Here’s how we can stop being Transphobic
By learning to recognize it in ourselves and others.
Transphobia is bad. You know that. Everyone knows that. That’s why it pretty much never really happens, right? I mean, sure, there’s those people, but they’re just ignorant and intolerant of others. You’re not like them. You aren’t stupid.
Heck, you’ve even got a friend or family member who’s LGBT! If somebody chooses to wear makeup and a dress or something, it’s none of your business, right? I mean, nobody’s perfect, so it’s okay if you flub some pronouns here and there. You’re just getting used to all this trans stuff and you deserve some slack, you know? You didn’t even know it was a thing until folks got mad about bathrooms and stuff. Like, who even cares where you pee if you’re not hurting anybody?
But boys dominating in girls’ sports?
That’s radical identity politics run amok!
If you’re like me, you have heard a similar line of thought laid out for you in real time for years now. I’ve heard this same thing from coworkers, friends, family members, and even my own parents. What changes is where people choose to move the goal posts:
- They shouldn’t go shoving their “otherness” down our throats
- They shouldn’t occupy the same spaces as us for our protection
- They shouldn’t be allowed near our children — so that kids aren’t exposed to “that” sort of thing
If this pattern seems familiar to you, that’s because it is . It’s the basic bone structure of all forms of hate. This skeleton lives behind the different faces of systemic racism, abusive relationships, hate crimes, and transphobia.
These policies include a combination of criminalizing gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth and banning them from participating in sports. The pretext for this is that trans women and girls would have an unfair advantage — which is a myth. As Helen Carroll, transgender rights activist and former NCLR sports director and, puts it:
“For the past nine years, transgender athletes have been able to compete on teams at NCAA member collegiates and universities consistent with their gender identity like all other student-athletes with no disruption to women’s collegiate sports.”
Simultaneously, the goal in making healthcare inaccessible to trans people is to stop them from doing “permanent damage” to their bodies — which is also untrue. Puberty blockers are a safe and reversible treatment. They allow transgender kids time to understand themselves better in a supportive, healthy environment. Taking that away would — ironically — cause permanent changes in the form of the wrong puberty for their gender.
These transphobic policies based in unscientific ideas intersect where they require trans people to undergo medical treatment before starting puberty — which they also seek to take away!
Further, there are calls for trans women in sports to undergo costly bottom surgery to be eligible to participate. This is on top of the discriminatory policies of many states, which require surgeries for transgender people to be allowed to legally change their name or birth certificate.
All this culminates in legalizing far-reaching discrimination against a marginalized group that already faces adversity every day.
So how could anyone defend such horrible ideas?
The reason to defend hateful and harmful actions in this way is out of, well, defensiveness.
In reality, people defend these anti-trans beliefs indirectly. The argument isn’t about whether transgender people and children deserve to have healthcare and equal rights or not. Instead the debate is centered around “protecting women and girls.”
This is, of course, disingenuous given that many of these policies would subject both transgender and cisgender female athletes to invasive inspections into their physiology and private biological records. Not to mention the fact that it assumes transgender men and boys don’t exist and aren’t valid.
The reason to defend hateful and harmful actions in this way is out of, well, defensiveness. A behavior born out of fear and insecurity that seeks to protect the self at the expense of others. Being branded something as terrible as a prejudiced bigot is embarrassing and shameful.
Deflecting away from that pain by using the “trans friend” defense and even blaming the victim are just short-term solutions to much deeper problems. Oftentimes, transphobia like what we’re seeing now is a product of ignorance, which lead to tragic outcomes for trans people.
Stupid is a thing you do, not a thing you are.
We are all afraid of looking foolish—giving the wrong answer in front of the whole class, tripping up the stairs in public, or calling someone by the wrong name—we’ve all been there. One of the things we commonly associate with intolerance is ignorance. Not only is bigotry seen as a moral sin, it is also implied to be an intellectual one—because we fear that which we do not know or understand.
This leads us to call people with these intolerant ideas “stupid.” I firmly believe this characterization is counterproductive, because using ignorance as an insult generates more defensiveness and less compassion (it’s also super ableist and offensive).
