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| A few of the places Lily and I have visited |
It was a little over 4 years ago, when I was in the process of transitioning, I was at a support group. It was the very first week of March 2015. There had already been several transgender suicides and several transgender murders. We were brainstorming to see if there was anything we could do to somehow improve the situation. The only thing anyone could come up with was: people need to see and be around more trans people. See that we are just people and we aren't trying to do anything nefarious.
I ended up taking that to heart. I dress for me, but it turned out the way I normally dress makes me stand out. I like to wear nice dresses or skirts and I almost always wear high heels every day. Several of my friends have said that I dress "to the 9's". Which is good because that makes me stand out and get noticed. I can't even count the number of people, strangers that have complimented me on how I dress.
I try to be friendly with everybody and interact one-on-one with people. It has worked out amazing for me, it is absolutely how much love I feel from people. It has been 180 degrees opposite from how I feared people would react to me. I feel like I can say there are hundreds of people that love me.
I make every effort to avoid drive-ups whenever possible. I make every effort to go inside banks, credit unions, fast food places, etc. and do my business. When you are doing whatever through a car window, you generally interact with one or maybe two people. Plus they only see a smaller portion of you, I.E. what you see through a car window. I believe it is far better to go into the business, the odds are good that more employees see me and possibly interact with me. And all the other customers inside the business can see me.
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| When Lily and I went to the Women's March in Las Vegas in 2018 |
One of the privileges MS gave me was having ADA plates on Lily, so I had access to the nice parking spaces. I tried, whenever possible to park Lily in the parking spaces (ADA or not) with the best visibility from the entrance to and, more importantly, exit from the business. I wanted the people exiting the office, business, parking garage, whatever to see her.
When driving Lily around, I always tried to optimize the number of people in other vehicles she was visible to. On surface streets with multiple lanes in both directions (for example 700 East in Salt Lake City) I drove as much as possible in the leftmost lane. That way there weren't other cars obscuring us and as many people as possible going in the opposite direction could see us.
The freeway is more tricky, it's really not a good practice to stay in the left lane, plus it's often isolated from the opposite traffic by barriers, etcetera anyway. So my ploy on longer trips, for example on the way back home from the Women's March in Las Vegas was to stay in the right lane as much as possible and drive somewhat below the speed limit. Lily's engine was not that happy for the trip home anyway, the engine felt like it was missing on one cylinder anyway. So I drove more like 65 MPH on the way home and that way the vast majority of traffic passed us on the left and was able to see the Pride Flag.
#TransVisibility
#TransIsBeautiful
So I have tried to write a book on being visible. And I feel like I can say that I have changed, at least, my little corner of the world.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekrzLtCKMJg
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBJRAIO119Q
YouTube (Vevo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1d4r9awjKE
