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- Hey guys it's Kat and I wanted to do another video like the last video I did where I was just kind of very personally and rawly speaking about my perspectives and experiences. Now for (mumbles) I actually wanted to ask you guys a question, a pretty vital question 'cause I've been thinking about this. There was a really good response to the last video that I did where I was just talking and you guys know if you follow me that I like to put a lot of time and energy and effort into editing my stuff and researching it and making it super, super concise and very, very whatever, but I think sometimes when I talk about my personal stuff, when I'm not really sitting at a space as a direct educator giving you the one, twos and threes sometimes it might just be better for me to make a video like this where you guys are hearing me speak off the top of my head as opposed to reading from a script. So let me know if you guys like these videos or that type of content because I like it. It's also just very pricey for me to produce because I have to pay for captions and things and you guys know I can't really make videos like this that are short. So I would really appreciate it if you guys gave me some feedback there. Also, if you do like these videos, feel free to support me on my Patreon. That would be very, very helpful. The money from my Patreon goes towards captioning videos like this and videos on other channels that I have. So I'd really appreciate that. So anyway, I wanted to sort of talk to you guys about my reactions and current feelings when it comes to Trump's conversations about, well the Trump Administration trying to genetically verify trans people's genders based on their sex, and I also want to tell you guys the importance of changing your name and your gender marker and what that's personally meant for my life. Just because I feel like often, so maybe this is me being an optimist. I don't know if this is me being an optimist or not, but I sort of have this thing where most people watching this, you probably don't know a transgender person. You probably don't have a transgendered person who is in your life giving you the information about what it's like to be a trans person and so my perspective is honestly that a lot of people because they don't know or don't have a way of knowing don't understand why things like this are important. So I sort of believe that having these conversations and sharing my experiences and things like that is ultimately going to be very helpful in bringing people towards a place of understanding for transgender people. Now I will also say that and say that I've been doing this right here what we've been doing right now for 10 years. I have been doing this for 10 years. I have been having conversations about trans life and trying to bring some sort of, I guess, humanity toward transgender people and I've seen a shift. I'm probably gonna talk a little bit about that shift in this video. But I think that- All right, I'm just gonna start with saying what I wanted to start out saying because that's leading in to what I want to just say, so let's just say it, right? I wanna sort of set some sort of foundations, right here and right now because I think there are some people who they have this misunderstanding about the way that a lot of transgender view the world and I'll walk that back slightly and say a lot of what I'm saying is what I feel and what I experience. In thinking about making this video I really debated a lot about whether or not I wanted to sort of shoehorn somebody else's perspective in this and I know some of the things I say are probably gonna feel very invalidating towards people who are not like me in terms of their transness, but ultimately I sort of recognize that my perspective, my narrative is valid and it is impossible for me to imagine what someone else's life is like as a trans person, so I don't want to do that. I do believe having more openness and more understanding about genders that are outside of the binary, things like that, is very, very important, however, I got my one very, very binary experience that I felt like I needed to share. What I was going to get to though is, first and foremost, like I said I've been doing this for over 10 years, you can sit in front of me and you can yell at me all day long and say that I'm a man and say that I'll never be a woman and say that you're a tranny, you're a this, you're a faggot, you're a da da da. You can say all of these things about me, but I'm never going to leave this conversation not believing and feeling and knowing that I am a woman. It's not going to happen, so if you're here to leave some sort of coming to Jesus, I just thought you should know in case you didn't know that I think you're a man and da da da da da, I honestly like, save it, because it's not going to bother me. Like I said I've been doing this for a very, very long time. It's out of the habit at this point. You're not going to be able to say anything to me that's gonna make me walk away from my gender. So I wouldn't say that, right. That all being said, that being said, let's establish this as well. I'm very aware of the fact that there are people who will never accept me for who I am. I'm very, very aware of the fact that there are some people who regardless of all the different things that happen, regardless of what I look like, regardless of how I am, regardless of the way that I've lived my life, there will always be people who believe confidently that I am not a woman. And I'm aware of that. With that being said, I'm also not necessarily functioning under the perspective that you have to feel that way. I'm a realistic person and this is where I think I'm a little different from some trans people in that I know that this world is not built for us. I know that this society is not built for us. I know that there will always be people who at every turn want nothing more than for me to feel invalidated. I know that. So because of that, I'm not really gonna particularly spend a lot of time trying to debate with you about this or that or go over this or that or da da da. That's just not really where I'm from. I know certain things to be true about my life. I transitioned when I was 16. I'm now 28 years old. I've lived my life. I know what my life is. I know who I am. Because of that, you're never going to be able to convince me otherwise. You can try, you can make an attempt, but it's not going to work out in your favor. It's just not. I'm never going to leave a conversation being like yeah I guess you're right. I never thought about me being a man truly. I guess, you know, whatever. So yeah, I wanted to sort of set those foundations. So let's get into the story of me because a lot of you guys have only ever known me in this phase of my life. You've only ever known me as Kat Black, post transition gender marker change, name change, living the life, being comfortable, not really dealing with a lot of dysphoria. You've only ever known me like this. Now like I said I've been on here for 10 years. So there are people who do remember the rough times. You remember when I was going through my name change process. You remember when I made the video shaking my paperwork in the camera and just being so elated that my name is now legally Kathryn. You remember when I got my gender record changed. You remember when all of these milestones happened because you were there from day one. So a lot of you guys who have been there for me will know that I'm a very different person now and you will see how much my life has changed and how much ease I have in my life now that I didn't before. Because let me tell you my YouTube channel used to be mostly me crying. My YouTube