Introduction
Now that you have a macro level understanding of transgender identity, it is important to understand gender privilege. A person who identifies as cis gender is the soul beneficiary of gender privilege. It is ok, you do not have to apologizes, you only have to recognize! You deserve credit for looking at gender identity from a new lens. The simplest fact that you never have questioned if your gender state of mind matches the gender you were assigned at birth is a privilege because you benefit from the binary system that, yes, was designed from cis gender mind frame. My page is not to shame anyone for taking advantage of their cis gender privileges, rather, I aim to introduce you to four amazing transgender females and their stories. The motto, "knowledge is power" comes to mind, and if you are equipped with powerful information, then you have the ability to approach the topic confidently and without trepidation.
It is true, identifying as transgender, or other than cis gender, has been around for a very long time. However, if you type in "transgender" in Google's Ngram Viewer you would not see the line graph lift off from zero until, yes, you guessed it 1960's. Subsequently, when discussing transgender we must apply the notion of perverse presentism. To illustrate this point, it is important to know that transgender people thrived in cultures and societies for thousands of years. For example, both the Native Indians and the Native Hawaiian's recognized genders beyond the two-gender system in place today. Many Native Indian tribes have native words such as "mahuwhine." Due to the evolution of social media transgender people have utilized these platforms in order to live visibly, build community and educate cis gender people. In 1952, Christine Jorgenson was the first trans woman to utilize radio waves to broadcast her successful gender reassignment surgery on every television in America. Marsha P. Johnson, a trans woman of color, is the person responsible for uniting the LGBT community to fight against oppression by starting the Stonewall riots of 1969. She, like Christine, was limited to social engagement through radio waves. She was practically homeless, so she would not have had access to a computer. According to Mikhel Proulx in his blog post, "Queer Networks," since the launch of the internet queers, "found each other across cultural and material borders to create online identities, develop novel forms of pleasure, and create networked cultures." Developing these cultures on the web can explain the huge spike in the trend when typing the transgender into the Ngram viewer. In fact, Jane Mock, trans woman of color activist, was one of the first trans women to use social media to unit trans women around the world. Social media has been a huge game changer for the transgender topic in America. Social media has been a great platform for social participation to advance trans rights and to change ideologies and stigmas placed on people who do not live within the gender binary system. The internet has paved way for a positive cultural climate shift on the transgender topic. This can be seen through the latest work of a young and brave trans girl, Jazz Jennings. She published her children's book, I am Jazz, in 2014 that educates young children on trans topics. Moreover, both Mock and Jazz are accessible on Facebook and twitter.
