I am a transgender woman.
I am a woman.
I am your friend, your loved one, a human being. I am a person with rights and I'm entitled to my dignity.
I am not a man.
I'm not anyone's dirty secret nor anyone's fetish — I deserve better than that. I'm a flesh-and-blood person.
Don't call me a "shemale," a "tranny" or "trap." These are dehumanizing insults.
And please don't call me "a transgender" — it's an adjective, not a noun. I'm "a transgender person," or "a transgender woman," or "a trans girl" for short.
I'm not your trans Wikipedia. I may feel like answering questions, but I may not. Try looking stuff up, doing a little learning on your own. Talk to me like any regular human — don't burden me with the expectation of having to justify my existence.
Please deal with your thoughts and feelings about trans people on your own as much as you can — this journey is hard enough without having to be everyone's caretaker.
And don't ask selfish questions that turn me into an oddity or a museum exhibit. Trans people are a normal variation of the human race. There are millions