Why Marginalized People Have to Be Extraordinary
Rene Hebert, Mr. International Leather 2025 , recently wrote:
“Why are trans people winning all of these leather contests?
Well, when you have to try harder and go above and beyond just for a seat at the table that is mainstream, primarily cis, white, male gay and queer culture, excellence just kind of becomes second nature.”
That observation reaches far beyond trans people and Leather contests.
Throughout much of the LGBTQIA+ commUNITY, cisgender white men, and to a lesser degree cisgender white women, are still treated as the default. Their experiences are frequently presented as though they represent all of us, while transgender and non-binary people, people of color, and those living at multiple marginalized intersections are expected to fight for space, recognition, resources, and respect.
Trans people, non-binary people, women, Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, disabled people, fat people, and those living at multiple intersections of these identities are often expected to work harder simply to be regarded as equally capable. We must frequently arrive more prepared, more knowledgeable, more polished, and more accomplished just to receive the consideration others are given automatically.
When marginalized people succeed, someone inevitably asks whether they were chosen only because of their identity. Yet when a cisgender white man succeeds, people rarely question whether his identity opened doors, made him appear more “marketable,” or allowed others to recognize his potential more easily.
That is the double standard.
The success of marginalized people is not evidence that standards have been lowered. It often reveals how extraordinary someone had to become before the gatekeepers could no longer justify overlooking them.
I experience part of this personally as a non-binary person who uses they/them pronouns. I have had people see my pronouns in a dating-app bio and immediately decide that I must be mentally ill. Some have looked at my pronouns and my weight and made the tired joke that using “plural pronouns” makes sense because there are supposedly two of me.
That is not curiosity. It is not debate. It is cruelty disguised as humor.
They/them pronouns are also not grammatically incorrect. Singular “they” has been used in English for centuries and is something most English speakers use naturally without even noticing. People routinely say, “Someone left their phone,” when they do not know the person’s gender. The objection suddenly appears when a non-binary person asks them to extend that same ordinary use of language to us.
The problem is rarely grammar. Grammar is simply the excuse.
These encounters also remind me of the consequences of poor literacy, especially in the United States. Literacy is more than sounding out words on a page. It includes comprehension, critical thinking, evaluating information, recognizing context, and engaging seriously with experiences different from our own.
We live in a culture where too many people form opinions from headlines, memes, short videos, and whatever confirms what they already believe. They repeat claims about gender, race, history, religion, and so forth without reading the research, studying the history, or listening to the people whose lives they are discussing. Some are perfectly capable of learning but refuse because learning might require them to admit that what they were taught was incomplete or wrong.
I was raised in a small Kentucky community surrounded by conservative religion. I understand what it means to inherit a worldview before you have the knowledge or freedom to question it. I also know that inherited beliefs are not a life sentence. People can read. They can listen. They can unlearn. They can choose intellectual honesty over the comfort of certainty.
I had to do that work myself. I had to confront beliefs and influences from my upbringing, including the ways I was being groomed toward white supremacy. I could have protected my ego and remained silent. Instead, I chose to examine what I had been taught, accept responsibility, and change. That process did not end once I declared myself “one of the good ones.” Unlearning is ongoing.
As a person who happens to be white and is often perceived as cisgender as I am masculine-presenting, I experience marginalization because I am queer, non-binary, fat, neurodivergent, and from a working-class Appalachian background. At the same time, I still benefit from being perceived as white, cisgender, and masculine. Intersectionality requires me to be honest about both. Experiencing oppression in one part of my identity does not erase the privilege I carry in another.
Poor literacy alone does not create hatred, and people with limited formal education are not inherently bigoted. Some of the most compassionate people I have known lacked educational opportunities, while some of the most hateful people hold advanced degrees. The deeper problem is willful ignorance. It is the refusal to learn when information is available, the refusal to listen when people describe their own lives, and the belief that one’s discomfort deserves more consideration than another person’s humanity.
Reading the stories of people unlike us builds the capacity to understand that our experiences are not universal. It becomes more difficult to reduce someone to a stereotype once we have listened to their fears, their joy, their history, and their journey. That is precisely why those who depend on prejudice so often discourage people from reading widely, learning accurate history, or hearing marginalized voices directly.
My writing is often long because these subjects deserve more than a slogan. Human lives cannot always be compressed into a meme or explained in a sentence. If someone wants to hold an opinion about whether people like me deserve dignity, then I believe they have a responsibility to do more than repeat something they heard from a politician, preacher, influencer, or anonymous account.
This does not mean every cisgender white man, or every cisgender white woman, has had an easy life. It also does not mean none of them have worked hard. It means their race and cisgender status, as well as gender in the case of cisgender white men, generally have not been additional barriers they were required to overcome. Privilege does not mean someone has never struggled. It means there are particular struggles they were less likely to face because of who they are.
White privilege has been normalized for so long that many of the people who benefit from it do not recognize it as privilege. They experience their advantages as simply the way life is supposed to work. As a result, when those advantages are questioned, shared, or removed, equality can feel like oppression to someone who has always been centered.
Some also fear that making room for marginalized people means they will be silenced, excluded, or cast aside. That fear often reveals how they believe power works. They assume that if someone else gains a seat at the table, they must lose theirs. They expect marginalized people to treat them as they have treated those who were different from them. But the purpose of equality is not to reverse the hierarchy and create new outcasts. It is to dismantle the hierarchy so nobody’s humanity, opportunity, or belonging depends upon their race, gender, or proximity to those historically allowed to hold power.
When someone has been accustomed to privilege, accountability can feel like persecution, inclusion can feel like displacement, and equality can feel like loss. But losing an unfair advantage is not the same as being oppressed. It is simply being asked to live on more equal ground.
We should also be careful not to romanticize this reality. Marginalized people should not have to be exceptional to be included. They should not need to outperform everyone around them merely to earn a seat at a table that claims to represent the entire LGBTQIA+ commUNITY. A person should not need a title, a flawless résumé, or an extraordinary record of service before their humanity is respected.
Our commUNITY rightly asks the world to stop treating cisgender heterosexual people as the default. We must be willing to examine whether we have recreated that same hierarchy internally, with cisgender white gay men positioned at the center, cisgender white women often receiving greater recognition and access than other marginalized groups, and everyone else pushed toward the margins.
I deliberately write commUNITY with “UNITY” capitalized because a community cannot truly exist without UNITY. It’s the most important part of the word. Unity does not mean uniformity, silence, or pretending our differences do not matter. It means recognizing that our differences belong within the whole and that nobody should have to erase part of themselves to be accepted. If our unity only includes those who look, identify, love, speak, or live like the people already holding power, then it is not unity at all. It is conformity wearing the language of community.
Representation is not taking something away from cisgender white people. Inclusion is not oppression. When people who were historically excluded finally begin receiving recognition, that is not evidence that the system has become unfair. It may be evidence that it is becoming slightly less unfair.
So, when trans people, non-binary people, women, and people of color win titles, lead organizations, create art, preserve our history, and shape the future of our commUNITY, we should not ask why they are suddenly winning “everything.”
We should ask why they had to be so extraordinary before we were willing to see them at all.
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