Pride 2023 DEFIES White Supremacists, Christian Nationalists

Fatherly Advice to Trans Daughter: Don’t Let The Bastards Win!

In celebration of Father’s Day and Pride month.

Sadly, my Dad never knew he had a daughter. For years, I never knew that I was his daughter. But I was lucky; he was a wonderful father and he loved his three sons. My older brother told me years after my father’s death that they thought that during my teens that I could be gay. I was shocked to hear that, because I never thought my parents had any issues with my gender and I never a felt a moment’s pause in his love and care for me.

Given my lifelong struggle with my female gender versus my male socialization, I must have given him lots of unanswered questions, but he never failed me.

Growing up is a struggle for everyone. Some have it better or worse than others. The one piece of advice that he gave me and that I shared with my own sons was:

“Don’t Let The Bastards Win!”

I have been a fighter all my life. I was flattered when I was once called a “moral pit-bull”. I just can’t let wrongs alone. As I have aged, I have tempered my anger and selectively chosen my battles. Coming to accept that I am transgender at this time has set off a whole new series of emotional reactions and moral outrage.

Much of the world has chosen to attack the LGBTQ community. All we want is to just live our lives but many feel that we have no right to our life. We are the victims of so much hate, it is just so tragic. They use us for their agendas.

The haters need the megaphone to scream in, the media needs the negative news to sell ads, the churches need hate to rally their dwindling worshipers and the politicians will sell their souls for votes.

Well, don’t forget we can vote too. Vote in every election, even the small ones. Ignore those and the haters will ban books at your local library, fire teachers for sharing the real world and prevent doctors and parents from caring for the needs of their children.

You do have a choice: “Don’t let the bastards win!”

I know I won’t. I know my Dad would be proud.

Emma Holiday

Thank you for reading my work.

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Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.

My writing has three specific goals:

1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.

2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.

3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.

This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, Pride 2023 DEFIES White Supremacists, Christian Nationalists.

Prompt stories so far —