The only choice I have made is to accept who I am and make the right changes to keep myself safe and happy.

Dear Cisgender* people,

1. I’m not transgender because it’s some popular political statement. I’m transgender because this is how I was born. I didn’t get a choice in that.

The only choice I have made is to accept who I am and make the right changes to keep myself safe and happy.

a. Stop telling me I’m fighting for my “cause” wrong. What even is my cause? I’m just sitting here trying to exist. I didn’t come out of my mother’s womb screaming for equal rights, y’know?

b. Ignoring the fact that I’m running in the 2016 Dunedin City Council elections, I don’t exist to be a political pawn, and neither do my transgender family.

2. Caitlyn Jenner is a household name these days, and it’s great that trans celebrities are becoming more out there, but that doesn’t excuse her from the sexism and transphobia she still spouts and her refusal to acknowledge the great privilege she has.

a. Remember that time she shamed systematically unemployed transgender people for living off benefits?

b. Remember that time she shamed transgender people for not “passing” right and making cisgender people uncomfortable, ignoring that very few transgender people can afford the thousands of dollars of elective plastic surgery on top of the standard corrective procedures she had to look more “feminine”?

c. In other news, have you ever heard of Laverne Cox? She’s a much better role model for the transgender community – at least she’s actually lived it.

3. Transgender people do not owe you an education on transgender issues. Queer people full stop do not owe you an education on queer issues. That kid down the road from you from China? Doesn’t owe you an education on China.

a. If we choose to educate people of our own choice, in our own time, that’s our decision. Don’t bombard us with questions at your own whim. You have no idea how dull it gets when your existence seems only to serve cisgender people with lectures they didn’t pay a tuition fee for.

b. Don’t ask us about our genitals or about how we have sex, seriously guys, didn’t your mama teach you any manners when you were tiny?

READ MORE:

*Time for a transgender education, NZ

*Transgender woman says she was detained, humiliated over body 'anomaly'

*'2015 has shown transgender acceptance is coming'

4. Cisgender people don’t get to tell transgender people how to be transgender. We’ve been doing this our whole lives folks, you just sound like a moron.

a. Cisgender people also don’t get to tell us transgender people that we are “hurting the transgender ‘cause’”. Like, I’ll ask it again, what cause?! All we’re doing is existing! Not to mention we know how to exist as transgender a lot more than you do.

b. A few days back I had two cisgender people try and tell me that the tone I used in a Facebook post was wrong and hurting my “cause”, 73 Facebook comment replies from about eight of my other friends defending my wording and explaining how they were being transphobic later and the “friends” are no longer my friends anymore.

c. Which brings me to this one – if a transgender person tells you you’re being transphobic, stop, listen and learn from it. It’s just like primary school folks.

5. Transgender people face a lot of adverse behaviour from cisgender people, both systematic and socially. I remember reading an Argentinian study that said that we have an average life expectancy of only around 32 years because of it. The last time I got harassed in a supermarket and called disgusting for wearing “boy” clothes was two days ago, in Oamaru. (I was just trying to buy cereal!)

It’s not exactly infrequent, and I’m lucky that it doesn’t seem as bad at home in Dunedin. But I really feel for the transgender people living in regional New Zealand who don’t have it as lucky as me.

READ MORE:

* We need a champion for transgender acceptance

* 'I always knew I was different'

* Life as a non-binary trans person

And it’s really important that when people see or hear these kind of transphobic comments being made, that they speak up and against the person making them, because there are transgender teens out there killing themselves over transphobic bullying from members of the public. If you stop even one fellow cisgender person from making discriminatory comments towards us, you are saving lives.

Basically, I might be transgender, but I’m just a person. I’m nothing special. I don’t want to be a big deal and I don’t want to be the centre of attention all the time, I just want to live my life without being hassled for something that I can’t change about myself. I also just want to live my life authentically, like me, and what I am is a genderfluid/non-binary transgender person.

There’s a lot of other cool things about me that have nothing to do with being trans, I make a pretty neat chocolate mud cake y’know. I’m a multi-faceted individual just like every one else on this planet, whether cisgender or transgender.

Now please, cisgender people, for the love of god. Stop acting like the only interesting thing about me is my gender.

*Cisgender: Adjective to describe a person whose gender matches the sex the doctor decided they were at birth.

Got a perspective on what it's like to be transgender in New Zealand? Click the green button to share your thoughts, or email stuffnation@stuff.co.nz