Best For:
Transgender individuals reflecting on identity & autonomy, human rights advocates & community organizers discussing inequality, readers exploring the gap between American ideals and lived reality, & anyone interested in personal essays that combine memoir, culture, and social commentary.
The Vault:
- A trans man’s POV on freedom beyond political slogans & national mythology.
- The difference between legal equality on paper & lived equality in practice.
- Identity, medical autonomy, & the realities of self-definition within public systems.
- Reflections on growing up around firearms, patriotism, & traditional ideas of American freedom.
- The hidden calculations marginalized people make to navigate safety & visibility in daily life.
- Why freedom becomes an incomplete promise when access to it depends on identity, power, or social acceptance.
What does freedom mean to you?
America’s Favorite Word:
Freedom, America’s favorite word or maybe it’s America’s favorite lie… if not it is at least top ten on both lists. The hot take (from the point of view of a trans man & human-rights advocate) on how to see the crack in America’s myth which paints it as the land of the free.
Freedom as a Nation’s Lore:
Think about it: freedom is all over America in theory, at least. It appears in over and over again in speeches, classrooms, campaign slogans, and holiday celebrations as though its meaning is universal here and equally shared by everyone of us. We are taught to see freedom as a finished achievement rather than an ongoing question.
Freedom – Under the Microscope:
However, my experience as a transgender man and the stories of those around me prompted me to want to examine the freedom of Americans much more closely.
What happens when your identity requires paperwork, appointments, legal processes, and public explanations just to exist comfortably in your own skin?
What happens when safety, healthcare, self-expression, and even the ability to move through the world peacefully feel conditional rather than guaranteed?
The distance between the promise of freedom and the reality of access becomes impossible to ignore.
As advocates and American people, we need to ask ourselves a difficult question: if freedom only works consistently for some people, can we honestly call it freedom for all?
Freedom Beyond Slogans:
Freedom isn’t a buzzword or a flag on a bumper sticker. It’s not just fireworks and barbecues. It’s not the illusion of choice sold to us by systems never built for all of us. For me, freedom is visceral: something I had to fight for inch by inch, name by name, scar by scar.
Freedom Becomes Survival:
As a transgender man, freedom started with survival. It was the right to exist without apology. To wake up in a body I could live in, not just endure.
Identity Under Pressure:
Did anyone else notice how freedom gets used like it means one universal thing? As if it were already settled. Do they actually think that marginalized humans don’t get to question the inequalities they face while freedom is supposed to exist? Let’s interrogate the concept of America the Free for what it is… a myth.
Most of what gets called “freedom” in public doesn’t hold up under real pressure. If you start taking a look at the freedoms of some versus the reality of others, the mask slips even more. Freedom here is nothing more than America’s national identity language. A lie we are all told we already have, so that we don’t ask why it doesn’t feel accessible in practice.
“Freedom a word spoken as a constant in America. Swaying
-Axton N.O. Mitchell
depending traditional views & judgment placed on you.”
The idea of Freedom in America, through the lenses of reality, shows a more conditional aspect of this concept. Freedom here depends on who you are, what you look like, what you can prove about yourself, the amount of commas in your bank account and whether systems are built to recognize you as someone.
Conversations Beginning:
The discussion should start here if we are being honest with ourselves about freedom for Americans. If freedom only exists when nothing in your life challenges the traditional view, then it’s not actually freedom. This nuance makes it seem as if freedom doesn’t actually mean anything.
In my life, the gaps in freedom showed up early; I noticed that there were differences for me and others before I had the words to explain that. It wasn’t theoretical. I found it in my own lived experiences.
I saw it when my mom’s best friend feared bringing up her lesbian identity around anyone who did not need to know. I heard it in the stories of racism many people still face even today, told by my mom’s numerous African American friends at cookouts and other gatherings. I felt it in my own fear to admit for over two decades that I too am queer.
Freedom wasn’t an idea I adopted. This was a concept I knew I had to work for in order to be authentically me and exist freely. Yet, let some people tell the same story and they’ll say we were all already standing in the glow of it.
There is no cleaner way to explain the process. This was slow, incremental, and often invisible to people who were never denied access to themselves in the first place.
Defining Myself:
It’s having the power to say, “This is who I am.” Then having the same power to have that self-defined identity reflected on my ID, my prescriptions, and the way I’m addressed by the world.
Paperwork, Recognition, & Jumping through Bureaucratic Hoops:
I had my name legally changed.
I decided that the best form of transitioning for me was with hormones and surgery, after my social transition. Allowing myself the freedom to do this also helped me achieve the ability to define myself instead of being defined by others. That’s a freedom some people never get to taste, and one I don’t take lightly.
