before I was myself

The answer is, I suppose, I would give him a family. With one parent or two. Or three or four. As long as he felt safe and loved and secure. As long as he wasn't left alone. I'd make sure he knew how precious and valuable he was, even when he wasn't performing. I'd let him know that his worth was himself, no matter what he did or didn't do. I would kiss his cheeks a million times so he'd know he was immeasurably loved.

I would give him a baseball glove and teach him to throw and to catch. And if I could afford it, I'd put him in Little League, but even if I couldn't, it would be okay. Because he'd never have to put on that dress and those heels and learn to walk across the stage smiling and waving gracefully. He would never cry over sequins or velvet. His hobbies would be his choice.

I would give him a haircut. However he wanted it. Because his head is his own and he shouldn't have to see a stranger in the mirror. It would never be a "compromise" with the back kept long for braids and bows and curls, never a "compromise" that keeps only one person happy unless that one person was him. He wouldn't have to bury his preferences about his own appearance.

I would give him my ears and my attention. I wouldn't snap at him or judge him for feeling the things he felt or for seeking help when the feelings got too big for a little kid to handle. I would trust that he knew his own mind. I would protect him and hold him close and never send him away when things got hard.

I would give him the world. And it wouldn't be perfect because nothing ever is, but it would be good. He deserved good things.

When I was a little older, I was a majorette and I was in a lot of beauty pageants, so I had to wear a lot of makeup. But I was also the great-grandchild of Appalachian New Deal workers, the grandchild of an orchard farmer, a trailer park kid. I wasn't wearing high-quality makeup. I wasn't even wearing Walmart makeup. I was wearing 1970s Avon samples from my great grandmother's camper. And this is what it looked like.

I have a lot of bitter feelings and resentment about my upbringing. But, in the wise words of Cavetown, hating on a kid doesn't serve me anymore. When I think about it in this context, I don't see a trans boy forced to do feminine things. I see a poor kid being given the chance to feel fancy. It was misguided. They didn't really listen to my needs. But they were doing what they thought best because they were giving me what they wish they'd have had. I didn't know until much later that that's not what makeup usually looked like. I didn't know I was a poor kid. And as much as it wasn't what I really wanted, I did, in fact, feel fancy opening these tiny little lipsticks, precious for their scarcity, and using them to paint the mask that helped me survive.

Years ago, I heard about the Christian fervor over the His Dark Materials books. I laughed and called it silly, but there was a part of me that bought it completely. There was a part of me that thought I'd go to hell if I read these books because all the Christian bloggers and pastors and vloggers were speaking a language I had known since my youth. There was a part of me that thought I'd be inviting negativity into my life if I read them because I'd witnessed a woman in my church struggle with infertility and have it attributed to her enjoyment of Harry Potter by other church members. Evangelicalism reduces religion to buzzwords and red flags, to hatred and anger, and beneath all of that is a staggering amount of superstition and fear. I laughed at the articles and the outrage, but there was no way I was touching those books.

A few years later, I found the trilogy at a yard sale. In a moment of boldness, I bought them. I was still the same kid who kept Goosebumps under his mattress, who hid Stephen King in a drawer under palettes of pageant makeup. I grew up afraid, but I also grew up sneaky. Guess what, grandma? I'm an adult, and I can buy the scary atheist books if I want to.

I still didn't read them, though. In a move that should surprise exactly no one, I hid them. I hid them, never acknowledging that I'd done it. I knew that I had them. I knew where they were. But I still wasn't touching those books.

Today, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw a post in a book group asking for recommendations for a series to gift to a child, and someone in the comments mentioned these books. And something in me just said it's time to stop hiding those. I've been hiding things all my life, and I don't want to hide anymore. So this is how I'm finishing 2022. I'm reading this kids' book series that I never dared to read, that my grandma would have hated. And I'm announcing that just because I think that I should. It's my job to advocate for my inner child in a way that I couldn't when I was that child. I'm wrapping up the year of reading with a restorative experience for him.

When I was a child, no one in my family would talk to me about sex, consent, or even puberty, even when I asked direct questions. I felt like it was a deeply shameful topic because of that and hid a SA by a family friend and some other legitimate medical issues from my parents. The only thing I had ever known was that it's not ever appropriate to talk about these things. I hate to think how much worse it would have been for me if I hadn't learned anything at school either. While I still thought it was shameful, at least I knew what was going on.

