A Letter To Cis People
I am upset.
Do you know why?
Because I’ve done my best to calm down.
Otherwise I would be angry.
And I don’t like anger. Well, that’s partially a lie.
But let’s take a step back, ok? Let me introduce myself.
I’m sorry, I forget my manners when I’m angry.
Damn. See? I’m doing it again. But I’ll get there.
Hi everyone. I’m Ramses, and I’m angry.
I should probably also say I’m trans, since that’s why I’ve got the microphone.
I’m Ramses, I’m trans, but I’m mainly angry.
But I don’t like saying I’m trans, because that makes me vulnerable. That makes people ask inappropriate questions. That means I have to justify my existence. Did you know there’s people who don’t think people like me exist? That’s wild, right?
On September 5th, I was supposed to speak in front of a crowd at a trans rights protest. It was our last chance to speak before a possible amendment to the Gender Recognition Act. After threats to arrest everyone, including organisers and interpreters, despite having permission to go ahead, the protest has been cancelled. Once again, my voice had been silenced. This was supposed to be the beginning of my speech. I had spent a month working on it - it was ready even before my attendance was confirmed.
Since then, I have looked at my notes over and over and once again, here it was: the same emotion.
Anger.
I have seen anger in various forms in my life. I have seen my parents argue; I have seen frustrated teachers; I have seen friend groups falling apart.
So why is this different? Is it because of the people involved? Is it because of what triggered it?
I remember what my philosophy professor told me years ago, when we were discussing why history repeats itself: we do not have a memory of pain.
If we undergo surgery, our body goes through an incredible amount of pain. But if months later someone kicks us, that doesn’t hurt less. We can build up pain tolerance, but we will never erase that pain. Bigger wounds don’t erase the smaller ones. A deeper cut doesn’t mean we can’t get smaller ones anymore.
It’s a survival mechanism: if the memory of pain was enough to make us feel it, we wouldn’t be able to function.
And that’s the same for emotional pain: if I look back at when I was depressed, I do remember the anxiety and sadness and hopelessness, but I don’t feel it again.
It’s not the same as having a fresh wound, as feeling that raw pain. And only empathy is left to fill those gaps.
But empathy isn’t innate: it’s developed, learned. And we live in a society which doesn’t value emotional education, compensation for labour. We live in a society which dismisses mental health struggles, normalises ableism and values formal education over lived experience.
So where does that leave us?
How can we expect majorities to understand our struggles if they haven’t experienced them? And how realistic are those expectations?
Talking to big audiences scares me, and not because of poor public speaking skills or social anxiety. It scares me because they are the skills which are constantly asked to decide on my rights, on my life, on my future.
Being a minority, means, by definition, not being the majority.
And when people are asked to vote, it’s numbers that count.
Giving that power to people who will never experience my pain, my anger, my needs is hard, and makes you feel powerless and hopeless.
And the only way to push back is education, but that’s when it gets hard.
I need to get people to listen. I need to convince them more than educate them.
And people don’t listen to anger, to shouts, to pain.
They listen to well-spoken arguments, research, smiling well-dressed people on TV. So, in order to teach them, I have to forget about my feelings and put on a façade.
I have to appear reasonable and educated. I have to beg for my rights smiling, because if I stop, then I’ll be marked as dangerous, aggressive, degenerate. I’m going to be used as an example to push my whole community further away.
Every time one of us speaks, we carry our community on our shoulders. We are aware people will weaponize our missteps.
I am a big advocate of education, and I truly believe it’s our first line of defence against hate, prejudice, trauma. But it’s hard when we need to set our demands and tones on someone else’s terms.
And that’s where the anger comes from. If we’re silenced, it’s on us. If we’re hurt, it’s on us.
I co-manage a learning platform to educate on gender diversity, and almost every single time, when cisgender people ask questions, they’re prefaced by “please be nice”, “not looking for arguments”, “no hate, it’s just a question”.
