Do you say like people are kind of like an alphabet soup?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's difficult to say, yeah, people are kind of like an alphabet
soup.
So many different adjectives you can use to describe ourselves.
My name is Ashley Hope.
I'm a transgender woman.
I'm 24 years old and let's see, there's a whole bunch of other adjectives I can use
to describe myself.
I'm a website programmer, I'm an advocate, I'm an activist, I'm a peacekeeper.
These are all just different adjectives that can describe parts of my life and it's all
of these parts together that make up the whole that is me.
I'm transgender and that's basically somebody who is born where their body doesn't match
their gender identity.
So they feel the need that because there's an incongruity between their image of themselves
in their head and what their body actually is, there can be a lot of distress and trauma
and there's a whole lot of terrible statistics we can talk about with transgender people.
They're one of the lesser understood minority of the minority of the minority kind of groups.
When I was just starting out, I always had a feeling that I was feminine from when I
was a little kid, but there was never words for it.
I mean, I can see on Jerry Springer there were some transactuals throwing high heels
at each other, but that wasn't real people, that was just TV, that was not real.
So there were never words to describe what I was feeling.
And then I found the words, I found the label transgender and it was completely life changing
because it was like, wow, there are other people who feel like I feel.
There are other people who have dealt with the things that I'm dealing with.
I'm not this crazy psycho person off on a tangent.
There's other people who know what I'm going through.
So that label actually empowered me because it showed me I was part of something bigger.
A lot of people will look at one part of the identity and form their entire basis of opinion
off of that one part.
So they look at me as a transgender woman and that defines everything that there is
about me, but there obviously is a lot more about me and a lot more to me and that's true
for all people.
We're all very unique and we have different qualities and we can describe each other and
ourselves in different labels, but they're just labels.
And it's about who we are and what we do and how we live our lives that define more about
who we are.
A lot of people have said things like you're not a real woman or you're less of a woman
than somebody who was born a woman.
And that led me to question, you know, why do they think this?
What is it that I don't have that makes me less of a woman than a cisgendered woman?
The first and most obvious answer that people give me is, well, you don't have a vagina
so you're not a woman.
I think that's kind of absurd because in about $20,000 to $30,000, I'll have a vagina
and it will be functioning and working.
So if it's just the vagina, that's just a matter of money.
Then other people say it's the fact that you can't bear children.
I know a lot of women who were born women who cannot ever bear children for medical
reasons, for personal reasons or for spiritual reasons.
So it cannot be this factor of to be a woman, you can give birth.
Some people say things like it's secondary sex characteristics and whatever way shape
or form they say that, breasts or soft skin or the tone of your voice, the way you speak,
all of these things that I have through hormones and through just educating myself acquired.
So that can't be the defining characteristic of why I am not as much a woman as somebody
else.
There's a whole bunch of different excuses or reasons that people try to use but it comes
down to how do you really say what is a woman and what isn't a woman?
How can you say that somebody who was born in the female body is more of a woman than
somebody who was born in the male body if they present and look female like I do?
For me, my answer to that question would be it's the shared experience that we have.
It's waking up in the morning and thinking about what am I going to wear and what impression
is that going to make or how do I address the situation and what I'm wearing.
We're just saying we'll screw that and putting on a t-shirt because you feel like it anyways.
It's walking down the street and seeing people looking at you in that certain way that a
lot of men look at women.
It's walking into somebody and them calling you sweetheart and you have to decide whether
is this creepy or is this just, oh no, he's just being a jolly old man, whatever, that's
okay.
It's navigating in a workplace where you have to prove that you are actually there as a
serious worker whereas your male counterpart can just come in and already have that assumption
made.
It's getting to the top of the executive chain and everybody saying, oh, did she sleep her
way to get up there or something like that.
These things that all women endure regardless of what it is, that, to me, is what makes
you a woman.
It's the fact that all of us have this shared experience of living in a world that is misogynistic.
That's just our culture and all of us as women have this shared experience of living in this
misogynistic culture and that gives us something that defines us as separate from men and that's
something that I share.
That's something that for the past, at least the past year, I've lived every single day.
There can be a beautiful woman walking down the street and there are certain physical
characteristics that I would describe to beautiful.
They don't quite match up to cultural norms but I think the bigger sort of beauty is the
inner beauty that a lot of people have.
I found it's people who have had to endure discrimination or who have had to endure something
in their life that has made them stronger and that gives them a sort of inner beauty,
especially when they want to make sure that other people don't have to endure what they
have endured.
This sort of compassion, this caring, that's what makes somebody a truly beautiful and amazing
person.
It doesn't really have to do with exterior physical characteristics, I'd say that a beautiful
person is somebody who really cares and is compassionate about other people.
There's a very famous quote out there and I'm just, it gets better, it gets better.
The first part of transition is always very, very, very difficult because you're breaking
that outward physical binary of there are two sexes and it kind of sucks that you're
tossed right into that when you're starting transition.
It's the hardest part in some respects but it gets better.
Just know that every day more people support us, more people are accepting of us and more
people are understanding of us.
So even if it's hard just know that it'll get better in the future and stay true to
yourself and be who you are.
Don't let anybody tell you other lies.