That doesn’t mean excusing bad behavior—the opposite, really — it means giving people a chance to choose to accept responsibility and change.
As Forrest Gump’s mother used to say:
“Stupid is as stupid does.”
It means stupid is a thing you do, not a thing you are. The same goes for transphobia and all forms of predjudice. It means we are defined by our actions, and if we actively decide to ignore the pain of other people for our own comfort, we show our true character.
Defending the bad actions of others only makes sense if, unconsciously or not, protecting them also insulates us from shame.
People are not responsible for their own pain and victimization…[They] choose to be themselves.
Shame is something with which oppressed and marginalized people are intimately familiar. This is especially true for those in the LGBTQIA+ community who have endured internalized shame and self-hatred both inside and outside of the closet.
People are commonly made to feel shame because of something they did wrong which made them feel insecure about themselves or their abilities. However, people are not responsible for their own pain and victimization. These people never chose to be LGBT, but they do choose to be themselves, to exist, and to live and keep on living every day.
Transgender people are being made into political scapegoats yet again for the very same reasons black and brown people, women, people with disabilities, immigrants, Muslims, and gay people have continued to be targeted: power.
Politicians build their careers at the expense of vulnerable people, wielding the internal biases and hidden prejudices of the majority of their constituents against minorities.
This is hate marketing.
If these bills pass into law, they would legalize state-mandated child abuse.
All of this comes from a very personal place for me. I am a transgender woman, and yet for many years I was extremely transphobic. I never called anyone by a hateful slur, or tried to deny the rights of anyone else. I just couldn’t believe anyone could ever love or accept a girl like me — because I am transgender. The thought literally never crossed my mind growing up, and I still struggle with it today.
While this internalized hatred is clearly deeply damaging, externalizing that hate is even moreso. Transphobia not only hurts transgender people, but also the people who love us, who raised us — even transphobes themselves are harmed by their own bigotry. My parents took a painfully long time to even begin to accept me, and all that time they were damaging themselves as well as their relationship with me.
I’ve been an advocate for transgender rights for almost 10 years now, but after returning to my home state of Missouri, it’s striking how desperately little has improved.
As I’m writing this, there are six bills targeting transgender people in my state. Four of them — HJR53, HB1184, HB1077 and HB1045 — would single out transgender women and girls by excluding them from sports or forcing them to play on mens’ and boys’ teams. The other two — HB33 and SB442 — would prevent doctors from treating transgender people under the age of 18 using puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy or — when deemed medically necessary — gender-affirming surgeries.
This would force trans kids to endure permanent changes by going through the wrong puberty for their gender. If these bills pass into law, they would legalize state-mandated child abuse.
And this is in only one of the 28 states that are tirelessly working to pass anti-trans legislation.
I know this all sounds very grim, but there are meaningful actions we all can take to safeguard the rights of transgender people. The most important is guaranteeing gender-affirming healthcare is protected for every American.
In Missouri, for instance, it is both cheaper and easier to legally purchase an entire armory of assault weapons than it is for a transgender person to access medical care, make legal changes to their identification and birth certificate, or find adequate employment. Also, there’s far less chance you’ll be denied service, harassed, assaulted, or murdered for openly carrying an assault rifle than for being openly transgender.
Nonprofit organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Transgender Law Center, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and the Human Rights Campaign advocate for transgender rights and fight against discriminatory laws like these. Making a donation within your means is a great way to support the ongoing fight for equality.
For a more personal approach, you can take action to educate yourself and others about transgender and LGBTQ+ issues. There is still no LGBT-friendly legislation regarding sex education in Missouri and many other states. Our only “education” on the matter when I was still in school was centered around abstinence-only presentations and comparing women to a piece of packing tape.
And of course, look into your own state’s anti-trans efforts and call on legislators to protect the rights of the transgender community.
There’s a lot of work to be done in teaching people about the realities of the uniquely trans experience. However, the only way we can stop transphobia is — as with all forms of hate — to smother it with compassion, love, truth, and the collective, raised voices of our neighbors and loved ones.
