In the 20 or so sessions I've facilitated as the coordinator of Under1Roof, I've often been asked by first-years to talk about my experiences as a transgender man on campus. The questions have both warmed my heart (how can cisgender students better support their trans friends and classmates?) and made me cringe. (Have you had the surgery?) While there have certainly been moments in and out of the classroom during my four years here that have made me feel uncomfortable, I've always thought of Columbia as one of the few places where I didn't have to justify my existence.

With that in mind, I was deeply disappointed and disgusted to see the note taped to a bulletin board in support of trans Columbians reading, "I RESPECTFULLY QUESTION THE VALIDITY OF TRANSGENDER IDENTITY" on Carman 13.

Throughout the process of coming out as trans, undergoing hormone therapy, and changing my legal documents, I have been asked to demonstrate the "validity" of my identity. When I first asked my friends to address me by a new name during the fall of my first year, I found myself having to write "he/Alexander" on the inside of my left thumb as a reminder—the name felt foreign in my own mouth, and I struggled to use my pronouns.

In order to access hormone therapy, I, like many other trans people, had to speak with a social worker and was ultimately diagnosed with "gender identity disorder" (now known as "gender dysphoria")—proof that I wasn't making my identity up. This process is painful, emotionally exhausting, and more often than not requires trans people, myself included, to reframe and flatten our experiences into something palatable and easy to understand. For example, I have numbly explained that I grew up "trapped in the wrong body" to countless doctors and bouncers puzzled by the "F" on my driver's license.

As I have said in the past, I hate the vocabulary employed in this narrative, which sometimes insists on referring to the process of hormone replacement therapy as a "transformation." I am not, nor have I ever been, a Decepticon. And while the trans body is a public one—I can't think of any other identity that requires legislation to pee in peace—my identity, "respectfully" or not, is not something up for debate. I am here, just as real as you are.

Growing up, I had no idea that trans people even existed. By adolescence, the only movie starring a trans character that I could name was Boys Don't Cry, a fictional account of the life of Brandon Teena, who, by film's end, like the real-life Brandon, is raped and murdered. My college years have certainly been a remarkable period for trans visibility. I was able to see Janet Mock speak at Barnard about her New York Times best-selling memoir, Redefining Realness; I've binge-watched Orange Is the New Black, starring Laverne Cox, on Netflix; and I was happy to see the mostly positive reception of Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover feature. It is tempting to hope that more trans people being recognized and celebrated in the world will make trans identities more salient—I want to think that if this visibility had been around when I was first questioning my gender at 15 and 16, I would have felt less alone, less scared.

But 2015 has also been a violent year for trans people. As of November's Transgender Day of Remembrance, over 40 trans people, most of them trans women of color, have been murdered worldwide. Existing while trans can still get you killed. And, in the case of CeCe McDonald, defending yourself from attackers can get you incarcerated. The Youth Suicide Prevention Program reports that more than 50 percent of trans teens will attempt or commit suicide before they turn 20. These numbers do not exist in a vacuum.

By asking trans people again and again to justify our existence, to prove the validity of our identities, we reinforce a system that inherently only values certain lives. More often than not the required "proof" of a valid trans identity means submitting one's self and body to the standards of our cis counterparts—had Caitlyn Jenner chosen to appear on Vanity Fair's cover in a T-shirt and jeans, as opposed to a more traditionally feminine corset, I can't help but wonder if she'd face more people calling her "just a man in a dress." Leelah Alcorn wrote that she feared that she was "never going to transition successfully" before she died for being trans, and her parents failed to recognize her identity even in death. Suggesting, as the note in Carman does, that some trans people's identities are up for debate or somehow not valid leads, directly or not, to violence.

In my own experience, partly because I am white, binary-identified, and "pass" as cisgender, I have mostly encountered extreme support and love from my friends and classmates here at Columbia. Throughout my past few years of writing and talking about being trans, people have often told me that conversations about gender can be terrifying and uncomfortable. I understand that fear and discomfort—gender is a complex mess, and even though I've spoken about it for years I often struggle to translate my lived experience of gender identity into something relatable.

To be sure, if you've never been forced, as I have, to really interrogate gender, it's frustrating to know where to start, especially at a school that tends to value certain kinds of awareness as cultural currency. I want to believe that the sign on that bulletin board is an attempt, however badly worded it may be, to begin to understand something that was previously unfamiliar. As hurt and angry as I may be, I'm trying to see the sign as something that represents discomfort and not hate. But, as a community, we must fundamentally respect the validity and existence of all trans people, full stop. And for anyone wanting to know how to better support their trans and gender-nonconforming friends and classmates, calling out violence like the vandalism in Carman is a place to start.

As I make sure to tell my first-years at the beginning of every Under1Roof session, being uncomfortable isn't always a bad thing. Learn from it.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in creative writing and American studies. He is the former features editor of Bwog and the current culture editor of the Blue and White.

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