I knew that I was queer from a young age but I had no words for that. Not from school, not from TV or books, not from anywhere. Not in the rural south back then. So on top of feeling like my body was shameful, I also felt like there was something inherently wrong with me. The first time I heard the term homosexuality was from a preacher who said that gay people were going to hell. And all the people said amen, my family included. I could tell how happy it made them to hear that. And I knew that's what they'd want for me if they knew who I really was. If I had heard from a teacher that I wasn't the only one or if I had even read a book about one queer kid, I might not have tried to kill myself before I was even a teenager.

As corporations who hate me for 11 months of the year drape themselves in rainbows and beg for my money, as the government legislates me out of existence before I've even had the chance to exist, as I cower anxiously under a weighted blanket filled with other people's expectations, I ask myself, what is Pride?

For me, Pride is a closet filled with dresses and skirts. I take my bricks and wall myself in, never daring to throw one. I swallow my true colors until I choke, until they leak out of my eyes or pour out of my veins. Whatever makes everybody else most comfortable with them.

For me, Pride is a name on a gravestone that no one ever stops saying and I just let them. Just prop that girl up like its Weekend at Bernie's; pay no attention to the man behind the rainbow colored curtain. Ignore the man behind the closet door.

For me, Pride is a question and an aching nostalgia for a past that doesn't exist. If I had seen a rainbow flag in a grocery store at 12, would I still be hiding? If I had read a book with a boy like me in it when I was 15, would I be free? If that pastor hadn't said those words, if that youth group hadn't asked me to leave, if my mother had wanted me for more than an escape, if the world had been more ready for someone like me, would things be different?

For me, Pride is a tower that I'm locked up in, watching everyone walk past and knowing that they can't see me where I'm at. The ground looks like a beautiful place, looks like everything I've ever wanted but I can't reach it. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. But I can't; I cut it all off hoping that would let me be seen.

For me, Pride is a kind of joy and truth that fills the air like oxygen, and I am a mermaid, wanting transformation but terrified to take a breath. Drowning where the fish will mourn me feels safer than standing up on land alone and hated.

[Image description: a series of screenshots of a public Facebook text post by Evey Winters which reads: I wish cis folks were able to feel and understand that we trans folks are on very different timelines.

My trans timeline and your ability to comprehend my trans timeline are NOT in sync and that changes our perspectives.

This might make you uncomfortable, but you need to hear it.

Every single day before we came out, we prioritized you. You were our partners, friends, family, or whatever. We put you first. Every single day is a sacrifice we made for you, for your expectations and assumptions. We were willing to live and die in a lie because you were that important to us or central in our lives.

I work with SO many closeted trans people. Do you know how many times the people close to them are their reason for not coming out? I would say that’s a factor in literally 100% of the adult closeted trans people I work with where family is still in the picture. Uncertainty about your reactions, fear about upsetting you, and more lead them to trying desperately to stay in the closet FOR YOU. To keep YOU. Because they love YOU. That goes on for months, years, decades.

To you, when we come out, this is new information. Even when you’re supportive, it’s new. And from your perspective, correctly, you’re being asked to reconcile and change things in ways you’ve never had to change before very quickly. I get it, that seems like a tall order. It must feel like you’ve had a pop quiz placed on you with rules you don’t understand and background you never had. That’s scary. You don’t wanna mess up. And that’s the relatively mild version.

In many or most cases right now, by the time someone comes out to you they’re exhausted. They’re coming out because they’re out of options. This is the Hail Mary play. Coming out as trans is so difficult, so scary, that it’s the LAST thing we try after exhausting every available opportunity to not do that.

I wish you knew how genuinely soul crushing it is to come out to you and say “this is me. Please see me. I need your help,” only to be told “well this is hard for me, too.”

It’s not that you’re being dishonest, it’s that we’re running on fumes by the time this happens. We are out of time to be patient and calm and rational in our responses to mistakes.

I spent 30 years of my life cannibalizing my soul for the strength to make it through a day of not knowing my real name, being too afraid to slip or let you see who I was, and being unsure if our relationship would survive you knowing who I am. When I came out, there was nothing left to give. I was ready to be done living. That’s where I was at.

Do you know what it feels like to give that cry for support, help, and acceptance to your loved ones and to have any of them say “when I get to it, then I’ll make this a priority.”