channel used to be mostly me being really upset and hurt that the world was the way that it was. So when I eventually changed my gender marker, when I eventually changed my name, the difference in my life was incredibly stark. And I wanna talk about that because, for me, that is why these laws and the steps forward we've made for transgender people are incredibly important. So tell you about my life. Like I said, I figured out I was transgender when I was young. I've always known to some degree, but I didn't really have the words for it. I didn't really have an understanding of what it was and yes, seeing other trans people later helped me figure out who I was. Of course, when I started seeing transgender people in the media, they were on Jerry Springer, they were the people who tricked somebody into this or that. They were these people who I looked at as mentally ill, untrustworthy and out there to deceive and hurt people. That's who transgender people were for me for a very long time. That was the image that was presented to me, that was all I knew, that was the only thing I could relate to, and because of that that is what I thought being a transgender person was, was this life of deception, turmoil and anger. So when I was younger and I started to sort of have this understanding of myself, it was hard for me to get to that conclusion, because ultimately, I didn't wanna be like that. It took me a while to sort of understand that transgender people have been framed in the media in that way in order to de-legitimize transgender people. Really what it took for me was, is actually, I watched this film. There was a time where Logo used to be very much used to be very much like the IFC channel, and I remember watching Solider Story. Solider Story is the story, not Solider Story, Soldier's Girl, sorry. Soldier's Girl is a movie about Calpernia Adams who was a trans woman and showgirl who fell in love with a solider who ended up being killed once his, I guess the people who served with him I don't know the word, other soldiers, discovered that he was dating a transgender woman. Even though is a really sad story, it led me to Calpernia Adams, which led me to seeing a transgender woman who was functioning in this world. Then that led me to Andrea James and a bunch of other trans people and I started to sort to see that there were trans women who existed in this world and did so without being like those Jerry Springer people that I saw. So that help me sort of put the pieces together of who I was. Really the story sort of goes that I didn't quite- So when I was 16, I definitely was more in the androgynous gender, queer mindset. I'd read a couple of queer theory books. I was like this is who I am. My early blogs from when I was 14. I found a blog that I wrote when I was 14 years old about gender 'cause I've always been a writer and there's a lot of it. Unfortunately, I can still find a lot of my teenage writings. I will not help you find those writings, but they do exist. So anyway, I'd been writing about this stuff for a while and a lot of my early writings were about me not quite identifying here or there. Sort of through seeing other people and also, being more honest with myself because when I went away to college I recognized that this part of me that was trying to be gender queer was really just this me holding onto this image of myself that people had already fallen in love with and had seen as likable and this, this and that, but also wanting to reconcile this other person I was. Because at a certain point in my life I was living in many ways a double life. When I was in high school I found this artist who worked in Los Angeles. So my story as a teenager was I became super aware of the fact that my father would never accept me. My dad, I remember, one of my most vivid memories of my father is him watching a story on the news about AIDS and him saying something along the lines of that's God's retribution for homosexuality. So it became super clear to me early on. I was raised very, very Christian. I was raise in Christian private school. I was involved in the Church. I recorded a Christian singing album when I was in the fourth grade. I was very religious. I just knew that my father because of his religion and also because my father just is the sort of person who just doesn't like change, I knew that my dad would never really fully accept me. So what ended up happening is I would go and run away to Hollywood as much as I could trying to find work because in my mind working in Hollywood, it was more progressive, it was more accepting, there were more people who were understanding of different types of people and I found out that wasn't the case, but that's still what I did. So what I would do is, if you look at the username of this channel, you'll see that it's transdiyer. Because this YouTube channel started out as a transgendered themed sewing channel because I used to hand sew all of my own clothes. I was so terrified of going to the women's section of any store that I learned how to hand sew my clothes. That's sort of where I was at. So I used to take these little t-shirt dresses that I would make and I would put that on, put some opaque tights on under the dress and put a baggy pair of jeans over my leggings and then tuck the dress into the pants and then this really, really baggy sweatshirt and I would leave the house so that my father didn't see me and I would go outside and I would walk across the street from my neighborhood where there was a bus stop that took me directly to Hollywood. Now that bus stop does not- I mean that, what's the word I'm looking for, that route no longer exists, but there used to be a bus that would take me right to Hollywood and it was the coolest thing growing up. So what I would do is I would go to that bus stop. I would take off my jeans and I would take off my baggy shirt and stuff like that, and I would stuff it underneath the bus stop. Then I would get on a bus and I would go to Hollywood Boulevard and I would walk to every store that I could and I would fill out applications because my whole thing was I wanted to get a job so that I could move out and so that I could start supporting myself so I wouldn't have to rely on my family. Doing that I had a lot of really sort of upsetting experiences. Now my story personally is, when I was a teenager I started to develop breasts. I don't know what that is, I've never known what that is. I've never really cared to figure out what that is. But when I was a teenager, I had very noticeable obvious breasts. These were not man boobs, these were not in the shape of what a man who was overweight would have, these were breasts. These were breasts. It was uncomfortable for me because when I would be in the boy's changing room I would have these guys stare at me. They would just stare at me. Then sometimes staring at me very, very hard would lead to them coming up and groping me, just grabbing my breasts. So what ended up happening is I just became very accustomed to leaving the classroom, whatever class I had before PE, I would leave the classroom early, run into the boy's room so that I could change my clothes really, really fast without anyone knowing. I sort of developed this really fast way of changing my clothes into my PE clothes, so that I did not ever have to deal with being in the locker room and having that happen to me. It made me incredibly uncomfortable. So sort of my story has been that because of that and just the way that I always sort of looked people often assumed that I was a cis woman, without me doing much. It was very, very common for people to just assume that I was a cis girl. When I was in the more gender queer phase in my life that used to aggravate me, it used to really, really