“Stand with and for us, as we continue standing with and for you. It is vital to our community, particularly our youth, to see themselves reflected positively. Instead of dictating their stories to them, it is so vital that we teach them to be the custodians of their own narratives. More than 20% of millennials now identify as LGBTQ and they need our support and we need to listen to them.”
Tiq Milan (top photo), Seth J Rainess (second photo), Dana Delgardo (third photo, and Mitch Davis (bottom) are trans men. As such, they have a unique perspective on gender and sexism:
[E]xperiences of trans men can provide a unique window into how gender functions in American society. […]
Over and over again, men who were raised and socialized as female
described all the ways they were treated differently as soon as the
world perceived them as male. They gained professional respect, but lost
intimacy. They exuded authority, but caused fear. From courtrooms to
playgrounds to prisons to train stations, at
work and at home, with friends and alone, trans men reiterated how
fundamentally different it is to experience the world as a man. […]
“All of a sudden, I’m the golden child,” [Dana Delgardo] says. “I have been with this company for 6 years, no ever recommended me for management. Now I’m put into a managerial position where I could possibly be a regional director.” […]
“If I start to get too close, I can feel her fear, I can feel that she’s
getting upset,” says Milan. “And it’s really just an indication of how
dangerous this world is for women.”
You know all those anti-transgender bathroom bills, where their supporters will force trans people to use the bathroom of their assigned gender, while expressing concern for women and children? We have been there before.
What history tells us is that people who hate use segregation in public places to harass, humiliate and control those they consider inferior.
This is not about protecting women and children. This is about protecting an oppressive way of life.
Here are some pictures from the segregated American South and Apartheid South Africa. Do you see the difference between what the haters did then and what they do now?
Exactly! Trans women and trans men do not even get their own segregated restrooms. They are to stay at home, in their closets.
Anyone who supports the anti-trans bathroom bills are committing a crime against humanity, in the same way the racist of the southern states and South Africa did when these posters were put up.
During her transition, she was working as a scientist, and her colleagues thought highly of her skills. She had even developed a unique, complex algorithm as a grad student—an algorithm she used to create an artificial intelligence that learned to hear, which she then put into a neuro-prosthetic cochlear implant. (She’s not kidding when she says she wants to jam things into people’s brains.)
But after her transition, nobody asked her about math anymore. This was a striking moment for a person who had grown up with the “arbitrary privilege” of being male: “Nobody told me I couldn’t do math or be a scientist,” she said.
Over at New Crossdream Life Sofie documents the connection between the sexoligist supporting the toxic autogynephilia theory and the racist Human Biodiversity Institute (HBI).
If someone ever tries to invalidate your identity or the one of your transgender friends using this theory, remember that it has been thoroughly debunked as a pseudo-science! Documentation here!
“I have seen and heard some truly strange things in my time as an activist. However nothing was odder than what I experienced at this year’s World Professional Association of Transgender Health conference. A senior psychiatrist and psychologist were on a panel, where they strenuously opposed laws banning reparative therapy, especially if those laws included gender identity.”
The two are Dr. Kenneth Zucker and Dr. Richard Green, both supporters of the transphobic autogynephila tribe of sexology.
The good news: They did not get much support. Tannehill ends her article in this way:
At the end, a non-American doctor who treats transgender youth standing next to me at the back of the room remarked, “I’ve never heard Dr. Zucker speak before, and I’ve tried to keep an open mind. Now that I have, I can say that all the hateful things I’ve heard about him were absolutely true.”
WOMEN and men face double-standards. That this should show up in the language is no surprise:
Men who put themselves forward at work are “assertive”, women who do the same are more often “pushy” or “bossy”;
men are “persistent” whereas women are “nagging”;
men are “frustrated”, women “upset”.
A man has a lot to say; a woman is “chatty”.
A man discusses the doings of his colleagues and rivals; a woman “gossips”.
The point is that even when we describe the same abilities or personality traits, we use negative words for women and positive ones for men.
Men are studs, women are sluts, simply because sexual aggressiveness is seen as admirable in men a, while people would like to police the sexuality of women.
Trans rights are now where women’s rights or gay rights were a generation ago, in terms of what people feel able to say and still feel self-righteous. So, we need to think ourselves back in time. If you’re the kind of person who says “Trans women are not real women”, a generation ago that would have been you denying the womanhood of lesbians or women who don’t have children. If you think that trans women should not be allowed into public toilets, you would have been that moron shouting, “Backs to the wall, lads” any time a gay man walked by.
I got the following question from a tumblr blogger who is working on a research paper:
“Who do you see is more susceptible to being transphobic? Like…types of people?”
Here is what I answered:
I would say that insecurity, anxiety and fear are the main drivers for transphobia, in the same way they are for homophobia, racism and sexist attitudes.
Life is not without its risks, and it takes a strong mind to handle all the uncertainty life throws at us.
If you have been raised in a dysfunctional family, or you are taught to fear “the others”, or you live in troubled times, it is easy to fall back on the more primitive sides of our minds.
Scapegoats
We look for someone to blame; we look for a place to vent our fear, and we do so by turning our fear into anger. We then channel that anger towards those that are different, the ones we do not understand.
This may give us a much wanted emotional release, and for a moment it looks like we have a solution to our problem. For instance: “If we can only get rid of those pesky LGBT people, everything will go back to the way it once was, back in the good old days”.
Another group of people are using the same language and playing on fear without feeling it themselves. These are people who understand such social and psychological processes intimately, and who make use of them to gain power and influence. Many of them are borderline sociopaths or full-fledged psychopaths. Adolf Hitler comes to mind.
