Continued fromPAGE Page41 44. CONTINUED FROM cause their self-esteem, their confidence, and their vitality, fails them in light of all the negativities that surround them. It’s not the disgustingly abusive world that the media paints of us. I ask myself, how someone can judge me, before they even knows me. I understand this though, because for so long I was hated by people before they even knew me. Being transgender, like being gay or lesbian, is not a choice. What is a choice is accepting it for a fact. What is a choice is if you — at some point in life —decide to not live a masked life, under the guise of a straight, or asexual person like I did, and restrain yourself, from everything that you know you are from the core of your being. It is very hard living your life through other people’s eyes; trying hard to make them happy while you restrain yourself from who you are, or even demonize your actual being because of their negativities. It’s a strange reality that I can loosely liken to solitude in a crowd, for even though there were so many people around me, none of them knew me for who I was — for I deliberately concealed a part of me that I considered a flaw to my being. At some point though, I realized, just like everyone does in life, that I could not live entirely on other people’s perceptions of who I was, battling to make other people happy at my own life’s expense. For we all have but one life to live. I came to the realization that I alone knew better who I was, and that I had a rare opportunity to let people know who I was, and not let them tell me who I was. It had been a sad existence, but not quite living, of living a lie, trying to convince myself —and ultimately others — what I was, what I wasn’t, and I was determined to end that cycle. As a transgender person, I envision a utopia of gender neutrality, where all the genders in all their entireties are able to coexist together, and live in utter harmony and mutual respect of one another. So that, if not to accept, they might tolerate each other, just like we have tried to do as people of different tribes, colors, religions, value systems and races; it’s the measure of our maturity as a civilization. I believe then, that in the same regard that all diver-
sities — racial, tribal, religious, sexual, and gender alike — instead of being criminalized and demonized, should be celebrated and empowered, so that rather than to condemn a sect of a few people to social redundancy, all the HUMAN RESOURCES that Uganda boasts of can be fully tapped. Let’s not then condemn ourselves, so that when people in the future look back at us, they will do so, just like we do at our ancestors, and exclaim how inhuman and selfish they were to disregard the existence of a few people because of their color and race. Gender diversity and sexual orientation is no premise to crucify someone, just because you do not agree with how someone dresses, what they act like, or who they sleep with. What then, I ask myself, are we teaching the future GENERATIONS? Morality even at the expense of life? Morality in the eyes of a few self-righteous people? That all people aren’t the same, if they are different? That it is okay to be selfish? But being transgender — as much as it is my gender identity — does not holistically define who I am. As people, like facets of a gem, we are complex in our ambitions and aspirations. We are unique in our personalities, talents, and value systems. It is these things in their entirety, but none of them in unison of others that defines us. The BINARY reductionist paradigm of looking at life as being either black or white — rather than as a continuum of several shades — fails to address the issues of life as it is. I am only different because I am transgender, but other than that, I am human, with red blood coursing through my veins just like you, with family and friends that care for me deeply, with personal sentiments and feeling like you do. I cry and laugh like you do, but I cannot be reduced and labeled as transgender, as an item on a supermarket stall, because that’s not all I am. As a person, I am more than that. Being transgender and having been rejected most of my life has taught me serenity in the storm. It has taught me perseverance, even when the storm wails CONTINUED TO on NEXT PAGE Continued Page 46.
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