Trans Women are Women

Full stop

My first introduction to trans people was way back in the 1990s. My best friend since the fourth grade had just come out of the closet, and I started accompanying him to gay night clubs in Kansas City. (Yes, Kansas City has a gay scene.) I quickly learned that in gay night clubs, the women’s bathroom is for cis-women, fem-leaning gay dudes, drag queens and trans women, while the men’s bathroom is for more butch gay guys and bathroom sex. My gay best friend would accompany me to the women’s bathroom so we could chat while in line.

Despite conservatives’ assertions that trans women are male rapists to who dress like women to creep in bathrooms, I quickly learned trans women are women. While waiting to pee, we’d talk about makeup and clothes and hair and shoes, just like cis-women do. Just like me, they prefered to use a bathroom stall to pee, despite the fact many of them probably hadn’t had bottom surgery. Why? Because they’re women and that’s what women do.

Not one trans woman has ever groped me, touched me without my permission or said anything inappropriate to me. I also learned trans women put up with all the same bullshit cis-women do, including discrimination, poor treatment, rape, and even death at the hands of cis-men.

I have been groped and grabbed and sexually harassed by cis-men many times throughout my…