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Originally Posted by onesnowyowl
Gilda, thank you for opening up this topic to discussion. Over the course of my college career I have taken several classes on human sexuality, including one on the history of sexuality in which we had to read Joanne Meyerowitz's book "How Sex Changed." In my women and sexuality class we read excerpts from the book and an article (the name of the author has slipped my mind, but it is referenced in a paper I wrote that I don't have access to at the moment) dealing with transsexual hate crimes.
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Yep, it's really a tragedy that some people are so small minded that they would attack or even kill someone simply because they are transsexual. This is why you'll never see me posting pictures of Sissy anywhere on the internet, although she is quite pretty and completely feminine. There are transsexuals who put up vanity websites to show off, but I think that's a bit foolish on their part. All you have to do in a group of transsexuals is mention the name Brandon Teena or half a dozen others to spark a long, involved conversation. MTF transgendered persons have a murder rate about 119 murders per 100,000 annually, or about 3 times the rate of young black males. The killer is usually a straight male, often a current or former sexual partner. It happens often enough that there's even a legal defense for this, called trans-panic, in which it is claimed that panic resulting from a sudden revelation that a man's partner is transgender justifies homicide. It's disgusting.
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Transsexuality is an issue many ignore, including others marginalized by their sexuality/gender (for instance, the GLBT community just came around to welcoming transsexual/transgendered folks under their umbrella in the late 90s).
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Unfortunately, often the T in GLBT is sometimes just tacked on without having any regard for the rights and concerns of the transgendered. Many lesbians and feminists, particularly the man haters, resent and reject transsexual women for "trying to infiltrate thier sex" and reject the notion that they are women at all. The Women's International Music Festival for years actively screened out transwomen from attending, declaring that the festival was for "womyn born womyn" only, a backhanded way of saying transsexuals were not actually women.
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Hate crimes committed against transsexual/transgendered people are also largely ignored. I wrote an extensive paper on that topic for my women and sexuality class, focusing on the media coverage of the Mathew Shepard case versus a similar incident in Texas that happened to a transgendered teenager.
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Yep, I can't remember her name, but I know the case. She was a MTF teen who was in the initial stages of figuring out her identity, and had performed oral sex on a teen boy she had met at a party. When it was revealed that she was transgender, the boy and several of his friends choked and beat her to death, and claimed transpanic as their defense at trial.
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In my paper I addressed the fact that the media tends to make transsexual/transgendered people into a circus sideshow versus trying to treat them like normal human beings. The example of Christine Jorgensen illustrates just how the media has done this--Christine's tabloid coverage is the first really clear example and there are many more that follow.
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To be fair, didn't Jorgensen actually seek out the publicity and make a living as a performer/poster girl? But yeah, the talk shows tend to sensationalize it, exposing the drag queens and drag club performers, giving people the idea that this is what a transgender person is, when really that's just a fringe group.
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I've yet to meet a transsexual, and believe me, I desire the opportunity to humanize them versus thinking of them in some nebulous scholarly context. They seem to be the one thing really lacking in our GLBT community on campus, though I'm sure they are out there. I can only hope I'm a loud enough voice that they know they have an ally and friend in me.
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Maybe there aren't any on your campus. The incidence of transsexualism is quite small, about 1 in 10,000 male births, and 1 in 30,000 female births, so it's possible there are no transsexuals on your campus. It's also possible that they want to stay hidden, to simply be accepted as normal women and men. Sissy certainly wouldn't join a GLBT group, because that would mean revealing to the general populace at the university that she was transsexual, which is something most people have no need to know.
It would probably comfort her to know there were people like you involved, though.
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Thank God for Harry Benjamin, eh?
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Amen.