Trans Tribulations: Fleeing Florida
Y’all, I had a weird fucking week.
The Advocate (the queer journalists, not the Louisiana ones) ran a profile of me. It was about being a trans teacher in Florida, and how I just can’t keep doing it. I only got interviewed because they saw my GoFundMe, but they did, so all of a sudden I’m getting interviewed by a national news outlet.
I don’t know what the numbers on that story looked like in the grand scheme of things, but enough people saw it to change my life. Because the thing about Florida education laws is that I was effectively closeted against my will. On the clock, I couldn’t self-advocate for my preferred pronouns at all, and to be safe I needed to avoid talking about being trans in almost all situations at work. Non-compliance meant losing my job and my teaching certificate. And I abided by those draconian, awful measures, for YEARS.
Now people know anyway.
And on the one hand, that’s good! I want to be out, I never wanted to hide who I was. But coworkers and current students and former students and parents of students and old friends and old acquaintances saw this story, and for each of them that saw the story, I will never get the chance to come out on my terms. My coming out to those people has become political, not personal, and I can’t help feeling like I’ve been robbed. Not by Christopher Wiggins, who wrote a great article. But by the fascists in Tallahassee who put me in this situation in the first place. I gave up something in going public with my story, and I suspect I’m just starting to see the full shape of what it was.
The other big thing was that it drove donations to my fundraiser. As I type this, it’s raised a little over $9000, which is legitimately life-changing money for me. Lilly Wachowski donated $5000 by herself (When I found that out, I had to go lie down for a while). Regardless, my wife and I can actually afford to get out of Florida and move to Maryland like we wanted. We were working towards that, but now it’s actually real, so I should be happy about that at least, yeah?
But I’m not happy, at least not entirely. Because like…why do I get to be the lucky one? There are so many other girls (and guys, and enbies) that are just as worthy, if not more so. Probably a fair amount better suited to speak on behalf of an oppressed group. Why me? I’m a good teacher for sure, but it’s not like I’m particularly good at messaging. My most prominent social media post in the past year was about how I thought Ghost of Yotei needed more sapphic smooching. I’m nobody special, just an unserious goofball who was in the right place and the right time.
I believe that everyone is worthy of freedom and dignity, and so I think everyone is deserving of support that will help them actualize those things. But I don’t feel worthy of this.
Maybe it’s something akin to survivor’s guilt. I don’t know. But I do know that now I feel like I have to do something with this chance. I don’t want to just escape and live a quiet little life with my love. I want to escape and then make the world better for all the people who didn’t get lucky like me. I want to make it better for all the queer kids at my school who are about to lose another supportive teacher. I want to make it better for everyone feeling isolated because of government hate.
Because I didn’t deserve to get lucky and get to be the one special girl who gets out. I deserved to have my home state, the state that I love, treat me like a person. And so does everybody else.
But if you read this, find some other trans folks in Florida, and give what you can. Things are bad, and getting worse. They deserve the same chance I’m getting.