We sacrificed our lives for you. We can’t get back those days we burnt at the altar of our relationship with you. And most of the time, we don’t tell you even when we come out. We don’t tell you what we endured for you. We say it was bad, sure. But what we aren’t saying is this part because we love you and we just want your acceptance, not your guilt.

You aren’t obligated to do any certain kind of response, but you may have noticed that trans people seem very reactive to small slip ups from family and friends. Why?

Because we weren’t allowed to slip up. We had to be on every day, 24/7, living by the names and ideas enforced on us. We’re so desperate by this point half the time that we don’t have the second and third chances to give you. We’ve been giving them to you for years.

And the thing is that you’re actually right, changing habits on a dime is HARD work. I’ll give that to you. The pragmatic side of me knows that most people can only alter these habits so much so quickly. That doesn’t change our timeline or the weight of what we’ve carried.

When we come out to you, we need you to make an effort to understand where you can take the weight off of us and what we need. I hope you can feel the weight of every sacrificed day we gave you — not to hurt you but to strengthen your resolve not to collect any more of our days.

This may feel like I’m handing you guilt. I’m not. I’m handing you context and *deeply* uncomfortable understanding so that you can set your priorities better.

The longer we were in the closet, the more urgent it is when we come out. Please treat that with the proper gravity and focus on healing your relationship to the trans people in your lives. Make it clear, unambiguously and preemptively, that you will support trans people in your family and friends so they can come out sooner. Be a guide and a help and let that process of unearthing the real person in your life teach you to see and love them.

----

Personal Addendum:

I’ve never talked about this so bluntly, but I’m going to now because I have the words.

I felt little better than a pet, pre-transition.

I responded to a name that told me every day your view of me mattered more than anything about me. I felt like a trained animal being made to fill the slot you built in your life for your son, boyfriend, or whatever. I was allowed to be me on private time, the rest of the time I served you and your expectations.

Every time I hear my deadname or false pronouns from the lips of someone I care about, it twists my stomach because what I hear is someone I care about taking ownership of me and calling me, like a dog. It’s a trigger. The closer you are, the more I feel it.

That’s what it sounds like, to be broken down and built to serve those expectations. That’s how it feels to have one night gown tucked away in a hole in your mattress that you pull out occasionally and say, “someday,” to yourself with a sigh of resignation and to cry yourself to sleep with it in your arms because you worry that allowing yourself the slightest hint of freedom will make your life unbearable the rest of the time.

When I felt happiness or euphoria in anything, it made me sick because I knew I couldn’t keep having it. Happiness was a cruel taunt, a luxury others got to enjoy.

You know all those pictures you have of me? The memories? The childhood stories? Those things you treasure and hold so deeply and that you grieve or tell me how to process? That’s how I was feeling when you got those. I sacrificed so you could have those, thinking if I could just please you enough that maybe I could buy your true acceptance.

In the face of that, is simply referring to me properly really, truly so small a priority that you’d tell me to wait until you were ready? How many more days will you ask me to sacrifice?

It seems obvious now and like something I should have already known, but I just learned this term and, being honest, it feels really good. Not the dysphoria. That sucks balls. But knowing that there's a term for it and that other people feel it helps just a little bit. I wish none of us felt it, but since we do, I'm glad I'm not alone.

I've been going along thinking I'm stupid for feeling like this. I know that the way I'm perceived by others doesn't invalidate my identity, that I'm still a man when I'm being called ma'am. But it hurts so much. And I feel like I can't say anything because then I'll be belittled or talked down to, I'll have to face the eye rolling and the aggressive loud "ma'am" as opposed to the polite and superficially friendly one. And I'd rather not. Just man up and take it, Jimmy. You know who you are.

But the thing is, humans are social creatures. We want to be seen and accepted. I want to be seen and accepted. It took me so long to understand myself and now that I do, I want other people to understand me too. That's something I never wanted before. I didn't want to be perceived or acknowledged at all. Now I know why, and I don't feel like that anymore. It's exhausting and demeaning, having the world reflecting back to you someone that you aren't.

