Miranda Writes... by Miranda Stevens-Miller Patience, Miranda!

I was having dinner with a friend a few weeks ago, someone who I respect very much both for his wisdom and experience well beyond his years. "Miranda," he said, "You are just too impatient. If you hope to bring about a social change, you need to educate those who don't understand, those who have never seen a transgender person except for those on the talk shows. Besides," he continued, "you are asking for too much. Our wealthy clients would never accept it if they knew that their banker cross-dressed while he was away from work."

I accepted these comments because they came from a dear friend. But as I have thought more and more about them over the past few weeks, all I can ask is "What's wrong with a little impatience?"

Since we have recently commemorated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I looked to his words for advice on the subject of patience. "For many years we have shown an amazing patience," he said at the start of the Montgomery bus boycott. "We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice."

Well I don't like the way my transgender brothers and sisters are being treated. And I'll be damned if I will be patient while they are still being denied the freedom and justice that all Americans are entitled to.

And while I agree that education is necessary, what if nobody is listening? It is difficult for one's voice to be heard above the din of the television talk shows that are blasted over the airways to millions of people… including the wealthy banking clients whose only exposure to transgender people is on talk shows.

When your voice isn't being heard, there is only one answer. "We have no alternative but to protest," said King.

The transgender advocacy group, It's Time Illinois, is currently in the process of gathering cases of discrimination against gender variant people for it's annual report. I have submitted nineteen cases covering the past two years, and there are at least a dozen more that I am aware of. It's Time has documented well over a hundred cases of discrimination based on gender identity or expression since it began this project seven years ago.

"Miranda," my friend said, "you have only been working on transgender equality for seven years… look how long it took to get sexual orientation included in Chicago's human rights ordinance."

Seven years may not be a long time in the overall scheme of things, but it is a lifetime to those who have to endure the discrimination.

Like the 19-year-old trans-youth in a foster care facility for the past seven years… "The staff, everybody, are

mistreating her, calling her 'he', saying you're not this, take the make-up off. They say, 'Stop, you're not that. You're just going through a phase.' She was in a group home setting, with six boys all in the same room, sleeping together in the same room. She stated that she had been sexually assaulted because of this situation, but she doesn't want to talk about it. It's too emotional."

Do you tell her that she's too impatient, that it's only been seven years?

Like the transgender hospital worker being harassed by her supervisor… "My boss said to me, 'If you were born as a man, you need to come to work as a man.' He wanted me to hide my breasts. He actually asked me to hide my body. I'm the only employee in the department that has a special dress code."

Do you tell her that she should lighten up, she'll only have to hide her gender for another seven years?

Like the veteran on a fixed income whose landlord refused to renew her lease because she is transgendered… "They came in to make her move out. They didn't move her stuff out. They just locked her door and told her to get out. She wound up being homeless."

Do you tell her not to worry, that she will only have to be homeless for seven more years?

I could go on. I've got a hundred more stories just like these… or worse. It is difficult to look these people in the eye, and tell them, "Be patient. We're working on it."

I am running out of patience. The people whose cases have been documented deserve better. We should all be ashamed to show patience for anything less than freedom and justice.