I have to get two things off my chest. One positive, one negative. I’ve been meaning to post about the positive one for awhile, but the negative one has kind of forced my hand, because they are related. Bad news first.
I had to block someone today. A guy I met at Ai, and felt close to as a friend, someone I’d played songs with and carpooled with, and generally got on pretty well with. He posted a video the other day called “The Wife Hack,” which features some run-of-the-mill misogyny, the old “crazy vs. hot” graph kind of thing. Not really funny at all, and actually only mildly offensive because of how common it is to have that sort of background drone level of misogyny just in the air all the time. The kind that we all just expect to be there anyway.
But, towards the end of the video, the presenter warns men that if they meet a girl who is less than 3 (out of 10) crazy, and more than 8 hot, they have to get out of there, because “that’s a tranny.” He goes on, as if that wasn’t bad enough, to say “it’s a dude,” to the approving guffaws of his production crew.
I’m sure most of you can see what is wrong with that. If you honestly can’t, allow me to explain. First of all, “tranny” is a slur, as bad as any homophobic or racist or sexist slur against any other group of people. It is almost never funny, and when it is, it is delivered expertly from a VERY select group of people. It is a word of hate and violence, and its primary purpose is to strip people of their humanity, to make it harder to identify with them; to make it easier to hurt or kill them without remorse.
Second, when you call a trans person “it,” unless that is the pronoun they identify with, you are denying their identity. You are saying that you know their gender better than they know it themselves. You are saying that their gender is their physical sex, in defiance of not only that person, but every creditable medical authority on the issue, who practically unanimously agree that gender is in the mind, not the body. When you say that a trans woman “is a dude,” you are perpetuating the extremely damaging myth that a trans woman is just a guy who wishes that he was, or thinks that he is, or is under the delusion that he is a girl. That is almost exactly backwards. A trans woman is a neurotypical female who has a physiotypical male body.
In any case, that storyline is the thing that allows people TODAY, in America, to murder trans women nearly without repercussion in every state except California. (The so-called “trans panic” defense, that states that someone was so dismayed to find that their lover had parts or a history they didn’t expect that they HAD TO MURDER THEM.)
I have been very lucky to have realized who I was when I did, and where I did. I did not have to live with the conscious knowledge of my dysphoria in secret for very long at all. Even then, knowing that I was constantly on a journey towards public life as my real self, it was bearable. But there are other trans women who are nowhere near as lucky as I have been, who figure out who they are, and then are forced by family or friends, people who supposedly care about them, to pretend that they are someone else. I can barely imagine what hell that must be. It is almost certainly the reason why trans women have a vastly higher suicide rate than many other groups, by volume.
If all of this is pointed out to you, and your response is something along the lines of “I still think it’s funny,” or, “learn how to take a joke,” you are saying that your laugh is more important than someone else’s BASIC DIGNITY, than their simple HUMANITY, and you fucking disgust me. Do us both a favor and block me right now if that is you. Don’t just unfriend me. Become invisible to me. That is the kindest possible thing you could do for both of us.
And now, on to the good news. I have been so incredibly blessed (says the agnostic girl) to have friends who have supported me so completely as I travel the long road of transition. Most importantly, friends who have been perfectly at ease to be out in public with me, at the movies, at the mall, at a restaurant, at Target, at Costco, at the court house, at Starbucks… anywhere, everywhere, as if the fact that I’m trans has no real significance as far as being seen in public with me — the way it ought to be, but the way that it, sadly, often is not.
So, a long overdue and heartfelt thank you goes out to Hailee, Dillon, Kat, MJ, Alex, Jackson, Amy, Brandy, Joe, and, of course, Jenn; and anyone else I may have forgotten about just now, as I rattle these off off the top of my head. Please consider that a further compliment, to all of you — that your numbers are so great that I can hardly remember who’s been out in the world with me, in Seattle, in Edmonds, Arlington, Smokey Point, Everett, all over the place. Just out with their friend, Sera, like she’s any other friend of theirs.
You are not just showing me that my being trans is no big deal — you are showing everyone.
And that means the world to me.
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