I will never be a boy with skinned knees and a baseball glove. My glory days, if you can call it that, were spent in pageant dresses and strapless bathing suits. (Wouldn't want a visible tan line, you know.) My youth was spent in church, learning that who I am is wrong and must be repressed. I will never be a young college graduate, spending my life building a career. By the time I graduate and pass my exam, I will already be protected by the ADEA. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's weird. And I honestly don't think, at this point, that I will ever see my face the way I think it should look, or that I will ever hear my name spoken to me on a regular basis. It's too late for so many things.

I discussed all of this with my therapist and she suggested that my issue may not actually be getting older but instead fitting in, feeling like I don't really belong wherever I'm at, feeling that I'm not really seen. And that resonated with me a lot. In online spaces, I am just me. I don't feel too old. I don't feel like I look wrong or sound wrong to be accepted for who I am. That only happens in real life where I look too old to be a college student, where I sound too feminine to be a man, where I appear too straight to be queer. Where everyone around me knew me as a girl, over-performing femininity to protect myself, and now they don't believe me as a man. I sold the mask too well, now the real me is unbelievable.

One suggestion that she had for me was to let people in by sharing my own interests. And I'm finding that harder than it should be, which probably means it's a thing I should be doing.

It's kind of terrifying to think of the people I care about most reacting badly to the things I love the most, though. If they hate the things I love, do they also hate me? Logically, probably not, but I feel like yes.

(I wrote this on Facebook and I'm copying it here.)

I tried to go to a TDOR vigil tonight. I really did. I drove 30 minutes to where it was happening, parked my car, and walked to the building. I was 4 minutes late and the doors were closed. Will people look at me if I walk in late, if I message someone to let me in? Will they think badly of me for interrupting something so solemn? Am I even at the right building? I walked up and down the road for a few minutes, worrying and wasting more time. I'm late. I'm late. I'm so stupid. I can't breathe. Is it anxiety or my binder? (Both?) Ten more minutes pass. Now it really is too late. I got in my car and drove 30 minutes home.

And while I drove, I thought about the lives that have been lost. I listened to The Village and I had my own vigil of sorts. 375 people have been murdered this year. 375 that we know of. I'm sure there were more. Most of them were trans women. Most of them were people of color. We have a problem with transphobia, a problem with misogyny, a problem with racism, and it is costing people their lives. All of them were valuable and beautiful and loved. All of them are missed.

And I thought about how I could have been one of those, gone too soon, buried under a name that isn't mine. I'm barely peeking out of the closet at this point, but I've been threatened in a dark parking lot for holding a sign and wearing my pronouns, for daring to even support trans rights. I also thought about the self-harm and the intrusive thoughts that I live with all of the time. I thought about how fucking hard it is. If we aren't true to ourselves, if we aren't seen, we're at risk of harming ourselves; if we are seen, we're at risk of being harmed by others. We had no say about the rules and we can't win this game.

There was a family who went to my church at one time. Mom, dad, two sons, and two daughters. The parents are no longer for this world (my grandma's phrasing) and the children are older than my parents, so it's been a minute, but I know of them. I knew the parents when they were still alive. They raised sheep and I always went to their house to see the lambs in the spring. The daughters stayed in the church and grew up to have children of their own. I know them too. One of the sons is gay and moved far far away from this backwards Bible Belt town. More power to him. The other son is in jail now for sexually assaulting a child.

At my church, every teenager and young adult ends up in the nursery at some point, holding bottles or playing with toddlers so that young parents get a bit of a break. The children in this family, I am told, were no exception to that.

One day, my extended family were all at my grandmother's house and the topic of that family came up. My grandmother said something to the effect of "I can't believe I left my children in the nursery with him! I hate to think of what could have happened." And that seemed understandable. I said "you mean [name of pedophile]? Yeah, that's crazy." And she said, "oh no. He was fine. I mean [name of gay man]. I left my son with him."

What. The. Fuck??

So what I'm hearing is that, according to my grandmother, it's worse to be gay, it's more dangerous to have your children around a gay man, than it is to be around a child molester. That is some fucked up logic. Thanks I hate it.

When I was a child, my parents split up just before I started kindergarten. My mother and I moved in with her mother (for clarity's sake this is a woman I refer to as Stabby Grandma, not Church Grandma) and her mother's husband (not my grandfather). They lived on a kind of homestead and I followed her husband around a lot. I liked to play outside, I liked the dogs that ran around, and I liked to watch him chop wood and such. It was something of a dream world for a 6 year old kid.

