In Honor of Trans Kids

COMMENTARY: The nine recently reported suicides of boys savagely bullied at school have been rightly deemed tragedies — the outpouring of sympathy, outrage, and empathy from the LGBT and mainstream press, community, and leadership has brought the issue of teen suicide to national attention.

But in reading the blogs and watching the news reports, I couldn’t help but think about the untimely deaths of LGBT kids whose stories haven’t been heard. Imagine if those nine young people had been killed, violently, by their peers. It’s unthinkable. Then push further: Imagine the outrage and sadness if it had been not nine but a dozen. Not a dozen but two dozen. Not two dozen but three or four or five or six dozen dead kids.

A pointless exercise in unimaginable grief?

Not at all. In fall 2006, GenderPAC, with help from Global Rights, issued the report “50 Under 30,” which documented the violent deaths of 54 LGBT kids between 13 and 30, nearly all of whom were murdered because of their gender identity or expression.

Just two years later, there were 17 new victims — bringing the grand total to 71, many of them just teenagers and almost all of them transgender. That’s about six dozen total. Not such a pointless exercise after all….

syntheticaudio: ‎20th of November is International Transgender Day of Remembrance.International Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day to remember those who have lost their lives through transphobia. In the first nine months of 2011 there were 116 reported killings of trans people around the world. In Scotland, research shows that 62 percent of transgender people have faced transphobic harassment from strangers and that trans people are 7.7 times more likely to commit suicide than the rest of the population due to the prejudice they experience. 
View Separately

syntheticaudio:

‎20th of November is International Transgender Day of Remembrance.

International Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day to remember those who have lost their lives through transphobia. In the first nine months of 2011 there were 116 reported killings of trans people around the world. In Scotland, research shows that 62 percent of transgender people have faced transphobic harassment from strangers and that trans people are 7.7 times more likely to commit suicide than the rest of the population due to the prejudice they experience. 

(via )

Many of the excuses used to rationalize trans women’s exclusion are not designed to protect the values of women-only space, but rather to reinforce the idea that trans women are “real” men and “fake” women. For example, one of the most cited reasons that trans women are not allowed in the festival is that we are born with, and many of us still have, penises (many trans women either cannot afford to or choose not to have sex reassignment surgery). It is argued that our penises are dangerous because they are a symbol of male oppression and have the potential to trigger women who have been sexually assaulted or abused by men. So penises are banned from the festival, right? Well, not quite: The festival does allow women to purchase and use dildos, strap-ons, and packing devices, many of which closely resemble penises. So phalluses in and of themselves are not so bad, just so long as they are not attached to a trans woman.

Another reason frequently given for the exclusion of trans women from Michigan is that we supposedly would bring “male energy” into the festival. While this seems to imply that expressions of masculinity are not allowed, nothing could be further from the truth. Michigan allows drag king performers who dress and act male, and the festival stage has featured several female-bodied performers who identify as transgender and sometimes describe themselves with male pronouns. Presumably, Lisa Vogel (who is sole proprietor of the festival) allows this because she believes that no person who is born female is capable of exhibiting authentic masculinity or “male energy.” Not only is this an insult to trans men (as it suggests that they can never be fully masculine or male), but it implies that “male energy” can be measured in some way independent of whether the person expressing it appears female or male. This is clearly not the case. Even though I am a trans woman, I have never been accused of expressing “male energy,” because people perceive me as a woman. When I do act in a “masculine” way, people describe me as a “tomboy” or “butch,” and if I get aggressive or argumentative, people call me a “bitch.” My behaviors are still the same; it is only the context of my body (whether people see me as female or male) that has changed.

Julia Serano - “Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity” (via effusionofbiopower

)

(via veganmudblood)

Source: effusionofbiopower

Art of Transliness: Solidarity With Our Trans* Sisters

artoftransliness:

It’s easy to get absorbed in our own problems. Between dealing with unsupportive parents, hostile work environments, tricky legal issues, and medical nightmares, most of us hardly have any time to think about anything else. As trans* men in particular, it’s difficult to remember we’re not the only ones under the “T”. Our voices are so loud on sites like youtube and tumblr, we tend to drown out or forget trans* women. 

This is troublesome, because it allows us to forget that transgender women (particularly women of color) are disproportionately the target of hate crimes, that 44% of LGBTQ murder victims are trans* women, that trans* women have particular difficulty accessing health care and enormously high rates of HIV, and that they are so frequently (far more frequently than transgender men) the butt of jokes in the media (take, for example, the recent Family Guy episode called “Quagmire’s Dad). 

Of course the point of this post is not to play the oppression olympics, but to issue a call to every individual who considers themselves a transgender activist or member of the trans* community: DO NOT FORGET YOUR TRANS* SISTERS. Trans* women in our society are often the victims of transmisogyny (what happens when sexism and transphobia climb into bed together) and face unique issues that are often glossed over when the struggle over trans* issues focuses on trans* men (and transmasculine individuals in general). Yes, as trans* men we have it hard. We have it very hard, but at the moment we have more privilege than trans* women and we should not use that privilege to abandon them the way transgender people have so often been abandoned by the GLB movement. 

Transgender Day of Remembrance is fast approaching (Nov 28th) and is the perfect reminder that this is not just about us (in fact, it is hardly about trans* men at all), it is about them too. We are all under the “T”.

(via voxplutonia)

Source: artoftransliness