By Kandi Robbins
I am a 61-year-old transwoman. Like many of you, legally I am male, but essentially, I am a woman. Life’s circumstances prevent me from going any further than this. As such, I have sought to build a female life that brings me pleasure and peace. I have become a serial volunteer all around Cleveland, working for The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Arthritis Foundation, the American Heart Association, the Diversity Center of Northern Ohio and this evening, I will be working one of the principal fundraisers for the Providence House. Providence House provides much needed crisis nursery services for those in desperate need in our area. There are many other places I work as well.
Kandi
My mission in life is to demonstrate that we can live in the mainstream as women, even though we are unable to go down the difficult road to transition due to the circumstances of our lives.
I have also been able to work actively as a model and an actress as Kandi. I am Kandi.
I reluctantly started a Facebook account about a year ago as it was the principal means of networking within the communities mentioned above. I do have a male Facebook account. It is principally inactive and was only established to belong to a certain group I am in. I rarely use it.
My fear in setting up Kandi’s Facebook account was that Mark Zuckerberg and his algorithm would out me, possibly costing me my job and potentially creating issues for my family that they do not deserve. So when I set up Kandi’s account, I used a nearby suburb as my location (not my actual location) and selected a different birthday because I feared by accessing either account from the same location (our home), Facebook would cross-pollinate the two. In the meantime, I have built significant contacts through my cross pollinate account that are quite valuable to me.
Fast forward to December 9, 2022, and someone hacked my account. Facebook locked it down to “protect” me. And they will not unlock it without a legal form of ID. Kandi, legally, is not a person, so legally, she has no identification. I have tried on numerous occasions to submit my driver’s license with an explanation. I have done the same from my male Facebook account.
I have sent numerous emails to Facebook to various email addresses I could find online. I have tried calling. I have provided my legal male information alongside my female information, at great discomfort to me. Bottom line, they will not offer me (nor anyone else) the ability to contact them. They simply reject my submission time after time with no explanation or other option to prove who I am. A more arrogant organization does not exist.
Any of their “help” can only be accessed as a member and being locked out, I have no access. (Catch 22)
There are millions and millions of us on Facebook with the same potential situation. If I did not have so much invested in these contacts, I would simply walk away and continue to distain Facebook for the scourge that it is.
Facebook has locked me out simply because I am transgender. At least that is how I see it.
If you can offer any suggestions, you can reach me through my blog, Kandi’s Land, listed on the right side of Femulate’s screen. Thank you.
For further reading, Femulate has addressed this issue in the past, notably here, here and here.
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| Wearing Cynthia Rowley |
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| Pamela Ray Christmas shopping at Locationan outlet centre in Perth, Western Australia. |