Invade my Privacy Why Don’t you!

I have wanted to express myself for the longest,
I’m talking about the expectations you place on all of us as transgender people.
Your sense of entitlement to information regarding who we are without considering our level of comfort or privacy, continue to boil my blood
Your endless enquiries, posing as “Innocent Questions”, revolving around the nature of our bodies
As if we owe you our private intimate details, while you further sensationalize our existence

I repeat -we are not your entertainment
Just because we are Trans does not mean that we owe you a blueprint of what our lives have been and are going to be.
I repeat- we are more than our bodies or our transitions
This makes me believe that you view us as nothing but objects
Forgetting that we too, are people with real issues that affect our everyday lives

Yet, the reality has become that Trans people are constantly blasted with “Innocent Questions” expected to educate by virtue of being Trans

But to be honest this, this becomes so draining to have to explain our lives repeatedly
Have you not heard of google? Trying to understand our existence before invading my privacy is far more rewarding to us all in the end
Why must we continue to feel like our identity is an inconvenience or burden?
Why must we constantly apologize for who we are or make excuses?

We don’t have to apologize for being honest about our identity;
We don’t have to apologize because you find my identity difficult or unfamiliar.
We don’t have to say sorry for existing as being who we are is challenging enough. I owe nobody justification for the choices I have made when it comes to my body or my gender.

Truth of the matter remains that your entitlement erases OUR Humanity and continues to portray Trans people as objects or props before you can even view us as autonomous human beings.

16 April 2018

20h22

Linda RM Baumann

His face is crafted in my memory

His face is crafted in my memory

The round shaped and chubby physical features strain my brain as I strive to wipe it out of my mind – but I can’t, it just does not want to go away

When I wake up every morning, I make sure I am well dressed and look as elegant as ever but yet what is behind this look and deep inside me is a storm of emotions that keeps coiling within as I have been warned to never speak out about it

I feel sick, violated and worthless and still I must keep quiet. I feel cheap and degraded but I cannot speak

Holding on to this gag placed on my mouth by preconditions ruled by the thoughts and stares of a world so sick has made my days unbearable. Silently, at the back of my mind I sit and hope that the person he is haunts him for eternity.

I try to lace my body with perfume hoping to mask your scent that seems to be near all my favourite places. Then I find myself blasting music to drown out the melody of your voice and to kill the tone of your aggression.

The scars you left on my body, now remain a constant reminder of the torture and agony you put me through.

I hope you never forget what you did to me… that it may come for you in the middle of the night when you least expect it- your conscience that is- as you replay my screams until you cannot be sane anymore.

By: Linda RM Baumann

08 April 2018

21h56