When I gave rave reviews to my doctor, it wasn’t quite full disclosure, an oversight I want to rectify.

E’s experience at medical facilities can be quite different than that of cisgender women.  Though the doctor herself is very tolerant and understanding, some of the staff continue to be very ignorant, phobic, and inappropriate.   They’ve had all the necessary medical and surgical documents establishing her gender status in their files for a while, but still they seem to purposely get it wrong, and do so in a publicly humiliating way.  So while I get treated respectfully and professionally, she leaves there in tears and shame.  She worries that wherever she goes, she will never be free to live as other woman do.  I felt it was only fair that I clarify that inequality.

Much like the case of privileged white people never fully comprehending the inequalities and humiliations people of color face every day, right under their noses, this is the plight of LGBTQ people in a straight society.  Because we white, cisgender women don’t experience this degree of civil rights violations, we can be blind to the reality.  Once we go through some of it with our marginalized sisters and brothers, we start to see what it’s really like outside of our insulated world.

I just wanted to set the record straight.