So, something sad and disgusting happened in the world of trans recently. At a DMV in Utah, a transgender woman was verbally abused and forced by security to scrub off her makeup and pull her hair back for her drivers license photo.
You can read the full story here
… or, if you prefer, check out this video of a badass lady (Diamond Stylz) explaining what happened
This once incident sucks, but what really irks me is the business culture that allows this kind of bigotry to flourish.
Because this shit is not rare.
Last December a trans woman filed a complaint with the California DMV because an employee sent her letters to her house that she was an abomination and that she was going to hell.
A trans woman in NJ is suing the police department for harassment in March of last year. She was discouraged by a lieutenant from filing a complaint because he thought the officers didn’t mean any harm.
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I could easily list more, but honestly… I don’t have it in me because this kind of stuff (and much worse) happens way too often.
There is an attitude surrounding trans people that seems to me to boil down to this:
the freaks don’t count.
Many organizations (including ones run by the state) have strong anti-discrimination policies, but if someone’s identity is seen as sexually perverse it isn’t treated as discrimination. Now, most of the organizations don’t actually think they’re supporting abuse. More often, I think all they are actively doing is not stopping it… and I don’t think its because they are out to get trans people. I think its because when the abuse happens, they genuinely don’t see it as abuse.
There’s a mentality that anything done against sexually threatening people is ok because you have to do whatever it takes to stop them. Part of the “MY GOD! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” clause. This mentality makes it ok to do whatever you like to people who could be a sexual threat. What non-trans aware people might see is someone overreacting slightly to a possible sexual threat. In this way, the abuse doesn’t get stopped and the abusers behavior gets reinforced. The culture takes hold when bystanders aren’t empowered to spot and stop the abuse. If the behavior has been going on for a while without anyone stepping up, there is a lot of pressure (especially in these rough economic times) to remain quiet about it.
A little myth + a lot of silence = gross culture of abuse
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So, as far as I can tell… the trans people as sexual freaks myth goes a bit like this:
Trans people get lumped in as sexual freaks because of cultural myths surrounding trans sexuality (I’ve personally heard strong current of upsetting “shemale” myths, even with my hobby-like involvement in porn). Trans people also get labeled as sexual freaks because of all the phobias surrounding homosexuality. If it wasn’t, I challenge someone to explain to me why the word “fag” is used so often in trans bashing cases.
and this kind of attitude bleeds into other kinds of abuse. Anyone who doesn’t fit into the normal box and who might possibly be perceived as a threat is acceptable to knock down.
I see a lot of overlap in cases of trans abuse, gay bashing, and violence against sex workers. There seems to me to be a very common chord running through all of these cases.
It seems to me to be part of a very old call against “moral depravity”, meaning anything overtly sexual… or sexually deviant.
Now, *I* see this happening more frequently around sexual identities… but I might just be seeing it that way because this is the framework I most intimately understand. I have to own up to the fact that I might just see it this way because its me seeing it.
I know at least that its not just a matter of rural areas being backwards, because most of the reported trans violence happens in cities.
And its not just a midwest vs coastal areas thing because the abusive letters sent from a DMV employee happened in California.
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So, now that I’ve reminded everyone of how unpleasant all this unpleasantness is… what are we going to do about it? Its easy enough to act up against one incident (as many awesome folks are doing for the trans woman in Utah). Its doable to organize marches and congressional campaigns…. but how do we change the culture that says its ok to bash the freaks?
What I think we, as activists, need to remember is that we’re not just fighting against any one organization (like the DMV in Utah). Yes, its VERY important to contact the DMV and let them know what they did is intolerable… but then what do we do after that?
How do we change a culture thats been around much longer than any of us?
I don’t know the answer to that… but I think Diamond Stylz is on the right track. She’s SO incredibly charming and funny, and she somehow manages to be funny without minimizing the absolute fuckupedness of the situation.
Maybe this is just one of those things that takes time, and the combined effort of people who will fight the injustices at every turn we encounter them and people like Diamond who can charm people who otherwise wouldn’t have much contact with the trans world.
check her out here talking about being trans and homeless
and here she is talking about body image and not being forced into a beauty box
I wish it was easier.
I wish I had a simple plan that we all could enact that would fix it.
but I don’t.
I think its just going to take a long steady boil.
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But in somewhat lighter news, I am now being called “Queer Queen” by at least one person on the interwebs. Much to my surprise and amusement, occasionally I get webcam clients who are looking for a high femme domme. One of them started calling me Queen and, in response, I used the word to describe myself in chat back to him… only since I almost never write the word “queen” but very often write the word “queer” I accidentally typed Queer, as a dominant title for myself.
I noticed my typo, and corrected it to Queen in the next line… but this was somehow read as “You should know call me your Queer Queen”.
… I started to correct him
…
… but you know, I kinda like the sound of it.