annoy me. Looking back, a lot of my denial over being properly gendered but back then I really didn't like that. But at this particular phase in my life when I was going down to Hollywood trying to get jobs and things like that it created another issue because I looked like this, but name wasn't changed and neither was my gender marker. I've always been the sort of person, I don't know what's wrong with me or why I sort of feel this way sometimes, but I always feel like if I put the wrong information done on paperwork or something, it's gonna lead to a really intense, I don't know, legal recourse, that's true in some cases, but in this case it really wasn't. So I would always put down my legal name, always put down my legal gender marker and I would have so many experiences where I would hand over my application and they would look at my application and they would look back up at me, with a very suspicious look on their face. They would look down at my application and they would look back at me with a fake, fake, fake, fake smile and then say thank you, we'll let you know. Then as I would be leaving the place that I was applying to I would hear laughter. I've always been a very determined person. So this didn't necessarily stop me from continuing to pursue work, but it became really rough because it wasn't like there was anything wrong with me. I've always been a very hardworking and capable person. I've had an incredible amount of responsibilities when I was younger. Like I said, I used to be very, very involved in the church. I worked in the children's ministry for years when I was in high school. At that time especially I worked very, very hard in children's ministry, so it's not like I didn't have the ability to flip burgers or to sell jeans and things that other teenagers did at the time. But because I was transgender it was like my application never got looked at. Even though I sent so many different applications to people never once did I ever get a call back. Never once did I ever have somebody call me in for an interview. I never was able to get a job until I found this artist would was living in Los Angeles. I'm not gonna get too deep into this story because this specific situation was one where because of the rejection from my father and furthermore the rejection from the employment around me, this guy sort of created a really, really nice situation for me where I felt really accepted, I started going by a different name. I started going by Kitty. So I started to really develop this really in-depth social life that was totally different from my friends. I was Kitty, which is funny to think about now because that's how I got Kathryn was 'cause Kitty Kitty became Kit and Kit was a nickname for Kathryn and Kathryn just made more sense. But anyway, I would go by Kitty and I had all these friends. People who had only ever known me as Kitty. It was kind of within those situations that I recognized more and more that I was a binary trans person because this was a time where I was really able to redefine myself in a situation where people who did not know me and so I was able to be who I was as opposed to worrying about who people already knew me to be if that makes any sense. However, that guy sorted of created a situation for me, he did end up grooming me over several months and he did end up raping me. So that's a whole another story, but that has been my initial trajectory for working at that point in my life. When I was, I forget how old I was, my first legitimate job, my first legitimate job where was I actually on payroll or whatever and actually getting checks and file taxes and things like that, this guy that I was dating, this much, much older man, I dated a lot of- When I was younger and I didn't have a lot of people or things to support me, I did spend a lot of time with older men who were able to help me out because I didn't have any one. My father had really rejected. Even though my parents, they loved me, I know they do, whatever, whatever, their inability to see me, their inability to support me made it very, very hard for me to interact with them, but anyway. The first legitimate job I got was before my gender marker was changed and I didn't get it because I sent in an application, I got it because a guy that I was dating, a much, much older guy was working as a telemarketer at this place and he helped me get the job and sort of explained the situation and even though my legal name was this, I would only be called this, I think by this time I was calling myself Kit, and so they would refer to me as Kit publicly, but then my check would always say my legal name because, of course, I had to go deposit the check. That's the only situation I've ever had that worked out like that and honestly if I wasn't sleeping with the guy who helped me get the job it probably wouldn't have happened, right. So I made a little bit of money from that, but that was it and that's after years and years and years of trying to get some sort of job, some sort of legitimate source of work. It became really clear to me that my gender marker and my name were going to be these big hurdles, these big things that I had to overcome just so I could get a job, just so I could financially support myself just so I can survive. Coupled with that, and this is something I want people to understand, coupled with that, was this understanding, or at least this notion frankly, that my life would be so much easier and so much less complicated if the people around me did not know that I was transgender. Why is that? A lot of people, so some I believe the paranoia around Trump wanting to DNA test everybody to verify their gender comes from the fact that there are trans women like myself who exist in this world, who have their legal markers changed, their names changed and they look cis gender, and how that makes people feel paranoid or uncomfortable whatever, whatever. I currently know someone who's, for example, is a teacher at an elementary school. She is a passing trans woman and nobody knows she's transgender. She works, she's a very passionate teacher and she doesn't tell anyone. Why? Because if they knew, if they knew, the parents would complain and it would be a whole thing and she wouldn't have a job. What I need for a lot of people to understand is that if a trans person can get away with in quotations the ability to go through the world without people knowing that they're transgender, they're usually doing that for survival. Now why are they doing that for survival? They're doing that because we don't live in a world that currently understands transgender people. We don't even live in a world that understands that they exist and have existed for a very long time. I always tell this joke when I give my talks. I talk about how different trans understandings were when I was coming up versus now. Because when I was coming up you would read these stories about transgender women and the story would kind go something like this. It would go, I figured out that I was transgender, I went to Pablo on the corner street and he gave these black market hormones and I started taking my hormones. My body started changing and then I recognized that I needed the surgery. I had the surgery. I felt content, I felt happy with myself, I was ready to move on with my life, so I killed everybody that had ever known me from before. I moved to another state and now I'm sitting here on the front of my beautiful home with my white picket fence with my husband and 2.5 kids and no one in my community knows that I'm transgender. I'm just oh, so happy. That was very much the story people like to think with the exception of you killing everyone obviously. That was the story. It was this narrative of people transitioned to