Acceptance: Actually Living It

Over the years of witnessing friends transition between gender and going through a very gradual transition myself, I have come to realize that there is a difference between acceptance and truly accepting. I am writing this from the perspective of male to female transition simply because that is my personal experience. But this is an issue no matter what gender identification is involved.

I am directing this, primarily, at friends and loved ones of people in transition. I am going out on a limb here and stating that I believe what most of us want more than anything is to be truly accepted as the gender we identify with. For me, that is a woman. I need to be fully accepted as a woman. I don't identify as a trans woman, I identify as a woman. When I first started coming out to friends and family I told them that I hoped they would accept me as a woman and they assured me that they would. I take them at their word. I love them all dearly and I believe that they will do exactly what they say.

But I often wonder how many people truly understand what that acceptance means. It is one thing to love and accept your friends for exactly who they are, it is another thing to live that acceptance. Let's say that you are a woman and your best guy friend for twenty years comes to you and says he is becoming a woman. You are happy for him/her and you swear that you will support her completely. You will help her with makeup, hair, shopping and everything that she needs. You are actually kind of excited about it. Then you go to the mall with her. You spend a couple of hours shopping and having a great time. But all of that coffee the two of you drank at Starbucks is really starting to take it's toll, so you head to the bathroom. Being a woman, your best friend walks beside you into the women's room. If there was even a fraction of a second where your mind questioned whether or not she should be in there, then you are not living the acceptance. You have assured her that you completely accept her as a woman, but in reality, you haven't. You still consider her either a man wearing women's clothing or a transsexual woman. You have not truly embraced her existence as a woman.

You finish the day shopping, you go home with tons of new clothes including new intimates. You are both excited to try all of the different combinations of tops and bottoms to see how many cute outfits you can put together. You have done this with your girlfriends lots of times and never had a problem with it at all, but this time you suddenly hesitate. Maybe only for a moment, but that hesitation is because you are not completely comfortable undressing in front of her, even though you have no problem with your other girlfriends. That moment of hesitation shows that as much as you want to believe you have, you have not completely accepted her as a woman.

Your friend needs that true acceptance. She needs to be invited to girls nights out, she needs to be invited to bachelorette parties other social gatherings. She needs to be completely accepted. If she isn't, then she exists in a limbo. She would never be accepted as a man, even if she wanted to, and if she isn't accepted as a woman, then where is she? She is lonely.

We toss the words acceptance and tolerance around like yesterdays torn clothes. They have become buzz words that have lost their true meanings. As a society we have stopped living what those words truly represent. And members of the LGBT community suffer for it on a daily basis. So, please, if someone you love asks you to accept them, do it with all of your heart. Truly embrace that friend, love them and give them what they truly need. Live that acceptance that they have asked for.