Dysphoria, what does it feel like?
They sigh, trying to find a single sentence for years of caged silence.
Identity: Female
Stuck in the wrong way
To me it’s a sense of nothing will ever be right
The feeling of being in extreme danger
Like you’re about to die
Identity: Male
All I can say is
This isn’t me
The feeling is a long and windy explanation of
Disassociation
There are things about me that I don’t associate with myself
And it’s weird and confusing
When I become aware of them
Identity: ****. A drag queen? Trans fluid.
Dysphoria...
It's a lot like,
Anger,
Betrayal,
An itch
Like a really itchy sweater,
You can’t take it off
And the longer you have to wear it the worse it gets
You start to hate yourself because
You’re the one that put the sweater on in the first place
They say we are ill
Broken
“******”
“***”
“Butch”
It’s not correct
When they say it’s their right to say those
That’s when I get mad
If there is no way to make the mind conform to the body
You must make the body conform to the mind
If they think it’s their right to tell other people that their identity is wrong,
Then they are ill and broken
They have no f**king clue
And I know,
I can’t tell them they’re wrong
Without telling them why
But I realize
Explaining this is futile
With closed minded people
Bathrooms need to change, Health care needs to change, Identification needs to change
People are forced to “pick one”
Trans-phobia shouldn’t be tolerated
Mental health care shouldn’t be because it’s a “defect”
Social pressure, Internalized oppression, Abuse,
Shouldn’t
Be
Tolerated
Politicians have got it the wrong way around
One in two transgender persons have experienced ****** assault
One. In. Two.
They say, “We don’t want men undercover spying on our women and children”
You think they are in there to spy or ****?
Name more than two cases in the last 25 years
Where a transgender person has sexually abused a woman in the ladies bathroom
You can’t
But give me five minutes, and I can come up with five to eight names of transgender people
That have been assaulted in bathrooms since 2019 started
But our Pride cannot be destroyed
It’s our strength
A feeling of belonging
A belief that we can change this
We are not alone.
We Are Not Alone.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
This is a poem written from the words of transgender people in my school. It is written for all who don’t understand who we are and all who wish to be understood. Please listen.