There was a lot of talk at that time, understandably, about how my father wasn't doing what he should. He was late or didn't come pick me up at all when it was "his weekend". He wasn't paying child support. Typical ex-wife complaints and perfectly valid ones. But I heard that. I knew that my dad wasn't doing what he was supposed to do.

And when this man, my stabby grandmother's husband, started making me sit on his lap and pressing himself against me, when he started putting his hands down my pants, it made me uncomfortable. But there was a part of me that thought, this must be what dads are supposed to do. The wonky logic of a child who doesn't know better. It sounds utterly appalling to me now, but I remember having those thoughts. I had heard so much about how my dad wasn't doing his job as a father that, when a different man started paying close attention to me, I thought this must be what I'd been lacking in life. I thought it was probably good that this was happening to me, because my dad wasn't around. I didn't tell anyone about it. I started having panic attacks. I didn't know what they were then. I only knew that sometimes I couldn't breathe. I know what they are now. I never stopped having them. I also started wetting the bed around that time and I got in trouble for it, for being too lazy to get up in the night, but looking back, I imagine that it was stress-related.

Eventually my mom got an apartment and we moved out. I kind of forgot about that having happened as life moved on. Things move so quickly when you're a child. After that, I started spending more time at my church grandma's house and I rarely saw stabby grandma or her husband. She divorced that husband later.

I didn't really think about it again until that man was arrested for sexually abusing a child. My mom asked me, nervous, "did he ever touch you?" I was a teenager or maybe even an adult by this time and I could see how much that thought distressed her. She had been a single mom in a tough place, having to rely on her family to survive, and the idea of her child being harmed because of what she had to do back then would have hurt her. So I said, "no I don't think so. I'm glad he was arrested though." He had only touched me, had only made me uncomfortable. It didn't hurt me. Not really. It wasn't worth bringing up. I will people please myself into a coffin if necessary.

As I got to know myself, I started to compartmentalize those old painful memories. That is something that happened to a little girl. It's terrible but it wasn't me. That little girl wasn't James. It let me keep my distance from it. And that worked. It worked and it worked. When my therapist and I did some "inner child" type of therapy, it still worked. Because my inner child is little James, not a little girl.

It worked until I took an extensive trans health survey. They were asking me about my experiences as a trans man, and then they asked if, as a child, I'd ever been touched in a sexual way, if I'd ever been touched without my consent. And for some reason, that forced me to confront the idea that, yes that had happened to a little girl. And that little girl was little James. We are the same. This thing that happened is a part of my experience as a trans person because it happened to me. And that devastated me.

I spent several weeks in a suicidal haze. I wasn't sure exactly why, but I knew it was related to that survey. It wasn't until I started to pick things apart with my therapist that I realized exactly what had triggered me. I was still fucked up over that ancient history. Compartmentalizing it wasn't working anymore. And now I'm having to deal with all of this. It happened 30 years ago and it's still so raw.

And I think about that family from my church, about how, according to my church grandma, it's better to be a child molester than a gay man. I am a gay man. If they knew what happened to me and who I am now, would they think it's better to be the man who touched me as a child than it is to be me? Would they think he is safer around children than I am? Would they fight to take my own children away from me?

The thing that really sucks is that other people don't. Some don't know. Some don't like it. Some don't know but if they did they wouldn't like it. And it sucks. 

It sucks that they put political signs in their yard, proclaiming their support for people who wish me dead. It sucks that they laugh at anti-queer jokes and support transphobic public figures.  It sucks that they make bigoted statements and wonder why I'm so "touchy" when I get offended by it. "Offended" is a dirty word, unless it's them being offended because there are people in the world who are different from them. 

I go to the same church I've gone to all my life. I don't really know why I still go beyond the fact that it's easier to maintain that particular status quo than it is to endure my family's questions. So I go. The church has one of those stupid signs out front which always has some ridiculous one liner on it. My grandmother is in charge of that sign. Right now it says: "Don't like the way you were born? Try being born again." That feels kind of targeted if I'm being honest. I hate it. That kind of thing is why people hate American Christianity so much. Love your neighbor? Sorry, I don't even know her. I'll gladly slap her in the face with this shiny Bible though.

