I think everyone can relate to hearing the phrase “the new normal” far too many times since the pandemic started. I’m no exception to that – my mom and I joke about the phrase and how we wish people would stop using it.
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I just started my career as a financial advisor by joining a team at Northwestern Mutual. I am the only trans person in the entire office, and most of the employees are cishet white men. I knew I’d be a trailblazer, but it didn’t occur to me what that would feel like in practice. I didn’t know how it would feel to be drunkenly confronted with a coworker who believed in the disease of transgenderism. I didn’t know how it would feel to be told by the diversity and inclusion presenter that gender is created by God.
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A few weeks ago, two mass shootings rattled cities across the nation in less than 24 hours. One in Dayton, Ohio, and the other in El Paso, Texas. I wrote this and submitted it to Cincinnati.com as an Op-Ed and never heard back, so I decided to independently publish it here.
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LGBTQ people are legally allowed to be fired or not be hired because of their identity. They are allowed to be kicked out of housing due to their identity. They often turn to sex work and remain homeless, making them more at risk to violence due to living on the streets. “Gay Panic” is still a valid court defense.
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Since early December I’ve been applying for summer jobs. I’m trying to find a more corporate job where I can learn the applicable side of sales and marketing to bring back to my social entrepreneurship. But this job search has been really different from the last few in a couple of ways.
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One week ago, I was elected president of the SAEPi Kappa Colony. As far as I know I am not only the first openly trans Chapter President within SAEPi, but across all of UC Campus I am the first openly trans and non-binary Greek Life Chapter President, and possibly in the entire country.
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Failure is healthy. It’s necessary to grow and learn. A professor of mine taught me resiliency, and I forgot it this semester. She taught me to “fail hard, and fail fast”. If you are constantly wallowing in the things you didn’t get, you’ll never be able to do better.
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Part of Women in Leadership and Learning is a discussion about how we came to be feminists, and how our activist journey developed. My first talk, I spoke on Judaism and social justice, and how that taught me what feminism was. This year, I decided to take a different route and talk about my journey with gender.
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Sometimes the best people reach out to say, “I don’t have your intersections of identity, but I’m sorry this is happening. I want to let you know that I love you.” That happened to me a few times this week with people that I know genuinely care. Those individual acts of solidarity remind me of the goodness that is in each and every one of us fighting for justice and peace in this world.
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Last Sunday, every transgender person in America woke up to the news that the current officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (under the Trump Administration) are rewriting existing definitions of gender to exclusively define it as either male or female, defined at birth by genitalia and never able to change over the course of a person’s life.
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Bloomberg Law recently reported that 16 states want the Supreme Court to limit workplace rights for transgender workers. These states want companies to be able to fire or not hire workers based on gender identity and want the Supreme Court to rule that doing so is legal and does not violate federal workplace discrimination law.
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You have to sell yourself and the things you care about to get other people to invest in you. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. These two things are basic business practices and need to be a strong part of the campaign if Democrats have any chances of flipping deep Republican seats.
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Another trans person was killed last month in Orlando, Florida. Her name was Sasha Garden. She was the 16th trans person killed so far this year, 15 of whom were trans women.
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There’s this scientific concept where some things are too large or too horrible for a brain to fully comprehend. I first heard this in conjunction with the brain teaser that a piece of paper folded 42 times will reach the moon. Our brains can’t actually process that data. It can’t imagine a piece of paper being folded ever getting that tall. I imagine a piece of paper reaching the moon every time I think about this administration.
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Cultural sensitivity is wildly different in other countries than it is in the United States. That phrase something I had been told many different times but didn’t really understand what it meant until my literature professor in Spain stood in front of me, pointed at me, and told me that Nazi’s think of Jewish people as rats.
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My experience with anxiety was one of my biggest fears when I decided to study abroad (I know; anxiety and fear? No way!), but I insisted that I wanted to do it anyway and possibly learn how to deal with mental illness on my own/with love and help from friends.
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When I was anticipating coming to Spain, one of the things that excited me the most was the prospect of learning about the politics of Spain, particularly as it relates to Catalan fights for independence that have been headlining the news the past few months.
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Last night I had a flashback. It's a rare occurrence, but they fuck with me for a long time when I do. I wrote this as I tried to calm down. I'm happy with how it turned out, and I'm glad that I could create something beautiful out of such a lonely and scary feeling.
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On November 8th I reached out to my good friend, David Bulova regarding the recent Virginia election. I was so inspired and motivated by Danica Roem’s victory that I wanted to pull some strings in my circle and see if there was any possibility of meeting her.
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