Transgender Self Help

On too many occasions, I hear from transgender women who are painfully stuck in the closet.
There are ways out of your dark room and every once in a while someone steps forward with a great idea.
This one comes from Toni D'Orsay and her Dyssonance blog.
(Disclaimer. Sometimes Toni gets a little "wordy" for my tastes but she does incredible with this!)


"Idea: for the month of March, volunteer for 20 hours with an organization or project that specifically deals with trans folk, or solve a local problem. Without getting involved in politics. When I say without getting involved in politics, I mean without becoming embroiled in the online arguments we see, without lobbying for a law to change, without going to see a politician and getting them to vote for something. Kinda different for a request, isn't it? It is a suggestion to you in order to get you to help yourself. The difficulty is that the way that it helps you is indirect -- far more so than working on some change in law. It is going to affect other trans people, and that, in turn, is going to affect your life and make it richer, make it better. You might wonder why I am doing this now, as February comes calling, but the reason is that I want you to take a month a research the organizations in your area that do things for Trans people other than the political. You will have to research them. You will have to hunt for them. Well, that is unless you live in New York or Boston or San Francisco or Los Angeles. Some of the organizations will be doing political work as well, and that's ok. Just say you want to spend 20 hours in an entire month doing whatever it is that they need done. I haven't talked about this idea with any other organization. This isn't part of some secret trans activist effort carefully coordinated behind the scenes. Yes, those things happen. They have to if we are going to get some things to change. No, this is just me, by myself, asking you, personally, to stop for 20 hours in March and volunteer your time to help trans people. And I am asking you to start looking for that trans organization now."

For more on the post and Dyssonance go here: