Alice Vol. 2 No. 2

BEYOND
THE
BARRIER
Pushing against heteronormativity:
living in the LGBTQ community
By Elizabeth Elkin
Editor’s note: Finn is a pseudonym
for a University of Alabama student
who requested anonymity.
Finn has been transgender forever.
He didn’t have a word for it until the
beginning of middle school. In sixth
or seventh grade, he thought to himself,
“Oh, that might be it. I might
be trans.”
Freshman year of high school, he became
more certain.
“There was kind of a progressive level
of ‘I know, that might be a thing,’
and then, ‘Oh, there’s a word that actually
describes me,’ ” he said.
Sometime around his junior year of
high school, Finn spoke with his mother
about it. At the time, his friends and
family knew him as a female. He did
not come out to the rest of his family
until sophomore year of college.
Finn grew up in Alabama. In high
school, everyone chose to attend the
state university, who gave him scholarship
money. Going there just felt like
the thing to do. If he could remake that
decision, Finn would be somewhere
else right now.
“It doesn’t feel safe,” he said. “I’m
always on edge. Always. Even if I feel
comfortable, I’m always like, ‘Okay,
but make sure you’re watching out
for yourself.’ Especially because all it
takes is one drunk frat daddy and his
friends to not like me. A lot of us feel
like they could kill you and not have
that much of a fuss.”
The transgender community is often
the recipient of violence, and after
this election season, people like Finn
worry about their personal safety.
Finn goes through college in fear, trying
not to stand out, trying to avoid
being outed in front of people who may
hurt him for becoming the person he
feels he was meant to be.
Alice Spring 2017 [59]