disappear. Actually, in the early days of YouTube when I was on here as a blogger who was really documenting their trans life I was following a lot of other people, and it was very common for you to see a girl do her I've been on hormones for a year video and then I've been on hormones for two years videos. Then I get my FFS and then I have the surgery and then they feel there's nothing more to talk about and they delete all their stuff and completely disappear and they end up being stealth in real life. It's very, very common and why is that? Because we don't live in a society that accepts and embraces transgender people. Now when I say that there are some people who hear this and they think that I am just speaking some sort of foreign language, I mean, do we really live in a society that doesn't accept transgender people? I hear about it all the time. How can we live in a society, da da da da that is so antagonistic towards trans people. Well. Here's what I've seen and this is really going on an aside, but here's what I've seen. So like I said, growing up when I was coming up in my understanding of trans life, the goal was to be stealth, the goal was to disappear, the goal was to have nobody know. That was kind of the general way that trans people were. Transgender people just wanted to be left alone. They didn't wanna be in your face. They didn't wanna be out there. They didn't wanna be pushy. They didn't want people to always know about their pronouns and their this and their that. They just wanted to be left alone. I was like that. So when I went to college and I understood and accepted that I was a transgender woman I made the distinct goal of I want to graduate from this college with my name changed and my gender marker changed. I wanna be able to enter into this world, enter into my professional life as animator with my name change and my gender marker changed. I just want that to be the case so I now longer have to deal with the hurdle that's being known as a transgender person. So for those of you guys who don't totally know my story, I do give this story in my talks, but my story is that that was my goal, then through several different experiences I had I recognized that stealth for me made me feel like I was in another closest and I had a couple of really scary experiences. Some of you guys already know this, but when I was living with my ex in my ex's cousin's boyfriend's place his family did not know that I was transgender. His mom knew, but the rest of his family did not know and one day his cousin found the video that I did with Buzzfeed which back then for some reason I thought if I do a video with Buzzfeed who was gonna know that I'm, who's gonna know, who's gonna see it, who's gonna know. It's a very weird way of looking at things, but for some reason I'd convinced myself that no one watched Buzzfeed and that no one would watch specifically a trans video on Buzzfeed. So I really could do it and not have anyone know. This was a very silly, idealistic perspective for me to have but it's one that I had. So she found the video and she had always been this sort of person like, have you ever met people who you don't think you're competing with them, but they think you're competing with them? It was very much one of those situations where she just didn't like me, she was always at my throat for something and I was just trying to be on my own. So she rushed to my ex's grandparents and tried to out me as a trans person and his mom was there at the time and so she was able to settle things and they ultimately said, well you know not much changes. We've had her over for three different Christmases, nothing really changes about this at this point. So they said that, but she wasn't satisfied, of course, because she didn't get the response she wanted. She ran back over to our home, and she didn't live there. We lived there, but she did not, she was just there all the time, she didn't pay no rent. But she basically told her boyfriend and my ex and I were evicted from the place we lived. That was the first time in my life where I ever experienced truly, like I'd experienced a lot of crappy things, but I'd never really experienced what it felt like to be like actually on the receiving end of a repercussion because I'm transgender. Because I'm transgender I can no longer live here. That was the first sort of discrimination truly that I really ever experienced like that. So yeah, that was really rough for me to swallow, but I was able to sort of move on from there. So that is, just giving you an example of the way that people use transness against you. So anyway, once I managed to change my name and my gender marker. I changed my name before my senior year in college 'cause I wanted to move into the master's dorms and be stealth and I didn't want people to know and at the time I was black market hormoning. I was taking hormones from this little Indian pharmacies or whatever, so my body had been changing. I'd been on hormones at I think at that point I'd been on hormones for, shoot how long had I been on hormones at that point? I guess four years, three years. So my body had been going through slight changes or whatever and legally in California, in order to change your gender marker you have to prove that you've been taking hormones. Because I was just black market hormoning, I couldn't do that. So I was able to change my name, but I couldn't change my gender marker until I went through LA Care and then LA Care connected me with hormone doctors and I was able to get my hormones and I was able to go to the court and prove da da da da, and doop doop doop de do. That's kinda how that went. So anyway, I did that and it was so funny because once I had actually changed my gender marker and my name and I went back to the stores and I started apply for jobs, just retail jobs, what do you know? I'd get call back after call back after call back, and actually ended up getting a job. I got a job at Toys R Us. At the time I also gotten a job working for Fox Animation so obviously I chose Fox Animation over Toys R Us, but I had started out in- it was like immediately after I changed my stuff, everything changed and to put more things in perspective, think about how often you have to give your name. Think about how often you have to share your identification card. Most people if you're going on a plane, you're checking out equipment. You're doing anything, you've gotta show your ID card. For years my ID card with the wrong name and the wrong gender marker was the bane of my existence. It was the bane of my existence because especially- So I remember this very vividly, when I was in college this was my senior year. I needed to get a ladder from security for some reason and the way that I got a ladder was handing them my ID card, which at that time I don't think I changed it, so it probably wasn't my senior year. I think this was probably either my sophomore or my junior year, I don't really remember, but I had to go down and get some equipment. I guess I'm not giving the full story, I really figured out that I was transgender my first year of college, which was a really sort of upsetting thing, but then I start my transition pretty immediately. Because of the way that I looked I was able to very easily fall into the background in terms of passability and things like that. So there were three years where I was at college where I still had the ID card that I took when I first got to college, which was me. I had a Mohawk. My style was very like Robyn early 2000s. I had a blue and black checkered handkerchief situation and I looked androgynous for sure, but definitely more on the butch side of androgynous than on the fem side of androgynous, and obviously my name was not what my name is now. So what