Story highlights Kasey Suffredini: Overcoming deeply ingrained stereotypes about transgender people won't happen overnight

Laws that single out and attempt to exclude transgender people deny shared human dignity, he says

Kasey Suffredini is a transgender attorney, chief program officer at Freedom for All Americans, and director of the group's Transgender Freedom Project. The views expressed are his.

(CNN) All over the country, bills are being filed that treat transgender people like pawns in a chess game.

North Carolina has passed the most extreme anti-LGBT law in recent history, forbidding transgender people to use restrooms that correspond to the gender they live as every day. Meanwhile, a bill that would have made it legal for some groups to deny employment or services to LGBT people just narrowly escaped becoming law in Georgia, while in 31 additional states, transgender people lack explicit protections from discrimination.

That discrimination is a reality that's too common for too many Americans, including myself as a transgender man.

Kasey Suffredini

Revealing that I am transgender was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. To finally and fully be myself, I had to share something intensely private with my entire world. I had to ask everyone who has known me to transition with me -- to learn a new name and new pronouns.

I've been fortunate to have support from my family and friends on this shared journey. But like so many other transgender people, I have been physically assaulted by strangers for being transgender. In my daily life, I've encountered humiliating and invasive questioning and treatment. Yet I'm lucky it has not been even worse -- I know other transgender people who have been denied jobs or refused services because of who they are.