Guest Blogger: Elisabeth
Elisabeth was born in 1981 in Liverpool, but is now a scouser living in Manchester though has lived all over the UK.
A happily, openly bisexual trans sex worker, who also blogs on a wide range of topics from sex work to mental health and everything in-between.
Loves music and is a self-confessed geek.
Twitter:-
Blog:- https://elisabethmcqueen.wordpress.com
To whom it may concern
I like you do not conform to the social norm, myself I am a tattooed, pierced, bisexuals, non-op transsexual, sex worker, who’s in to BDSM in fact I could probably go on for hours listing things that make up who I am which do not conform to the “social norm”. But we don’t want to make this in to a TL;DR post in the first paragraph now do we.
Now I am writing this letter to you all, to ask you to do a simple thing to make a difference to the lives of millions of other people out there. Every second of every day someone just like you or me who does not conform to the social norm will face some form of bullying or harassment for just being themselves.
Some will be called names, some will be sacked from their job, some will be physically assaulted and yes some will be murdered for it.
We have all these days and events like National coming out day, or International Transgender Awareness day or Pride events and so on. Which are all made with good intentions, they are all there to help raise awareness of particular issues and problems that certain groups face on a daily basis. Or to allow people a safe place to express themselves.
But to me this seems wrong, what we need is something more, something bigger. Something more permanent than 24 hours once every 365 days.
What we need is for everyone one of us to stand up and be counted. To stand up to those people who think its ok to bully and intimidate people who they consider to be different by showing society that actually this whole idea of normality is well just wrong.
The way to do this, is for all of us to stick our head up above the wall and to proclaim who we are, lets show everyone that there is no such thing as normal. Let’s make every non-conformist voice heard. Let’s stop hiding parts of ourselves in the shadows and if people then have the ability to be open about themselves we should see less violence and hostility towards other people like us.
This may sound daunting to a lot of people but as someone who has “come out” to people about a few things in my life. The whole idea in your head is a lot scarier than it is in reality. If we all do this, then that teenager sitting in their bedroom feeling alone and scared and confused about who they are should no longer need to feel that way.
By saying a few simple words and announcing our differences to the world we could help save many thousands if not millions of people from years of suffering in silence. Together we could make the world a better place by just making ourselves more visible and not having to hide away.
So from one massively non-conforming person to the rest of you I ask you to join me in embracing who you are and let’s show the world just how many of us don’t fit in to the neat little boxes they want to place us all in.
Thanks in advance,
Elisabeth, a very socially nonconforming person.
