Community

I feel very lucky that I’ve managed to make a lot of friends with other trans women and gender non-conforming people in Toronto. There’s been a lot of positive outcomes from this that I couldn’t have necessarily predicted.

After I came out to my family, I started opening my home to guests and hosting small parties for friends. Small parties grew into medium size parties, and medium size parties grew into ones about as big as I could fit in my place. New connections made one-by-one over social media, dating sites, chat groups, and other peoples connections. I’ve managed to form quite a network of supportive people around me and also helped my friends meet each other and grow their own networks too.

We’re lucky in Toronto to be able to find each other so easily. Sometimes I think about how if I was living in the United States right now in a red state how impossible it would feel. Nonetheless, I do see many people from these places finding a way, because that’s how important this is to us. No matter the constraints, if it’s true to who we are, we find a way.

A few years ago I went to an event in Las Vegas for gender non-conforming folks, and I met people who had no one else to share their identity with back home. The importance of this event for them was tremendous, and they had travelled long distances and spent large amounts of money to have the opportunity to feel like part of a community that didn’t judge them.

My friend and I have discussed returning to Vegas for event like this again but the cost in time and money seems a little bit high, considering all the opportunity we have at home.