A Transgender Woman’s View of Pride Month from the Dominican Republic

PRIDE 2026. TIME TO RAISE OUR VOICES IN A LOVING ROAR

A Transgender Woman’s View of Pride Month from the Dominican Republic

I am a 66-year-old transgender woman who emigrated from the USA three years ago

Sunrise in Dominican Republic as a storm approaches. Photograph by author from her home

Mine is a small voice. I live in Las Galeras, Samaná, a remote rural community of Dominican Republic. In the hope it will be amplified in the roar for Pride month, I add it expectantly.

I am a 66-year-old transgender woman who emigrated from the USA three years ago. It was not the transphobic rhetoric that prompted the move. It was warmth, human warmth. That quality in a human being many of us seem to long for. Where can human warmth go? How can I lose a vital part of who I am? Does it just disappear, leaving no trace? Or does it remain fallow, beneath the surface waiting, expecting to be expressed?

I found it here, and the narrative I left behind is not even a murmur. It is silence, the kind that says we feel comfortable with you here, as you are. During a casual conversation with a stranger I answered this question: Why do you like living in our country? The people, I answered. Yes, I’ve heard that before, many times, he commented. I’m a transgender woman, I continued. So what (y eso que importa), he answered.

Unlike the storm brewing to the north, where the debris it leaves is measured in trans lives, my existence mirrors the refreshing breeze of the Caribbean. Yet the voice I whisper is one of what could be, should be, happening everywhere. It is one of reason, of commonality, of acceptance. It exists. It is real. It is here. My presence should not upend social boundaries, I exist to live within them, but when these boundaries contract I am left wanting, the one that does not deserve understanding, the one that becomes a threat, the outsider that becomes the scapegoat, the innocent that becomes the transgressor.

I loom large because my presence here is not tolerated, it is respected. Yes, it is a strange presence, an unusual one, and unexpected. Yet it invites dialogue, not discomfort; exploration, not persecution. The locals seek me out, they enjoy the interaction that is different, yet not threatening. And I enjoy in them an openness that is simplicity, a warmth that is candor, a view of life that is forgiving.

Yes, bigotry lives here as well, mostly in the larger cities like Santo Domingo. But it is hard to find, and not the rule, much less the law. Here I am more of a curiosity than a target, someone to be discovered, not incarcerated. In the words of a beautiful young Dominican transgender woman, “Then they share with us and see that we are not as bad as they were led to believe” (Luego comparten con nosotras y ven que no somos tan malas como les hicieron creer). One part bears repeating: as they were led to believe. The call of the herd. The voice of a few fills an uncertain world they have created, rallying the herd to a cause worth shouting about because it talks of danger, social upheaval, children, spaces, promiscuity. It makes mention of an agenda, a revolution, a manifesto of social change via gender change. This is not fear, this is cruelty masquerading as concern.

My voice is not a call to move to the warmth of an island in the Caribbean. It is a call to all to cease and desist a narrative that destroys physically, emotionally, and spiritually. From the calm of my existence I can’t see winners there, we all lose. From the height of my age I only see destruction, and destroyers, by their very nature, cannot be builders. For what they build on the ashes of their destruction is bound to be suffused with the weaknesses of the human spirit, not its strengths. Hate cannot be strength, or it would be valuable. Warmth is not weakness, or it would not be sought after.

But will there be an echo once the roar subsides, because it will grow faint, and the only lasting impact will be the echo that lingers beyond this generation into the next. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot echoes, I can hear it. The Stonewall Riots echo, I can feel them. Hundreds of whispers that say, “We are, not by choice, and we would like to stay, by choice”. A nation that moves to annihilate its citizens cannot possibly survive, much less prosper. History is the silent witness to what happens to a people, a nation, when human beings are targeted for exclusion, then extinction.

I add my voice, my whisper. Not a cry, a plea. Not a threat, an invitation. Not a lament, a proposition. I add my presence, my humanity, my warmth as a transgender woman.

This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt, **Pride 2026, Time To Raise Our Voices in a Loving Roar!**

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