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I’m a Trans Woman. Bullies Don’t Surprise Me, but Allies Still Do.

Credit...Ohni Lisle

Ms. Boylan is a contributing Opinion writer. She writes on L.G.B.T.Q. politics, education and life in Maine.

In late March, President Vladimir Putin of Russia compared his country’s reputational plight to that of J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. In a speech railing against the West’s efforts to ostracize Russia, Mr. Putin groused about cancel culture run amok, pointing to what he called the cancellation of the author because she “did not please fans of so-called gender freedoms.”

Ms. Rowling was, understandably, not thrilled to learn Russia’s president, who began his brutal, deadly war against Ukraine six weeks ago, believed they were of common cause. “Critiques of Western cancel culture,” she tweeted, “are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics.” She included a link to a BBC story on Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who has been poisoned and imprisoned.

Ms. Rowling was absolutely right to push back at Putin’s statement and to use her bully pulpit to redirect attention to Mr. Navalny’s story. And yet in that tweet, she failed to examine how on earth she — the creator of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — had ever found herself on the same side of the aisle as the Russian leader.

The point of commonality is not that they were canceled; Ms. Rowling has a new film coming out, and Mr. Putin runs one of the most powerful countries in the world. What the two really have in common is what seems to be an antipathy to transgender people. Ms. Rowling, who has repeatedly protested that she supports trans rights, has nevertheless accused the trans rights movement of “doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it.” Why she has chosen to use her enormous influence to pick on some of the most vulnerable people in the world is hard for me to fathom. But then, if you’re a member of a vulnerable population, being misunderstood by the powerful, and bearing the consequences of that ignorance, is an all-too-common experience.

As a queer American, and one who has been involved in the movement for L.G.B.T.Q. equality for over two decades now, I am not surprised by the way trans folks are continuously bullied, misunderstood and belittled. What does surprise me, a little, is that in response, so many others — straight, cisgender and gay — have rallied on our behalf.

Standing up makes a difference. Back in 2020, on the same day that Ms. Rowling posted one of her screeds about trans folks eroding what it means to be a woman, the British actress Emma Watson (best known for playing Hermione in the Harry Potter film series) tweeted, “I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.” That mattered. When the actor Don Cheadle wore a T-shirt that read, “Protect trans kids” on “Saturday Night Live” in 2019, that mattered. When Iowa — Iowa! — flew the trans flag at the State Capitol on the Transgender Day of Remembrance in 2019, that mattered.

When members of Congress displayed the flag outside their offices for the International Transgender Day of Visibility, that mattered, too. I was especially grateful last year when Representative Marie Newman, Democrat of Illinois, put one up so that her neighbor across the hall, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, had to look at it when she went to her office. Ms. Greene had criticized the Equality Act — which would expand civil rights protections to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity — by calling it a “direct attack on God’s creation.”

I have a message for all those who would rather leave me out of the American story: I am not an attack on God’s creation. I am someone whom God has made, just like this. It may be that there is no room for me in your view of the world. But the world contains all sorts of miracles: the wombat and the seahorse and the night-blooming cereus. Surely there is room in the universe for all of these things, as strange — to you — as we might be.

I have been writing for The New York Times Opinion page for 15 years now, since Halloween of 2007. Today, with equal measures of pride and fatigue, I step down from my post as contributing Opinion writer. I admit this makes me a little sad; there is so much more work to be done. But I know that as I near retirement age, I’ll be grateful to be freed from the constant deadlines this column has demanded and to turn my energies to other projects, including a new novel coming this fall, “Mad Honey,” co-written with Jodi Picoult.

In any case, this is not farewell. I’ll continue to write the occasional piece for Opinion as my imagination, and the news cycle, demands.

I believe that we change the world with the stories we tell. It is my hope that the stories I’ve told on these pages since 2007 have shown that a family like mine can flourish and thrive, in all its gnarly glory.

And I’ve often told the story of coming out to my conservative, Republican, evangelical Christian mother, a woman who, when she finally learned the truth about her daughter, simply put her arms around me and said, “Love will prevail.”

I still believe in a future when a life like mine is not seen as a near crime against humanity, as Vladimir Putin has called the teaching of gender fluidity to children, but as a gift, not as an attack on God’s creation but as the fullest measure of what it means to love and be loved.

When I came out to my mother, she quoted I Corinthians: “These three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

To my precious readers: In the days to come, I hope that you will find the faith that gives you courage, the hope that gives you strength and the love that you — and all of us — so surely deserve.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Jennifer Finney Boylan (@JennyBoylan), a contributing Opinion writer, is a professor of English at Barnard College. Her most recent book is “Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs.”  @JennyBoylan

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Bullies Don’t Surprise Me, but Allies Still Do. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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