My Speech from Women’s March — Utica, NY — Jan. 19, 2019
Here is the text from my speech at the Women’s March Utica.
Here is the text from my speech at the Women’s March Utica.
“I am woman, Hear me roar.” That song is now my personal anthem. I came out as a transgender woman in May 2018. Inside I have always been a woman. I am like a can of corn that has the wrong label stuck on it. The outside does not match the inside. I am now making the outside match who I am on the inside.
I am often asked how long it took me to come out. It took 68 years. That is why I am becoming an advocate and activist for trans rights and I am hoping because of my advocacy and that of others, trans youth will have all of the support they need in a safe and supportive environment. When I was growing up there was no support for anyone like me. I thought I was the only one like me. I felt like a freak of nature and that I was a sick pervert. Many of you know how it is to live with secrets that you can never share because you fear for your own safety. I had a secret life. I felt ashamed. I felt less than human. Finally, something happened that started me thinking about my life and where I was going.
My father passed away 3 years ago at the age of 91. He and I had gotten quite close over the years as he aged. His death threw me into an even darker place, and I started looking at my own life and how I felt about myself. I was diagnosed as depressed but didn’t tell anyone my real problem. I would look in the mirror and hate what I saw. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I was still in denial. At this point I started researching my feelings and why I felt better dressed as a woman. For years I had thought of myself as a man with a fetish but as I read more and more in the medical and psychological literature, I began to think otherwise. I started looking for online forums for transgender people. Unfortunately, all I stumbled into were the ones of doubtful value. I became more and more despondent. My marriage began to deteriorate. Around April last year I decide I needed to find a permanent solution, my death. Many in the trans community have gone down that rabbit hole without coming back out. I was more fortunate than many. The suicide rate of 41 percent among trans people is more than 25 times the rate of the general population, which is 1.6 percent. I don’t remember how or why but I happened to find a phone number for a suicide hotline for trans and others in the LGBTQ community. I don’t even remember the number or where it was located. I talked to a trans woman for two hours. She saved my life. Thank you, whoever you are.
I shed my male husk on May 4, 2018. I am not particularly proud of how I did it, but I had no choice, I had already decide I had to just dump it all out on the table. I moved out that night and that is when I finally began living as me, Branwen Rhiannon Drew. Since then I have gotten involved in Indivisible Mohawk Valley by volunteering on the Brindisi campaign. I found women who had come together to elect Anthony Brindisi to Congress to replace One Term Tenney. All of us working together moved mountains to take a district that had gone for Trump by 16 points. We swept the district blue and lead the Blue Wave. We now control the agenda, an agenda of equality and justice, for trans women and all women.
As one of my heroes of the trans community, Sarah McBride wrote as she ends her book,” Tomorrow will be different.”
“We are powerful. We are making history. And, together, I know we are unstoppable.”
AND ONE MORE THING:
WHOSE HOUSE?
OUR HOUSE!
WHOSE HOUSE?
OUR HOUSE!
— at YWCA Mohawk Valley.