Transphobia

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“”Yes, all the psychiatrists and psychologists of the world banded together to invent a fake condition just to rob you of your precious titty supply. Good catch.

—Cerberus

Transphobia, in common English, is dislike or prejudice against transgender people. The term has been used by some philanthropic non-governmental organizations, e.g. from Planned Parenthood, "Transphobia is the fear, hatred, disbelief, or mistrust of people who are transgender, thought to be transgender, or whose gender expression doesn’t conform to traditional gender roles. Transphobia can prevent transgender and gender nonconforming people from living full lives free from harm."

Transphobia is often conflated with homophobia and is justified for the same reasons that homophobes use to justify their hatred of gays (religion, prescriptive gender norms, etc.). Indeed, many clueless homophobes conflate homosexual people with transgender people and cross-dressers. Transphobia also manifests itself in some schools of radical feminist thought, as some feminists resent the idea that people who aren't cisgender might make claims as women.

On a societal scale, it can manifest itself in any number of ways, from systemic discrimination against transgender people in housing, healthcare, and employment, to a relatively high murder rate, to a series of demeaning depictions in the mass media. Cases of murder have been exceptionally high in Brazil. "The situation in Brazil is especially worrying, with 40% of the cases since January 2008, and 42% of the cases in 2016 so far worldwide."

Language and social interactions

Casual transphobia may occur in everyday interactions between people, as well as in writing.

Misgendering and deadnaming

One common form of transphobia is misgendering. Misgendering is treating a trans person as the wrong gender. Most commonly, it involves language and it is not always (but certainly can be) intentional. It can involve using the wrong pronoun (he, she, they, etc.), honorific (sir, ma'am, miss, son), title (Mr., Mrs., Miss, etc), or descriptive noun (guy, gal, gentleman, lady, etc.). Some people may gender trans people correctly the first time, but "correct" themselves after hearing their voices or seeing an unchanged ID card. Misgendering can also mean expecting people to act or present in strict accordance with gender stereotypes, e.g., expecting a trans woman to always wear a dress, or for trans people to use the restroom of their birth-assigned gender.

In addition to misgendering, transphobes may disrespect the preferred (and often, legal) names of trans people. Deadnaming is the intentional use of a trans person's birth or non-preferred name. It is common in both speech and in writing. A similar technique involves placing the trans person's new name in scare quotes (e.g., writing "Natalie" instead of Natalie), even if the trans person legally changed their name. People might also come up with childish portmanteaus like "Brucelyn" for former Olympic athlete Caitlyn Jenner.

It should be noted that there is not a universal taboo against deadnaming in the LGBT community, particularly when the trans person was well known before transition. As an example, anthropologist Jaimie Pearl Bloom published a large body of work under her birth name, James F. Weiner, and had no objection to the use of her dead name. That being said, a person should be addressed how they want to be addressed — that's a simple matter of civility.

Slurs and insults

Slurs are another form of transphobia. Many transphobic people may use derogatory terms instead of "transgender" or "trans woman/man". Slurs such as "tranny", "freak", "science experiment", "he-she", "shim", and "trans identifying (male/female)" are used as slurs for trans people in general. "She-male", "man in a dress", "cock-in-a-frock", and "guy with tits" are used to refer to a trans woman, notably by Milo Yiannopoulos and the Ted 2 movie. Trans men (AFAB) are sometimes referred to using slurs aimed at lesbians, such as "dyke." Post-op vaginas are sometimes pejoratively called "rotpockets," while post-op penises are called "skin sticks" or "piss tubes." The pronoun "it" is sometimes used to dehumanize trans people. Transphobic slurs can be likened to slurs thrown at other kinds of LGBT individuals.

Language that implies deceit

People might view trans people as being deceptive, using words like "posing", "pretending", "self-professed", "masquerading", "disguised", "fooling", "dressed up", or "presenting." They may say that trans people are "actually" or "really" their birth-assigned sex, and that trans people are just play-acting. Traditionally, the term "passing" was used for trans people who do not appear to be transgender, and "stealth" was used for trans people who are not open about their trans status. However, those terms can imply deceit and inauthenticity, so "not visibly trans" and "not openly trans" are now preferred by certain groups.

Friendships and relationships

Though coming out as trans is the first step to expressing one's gender identity, it will inevitably be met with ostracism by some people. People who once liked and respected the closeted trans person may now view them as a pervert or as a "waste of a good man/woman". People who once shared many great memories with the person might now actively avoid them, despite the trans person doing nothing wrong. When trans people come out on social media, they often notice they lose followers (including close family members). Other people might leave hate comments.