would happen when I checked out this ladder is I had to give this person my ID card. I don't think that when I gave it to him, he looked at it or anything. It was just hey, here's my ID card, here's the, I guess what is it, the trade-off, I don't remember the exact phrase. But here's my ID card, I'm gonna get the ladder, and that's that. So after I was done with the ladder, I went down to return the ladder and there's a completely different person there. So I believe this is probably my junior year. I'm thinking it's probably my junior year when I did not have my name marker changed, but I looked like this. So when I went to go return the ladder it was an issue because the way that I sounded, the way that I looked, everything about me did not look like this person who I was the day I walked into college. The day at registration when we took our ID photos. So I had a little bit of a debate with him about whether or not this was actually me. At the time especially, this had to be my junior year because my junior year was when I really started to understand for sure that I was passing and so I actually hated, absolutely hated drawing attention to my transness or referencing my transness or pointing out my transness. I did not want to do that. So I spent a lot of time trying to be like yeah, it's me, it's me, it's me. I know I look different, but it's me. Then I had to sit down and be like look, here's the thing. I'm a trans woman, those are the photos I took when I first got here, that's why I look different, that's why I sound like a woman, I am a woman, but this is what my paperwork says, please give me my ID card. Give me my ID card. I think I even pulled out my old Facebook page to just show him photos of me. I had a similar experience time and time and time again where people thought I was stealing someone's identity because my name was this, and I looked like that. I had so many issues in college when people would call out names, make sure that everyone was there. I would sometimes not respond. I would sit back and I wouldn't say anything and I would come up to the teacher after and be like hey, this is my name, this is my situation da da da da da. After I did that, I would get into the habit of regularly emailing all of my teachers to tell them hey, here's the thing. My name is legally this, this is the name that I go by, can you please change it so I can interact with the class because what people don't get is this sort of stuff, this little stuff, like getting your name wrong, even incorrect pronouns and shit, it makes it really hard for you to want to be at school. It makes it really hard. 'Cause why would you go to a place where the basis of you who are is being invalidated at every turn. Why would I go to a classroom where everyone, well not everyone, there's a story that's popping into my head and I'll just tell it because it is relevant to this. I had a teacher my junior year. I definitely remember this. Oh I could tell you so much about Cal Arts, but the thing I'll say is that it got really messed up towards the last two years of our school and we had this animation teacher who none of us liked. None of us liked. But my junior year of college was when I start to figure out makeup and hair and stuff and clothes. I stopped making all my own clothes. I graduated to Goodwill. It was fairly common for teachers to just look at me, assume my pronouns and for it to be correct, but for the people who were in the room with me, who had known me since my freshman year, to laugh at the fact that this person was properly gendering me. I remember this one teacher and if you were in my class you remember this teacher. He would always refer to me as a she. A she, she, she, she, she, her. At that time, those were definitely my pronouns, but my classmates did not really get that and to be fair I've always been really bad at I've always been really bad at explaining myself when it comes to certain things. Like I hate explaining really anything truly, but I definitely hated explaining why my name was this and da da da da, and (mumbles) speak to me like that. I've never really been someone who has like begged people to use the right pronouns. I've always just been someone who people looked at and assumed their pronouns and have been correct. So yeah, I had a lot of situations like that where here I am in a classroom and there's awkwardness around my name, and I know that it's hard for people to get, but that little simple thing. There were so many times in classrooms where I would be misgendered or someone would dead name me. I almost couldn't focus on the class. I almost couldn't focus on everything else 'cause all I could think about was either this person just outed me to a room full of people or this person doesn't see me for who I am. It would just really mess with my head. Now, of course, I was dealing with a lot of dysphoria and insecurities I had back then that I don't quite have now but either way, it made being in and participating in that space incredibly hard. So this is kinda leading me to what I really wanna say and communicate, I believe is at the core of this sort of rhetoric. At the core of a lot of anti-transgender rhetoric is this desire for transgender people to simply not interact with people in public space. I say this a lot when it comes to the bathroom debate. The bathroom debate. To tell you guys a bit about my situation in the bathroom, there were so many times where before I felt comfortable going into the women's restroom I just sort of sat there and just held it to the point of hurting myself or I would try to draw myself into a corner and pee in a cup and throw it away or something. I would do a lot of really gross stuff because I didn't feel comfortable going into the bathroom. So that made it hard for me to sit in the lab all day. It made it hard for me to go and sit in the classroom all day because obviously most of us when we are outside of our homes for more than four hours at some point we have to go to the bathroom. So when you have these people arguing for well you've gotta go to this bathroom or that bathroom and if you were born this way, you need to go into the men's room or if you're born that way you have to go to the women's restroom really what they're trying to do is to get it so you just don't wanna go outside at all. I identify with that because there was a time in my life and I wish I sort of reiterated this, there was a time in my life where I didn't go outside. When I was younger it took me a really long time to build the strength together to get on a bus and go down to Los Angeles to look for work. It took me so much time. Because I was always so afraid of being judged. I was always so afraid of being attacked. So even something like learning how to, making my own clothes and learning how to look a certain way so I'd cause less suspicion, these were all things that I learned to just survive. To just be able to survive and be accepted and not to have to go through life having any issues. Changing my gender marker, changing my name made it easier for me to get a job. Having that stuff understood in the workplace made it easier for me to be in the workplace. So it's my core belief that a lot of these people who are trying to argue against trans people in the bathroom, trans people doing this, trans people doing that, they just don't want trans people in their public space. They would prefer that trans people went back in time and hide in the closet, which is so funny to me. Part of the irony of this conversation is I know because of the research that I've done and the people that I've spoken to trans people have existed for a very, very, very, very long time. The thing is there are people in your life who, like I said, the goal of many