Let me begin by saying I’m new to this.
As recently as just a few months ago, I was not on board for the transgender movement. I believed that you were dealt a certain hand in life and that was that. Boys were boys and girls were girls. It was an easy issue to dismiss. But with Caitlyn Jenner’s appearance into the mainstream, the transgender movement became a huge topic of conversation and brought the issue into the limelight. So, after reading countless articles on the subject and paying attention to what members of the trans community are actually saying, I’ve changed my stance and now fully support the transgender movement.
And I think it’s something we all should, and can, get behind.
I believe that most to all prejudice is based on the proliferation of misinformation. People are not born with intolerance; it is taught. And these teachings can be really harmful. A lack of understanding in regard to a group of people leads to brash and incorrect generalizations, which lead to hatred that has no real reason to be there.
The arguments against the transgender movement follow similar patterns. The biggest one, often used in these sort of discussions, is assuming a hypothetical future effect that has no empirical basis. We hear it a lot about gay marriage; “if we let a man marry another man, soon we’ll be okay with men marrying their dogs.” There’s no evidence to support that, and there never was evidence to support that. And, as it stands, there have been a shocking lack of dogs at pride parades.
It’s equally inaccurate to say that accepting trans people will destroy the very concept of man and woman, that your son will be shamed for liking ESPN, and your daughter won’t be allowed to shop at Forever 21, and that soon, humanity will become an amorphous, sexless, spewing gray Jabba the Hut blob of political correctness. Again, there is no evidence to support that trans people are initiating an attack on your way of life. Your way of life will not have to budge if transgender people become accepted into society. There is politically correct rhetoric that may annoy some, but I think you’d have to be pretty sensitive to call that “an attack,” and if America can survive calling someone “Ke$ha” for no reason, then we can survive learning to call Bruce, Caitlyn.
Another argument involves the fear that allowing trans people into the restrooms they feel comfortable in will result in sexual assault. “Letting a man into a woman’s restroom with my daughter just because he wants to be a woman?” Seems sketchy, sure, but it’s a surface value analysis that misses a lot of important points. First off, the “man who wants to be a woman” is a woman. I don’t see how it makes more sense to stick someone who has female anatomy and is a woman in a bathroom with men just because, 30 years ago, she was born a man. Second, accusing transgender people of wanting to use a bathroom to commit sexual assault is a hurtful and misguided categorization that, again, is not supported by evidence. And another thing--there are no laws preventing a gay man peeing in a urinal less than a foot away from another man peeing in a urinal, so unless the proposal to prevent transgender people from using the restroom they’re comfortable in involves taking a survey at the entrance of each bathroom indicating your sexual preference and an attendant to escort you to the one filled with people you are not attracted to/directing bisexual people to the nearest tree, it doesn’t follow a whole lot of logical consistency.
Another type of argument you hear is that being transgender is a mental disorder, and that a mental disorder shouldn’t be fostered, it should be fixed. Understandable, because as someone who has never questioned their gender or known anyone who has questioned their gender, it probably feels unusual that anyone would be driven to want to change it for reasons outside of mental instability. However, while the cause of gender questioning can be based in biology, it is not a mental “disorder.” A mental disorder, as defined by the American Psychological Association, has to cause “significant distress or disability.” Becoming transgender does not cause significant distress or disability. Maybe you can point out a couple anecdotes you read from that website you like about people regretting the decision, but overwhelmingly, people who are transgender are comfortable in the gender they become. A recent San Diego study followed transgender teens who were depressed/anxious/unhappy/etc. before their change and saw that after the change these problems were significantly reduced in 20 of the 22 participants who said they had felt that way previously.
What does cause significant distress or disability is the treatment they face daily. The attempted suicide rate is 41 percent among transgender people. They are twice as likely to be unemployed and four times as likely to be in a household that makes less than $10,000 a year. 19 percent of transgender people reported that they were refused care at a medical center. And 90 percent said that they have faced discrimination at work. The statistics get even more appalling when the demographic is narrowed to transgender people of color. You could pull out “correlation does not mean causation” for some of these statistics, but you would have to be turning a very blind eye to deny that a world where 90 percent of transgender people are discriminated against at work, 28 percent were harassed in a medical setting, and where constant, biting, hate-filled Facebook and YouTube comments posted on their feeds daily has no effect on the suicide and poverty rate of transgender people.
Why is this okay? Why is it “taking the moral high ground” to be against the transgender movement when this group of people suffers from severe depression, poverty, and discrimination at every turn of their lives? Why does “traditional” and “the way things were” immediately become ethical even when the statistics show otherwise? There are so many accusations thrown out at trans people; that they’re doing this for attention, that they’re bandwaggoning on a social movement, etc. But it’s not fun to live in a world where you are being harassed at your job due to your identity, where you might quickly end up unemployed and in poverty, and where your choice to become who you truly are inspires the hatred of probably the majority of the country. They’re not “doing this for attention.” Choosing to be vocal about gender questioning is a brave, well thought-out decision that comes with very many risks, and can only mean one thing: they actually don’t feel comfortable in the gender identity they’re currently in and want, even need, to change.
And really ask yourself, what is so wrong about that? Is there any argument against the transgender movement that doesn’t involve personal discomfort or misunderstanding? They are not criminals, they are not evil, they are not set out to destroy any way of life. They are humans, and it’s time that we start granting them their humanity.
Let’s say you’re not ready. The thought of a man becoming a woman is still too far outside the reach of what you’re ready to accept. That’s understandable. I think it’s a problem when liberals take someone who doesn’t agree with them and spit out insults like “hateful bigot” and “prejudiced asshole.” It’s not an easy thing to accept, because there isn’t currently a lot of public knowledge about it, and for a lot of people, it’s a tough concept to grab. These things take time. I don’t want to come across as judgmental, because, as I noted, this is new to me too.
But I think it’s fair to ask of people to keep an open mind, and to at least grant them the basic rights that we take for granted. You don’t even have to necessarily agree with them, but you also don’t have to hate them. Too often we speak before we listen. Before you comment on the Internet that “the transgender movement is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard” (when, keep in mind, a Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus feud captured the attention of the media for a whole week in the midst of a presidential election), hear their concerns and their perspectives. Before rolling your eyes and saying, “what’s happening to the world?” just because something is happening that you’re not used to, attempt to empathize with a group of people who just want to be themselves. They don’t want anything outside of the basic human respect that should be given to all people. I’m not speaking for liberals. Transgender people are speaking for themselves.
John Oliver made a great point about this in a recent episode of "Last Week Tonight," where he states, “This is a civil rights issue... If you take the anti-civil rights side and deny people something they’re entitled to, history is not going to be kind to you.” As I mentioned earlier, prejudice is based on misinformation, and right now, the public isn’t well-educated about this issue. One day, they will be, and there will be nothing standing in the way of the transgender movement, because there is no tangible reason to deny them these rights. Be on the right side of history, and history will thank you for it.
