To me, a President should be someone that no matter what, a child of any race can look up to them as a role model. But, that’s not what we see with Trump. Instead, we have children afraid to leave their homes because of their skin color, clothes or religious beliefs. Instead, we see tens of thousands taking to the streets to protest the Presidential Elect. Portland, Oakland, LA, NY and I read on CNN, at least 25 other cities are protesting with signs like “#NotMyPresident”. I’ve seen social media erupt with sadness, anger, hate crimes, harassment and disdain for other’s victimization. Since this, it literally feels as if we are living before the civil rights movement. Are we seriously still fighting for equality among individuals in 2016?
Katherine and I were in Southern Oregon for several days recently due to two teeth breaking and needing a dental visit. I went round and round with the insurance company about how to go about getting a dental visit covered with a non-network doctor. Three days later, we had the answer, the doctors office chosen and the lady was compassionate toward Katherine being in pain and were able to work her in that day. Once we made it to the office, after the fiasco of waking the children, making breakfast, searching through our luggage bags finding clothes for everyone for the day and getting dressed, and then searching all over the camper for the kids shoes they constantly “forget” to put back in our shoe bin, the staff made remarks to how they expected us much sooner. We were finally worked in, the dentist came to see the chart, x-rays and Kat. Once he saw she was on hormone replacement therapy, he prescribed antibiotics and repeated to us multiple times we should just “wait until you get to California” and get your insurance swapped down there, maybe someone could help her then. The doctor left the room while Kat was still attempting to describe how horrible the pain had been for three days. She had been taking ibuprofen and using anbusol every half hour or so to help ease it. The medication was barely having an effect, the pain spread to her neck, jaw and gave her an excruciating headache, she described as a migraine. But, he didn’t give her the time of day to explain it, he literally walked in, saw HRT on the medication list and refused her treatment. This isn’t the first time we’ve been discriminated against but this is the first time by a medical professional since beginning transition. This was last Wednesday, November 9th. Now, I can’t say this would have gone differently on November 8th, but I sure hate to think that the two are correlated somehow. After being treated in this manner we wanted desperately to get out of that place! We continued on our journey. It’s Saturday now and we’ve made it to Sacramento. Thankfully, California is opening its arms to refugees of discrimination that want to flee and here we are..
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Authors:James and Katherine are a transgender couple raising two kids. They were southerners when coming to understand themselves as trans. Ultimately it lead to a nearly three year road trip to find home. Now they are re-housed and still focused on outreach in the transgender community! Archives
October 2020
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