trans people was to disappear and to just exist as their gender. So what did you have? You had people who transitioned, were stealth and people didn't find out the were transgender until they were dead. There have been several stories like that where you hear about these people dying and they go through and they find out that they're trans because they do body scans and things like that. Those stories are way more common than people understand and believe because, again, what transgender people wanted more than anything was to not be seen, was to not be heard, was to be left alone. That's something that's more obtainable in a world that knows less about transgender people. So anyway, it is pretty much one of my core beliefs that trying to prevent transgender people from interacting in the public space is a core, it's really what they're trying to do. It's really why they have the certain rhetoric that they do. It's why they have the approach they do. They're trying to make it so that transgender people just do not exist in public space. Period. Period. If you can't go to the bathroom, if you can't go into the public restroom or you're being forced to go into the public restroom that a outs you, b puts you into a potentially dangerous situation because now there's all this attention being drawn to you because you're a woman in the men's restroom, how would you hold a job? How? How would you go to school? How would you do anything? How would you go to an event? You can't. What's aggravating to me specifically about the bathroom stuff is that I've been using the women's restroom for over 10 years. I've never had a problem. I travel a shitload for work. I've been to the South. I've been to the Midwest. I've been to upstate New York. I've been to Canada. I've been to London. I've been all around the country. And I've never had an issue with the women's restroom. Ever, ever. So to listen to all of these people debate about whether or not it's okay for me to be in the restroom is maddening. It's maddening because this has already been happening and if it was an issue it would have been an issue a while ago. But people like to fear monger. Also, this is gonna sound a little conspiracy theory like, you can read it how you want to, but I'm gonna say it because that's how I firmly feel. Like I said, there's a lot of people who believe that there is just oh my gosh so much acceptance and so much understanding of transgender people because we've got all of these documentaries. We've got these TV shows. There's Caitlin Jenner. There's Laverne Cox. There's all these things. I look at specifically Laverne Cox and Caitlin Jenner and say, I've been observing this for a really long time. Those steps are minor steps. They're great big steps that should not be downplayed or erased or whatever, but they are very, very minor steps. When we've looked at how other groups have progressed, trans people are progressing very, very, very slow. But there's no shortage of documentaries, reality TV shows, things like that that involve transgender people. Now I've known a handful of people who have done these transgender documentaries and I'll just say that more often than not when you see a trans documentary, especially one that's not done by another trans person or done by a person who's really invested in accurately and truthfully telling LGBT stories you're going to get, there's a lot of miss framing of transgender people's experiences, feelings, perspectives and lives because it's just easier to understand to cis to explain transgender people in a way that is inaccurate. Like I've seen documentaries with people who I know who have lived their lives purely as one gender do not have any convoluted, complicated, complex ways of seeing their gender, and I've heard them being described by the narrator as a he or a him, and have them describe them in a way that they're just men doing these things or these beautiful women in Thailand, well they're really all men. That is a cis person's understand of a transgender person. It is not a transgender person's truth or reality. It's not. I'll get into calling trans women men a little bit later. So what's happening is. really effectively what's happening is it's a freak show. You've got these weird transgender people, who people don't really accept or understand and they're being brought out in front of cis people and saying huh, isn't that weird, is that person so fucking strange? That's what's actually happening. That's what's actually happening. If you don't believe me, go to any Barcroft video that features a transgender person. Will you see comment upon comment upon comment upon comment of people saying this person is mentally ill, this person is sick, why are we accepting this, da da da da. Those videos, those documentaries are literally created for that result. You may talk to casting director and they may say we're really interested in truthfully telling these stories and this and this and that, but you know what as somebody who's interactive with people. For example, this is in my mind so I'll just say it, I was recently included in a book anthology of these badass women who are doing these awesome feminist things. I'm very, very thankful for being included. I'm very, very thankful for being considered. I appreciate that. But I actually had to have a conversation with them about what they initially wrote for my write up. Because what they had initially wrote for my write up was describing me as someone who started out as a this, they used my dead name, they used all of this information that was not relevant to anything I do today. I transitioned at 16 years old. I do not have a life of maturing into manhood and having any sort of experience with what it's like to be truly treated as a man in this society. None of it. Not only that, but I don't really have with the exception of the jobs that I told, the two, one that was under the table at the telemarketing job, I don't have this extensive work history as my dead name. I worked for a telemarketing company for three months. So when someone tries to act like my dead name is relevant to anything I do today, it really sort of tells me where they're at. It really sort of tells me where they're coming from. Because at the end of the day what I am to people is a freak show, not an actual person. I am the weird interesting thing that they get what's it called? That you get allied points. You get acception points, whatever. Where they don't truly see or accept me as who I actually am. You guy have to understand that for me personally I have this very strange way of interacting with that particular conversation because like I said before I accepted myself as a woman, people were reading me as a cis woman, people were treating me as a cis woman before I had said to myself I'm a woman. In my life now especially I'm not used to being seen or treated or handled or viewed as anything other than a woman. I don't know, I genuinely don't know what it's like to be seen as anything other than that. I don't know. People have not been able to stop and consider whether or not I deserve to be treated as a woman, they just look at me and assume and they treat me accordingly for mostly worse. It's very aggravating to interact with people who are still trying so hard because they know that I'm transgender to look through my gender and to invalidate everything that is true about my life. Let's get it together and keep it real. I guess we can transition into this point. I know and I think most transgender people know the realities of their life. What is so aggravating to me about some of these conversations is you've got people who will say shit like well you know it's important to acknowledge that you're a male because what about the