The voice of each trans person is important

Reflections by Shannon Tl Kearns published on his website (United States), freely translated by Virginia Campolongo

"Your voice is important". It can start with discretion, a small interruption every time you speak. Someone who interrupts your speech with the sentence "Yes, but when I ...", or can start with less discretion, renounce after renunciation to be able to receive approvals (despite this has led groups to take permission to tell the stories of your community), renounces after renunciation to receive support of any kind.

Share your story in front of a coffee or on a stage, but it is ignored. Telling what it means to be trans and you realize how Christians are, in fact, the only group in this nation to be reduced to silence (it is pure truth).

Then you start having the feeling that your voice does not matter. That does not matter how many times you put your soul bare or show your heart, there will always be someone who will refuse to listen to you (or worse, who use your own story against you).

So you start writing less. To be more taciturn, not to speak just anymore, to no longer express your opinion during a conversation. Let them silence you. Feel that perhaps they are right and that therefore you have no importance.

You make back. You start not being able to get up from the bed. I retire from the world.

But there is still something that prevents you from surrendering you, who suggests that your voice still count something.

Then go to the internet and notice how much the number of young trans who are not accepted by the parents are increasing, who do not find a positive image of themselves in the means of communication, which attend schools where they are not respected.

And then you realize that you don't speak only for yourself, that the question has never concerned you, but they. That you can make the world better for them, to save them all that pain you had to suffer.

You understand that everything you should do is get up again, to go on you again and make you feel again.

And then you do it. Because your voice is important. Because those young people are important. Because the world can be better and it will be.

Will have to be. Made heard.

Original text: Your Voice Matters