Scary stories were always the bane of my existence. I used to always paint the mental picture in my head of all of the monsters, evil witches, scary, ugly looking things that I believe were out to get me. Today in the year 2016, there is an image that is painted of a certain group of people that affects the world, and that is the transgender community.
In a world where everyone has an opinion which means everyone can be wrong always, everyone can state their opinion because they have the right to. This is especially hard when it comes to minority groups. The LGBTAQ+ community is one that in the past thirty years as gone from baby steps to huge, gigantic leaps. I cannot imagine the injustice, pain and isolation that this group of people must have suffered along the way. Though this is still happening to countless people around the country today, there are more rights and laws that are there to protect the sanctity of the LGBTAQ+ community.
One of the biggest in history is the legalization of gay marriage on June 26, 2015. This is a humongous step for freedom for the men and women who have fought to be able to marry another person regardless of their sex. With all of these advances filtering through the court system and American culture, there are still struggles that we as members of the United States suffer because of being a gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender, or other identification of their person.
Most recently, on March 23, 2016, a law was passed in North Carolina which activists have stated is "the most anti-LGBT law in the United States." This law, passed by Governor Pat McCrory, states that people who are transgender must use the bathrooms based on their biological sex on their birth certificate. The first question I pose to this is: how can a law tell someone to do or not doing based on something that is the way they are?
Through all of the support of this community, the T of LGBTAQ+ has still a long way to go because many people do not understand and are not educated on what exactly a transgender person is. This bill is not just taking a step back and degrading, but it is posing more confusion within America towards a certain minority. How would it feel if you could not use the appropriate bathroom because your country tells you not to?
The last I checked, we lived in America. Land of the free, home of the brave; the land of opportunity that so many people in the past three hundred years have fought for. To tell someone they cannot use a certain restroom is beyond insensitive to a group of Americans here, completely ridiculous in their reasoning (the voters believed this would be an excuse for more sexual offenses by using transgender identity as a cover up), and incredibly embarrassing on behalf of Americans everywhere.
The struggles that the transgender community is already facing are severe as it is. Most states in the United States do not cover this group of people on gender identity and still so many senseless murders have been committed because a person was transgender. The oppression against this niche of people is completely unacceptable.
Everyone has been alone. Everyone has had moments of being scared and feeling like no one is there for them. The transgender community is no different in the hardships they must suffer to achieve the life that they want to live. Like a child afraid of the boogeyman under their bed, the oppressors of the transgender community are frightened of this group that they do not understand. They cannot comprehend what it's like for a man to feel like they are in a woman's body or a woman who is stuck in a man's body. The haters do not understand tolerance.
Maybe if these people would fix their eyesight, rub their eyes from the hate and ignorance and look at the big picture, these people will find out that the transgender community is not the monster under the bed, Bigfoot, or the boogeyman, but that they are regular people that live day to day lives. Let people live the way that they want to. We as Americans must be a community of people of all different backgrounds working together to build our lives and this country into what we want it to be. Working together, compromise, tolerance and acceptance are the only ways that we can make America work and churn the way that it needs to be like a well-oiled machine. The tolerance of the transgender people is pertinent in that everyone deserves to get the chance to live the life that they have always hoped for. Gender can change, but acceptance is forever. Creating an environment, such as tolerance in restrooms, is a simple step to achieving the strength of this community and in America overall.
As an American, that is the least we can do.
