"And here is the umpteenth refusal, the umpteenth sense of inferiority and the umpteenth lack of respect. Violence has many faces. Countless. It happened to me many times to taste it and I can assure that you never get used to it. Of course, time can make it almost an habit, but you will always perceive that bitter flavor of inadequacy and helplessness in your mouth. Discrimination shows itself walking with light steps in your daily life, in the small things of everyday, in the repulsion’s looks of the people in the metro or in the repugnance’s expressions as soon as they can hear your voice. You can perfectly hear the murmurs and the whispered comments: they allude to your identity and to your being, they do it without limits, without the least empathy. 

When you’re a transgender person, prejudice precedes you; this happens at least in the majority of cases. It’s difficult to fight for your own rights, especially when you live in a hostile environment, but even if I grew up in a context where my situation could be easily defined more unique than rare, I consider myself as lucky, extremely lucky. Too many people of the lgbtq+ community ordinarily undergo outrages and are condemned to abuses and psychological tortures. 

I am fully aware of having had a peaceful childhood and a quiet adolescence, protected and supported by my dearest loved ones, without having ever experienced physical aggressions. But this doesn’t mean that I’ve never underwent violence. Violence is also the disdain with which the people, that you used to consider friends, don’t accept your transition. Violence is reducing yourself to a mere mistress, because you’re never going to be worth enough to live your relationship in public. Violence is being refused even for the jobs that you’re extremely qualified in, just because you don’t have the documents congruent to your identity or simply because your passing is not good enough. Violence is always being asked about invasive and awkward things, because clearly the body and the identity of a transgender person are a public property, everyone deserves to fulfill their unhealthy and obsessive curiosity, even if this could lead to harm people that you just met: “What was your name before?”, “Your boobs are fake right? Did you fix something else?”, “What do you have underneath?”, “How can you have sex?”, “Don’t you think that you should need to dress in another way to be considered a woman?”.

Violence is being pointed at with stereotypes without having even had the possibility to introduce yourself. Violence is all this and also many other things."