Gender is Mutable

This past Friday, I finally received my new birth certificate with my name and my true gender on it. Legally me and somehow, way more than I expected, validating.

It seems whenever trans issues are discussed, inevitably bathrooms come into the discussion. However, seldom is this discussed based on the trans perspective... 

Recently, in the UK, there was testimony to members of the British parliament that Doctors were telling trans women that they were not wearing enough lipstick. Let that sink in.

As I progress in my transition, the image of who I used to be feels almost like they're in a fog, clouded by time and space. Memories of the past don't disappear, but how you engage with them matters.

We've seen this many times, somebody says or does something that is racist, homophobic, transphobic, or anti-semetic in some way and the truth of that gets pointed out to them. However, rather than apologizing and learning from it, they double down in defense with "I have a ... friend" defense.

My company hosts an annual Women in Tech Experience, a multi-day event with talks, teaching, and other learning opportunities from all regions of the company. As part of that experience, I was asked to do a lightning talk on my experience where people helped with my dreams. Now, obviously, I did not talk about this in the context of career dreams, but much more personally and from the lens of an environment of inclusion. Now that the event is past, I wanted to share the text of my speech, with the names of the guilty redacted. 😊 I was born a little less than a year before the Stonewall Riots, a watershed moment in the development of LGBTQ+ rights. But that was just the beginning of what is still a significant battle for equality almost 52 years later. As I speak here today, across 33 States there are more than 100 pieces of legislation aimed at curtailing trans rights or suppressing our very existence. I live in a world where my right to personal dignity, to be treated with respect, t