doctor's office? There's certain medicine that's built to respond to men and women differently and this, this and that. Now I'm not going to get into the long list of reasons why sex is socially constructed. Your fourth grade understanding of sex is not truly what it is. That's an over, oversimplification that gave you a starting point, but it's definitely not even close to the reality of sex classifications. It just isn't. The vast majority of medicine that's made is not formulated to respond differently to men and women. Some are, but the vast majority of it isn't. So to make that distinction all the time is mostly usually quite pointless. But that being said, here's what so aggravating to me about that point, transgender people devote the larger part of their lives to fighting against what their bodies are doing. They take hormones, they have surgeries, they do different things to their bodies, they get pumped. They do a lot of stuff because their body is one way, but they feel or know themselves to be another way. They do a lot of these things to put dysphoria and discomfort aside. Trans people are very aware of their biology. They're very aware of what their body really is. It's always really interesting to hear cis people speak in such a condescending tone when it comes to transgender people being real about their bodies because we know. Why do you think people are taking estrogen. Why do you think people are taking testosterone. They know. We know that our bodies are different than cis people's bodies. On that note, here's what I hear when people say that I'm not a woman, which again, you can say all day I'm still gonna be a woman, but whatever. Here's what I hear. I hear that I'm not cis. I'm not defab. I hear those things. Those things don't really bother me the fact that I wasn't born a certain way doesn't bother me. At a certain point in time it did. At a certain point in time you could tell me that I wasn't a woman and I was a man and this and that it would really get to me and I would make a five minute, not five minute, five hour long response to you to you telling me how I really am, but the reality is that now in 2018 I can't the locate the fuck to give. I can't. I don't care because I know who I am and that's what's also interesting is I think that there's often this reaction that people have to trans people where they just sort of assume transgender people just don't know who they are. They're so confused. Oh you're so confused. Oh you're so confused. Really what it is is you're confused. You don't understand transgender people, so now you have to sort of be now I have to be confused and I have to not know who I am because reasons I guess. Listen, I transitioned at 16, it's been over 10 years, I know myself. I know myself, I'm very content with myself. You know what's so funny, if I didn't have a YouTube channel I wouldn't spend this time even talking to you guys about this stuff because it doesn't matter to me because when I go through my daily life, especially with all of my legal changes done, I don't ever think about this stuff. I don't think about being trans. I don't because it's nothing something that for me personally comes up in my life. People usually assume I'm a cis person and that's just how it is. I don't challenge them on that. So that's my life. So here's my thing with the Trump stuff. If we're being real about it, if we're really looking at this administration and all the things that it's done and all the things that it hasn't done, if we're being real, what the Trump Administration has done time and time and time and time and time again is put in a lot of effort into diminishing the value of certain minority groups. A lot of people who are part of these minority groups believe that if they're just sort of acceptable kind of minority, they're gonna be okay. But in truth, a lot of these anti-immigration things against Mexicans, it is racism against Mexicans. That's why people who are actually citizens are constantly being pulled aside and facing all of these issues with races because of their heritage. That's why that's happening. It's not just this well, you came and did it the right way. Maybe people will make you feel that way, but that's not really what it is. There are people like for Caitlin Jenner to like for a while just believe that she would be accepted by republicans is just so funny. But of course in Caitlin's mind she probably thought well I did it the right way. I did the right way, I look how I look, I got my surgeries like this da da da da, I did it the right way. So of course I can be accepted. But no, the reality is they hate all of us. They hate all of us. To me when you start talking about locating and genetically defining and recording transgender people that's, I don't wanna sound dramatic, but those are the precursors to genocide, those are the precursors to deciding here's where all the trans people are, maybe we should all just go over here, 'cause we don't want them to interact with us in public space. I don't want that to be right, but that's definitely how I'm feeling because there's really no reason truly, there's really no reason truly to take people whose gender markers have been changed, who have been happily living in that way with no bother to anyone and now you know what, we've extended civil rights to people who really didn't necessarily deserve them, let's walk that all back, you're now a male and we genetically tested you to verify that and da da da da. There's no reason to do that other than to terrorize and embarrass transgender people. There just isn't. I don't care how many times people are like well, it's science, it's science, it's science. No, no, no, no, no, no. The only reason why they're doing that is to embarrass transgender people, is to humiliate them, to make them uncomfortable and to it known to the people around them, especially the queer and questioned people around them that you can't be this way in this world. We're no longer going to put up with it. You know and the time is all in. There are some people who say that these laws are a response to pushy transgender people who just won't shut up about their pronouns, just keep pushing it and this and this and that. This is the blow back, there are hashtag only two genders. You know what, to me I hear that and I roll my eyes because I think I know that they know that's not true. Or maybe they do. Because from my observation most transgender people have only ever wanted to be left alone. They've only ever wanted to be left alone. Here you have these people who upon maybe hearing two or three trans activists say hey, respect us are saying we're gonna genetically define you, we're gonna put up a list and we're going to retract the rights that were unfairly or unrightly extended to you under the Obama Administration. Like for me, and I don't know if everyone feels this way 'cause I certainly do, for me that's a very distinct line in the sand. Now I'm almost always willing to give people the leeway to be potentially be better people. I'm almost always willing to give people the leeway to potentially not be completely, terrible trans-phobic pieces of shit. But, for me, that was a fairly clearly defined thing. I don't think you can really get around it at this point. Trump hates trans people. It doesn't matter how many times you bow down to him. Trump hates- well, you know what, he loves people bow down to him so maybe that will change, but why should I have to bow down to a president in order for him to respect me as a human being? You don't have to agree with me, you don't have to like it, but why does the foundation of who I am have to be ripped from under me because you've been disrespected I guess, because you feel disrespected I guess. I