5 Things Cis People Can Actually Do For Trans People (Now That You Care About Us)

The (Trans)cendental Tourist

It’s been a weird year for trans people.

Allow me to be more specific: It’s been a heated, daring, tumultuous, graphic, specularizing, aggressive, pointed, contentious, highly fatal, and really, really complicated year for trans people.

Here are a few examples: Kristina Gomez Reinwald, Ty Underwood, Lamia Beard, and many other transwomen of color have been brutally murdered at the hands of lovers, family members, and strangers. Meanwhile, Laverne Cox and Janet Mock have come to fame and exhibited incredible feats of grace, articulation, and poignancy under the gaze of an eager media. Blake Brockington, Leelah Alcorn, Taylor Alesana, and many other transgender youth have committed suicide after enduring endless bullying and systematic brutality. Meanwhile, Jazz Jennings became the new face of Clean & Clear and published a children’s picture book about her life, and teen trans couple Arin Andrews and Katie Hill (best known for “Can You Even Believe They’re Trans?!” types of headlines) wrote and published individual books…

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Practical advice for the non-normatively gendered

a gentleman and a scholar

As much as I write about trans issues, particularly those outside of a binary framework, I realised recently that the majority of that writing is about education, media, specific activist events or frameworks.

Not that I think any of that is a bad thing – but it does leave out something that I, and a lot of other trans people, do in our day to day lives – we swap advice on the practicalities of living in a cissexist, transphobic world.

So here’s what I have on navigating the world as someone who does not (or does not primarily, or straightforwardly) live as a man or a woman.* If you’re new to this, I hope it helps. If you’re an old hand, I’d love to hear your advice. It should go without saying that no one should feel obliged to act as I do to have their gender recognised. But…

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