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"  I remember when I was &amp;quot;outed&amp;quot; as transgender. I&amp;amp;#146;d just moved from Brooklyn to rural New England for a job. I wore boxy quilted vests, heavy boots, flannel, and camouflage. On my first day at work, I was called &amp;amp;#147;sir&amp;amp;#148; and high-fived by a coworker. In Brooklyn, people usually assumed my look meant &amp;amp;#147;lesbian,&amp;amp;#148; but in this rural community, the qualifications for being male were pretty much a cropped haircut and the absence of makeup. I felt validated by my community&amp;amp;#146;s assumption that I was a boy. But it wasn&amp;amp;#146;t long before I started feeling afraid. I was careful about what I said and how I said it. What would a &amp;amp;#147;man&amp;amp;#148; do in this instance? How can I relate to my neighbors? Once, a pickup truck pulled up next to me while I was walking down the road. A man inside brandished a shotgun. I wasn&amp;#039;t sure why, but assumed it had nothing to do with me. Later, another young man approached me in a gas station parking lot. He put his face near mine and whispered something about my absence of facial hair before reaching to grab my crotch. I jerked away. The same pickup truck from earlier drove circles around me, swinging the shotgun. These incidents weren&amp;#039;t isolated. I realized they were the result of rumors around town that I wasn&amp;amp;#146;t really a &amp;amp;#147;man,&amp;amp;#148; but rather a liar, an impostor &amp;amp;#151; a threat. If a trans person is &amp;amp;#147;outed,&amp;amp;#148; consequences can be dire. In 2013 alone, 238 trans people were murdered as a result of their gender identity and expression, the majority trans women of color. In addition, 41 percent of trans people in the US have attempted suicide, a rate 26 times higher than the national average. Last week, ESPN&amp;#039;s Grantland published an expos\u00E9 of the life of transgender golf-club inventor, Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt. The article was published posthumously: Dr. Vanderbilt took her own life last October, while Caleb Hannan, the article&amp;amp;#146;s author, was still researching the story. According to Hannan, Dr. Vanderbilt pled with him to abandon his search into her background with a tone Hannan described as &amp;amp;#147;dire.&amp;amp;#148; She warned him that he was about to commit a &amp;amp;#147;hate crime.&amp;amp;#148; In response to the article, trans activist and author Janet Mock tweeted:    Disclosure is ours as trans women + trans folk; not yours. Forced disclosure is violence: http://t.co/6HSkefYM7h #trans #girlslikeus \u2014 Janet Mock (@janetmock) January 20, 2014    She&amp;amp;#146;s right. And as Grantland discovered this week, ignorance of trans issues perpetuates the high homicide and suicide rates in our community. Realizing this, Grantland&amp;amp;#146;s editor Bill Simmons apologized for the article. This is an overwhelming problem, but like most overwhelming problems, you can help in small ways. Do not ask if a trans person&amp;amp;#146;s name is &amp;amp;#147;real&amp;amp;#148; or attempt to suss out details of our &amp;amp;#147;former&amp;amp;#148; lives. Use the name and pronoun that trans people prefer. If confused, ask politely. But don&amp;amp;#146;t ask about our genitals with the flippancy you use when you ask about our lunch. We&amp;amp;#146;re human. Start now. Start with the comments section of this post. Be kind, be decent, be respectful. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a5411/transgender-outing-is-wrong/?src=rss>