Amazing Amanda Rae
Vibrant, well-read, opinionated and blazing a trail, a 22-year-old transgender woman from America’s heartland aims to enlighten and educate as she pursues her own dreams.
By Janice Burch
As a child, Amanda Rae was outgoing and sensitive before the concept of gender was a thing. “I just enjoyed being one of the girls. There were hardly any differences between us.”
It wasn’t until puberty and middle school hit, that society’s view of gender dictated how Amanda Rae, then living her life as a young boy, brought things to a head and began to unravel the confusion and complicated feelings.
Always closest to girls and able to relate best to girls, with an all-girl friend group, Amanda Rae began to feel despair and confusion when sleepover/slumber party time hit during middle school years, and she was left out. As she watched her then typical male body changes that came with puberty - body hair, deeper voice, a bigger frame, “it all became so strange,” Amanda Rae said.
“For the first time in my life a social barrier had been placed between my friends and me. I was a boy and they were girls. When I hit puberty, all the wrong changes started happening to me,” she said.
Snapshot: Trans Life in America
Living life as a trans person in the United States is rife with challenge and discrimination. About 1.4 million adults in the United States identify as transgender, according to a 2016 report by The Williams Institute at UCLA’s School of Law. In Indiana, where Amanda Rae lives, she is among 27,600 trans people.
A 2011 report conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality reported that 41% of persons who identify as transgender have tried to commit suicide in the last few years. For perspective, compare that to about 1.6% of the general population in the US. Further most respondents in the survey live in extreme poverty, 55% have lost jobs over employer bias against transgender persons, 51% reported extreme bullying and 64% have been physically or sexually assaulted.
“We’re sensationalized by the media - when you tell someone you’re trans, they think of you as a surgery-jockey; a vapid, egotistical, purely-cosmetic joke. You have to dismantle the preconceived notions." people have before you can even make any headway toward acceptance”