Transcriber: Daria Aza Reviewer: Robert Tucker
Good evening, everyone.
My name is Sarah McBride.
I am 25 years old.
I am a native of Wilmington, Delaware.
A proud graduate of American University, I am about to write "Go Eagles!"
I am a movie buff, a policy nerd, a sister, and a daughter.
It took me 21 years
to muster up the courage to say those last words: "sister" and "daughter."
Today they are among my proudest identities,
and, tonight, I am able to walk out on this stage as the woman that I am.
But I have to admit that is hasn't always been that way.
I remember, as a child, lying in my bed at night praying
that I would wake up the next day and be a girl.
To be my authentic self, and to just have my family be proud of me.
I remember looking into the mirror, struggling to say just two words:
I'm transgender.
It was a fact I thought about
every single waking hour of every single day.
With every penny thrown, with every birthday candle blown out,
my wish was always the same.
For every trans person, it feels a little different.
For me, it felt like a constant homesickness.
And not a homesickness in my own body, but a homesickness in my own life.
An unwavering, unyielding ache in the pit of my stomach,
that only went away when I began to embrace my true self,
when I could be seen as me.
But I kept it inside.
I told myself that if I could make staying in the closet worthwhile,
by becoming successful and making a difference in the world,
that those things would fill the void in my life.
It seemed, as I grew up,
that my dreams and my identities were mutually exclusive.
During my sophomore year at American University,
I was elected president of the student body.
At the same time, I was struggling with my identity
and whether or not to come out as transgender.
In the end though, I had to be true to myself.
My life was passing me by,
and I was done wasting it as someone I wasn't.
I came out to my family on Christmas Day in 2011.
There's really nothing to do once you open the presents.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
And I came out to my friends during the following weeks.
Eventually, on my last day as president of the student body,
I told the world that I was really Sarah McBride
in an op-ed in the AU student newspaper.
I have to be honest
that I was scared about the possible reaction
from the university community,
but all I got was support.
At the same time though,
people oftentimes tried to express their support
by saying: "I hope you are happy now."
"I hope you are happy now,"
it seems like such a small motivation for transitioning.
For taking the steps that I felt like I needed to take
to have my inner gender identity seen and respected.
I didn't transition to be happy; I transitioned to be me.
I didn't transition to create a positive, but to remove a negative;
to alleviate a nearly constant pain and incompleteness.
Transitioning didn't bring me happiness,
it allowed me to be free to feel every emotion;
to think more clearly, to live more fully, to survive, to be seen to be me.
And while transitioning freed me in many ways,
there is no question that in becoming myself,
I faced new barriers.
Like all women, my path to womanhood is unique.
No two paths are the same.
Each of us travel with different privileges,
challenges, and perspectives.
Some are limiting, others, illuminating.
And as someone who, at least tried to think critically
about the phobias and the isms and the discrimination in the world,
I thought I more or less understood what to expect.
In the end though, I had been so understandably consumed
with the transphobia that would come my way,
I didn't fully realize the misogyny and sexism that I would face.
And it was everywhere.
From the subtle to the blatant.
A world of contradictions and double standards.
I never realized how disempowering and unsafe it would feel
to have a stranger feel entitled to make a comment
about my looks or my body,
inviting comments for having the audacity to walk down the street.
If I wasn't smiling, I was told to smile.
If I am smiling, it's a special invitation for more comments.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
(Cheers)
You are treated like both a delicate infant and a sexualized idol
in the exact same moment.
Your thoughts are dismissed, and your emotion minimized.
Your insecurities emphasized, and your body objectified.
The simple and the mundane decisions
that I never had to think about in the morning before,
soon became integral to avoiding a thousand judgments.
And, in finding my own womanhood,
I was told that if I was too feminine, that I was a caricature or inauthentic.
As if masculinity is some sort of natural state of being,
a default, a preference.
But if I wasn't feminine enough,
then I was told that I wasn't "a real woman."
Pop culture, television, movies, music, politics, fashion,
all telling all of us what it means to be "a real woman."
I had finally, finally come out of the closet,
only to find myself stuck in the kitchen.
(Laughter)
And it became clear very quickly that the same forces,
the same forces that said to me: "No, you're not a woman,"
those are the same forces that say there's only one way to love,
only one way to live, only one way to act,
only one way to dress, only one role to play.
And those forces, they are not just the same people;
they are the same beliefs and the same dogmas.
It's why the fight for LGBT equality is so inextricably linked
to the fight for gender equality.
Homophobia, transphobia, and sexism, they are all rooted in the same prejudice.
The belief that one perception at birth, the sex we are assigned,
should dictate who we are, who we love, how we act, and what we do.
And that's why LGBT equality is gender equality,
and gender equality is LGBT equality.
And when we fully, and I mean fully realize that
as feminists, as LGBT people, and allies, and as a society,
then we will be able to build a world
where every little kid can know that they can grow up and be successful,
they can be independent, they can be gay, they can be trans,
they can be anything that this society says is mutually exclusive
with being feminine or being a woman,
that they can be any or all of those things
and still be seen, still be valued,
and still be respected as the equal humans that we all are.
Our dreams and our identities do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Working together to fight sexism, transphobia, homophobia,
and, yes, racism and ableism, they won't be.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)