A Transsexual Manifesto

Being that transsexuality is a natural and wonderful aspect of human diversity, and that transsexual women and men are the equals in every way of cisgender women and men, we transsexual people hereby declare and proclaim the following:

  1. We will NOT be treated as second-class citizens.

  2. We will NOT be ashamed of being transsexual.

  3. We will NOT allow our genders—or anyone else's gender—to be defined by anyone other than the person's own self.

  4. We WILL respect everyone's self-identified gender.

  5. We will NOT be forced to live in stealth.

  6. We will NOT be forced to have surgery we don't want as a perquisite for obtaining our rights, starting with having our legal identity documents in our proper gender.

  7. We WILL be as feminine, masculine, androgynous, or other as we like, and we will not be put down for it.

  8. We will NOT alter our voices if we don't feel like it.

  9. We will NOT feel obliged to disclose our transsexual status to anyone except medical personnel, but we WILL disclose it any time we feel like it for any reason.

  10. We will NOT disclose the status of our genitals, nor will we tolerate being asked about them.

  11. We will NOT be excluded from spaces appropriate for our genders, starting with restrooms.

  12. We WILL demand equal access to appropriate medical treatment—including insurance coverage for our trans-specific medical needs—starting with, but not limited to, the medical necessities of our gender transitions.

  13. We WILL demand fair and equal treatment in housing and employment, and we WILL demand that gender identity and gender expression be included by law as a protected class in all 50 states, the nation, and the world.

  14. We WILL demand the right to marry the partners of our choosing, whatever gender they may be. We will demand that every person, not just transsexual people, may do so as well.

  15. We WILL demand the right to worship in the church of our choosing, and we will NOT accept moral condemnation by ANY religion on the basis of our transsexuality. We will NOT accept any interpretation of the Bible, Koran, or any other religious text that professes to condemn transsexuality.

  16. We will NOT accept ignorant, disrespectful, wrong-headed interpretations of transsexuality by anyone, but we will work to educate them about us.

  17. We WILL work for the human rights of ALL people, not only our own.

Power to the people, be they transsexual, cisgender, or otherwise!

—Lannie Rose, 6/2007

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