Why are trans people still persecuted by society?
It’s 2024- gay marriage is legal and widely accepted in western society as are relationships that don’t fit societal norms such as polyamory. Those identifying as non-binary are also more widely accepted. However the only LGBTQ+ group that still faces the most hate and judgement is transgender people. As a heterosexual cis woman, you would ask me why I care? I care because I hate injustice and seeing minority groups being persecuted and treated as scapegoats. Being Jewish, I’m part of a minority group that many people hate, have preconceived notions about and often use as scapegoats.
Luckily in the past 15-20 years, attitudes around LGB have changed and there is far more openess and acceptance. Society gradually stopped believing that being gay was contagious and a “choice” (though many religious people especially fundementalist Christians still believe this). Research increasingly demonstrated that being gay wasn’t a lifestyle choice or an illness, but how gay people were born.
However attitudes towards the transgender community remain the same as 20 years ago. Like gay people, the majority of transgender people feel that they were born the way they are. Society seems to readily accept and understand homosexuality but they can’t understand those who are transgender. I’ve even heard of gay people shunning trans people and pushing for them to be excluded from their spaces.
I’ve also been coming across articles about lesbians campaigning to remove trans women from lesbian spaces. I recently read an article about a new lesbian app that has developed new recognition technology that can identify “signs” and “features” that somebody is transgender, thus banning and excluding them from the app. I think this is really disgusting and discriminatory. I can understand that not everybody is open to dating a trans person and that’s perfectly fine, but some are regardless of if they’ve fully transitioned. What are these women scared of? Some Mrs Doubtfire type transvestite in drag whipping out their dick at them?
It just goes to show how misunderstood transgender people are. Many transgender people undergo gender reassignment surgery and take hormones which erase the traces of their birth assigned gender. Transgender women are not men in drag pretending to be women. There are men who like to dress up as women but are not transgender as they are satisfied with being male. There are unfortunately men who do dress up as women in order to get close to women so that they can take advantage of them and sexually abuse them. This is not a trans issue, but a male issue. Trans people are being used as scapegoats.
The media tries its best to instill fear onto the public. Transgender people are treated as a threat. The media spins the toxic narrative that trans people are invading biological women’s spaces such as toilets and that they’re brainwashing kids into becoming trans (I’ll get onto that later). Firstly, as a cis woman I don’t feel threatened sharing female spaces with transgender people. I don’t pay attention to who is even in the loo. I shut myself in the cubicle and do my business. I don’t know about you but I don’t care about what other people do in the toilets or their body parts as long as they’re not abusing anybody. I think most cis women have gone into the mens toilets before when desperate especially in cases that the women’s toilets were occupied.
There’s this hysteria that trans people abuse cis women in the toilets. Well guess what? Cis women can abuse women too! There have been many incidences of women glassing other women in toilets on drunken nights out! Frankly I’m more scared of a drunk and aggressive cis woman than a transgender woman minding her own business!
Transgender women’s experiences and feelings are invalidated by many women because they “weren’t born women” and therefore “aren’t real women.” They’re invalidated as women because they can’t menstruate, don’t have wombs or ovaries, and can’t have biological children. I hate to break it to you but there are biological women who don’t and are unable to menstruate, are born without wombs and ovaries, and of course many who are infertile and unable to have a child at all. Are these women “lesser women” because of that?
What about those who were born intersex or female but with high levels of testosterone? Intersex women can be born with both male and female parts. What about cis women who are manly and masculine? Are they not proper women either? There’s no one way to be a woman or a man for that matter. Not every woman needs to possess a womb to be a woman. That’s also offensive to women who have had a hysterectomy.
Many cis women swallow the narrative that transgender women are just men ready to prey on women. That’s what the media wants people to believe. It’s ridiculous that despite a transgender woman undergoing a full transition, presenting as female in every way from her appearance to behaviour, her femininity is still being denied. If she didn’t tell you she was trans, you wouldn’t know any different or see her as a threat.