This was done by tons of paperwork, appointments, waiting rooms, and inside systems that don’t always allow nontraditional-identified individuals the comfort of existing inside them.
There is a weight lifted that I can’t accurately explain when you are finally done fighting for people to see who you are.
Identity No Longer Contested:
When your identity stops being something you have to argue for, it is simpler to exist in peacefulness. Not everything. So much so that you notice the difference in how the world pushes back against you, or in my case stops pushing, mostly.
This change didn’t make my identity more acceptable to the makers of American freedom. It just removed a layer of constant friction in the way I am viewed day to day that most people never have to think about.
Even then, it doesn’t stay stable in every instance. Recognition can be present in one system and absent in another. Your document can say the right thing while a room still doesn’t. You can, like me, exist with the privileges assigned to a man whose skin is white, as long as you never speak your truth. The moment you out yourself as a transgender man, it all wipes away.
– Axton N.O. Mitchell
“Gaps in freedom by definition & the way it works, typically one of the first views showing the conditions in freedom’s fine print.”
The gaps matter.
In these spaces the definition of self stops being personal and starts being assigned by assumption and force.
Here in America the Free defining yourself is not only about knowing who you are.
It’s about whether the systems around you are willing to allow you to exist in your identity. If they allow you to then the degree of what they approve also comes into play.
Freedom During Upbringing:
I was raised in West Virginia, at least for the first dozen years of my life. It’s a place where the word freedom echoes loudest around gun safes. Resonating in hunting camps and alongside different flags, the two seen most places you look are the Confederate and the American Flags. My grandfather was a cop and many of my other family members served in various branches of the armed services. We were taught that guns weren’t politics, they were a part of life.
Patriotism, Culture, & Early Framing:
Freedom, in that environment, had a very specific shape. They worked to see it was framed in things like protection, self-reliance, and your right to defend what’s yours.
Yes, even then, there was a clear difference between the idea of freedom and how it actually showed up in practice.
In those same spaces, freedom didn’t extend the same way to everyone. How it showed up, if it did at all, depended on who was speaking, who was listening, and the known point of view of those who could hear. Racism, homophobia, and other hateful things hide in the cracks here, afraid of showing exactly where they live.
Freedom, Fear, & Contradictions:
This fear and the endless contradictions becomes easier to notice the longer you live inside them while standing in opposition. When freedom is treated as something already fully achieved by all citizens, anything that proves something outside that frame gets treated as an act of dramatics. Usually, they act as if it is done by those lacking equal access to freedom in order to draw attention to themselves or “blame” their mistakes on something.
Guns Aren’t Political:
I still believe in the right to own firearms. I believe in the right to protect yourself. This right is important, especially when the systems meant to protect you decide you’re not worth protecting. I believe in free speech, even when it’s messy. I believe that the Constitution wasn’t perfect. However, the ideals in it about liberty and justice for all are still worth chasing.
Somehow after all this history and experiences we still find those that believe that guns sit outside politics. That they are just tools. That they belong to culture, tradition, family, protection. Something inherited more than debated.
Protection, Risk, & Unequal Safety:
I understand why that framing exists. I grew up around it. It was normal to see firearms treated like household objects instead of symbols in a policy argument.
The idea that they are not political does not survive the lenses of reality when you consider how differently safety is distributed.
Who gets to carry without suspicion?
Who gets assumed dangerous before they even speak?
Tell me who gets protected when something goes wrong and who does not?
Protection by the American standards is usually selective in practice, even if the language around it pretends otherwise.
The right to defend yourself only matters in full if the system around you does not get to decide your value first. The contradiction hides in the instances that shift because of the individual’s identity.
Free speech follows the same type of pattern. Sure, it exists in principle, but in reality’s lenses it bends depending on who is speaking and who is listening. Some people can speak freely without fearing any consequence, and on the other hand those fearing harm due to freedom’s inequalities are left to calculate every choice in words.
The nuance behind things like guns and freedom of speech are all pieces in the inequality puzzle. Rights that only function consistently for some people are more proof of the freedom myth that exists in the American Dream. These gaps are what make the statement “guns aren’t political” incomplete. Not because the object itself is political, but because the environment around it already is.
Daily Freedoms:
Freedom means being able to walk down the street without being seen as a threat or a target. It means my medical decisions are mine, not the government’s. It means I get to live out loud and still feel safe. It means art without censorship. Relationships without judgment. Life without someone else holding the reins.
