Springfield, VA, USA. The time has come for all people born transsexual to confront public ignorance, halt expanding government repression, and bring to an end the cynical manipulations of uncaring elements within the LBGT movement.

 

While we honor the many sacrifices of our predecessors and take due pride in our collective progress, let us stop and consider the challenges that lay before us in 2007.

 

Much of the public still reacts to our presence with alarm as we do not fit into pre-existing categories. Although no one really knows how many of us there are, we can note that so far it appears that people born transsexual are exceedingly rare. We will not know our numbers until a safe environment exists, everyone comes out for treatment, and science takes a hand in establishing our true frequency in the human population.

 

We have seen pockets of progress around the world. We have also experienced increased government repression and sly attempts to confuse our birth condition with life style choices and anti-religious attitudes. In a world where superstition and anti-scientific cultural currents take the guise of official government policy, transsexuals are deemed dangerous to public order. Our casualties continue.

 

Virginia Prince, a heterosexual male who liked to dress in women's clothes, coined the term Transgender (with others) and emphasized their differences from transsexuals. Since then, transgenders have attempted to colonize the transsexual population and assert that transsexuals, especially the women born transsexual, are an extreme (and unnecessary) version of transgenders.

 

Not so, of course.

 

Transgenders, most of whom appear to be men, have a dificult time understanding the interior life of women and a woman's direct bodily experiences. Those of us born transsexual have transformed our hormonal base to another, estrogen-based experience and understand the difference. Those of us who have corrected our physical sex live the difference. Those who have not and will not change, do not.

 

Somewhere along the line, transgender activists linked Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual (GLB) interests to those of Transgenders, resulting in the GLBT movement. The GLBT alliance is socio-political in nature and has little, if anything, to do with transsexuals.

 

Transsexualism is unrelated to questions of sexual orientation and/or transgender presentation.

 

We should enter into political alliances with transgenders in areas of common interest, but it must be as equals. People born transsexual can no longer be an afterthought when confronting public ignorance and government misdeeds.

 

We cannot let the transgenderists speak for those of us born transsexual.

 

Planning has begun for the 2007 Pride celebrations. We call upon people born transsexual to come out and make our existence visible. We recommend the transsexuals create an explicit presence at every Pride celebration. Identify yourselves, get out from under the transgender umbrella, and face the public as you really are.

 

Tell our story. Demand acceptance, medical treatment, and just legal protection. Tell your families, friends, caregivers, legal authorities, and the scientific community, as well as all other interested parties.

 

Let the world know we are here and are not going away. March as yourselves in the Pride parades, set up a booth and inform the public, and reach out to your communities. Open your hands and hearts to those in need.

 

This is not separatism: it is a demand for true inclusion based on mutual respect and recognition of the special needs of people born transsexual.

 

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