Open Letter to AOC

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

My name is Skylar Gowanloch. I am a 19-year-old English Undergraduate at Florida State University. This semester I am taking a Women in Literature Class. In class, we discuss topics surrounding female identity, women's rights, reproductive expectations, intersectionality, and sexist issues. One main theme that would often get brought up in class is: whose stories get told and whose do not? Women were excluded from the narrative for hundreds of years. We have been excluded from thousands of years of written history. How many stories were left out?

Women are a minoritized group. We need to band together with other oppressed peoples so we can lift each other up, not down, and come together. Ocasio-Cortez, I have a little brother who identifies as a transgender man. He is going to high school next year. I know that his rights are threatened, more than my own. Stories of the transgender community are starting to be written now. Just as women have been left out of the narrative and history, so have they, but at a far greater extent. I write you this letter to implore you to continue to use your voice in support of the transgender community. The current administration is trying very hard to silence it, as we see with the Trans Military Ban President Trump tried to pass.

All trans-men and trans-women are connected to the feminist movement. Reproductive issues and reproductive expectations affect them too, perhaps with even more extremity. Please use your voice, please speak out, please continue to support transgender youth. They are being kicked out of their homes by a family member, forced to run away and seek refuge. There has not been a place for them on this planet in thousands of years. We are the generation that can change that. You can help us more than you know.

With deepest respects,

Skylar Gowanloch.