Birthright Evolution
By: Kira Wertz
Tags: Life Lessons, Civil Rights, Life, Transgender, LGBTQ

Birthright Evolution

No One Would Choose This Life

When I was less than 6 years old I had already realized I shouldn’t have been a boy.

I spent years praying that God would “fix me…”

They didn’t.

I eventually went through a male adolescence whilst praying that the new testosterone in my veins would align my brain with by body…

It didn’t.

I continued to live a life that had been dictated on the day of my birth by a physician who made a cursory examination of my genitals and determined who I was.

Living that falsehood meant a lifetime of hiding and shame. It meant self-destruction, addictions, suicide attempts, and a failed marriage. It meant creating an emotional damage path wider than those left by the greatest of Oklahoma’s twisters.

I always had a choice… Admit it, and become the person I know I am. Or continue the destruction until I am gone and countless other lives are altered or irrevocably damaged as a result of the lie I was living.

I did not transition because it’s trendy.

I did not transition to be a fetish.

I did not transition to be deceptive.

I transitioned to be honest…

As a child I knew exactly why I needed to hide who I was. I didn’t have language for what I was because any — and all — depictions of people like me were framed in the most horrific of lights. We were painted as pathetic caricatures of “men” who put on women’s clothing for some kind of thrill. We were cast as something subhuman; some’thing’ relegated to street work. A person many secretly seek, but one who is belittled, dehumanized, assaulted, or even murdered when association becomes inconvenient.

At one of the worst peaks in my alcoholism, I turned to face this identity. I admitted this long held secret and I began a journey that most cannot fathom.

Taking this trip meant fear at every turn…

Would my family abandon me? Would my employer fire me? Would I lose my home? Or would I ultimately become the very stereotype that the media portrays Trans people to be? The latter of which tends to be the direct result of one or all previously noted concerns coalescing to pressure the individual into public debasement for mere subsistence. It’s society’s rigged game designed to prevent us from having anything close to an ideal existence; a not-so-subtle penance issued to us by the “God Fearing” for daring to be true to ourselves.

The only choice I made when I decided to stop living that lie was the choice to live. It’s the same choice that millions of others have already made; the same choice that someone, somewhere, is making right now!

We’ve weighed all the horrific negatives that society has reinforced over millennia of gender oppression, and we decide that a life lived as who we know ourselves to be is still greater than a life dictated by a marker etched on a birth certificate.

I am not male… And I never was!

God did not “fix me” because I was never broken to begin with. This is simply who I am.

Today, in spite of all the strife, negativity, and depression that rolls parallel with many a transition; I am more content with myself than I have ever been before.

Understand that I turned to face my darkest secret, and with that behind me, the only thing that scares me now are those who see that fact as a threat.

I did not choose this, and I say to you now, NO ONE EVER WOULD; THIS is precisely why…

Those are just a few targeted assaults and murders against individuals who identify as Transgender within just this last year. By in large the victims tend to be Transgender Women, and more often than not they are among another minority group which only increases one’s likelihood of being a victim of a hate crime.

And so it must be asked…

Who would choose this existence?

The fact that myself — and millions of others — have taken this path when there is this much horrific and unmitigated violence directed towards us, is proof that the alternative was even more devastating than the societal consequences associated with transition.

Simply put; we are who we are, and we become who we know ourselves to be.

It’s Birthright Evolution.