The thing is, there's really nothing wrong with being offended by bigotry. It means that you feel things. It means you have passion and compassion and empathy. The only reason they think there's something wrong with it is because they don't like anything that pushes against their cis white heteronormative worldview. They don't want to feel empathy for people who are different from them because it might mean their views would need to change. It might mean accepting that they aren't always right. 

When I was in high school, I tried to kill myself. I didn't understand who I was back then but I knew that I was different. And everyone around me knew too. They didn't let me forget it. I wasn't successful with that attempt and I'm glad that I wasn't, but those old feelings are the same ones I'm feeling now. The thing that helped me get out of that mindset back then was moving. I went to live with my dad for a while. Social media wasn't a thing back then. It was the 90s. So moving got me away from the people who were hurting me. That allowed me time to heal. Social media is a thing now. It's really difficult to get away from the bullies in 2021. 

I could delete my accounts, of course. But that would also mean cutting myself off from the friends I've made, cutting myself off from my fandoms and some of my local support systems. I could block the people that I know are bad for my mental health, and I've done quite a lot of that, but it wouldn't stop the articles and the people who laugh react when the news reports the death of a trans person. It won't stop the ads and the hateful comments on those ads. 

Last week, an ad for a trans health survey came across my feed, so I clicked on it because that's relevant to me and I am happy to do my part to improve trans healthcare. But the comments on that ad were atrocious. So I said, "hey OP, maybe clean up this comment section. How are you going to help us with healthcare if you can't even keep derogatory comments off of an ad targeted to us?" Then someone with a profile picture that said something about being kind to everyone said essentially, "Everyone has an opinion. You just have to take the good with the bad." Le sigh. So you should be kind to everyone unless they're like me. You should be kind unless you feel entitled to hate someone just because they exist and want their needs to be met. Got it. 

The OP's question: JK Rowling supports the trans community. She only disagrees with them on what amounts to semantics. As a trans person might feel upset by being misgendered, a biological woman might feel upset being called a "person who menstruates." Is it possible to love, support, and protect the trans community while disagreeing on semantics?

Speaking as a trans person, no that is not possible. You can say you love, support, and protect trans people, but those things are all actions, not just words. If trans people are telling you something and you ignore them because it doesn't fit your point of view, if a trans person is asking you to refer to them in a certain way and you refuse, that is the opposite of love, support, protection, etc. Trans people are not asking that all women be referred to strictly as "people who menstruate" or anything like that. I know that's how it keeps being presented but frankly that's absurd. In that case, we are asking for inclusive language to be used by, for example, doctors when referring to us specifically. We are asking for that kind of language to be added, not asking that anything be taken away. Believe me, we know what its like to be referred to by names and terms that make us uncomfortable and we are not trying to do that to other people. We would just like to be respected and included. And beyond that, being misgendered is harmful because it is saying something contrary to what we know is true about ourselves. It is denying us our very identity. A woman who menstruates is, in fact, a person who menstruates because women are people. The fact that she menstruates is not what makes her a woman; many cis women don't menstruate for a variety of reasons and many trans men and nonbinary people do. Boiling down the essence of what it means to be a woman to reproductive function is far more harmful, in my opinion, than the term "people who menstruate." But I'm not cis, so that's not really my territory.

The thing that started all of this with Rowling was that a charity who was providing free menstrual products to people in need tweeted something about the work they were doing in reference to "people who menstruate" and, rather than keep scrolling, rather than appreciating that a charity was doing something to help people, JKR decided she needed to get in a dig about it. There was no fight. She wasn't weighing in on a debate of any sort. It was just that one group decided, of their own free will, to use inclusive terminology and she kicked up a fuss even though it didn't affect her in any way.

I would also say that what seems like semantics to someone that doesn't experience it on a day-to-day basis, is something far bigger to someone who does. To you it seems trivial. But when you're being misgendered and getting those comments from every single person you come into contact with, when it's a constant fight just to be acknowledged and respected, it's not just semantics. It's our lives. For example, I had to fight with my rainbow flag waving college for 2 months just to get them to use my chosen name. No non-trans person has had that problem when going by their middle name or even a nickname, but apparently for no other reason than that I'm trans, it was a fight for me. That's what it's like everywhere. It's exhausting. And knowing that that's what its like at a fairly liberal/inclusive university, maybe you can imagine how much worse it can be with places and people that don't even claim or pretend to be supportive. It's not just semantics for us. It's our lives.