Safety Not Guaranteed

She paused.

“You mind if I…?” She pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one. Her hands trembled slightly.

“Basically what happened was I melted down.”

Staring at a pistol and a glass of whiskey, she contemplated death. At least two or three times a week.

She pondered it until she almost got what she wished for after a night of heavy drinking and the car crash that ensued.

Up to that night, Reilly-Owen Clemens lived in a glass box of seclusion.

She faced years of exclusion, barriers and blind hatred by nearly everyone around her because she was trying to pass as a woman.

Gender identity moves along a spectrum.

The way people identify themselves is fluid, and does not necessarily align with the traits and characteristics society typically associates with being male or female.

“Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey” defines transgender people as those who identify with a gender different from the gender associated with the biological sex organs they were born with.

Further, it explains that being gay or lesbian is a sexual orientation that describes a person’s attraction to the same sex. This is different from being transgender, which is an identity, not an attraction.

These definitions have substantial consequences for those who identify with them.

Just for being different from the norm, the report stated.

The 2011 report, a survey of 6,450 transgender and gender non-conforming people in the United States and its territories, concluded that those groups experience tremendous damage from institutional structures and personal prejudices against them.

Sixty-three percent of respondents to the survey had experienced a serious act of discrimination, defined as a having a major impact on a person’s quality of life and ability to sustain themselves financially or emotionally.

“It is part of social and legal convention in the United States to discriminate against, ridicule, and abuse transgender and gender non-conforming people within foundational institutions such as the family, schools, the workplace and health care settings, every day,” the report stated.

And protections are not always guaranteed or supported.

For the full story, please email me at shaynatanen@gmail.com

The full story runs 2,419 words

Fact sheet with four interview sources and one research source available on request