Transitioning is still frowned upon and discouraged by society. The anti-trans lobby circulate stories about kids being given hormones and people transitioning back to their birth gender to invalidate transgender people. People are so outraged and angry but they don’t think to listen to the other side of the story. They don’t care about hearing experiences from those who are genuinely trans and seeing how they compare to those who were misdiagnosed as transgender. It seems like there have been many cases of misdiagnosis but transgender people are not to blame. Inadequate medical and psychological professionals are to blame. Some of these “professionals” diagnosed patients in haste and ignorance. Not every person with gender dysphoria is transgender. Some people develop gender dysphoria due to abuse or an identity crisis. These people hope that transitioning will solve their problems, but it doesn’t because their dysphoria is caused by something else.
I read a case about a woman who transitioned to become a man but was unhappy being a man so they transitioned back to being a woman. From reading this woman’s story, it didn’t appear that it was genuine gender dysphoria. She never grew up feeling that she was born in the wrong body. She said she transitioned due to the fact that she was fed up of being objectified and abused by men, and she hoped that by being a man it would stop. Only of course being a man made her unhappy because it wasn’t who she really was inside.
It’s important to compare and contrast these stories. For the majority of transgender people, transitioning was the right decision. The decision that saved their lives and their mental well-being. Nobody should take that away from them. Yes it is a complicated topic as there are children who feel like they’re born in the wrong body and identify as the opposite sex only to seemingly grow out of it like Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, daughter of Hollywood actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. During her childhood, Shiloh could have easily been mistaken for a boy with her short hair and manly suits, and wishing to be called John. Now the eighteen-year-old seemingly seems to have grown out of wanting to be a boy. She now likes to wear dresses and looks typically feminine.
For some children it can be a phase but we don’t know the whole story. Some children and teenagers like dressing up and trying out different identities and styles. It’s all part of growing up and finding yourself. Who knows, maybe when she was a child, at home Shiloh showed her girly side and she liked pretending to be a boy without actually feeling like one.
I do understand the worry of gender changing hormones being prescribed to those who are under eighteen. I don’t have an opinion on this as I’m not a medical or psychiatric professional. Only a very qualified and experienced psychiatrist or doctor (with no bias or agenda) can make that call. I believe that children who identify as transgender should undergo therapy and be monitored throughout their childhood and adolescence in order to determine whether this is a phase or genuine case of gender dysphoria and what the correct course of action should be.
A friend of mine who is transitioning told me that many transgender people transition back because of the hate and lack of acceptance that they receive. It makes me feel so sad and angry that ignorance and hate doesn’t allow for people to be who they are. It’s no different to how gay people would cover up their sexuality and enter heterosexual relationships, at the price of being miserable and not true to themselves. With the amount of abuse and negativity I see towards transgender people online including social media, it doesn’t surprise me. For example a transgender woman constantly being told that she’ll always be a “man” coupled with dating struggles (there are men who hide their relationships with transgender women due to stigma and shame and/or those who fetishize them), I can understand how transitioning might feel like it was “all for nothing.” No transgender person should have to feel that way. They should be supported, validated and applauded for being their true self just like those who are gay. Nobody should suffer because society cannot accept something they can’t understand or have never experienced.
People who date transgender people shouldn’t be stigmatized because of who they love either. Even men who date trans women who have fully transitioned are called “gay.” A gay man isn’t attracted to femininity or tits and vagina. Even if a man or woman hasn’t fully transitioned, it’s still nobody’s place to pass comment on their sexuality. The biggest irony is that those men calling men for dating trans women “gay” would eye up and want to f*ck her if they never knew she was trans.
A lot of people lack empathy and understanding because they can’t understand any other way of thinking. A way to even try to understand somebody is put yourself in their shoes. Ok imagine if someone was to wave a magic wand and turn you into the opposite sex (only your appearance changes but you retain your original mind), how would you feel? I doubt you would feel comfortable or happy with your new body. I’m sure you would miss and desire your old body. I’m sure your mind wouldn’t match your new body.
Instead of reacting with fear, we should listen to transgender people’s experiences instead of invalidating them. It’s only by speaking to people instead of about them that we can dispel ignorance and fear. Hate arises from ignorance and fear. Transgender people should not be feared but admired, respected and seen the way that they see themselves.