Visibility & Constant Calculation:
Do you think that there is a difference between being allowed to exist and being able to exist without constantly measuring risk? If you don’t, you’re probably a person who never had to suppress parts of you to ensure you remain safe.
Most people do not have to think about how visible they are in public spaces. I know I wish I never had to worry about how my identity was read before I even spoke. Do you ever stress about what version of yourself is safest to present in a given moment?
The constant calculation and calibration become constant background noise when you live with it long enough, always in your ear. It almost feels haunting at times.
Medical & Bodily Autonomy:
Medical autonomy is part of that same structure. This is not just about a person’s access to care, but also the control over their decisions which affect only their body. Who gets to decide, who gets to question it, and who gets to deny it? Why?
Freedom of expression is another piece we can find here as well. Things like art, speech, and style exist here. In American freedom models the traditionally viewed ways to express one’s self are typically more freely expressed due to lack of fear.
“Freedom reaching citizens unevenly isn’t freedom in theory. Freedom is for all or it isn’t freedom at all.”
– Axton N.O. Mitchell
For many of us something as simple as walking through space without second guessing the way you carry yourself becomes an anxiety-inducing experience. The risk level of your actions causing you to be too visible to the wrong person is something many people are thinking about constantly.
The Trials of the Non-Traditional:
What gets called “normal life” is not what every person finds to be their actual normal evenly. The weight of the calculations is dependent on how many barriers you have to actively work around just to do what many consider a basic thing.
Tell me, did you notice the accumulation of small restrictions that shape how free someone actually is in practice?
Freedom Means Everyone:
True freedom means no one is left behind. Immigrants, disabled people, queer folks, people of color, and the poor have the same rights as anyone else when freedom is more than myth. We all deserve the same chances and the same humanity. If your freedom depends on mine being taken away, then it was never freedom to start with.
Equality on paper does not automatically equate to equality in practice. The distance between those two things is where most of the tension sits. The moment freedom requires ranking who gets it fully and who gets it conditionally, it stops being universal in any meaningful sense.
Uneven Distribution:
We see it distributed the most unevenly based on proximity to power, traditional views, and social acceptance. This creates a system where freedom is not a shared baseline but something negotiated differently for each group of people. Those negotiations are not always visible from the outside. They show up in policy, in treatment, in access, and in expectation. Sadly, they are usually based on the wants of whomever is lining the policymakers’ pockets.
This all gets erased when freedom is spoken about as if it already exists equally for everyone. The claim of universality only holds if you ignore the gaps it produces.
Freedom – American Myth
Those gaps are the parts that define this as the American myth.
Freedom is often described like it is already finished. As if it is a settled condition all Americans simply live inside. That framing turns it into something universal that you are supposed to have equally. They want us to accept the difference while staring at the proof of it rather than examining those differences.
The Gap Between Ideal and Reality:
The problem is the distance between the idea and what oppressed people actually experience.
If freedom were real in the way it is spoken about, it would not sway so much depending on the individual’s identity, location, or circumstance. Freedom should not require compliance to conform, constant explanation, or defense just to access it in a free country.
What exists instead is a version of freedom that functions more like a national identity language. A story that holds things together symbolically even when the lived reality is inconsistent underneath it.
That inconsistency is not small. We see it show up in everyday life, in who feels safe moving through the world without adjustment, and who does not.
We find it in how disagreement is handled. We see not all voices are treated equally in how they are received, even when the same principles are said to apply to everyone.
A Look at the Myth:
The myth is not that freedom exists at all. It is that it exists evenly, consistently, and without condition.
Once you start comparing the language to the outcomes, the gaps become harder to ignore.
Freedom, to me, is real, radical, and unfinished. I’ll keep writing, speaking, and living until it becomes real for everyone.
TLDR:
Freedom in America is distributed unevenly rather than the universal concept in the picture the government paints. I have experienced freedom as something negotiated through many areas in life as a transgender man.
Legal equality and lived equality are not the same thing and neither exist for any marginalized individual in any sense in America. Access to safety, self-definition of identity, healthcare, and public acceptance depends on the way society views the identity, privilege, and social power in comparison to the traditional way.
Growing up around traditional ideas of patriotism and freedom highlighted the difference between American ideals and lived realities.
Marginalized-communities often make situation based calculations multiple times a day about safety, visibility, and risk that many people never have to consider.
The American myth is not that freedom exists, but that it exists equally, consistently, and without conditions.
Read More:
Taking Risks. LGB Without the T.
ACLU – 2026 LGBTQ+ Attacks by US Legislation.
Pew Research Center – Views on Racial Inequality.
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