for these beautiful queens.
While walking downtown with my transgender friend, Karina, after the show however, I slowly could feel the perfect peace and love begin to disappear. Catcalls and comments followed our small group as we walked down the street. From derogatory slurs, rude comments about appearance, to lots of intentional mis-gendering.
Karina Labelle, the friend I walked home with, said she wanted to openly speak about her experience. She said that performing was "a really liberating experience, to be able to get up on stage and have people cheer and applaud you for something you were always told was wrong."
I asked her what the walk home was like for her, to me personally it was shocking and offensive. She was able to see it in a much more positive light.
Karina said, "walking home, I had a sense of empowerment, because I knew that I wasn't wrong. I had something behind me. And I had that passion existing in me. I knew that no one could bring me down. I knew that I had strong support right next to me."
I spoke later during the week with a few of the non-binary and trans gender friends I have. All of them wished to remain anonymous. I asked them what kind of advice they would give to other teens. Through these interviews I attempted to unearth a sense of understanding (as I am a cis-gendered white female, and cannot relate personally). I have always believed that ignorance is often the root of hatred, that having real conversations, and asking questions is one of the best ways for someone to understand someone else better.
One of the people I talked to said that he felt that ignorance truly was the root of the problem. He described himself as being lucky, because his family was so accepting.
P.J. said, "There was a large chunk of my life where I was really just waiting to die, and then when I figured out who I was, everything changed. And it changed for the better. I am extremely blessed. My whole family is accepting of me, I was able to get on hormones and have surgery within my first year of transitioning. Not a lot of trans people are as lucky as me, and that is very sad."
As a cis-gender female, this really stuck with me. People should not feel lucky to be accepted.
A trans female told me that being transgender was "hell." When I asked a girl, K.S., if she had any advice to fellow trans teenagers, she was extremely candid.
"I'm really not the most inspirational person. It's hell. But you get through it, and you feel better."
She went on to advise trans teens not to commit suicide. (The fact that she felt the need to say this I took to be quite poignant. Looking at statistics, the truth of the matter is however, that trans teens have staggeringly high suicide rates. According to Vocativ, 41 percent of trans gender people commit suicide.)
"Don't commit suicide," K.S. said, "that's definitely not going to help anyone at all. And it's not going to fix your situation, it's just going to put an end to anything good that could have come."
K.S. told me that she found transitioning to be quite difficult. She didn't see the changes she wanted as fast as she wanted. I asked her what the best part of transitioning was for her.
She told me that it was "Finally feeling comfortable with [myself.] What [I] see in the mirror."
J.K., a non-binary teenager described gender to me as an expectation. They prefer not to label themselves as male or female. While transitioning is not something J.K. has gone through, they did still feel pain because of societies' gender roles. They described gender to me as an expectation.
"It wasn't an expectation for me but to other people...It was about assigning roles for people that didn't really need to be placed, just because they were told this is how these people should be, and this is how the others should be. And I guess that was kind of really damaging because it made me feel so foreign and different in the world. Like I didn't belong. It didn't really allow me to be me," J.K said.
Expectations and gender roles were a hard pressure for J.K to deal with. My friend Karina explained to me that "gender is not a binary system." Perhaps people are too concerned with labels, and not enough with being open-minded or loving.
Karina's words of advice to fellow teenagers were, "believe in yourself, because until you believe in yourself no one else will. Be a self advocate."
Her final statement to me was, "you don't have to be trans to understand it's a struggle."
Following Karina's words of wisdom, recognize that some of the guys, gals and non-binary pals around you may be facing very hard situations. In order to promote peace, I would implore all of you to be open minded and accepting.
