July/August Letter From the Board

I was recently chatting with a cisgender colleague about my experience as an openly nonbinary attorney.  I told him, honestly, that compared to many other trans attorneys I know I have it pretty good.  There’s a gender neutral bathroom in our office (albeit up three flights of stairs from my desk), our coworkers are generally apologetic when I correct them on my pronouns, and no one batted an eye when I took time off for top surgery.  (When I came back, a fellow associate had filled my office with rainbow balloons and a banner that said “YAY!”, which I loved so much I’ve kept it up to this day.)

“In many ways, things are much easier because I live where I do,” I told my colleague.

“In the United States?” he asked.

I laughed.  “No, in southern California.”

I grew up in central Oklahoma, in one of the stubborn progressive communities that takes root in predominately conservative areas.  I genuinely, although complicatedly, love where I grew up.  For many years, I imagined that I’d move back there someday and keep fighting the good fight in the place that raised me.  I’m not so sure of that now.  Things have gotten much more openly hostile since I left for college, and even some of my most stubborn progressive friends have left to escape harassment and seek basic healthcare in other states.

I love where I live now, too – although not uncomplicatedly.  I love the friends I’ve made here, I love the weather, and I love that I regularly run into the cast of Critical Role at alt rock shows.  As I told my colleague, it’s also much easier for me to live in Los Angeles.  We’re not immune from transphobia here, but at least at the state level it’s much less profitable to use trans folks as a punching bag.  As a consequence, in my experience, most cis people just aren’t thinking about trans existence that much, for better or for worse.  It’s also much, much more expensive.  Like most of the other parts of the U.S. that are relatively safe for trans folks right now, that safety comes at a literal cost.  

I still have family and friends in Oklahoma, and I still love going back home to see them.  These days I just I wear my most feminine clothes to the airport and hope the TSA agent doesn’t notice the ‘X’ on my California driver’s license. 

-Riley Robertson
NTBA Board Member