Of all the hate messages and death threats I’ve received, the most troubling have been penned or spoken by people within the LGBTQ+ community.
As a trans and queer activist and ordained clergy person, I am not surprised by verbal attacks, but I continue to be surprised by the percentage that come from our community.
The message is usually some version of telling me I am different from them and do not belong. This is so very odd to me, as I have always been some kind of queer, even when I didn’t yet use the words gay, trans or queer.
As a small child, I ran around shirtless with all the neighborhood boys. We knew I wasn’t technically the same as them, but none of us cared. The concept of trans people was not on my radar. It didn’t need to be. I was He-Man, charging down the street with a plastic sword. I was Superman, with my cape tied around my neck.
When I was six years old, the neighborhood moms started telling me to go home and put on a shirt. There was no difference in my six-year-old chest and the chests of all the other boys.
Why was my young body the place these adults stored their discomfort? I was just existing: barefoot, climbing trees, wearing more dirt than clothing, getting burned by the Florida sun. As time passed, the friendships shifted, and I was no longer allowed to be one of the boys.
I remember lying in bed as a kid, praying that God would let me be a “real” boy. Then I would wake up in the morning, and people still wouldn’t see me as a boy. Eventually, I stopped praying. I stopped believing in God. I didn’t know then that one day, I would find my way to social transition, then to legal name change, to testosterone, to surgeries. I didn’t know then, as a small child, that I would someday wake up in a body that makes sense to me.
In finding my true identity, as a teen and young adult, I also found my way back to God. I am on the journey I am meant to take. My body is not a cosmic mistake that I corrected, my body is simply my body.
One of the greatest blessings of the sacred journey of my own trans queerness is that it helped me find compassion for the people who hate me. I believe that the hate that gets hurled at people like me is born from the haters’ own experiences of fear, rejection, and trauma in their lives. Even if I do not know their stories, I want to hold those stories with the same gentle care that I hold the memories of my own early experiences of rejection, judgment, and isolation.
Let me be clear, compassion is not the same as acceptance. I can have deep compassion for the pain that causes people to be divisive and hate-filled while simultaneously defending myself and others who find themselves under attack.
This is something that many people get wrong about compassion. You can recognize that a person’s behavior is shaped by their own shame, fear, and woundedness, but that doesn’t mean you are obligated to accept the behavior and be mistreated.
A common trope in the anti-trans messages I receive is about choice. It’s usually something along the lines of how the struggle for rights only applies to sexual orientation, because they did not choose to be gay or lesbian, but they believe being trans is a choice.
It is ridiculous to assume that gender identity is more of a choice than sexual orientation. But what’s more, why justify our rights by arguing that we didn’t choose these lives for ourselves? I can’t understand any argument that claims we only deserve rights if we are choiceless victims.
I struggled to understand my sexuality and gender, but that struggle is not what earns me basic rights. Choice or not, we all deserve community, love, connection and rights. If our validation comes from not choosing this, what does that say about who we are and how we love?
Are we all supposed to settle for something substandard and wish we could be “normal” instead of different? I refuse to paint myself as a victim to justify my existence. I love my life. I love my marriage. I love my post-transition body. I even love who I was before I transitioned, that’s what got me here. If I had my whole life to live all over again from the start, I would choose this life. I would choose all of it.
The LGBTQ+ community is not a place for conformity. Trans people do not detract from cisgender people. Rights for one group do not mean fewer rights for another.
Nothing is gained by the exclusions, the divisions, the transphobia and the infighting. No amount of hate mail will change my gender identity. No number of threats will silence me, and I hope threats will not silence you either.
We don’t have to fully relate to one another’s identities to treat each other with care and compassion. The struggle is real for us all, and I would much prefer to struggle through things together, as a complex and diverse community that chooses to work together.
Rev. Jakob Hero-Shaw is a spiritual director and retreat leader with Cairnheart Pathways, where he helps people find their own brave spaces, especially in seasons of transition and personal growth. He can be reached on Instagram @CairnheartPathways.
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