Anonymous asked: <p>I thought I might want to contact you directly about some hullabaloo that showed on my dash about your denial of white privilege. No one is saying that you aren&#8217;t oppressed through your gender identity, nor necessarily that your life has been without its struggles. However, it&#8217;s important that you realize that your whiteness still affects you. Your race still privileges you over people of color, esp trans PoC. You will be 48 times less likely to end up in prison for nonviolent charges, etc.</p>

I’m not trying to be more or less oppressed than someone. I think it’s foolish that we argue over such things. I was told that I can’t be a transgender representative because I’m not a trans person of color. I think that’s crap because I believe that anyone can be a trans representative. You do not even need to fall under the transgender umbrella to be a trans representative. It doesn’t matter what age you are, what your gender is, what your sexuality is, where you work, what you do, everyone is a representative if they are actively doing something for the community. You can even be a rep. just by living your life as out and going through your transition publicly, even if it’s just to your family, or to your friends, because you are educating the people around you and now they have become less ignorant to trans people. 

I’m not arguing that there is no such thing as white privilege. I’m arguing that you can be white and still be a representative to the community. Like I said, it shouldn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what your race is. All you have to do is the right thing. I believe that everyone should be happy of where they came from. There are downsides to every single race. There are downsides and upsides to everything. We cannot deny that. For example I’m sicilian, 100%. You wouldn’t believe how many times my family gets harassed for it. There are hundreds of people who think just because we are sicilian we must be mafia related. I wasn’t allowed to tell my grandfather that I am transgender. He doesn’t even know that I had surgery. I was shunned and harassed by my extended family because if I’m “Italian I shouldn’t be transgender.” It makes no sense. I don’t let things like this bring me down. I don’t throw a pity party. 

Also, I don’t know when the battle changed from being about being a transgender representative to be less likely to be arrested. I was only arguing about the transgender representative part. 

It’s definitely messed up that our society still contains so much racism. It goes both ways. It goes all ways. I watched the show “Black.White.” I took African American literature and History in High School. I finished the class with a 100% average. I definitely paid attention. I definitely learned a lot. In this class I learned that there are privileges to all races. 

I’m not in a battle to be more oppressed than someone else. I’m not in a competition. I’m not trying to throw some pity party or be in someone else’s. I’m just trying to do the right thing by standing up for the community. To the people that don’t want me to be your representative: There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t represent yourself. And I constantly say during my youtube videos and speeches that this is my own story, it’s not the story of any other specific trans person but myself, and it’s my own interpretation, it applies to only me. Most cases I’m just speaking for myself. 

I didn’t chose to be white. Nobody chooses their skin color. I’m not going to feel guilty for being white because I have it “less worse” than someone else. I think that’s foolish. I think that it’s absolutely terrible that I am getting harassed based on something that I couldn’t decide or choose. What is even worse is that I’m getting harassed by people in my own community, people that know what harassment feels like. We should not harass each other. We should not judge each other. We need to all stand together and be one. If we are missing one person in this community we are worth so much less in the march to equality. We need everyone.