But entering that space and deciding what to ask, whether to learn or not, choosing which answers to listen to is privilege. We do not stop being transgender when we go offline, or when we walk out of a seminar. We are not less transgender when we’re in our homes, away from the public. We are not less transgender when people decide we’re not allowed to identify as our gender, when they decide we have to wait five years to see a doctor, to decide we’re not allowed to use public toilets, or play sports, or go on a date without being killed.
People who step in our spaces to ask a question often don’t realise we have already answered it. Hundreds of times. And when we answer it again, we are not only addressing the question itself. We are addressing the privilege and ignorance behind it.
We understand what’s behind every comment, every insult, every compliment.
I have received lots of dehumanizing and othering comments. Most questions implicitly create a “you” vs “us” bias. I’ve had people react with “Oh my” to definitions - people laughing at me. People telling me my gender is a delusion. And even when they’re not saying this, even when I’m not called explicitly a freak, I can hear it. I know when they’re thinking it because I have had thousands of similar conversations.
Every word gets more and more loaded.
And implicit in every interaction is the idea that cisgender people are doing us a favour.
And the biggest implication is behind our fight for rights. Our begging.
Our giving in to people blackmailing us into educating them, keeping our lives hostages.
The implication, the subtext, boils down to the fact that other people are allowed to vote on our lives. And that is a very loaded implication because it means people are allowed to debate us. And this is terrifying.
I had mentioned earlier about the value society puts on formal education, and people who learn by challenging the ideas they don’t understand.
But inclusion doesn’t demand understanding, it demands vulnerability.
It requires people to admit some experiences, certain knowledge is outside their reach, and always will be. It requires a leap of faith in humanity.
And there lies the lie of superiority and supremacy. In refusing to admit your limits, your mistakes, your intentions. In acknowledging that you might have caused hurt in good faith. In acknowledging that there are spaces you will never enter, conversations you’ll never hear.
That we will always feel safer if you’re not in the room, and you will hear our cries and our laughs and our secrets muffled, through the doors, through the windows, through the curtains.
And yet, you’re given that power. You have the hammer in your hands, you are capable of barging in.
And you do, repeatedly. Because you just want to help, you are not like the others, you are capable of good things.
And yet, you’re scared. You’re scared not understanding will make you feel like you’re not enough, you’re not the good person you thought you were. That the world is changing and leaving you behind.
And we understand that. We’ve been outcasts our whole life.
If simply a moment of exclusion is enough to shake your core beliefs, how long would you last in our shoes?
And this is why you feel entitled to ask questions.
Because we have built up resilience, and we know the answers you seek. And we’ve become well-spoken, and well-dressed, and ready to comply.
But inside we’re shaking.
We’re killed on dates, we’re killed by friends, we’re killed in our sleep.
We die and are buried under the wrong name, wearing the wrong clothes.
We are kicked out by our parents, rejected by our friends, sent away from shelters.
And we know that answering your question about our surgery goals will help you understand. We know you asking why it’s wrong to call us “transsexual” might be a vote in our favour. We know discussing whether you can still like Harry Potter might save a life.
But we have to save ourselves every single day.
We will never turn down a conversation. But when you ask that we justify our existence, that we explain our identity, that we write nicer comments and use a better tone, don’t be scared of that anger.
Don’t be scared to feel offended, and vulnerable, and angry that someone corrected you.
Anger is strong, and anger can heal. Channel it. Use it to feel my pain, and my anger.
Let it burn through your body and you’ll see the world through my eyes.
It’s dark and scary, and on fire.
But there’s still warmth, inside.
Written by Ramses Oliva
In addition to working 9-5, Ramses can't seem to stop writing, even if it means scribbling on a notebook overnight. He's a trans activist who loves talking about queer identities, diversity and art. He is co-host of the brand-new podcast "Punching the Wall" and you can find him posting overpriced selfies on Instagram at @queer.discart.