think that we have to be very aware of the fragile ego that our president has and not kowtow to it. Because a lot of y'all will not understand it until it's you. A lot of you guys are not gonna see it until it's you. You know what, I think in this situation, I've always been very anti-Trump, but I think in this situation, 'cause I made a post that I think we can call this fascism now. Because initially when I did my fascism video it was kinda really inspired by people calling everything fascism. I don't think every time a right leaning person comes into power it's fascism. However, I do think we are creeping towards that now and it's weird because I didn't necessarily see it with other stuff, but I definitely see it in this. Just the conversation of genetic testing to define. Put it this way, just the idea of genetically testing someone in order to determine what sort of rights they have access to that should make you uncomfortable. That should make you uncomfortable. Which is why I take that to the layer of I believe this is a precursor to a genocide. I don't wanna be dramatic like that, I really don't, but that's how I feel, that's how I feel. I feel that way because I can't, there's no real reason to do it unless it's to embarrass or what was the word I used, it's just to embarrass and disrespect trans people, to dehumanize them. The dehumanization thing is what I really sort of I'm responding to, because one of the things that I've experienced time and time again, especially when it comes to sexual assault, when it comes to a lot of that sort of thing, there are maybe men who, this is just me giving you an example this is something that applies to a lot of situations, there are men who will disrespect me as a woman. As a woman, period. Then when they find out that I'm transgender they realize that they can do anything to me, they can do anything to me and nothing's gonna be done because they know that in the world we live in where every time a trans woman gets killed by a man the story is almost immediately she tricked him, almost immediately they know that people don't respect trans people enough to ever believe that they could be victims of anything. They're always the perpetrator. Like I said, they're always the predator, they're the fooler, they're the trickster, they're the this or the that. So when we live in this society where people don't understand transgender people and hold strongly to this general belief that transgender people are inherently out there to get you it's really excuse terrible things happening to them. We've already seen people excusing how the president treats immigrant children. We've already seen that. It takes part of being able to get to the point of an actual genocide is devoting all of this time and speaking terribly about these people and deframing as the enemies, as the pushy people who are gonna take something away from you and so you can say yes, I do want them all round up into camps. With that being said, here's what I'm gonna need. Because I have so many of these conversations with people on both sides. People are like well, you know, I do respect trans people, I have trans friends, I have this, this and that. On both sides, right. I'm gonna need both of you guys on both sides, cis allies, I'm gonna need you to stand up for this stuff. I made a sass the other day on my Facebook that was like if you're a cis person who is my friend and you're not currently posting about this stuff, you're not currently saying anything about how the Trump Administration is trying to delegitimize transgender people, I don't understand why we're friends. I really don't. 'Cause I'm sitting over here scared. Scared because I put all this time and energy towards working to a point where I could finally survive. Do you guys understand how revolutionary it is for me to be able to be in this place right now with my own shit, being able to take care of myself and not relying on anyone? I have worked incredibly hard to get there. I have worked incredibly fucking hard to get there. I was able to get there because I was able to change my paperwork. I was able to change my documentation, which unfortunately because the world we live in made it a lot easier for me to get a legitimate job, to make some money, to save that money and to be able to purchase something. We can sit there and say that's responding to trans-phobia, that's surviving through capitalism and that's all true and I agree with that, but what I'm saying is I'm in a position now where I've spent the larger portion of my life working towards this point and I'm acknowledging that it can all be taken away from me. All because people don't care about trans people. I'm gonna close out by saying, I need you to get out there. I need you to get out there. I need you to vote. I need you to be politically aware and I need you to not feel like you shouldn't speak up. I'm so happy that I have any amazing collection of LGBTQIA plus friends, people who are not in the community at all, that are allies, that are all trying to fight and support this issue because frankly it's what we need to do. Because trust me, they can come for us now because we're easy target. They're gonna come for you too. I don't think you should sit there. I'm not trying to scare people. I'm really not, but I'm sort of seeing the way that things are falling in line, which is why I've been sort of spending a lot of time and reshaping in the way that I feel about certain things because frankly I'm seeing some scary stuff and I'm trying not to feel paranoid, but I'm seeing it y'all, I'm seeing it. First it's a DNA registry, then it's a let's pull all these people on a fucking boat. I don't want to get there and I know that we can fight against getting there if we're more politically involved than we actually are right now. So anyway, I wanted to just come to you guys and share all my feelings and emotions about it because it's making me feel a certain way. I'm about to go get dressed up for a Halloween party, that's why I have this hair on. I'm being Poison Ivy. But I'm trying to escape, but it's on my mind. It's on my mind because I'm in a really happy place in life right now while the world is collapsing around me and I don't like that that's where we're at, I don't. The optimist in me knows that we don't have to end there, knows that we can actually get to a better place, but we need to be actually be engaged and work towards this in order for that to actually happen. Hopefully, this video made you think or whatever. Let me know how you feel. If you're a trans person I would love to hear how you're responding to this stuff because I think those conversations need to be had, and for those people who are maybe on the fence about the transgender issue I think they maybe need to hear it from a trans person to get it. So share what you have to say, I'd really appreciate it. Again, I don't know how long this video is, but I think it's over an hour. For every minute of a video that I do that is how much it costs for me to caption the video, so I would really, really, really appreciate it if you guys supported me on my Patreon. Currently, right now if you support me for more than $5 on my Patreon account, you can get access to the videos that I'm going to be making that are going to be posted next year. I'm working on them right now, one should be up soon. So yeah. Anyway, I'm gonna go. Again, let me know if you like these types of videos. I kinda wanna do them when it comes to starting to talk about personal stuff like this and sort of stick to my style of stuff when I'm doing my more educational things or whatever. Let me know what you think about this. I'm going to go, I'm going to get ready. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye.