Editor’s note: In honor of June being LGBTQ+ pride month, here is a poem by Sadie Mae, a working-class transsexual lesbian from Oklahoma. Her pronouns are she/her/hers. She lives in Chicago with her girlfriend and their two cats.
A pair of shears lay broken at my feet
I stooped to collect fallen strands to spin
Into gold poured molten into my wounds
The pain was like rebirth
Her fingers trace my seams, now resplendent
Tendrils or a tunnel system dug out by holy ants
“There was never anything wrong with you.”
There was never anything wrong with any of us
In fecund and fragrant garden-forests hogs
Who were destined for butcher blocks
Root for truffles unmolested by hunters
None of us, in fact, are hunted any longer
Now we grow wild together where once our branches
Would have been pruned with those life-denying tools:
The scalpel, the scissor, the orbitoclast, the law,
The roofie, the ring, the diet pill, the gun
But we melted them all down in the fires of rage
Boiling the sour bile in our bellies at everything taken
Everything severed, robbed and seized
And cast them into hammers and beams
With these new tools, we labored as one
To rebuild the fractured and poisoned earth
And tore up the roots that strangled us
The pain was like rebirth
Despite the dramatic progress of the transgender movement in the last decade, resulting in greater public awareness and significant legal victories, trans people continue to face blatant discrimination, high levels of violence, and poor health outcomes.
- Violence Against Trans People– Trans people experience violence at rates far greater than the average person. Over a majority (54%) of trans people have experienced some form of intimate partner violence, 47% have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime, and nearly one in ten were physically assaulted between 2014 and 2015.
- Lack of Healthcare Coverage– An HRC Foundation analysis found that 22% of trans people and 32% of trans people of color have no health insurance coverage. More than one-quarter (29%) of trans adults have been refused health care by a doctor or provider because of their gender identity.
- Stigma, Harassment and Discrimination – About half a decade ago, only one-quarter of people in the United States supported trans rights, and support increased to 62% by the year 2019. Despite this progress, the trans community still faces considerable stigma due to more than a century of being characterized as mentally ill, socially deviant, and sexually predatory.
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Dear Sadie Mae,
Thank you for your courage. I know it’s a difficult journey, but your not alone. count on me.
Sadie, I found this with my therapist when discussing the parallels between Kintsugi and Transition. Thank you for both putting it into words, and providing hope.