Transphobes also attempt to debate trans people in an effort to "talk them out" of transitioning. This is a form of Sealioning. Many of the questions sound innocent when taken at face value, such as "Why not just be a tomboy/feminine guy?" or "What if you regret it?". They may also try to make it sound like science is on their side with out-of-context studies. They'll let you know that hormones cause cancer, or pull the classic pop-psychology "Your brain is still developing until 25" argument, with the implication that one's identity isn't valid until then. On the other end of the spectrum, they'll tell older transitioners that they're too old to transition successfully or that if they were truly trans, they would have said something earlier. Alternatively, they'll bring up religion and quote Leviticus.

In more extreme circumstances, trans people have been evicted or even killed by transphobic family members.

Gatekeeping

This happens most commonly in the medical field where transgender people are denied the right to transition. Arguments by medical gatekeepers center around the belief that transgender people are wrong about their identity (transphobic in itself) and they need to undergo months or even years of therapy before they can be allowed to transition. Worse, some gatekeepers say that any psychological problem should be exclusionary to being "allowed" to transition which puts transgender people in a suicidal catch 22 because their psychological problems are caused by dysphoria from living as the wrong gender. The only way to relieve the serious problems is to transition. "Exclusionary disorders" just makes transitioning impossible, and most gatekeepers are probably fully aware of this.

The notion of gatekeeping as a "protection" against "wrongly transitioning" is a bogus shield for transphobia because cis people don't transition. Feminine men, butch lesbians, and people who think that their lives might be easier (based on gender roles and stereotypes) if they were born as "the other" gender don't transition. When someone comes out as wanting to transition, it's because they need to do it.

Transphobic laws

Recently the UK courts decided that children under 16 likely lacked the capacity to consent to puberty blockers. As puberty blockers are much less effective at that late age, it is effectively a ban on treatment for trans children. This case was brought by Ms. Bell, a person who transitioned as an adult, then detransitioned; Mrs A; and an array of anti-trans groups. The ruling is being appealed for several reasons, including the fact that the UK courts allowed multiple anti trans hate groups to submit evidence, and because the ‘expert’ witnesses allowed to give evidence were known anti trans individuals, often with zero expertise or experience in healthcare for children or trans people. Some witnesses had been banned from providing evidence in Australian and American cases.

These witnesses included sociologist Michael Biggs, known for harassing trans women online; Professor Neil Evans, whose work is in animal health; Professor Gene Feder, who has no expertise in trans healthcare; Professor Gillberg, a psychiatrist involved in a shredding scandal; Professor Hruz, whose field is diabetes and who has links with multiple hate groups; Professor Stephen Devine, linked to hate group ADF; Professor Patrick Parkinson, who has compared trans people to coronavirus and has promoted conversion therapy, which increases suicidal ideation; Professor Sophie Scott, well known for being transphobic and Professor John Whitehall, another conversion therapy advocate who is linked with multiple religious and anti-lgbt groups.^{[citation needed]}

France and Japan require trans people be sterilized if they will receive sex reassignment surgery. Others require sex reassignment surgery to obtain a legal gender change, whether or not an individual trans person desires it. Others disallow legal and medical transitioning entirely.^{[citation needed]}

Media and police

Transgender people are regularly discriminated against by the media and police. Both the media and police when involving a transgender person invariably use the descriptor "transsexual" or "transvestite" (with its associated archaic psychiatric baggage) in place of transgender. Transgender people face high rates of rape and deaths in custody while in prison. The level of cyberbullying towards transgender people and suicide is also disproportionately high. The media, in going for sensationalized stories, typically publish the transgender person's previous name without permission even if they have legally changed their name and that name change is protected by privacy laws. An individual's gender identity is suggested in these stories to be fake or a fraud by connotation, with the intention to deceive.

When referring to trans women, the use of recycling exaggerated stereotypes such as "long and leggy", "tall physique", "fierce looking", "muscular", "ill-fitting dress", "over-the-top femininity", etc. combined with negative notions that transgender individuals are perverted or depraved is all-too common in the media. Another popular stereotype of trans women is that of a slim Asian person who is usually a prostitute. Such stereotypical imagery is imposed on other media such as film and television, where trans women are mostly portrayed in acting roles as sick, twisted, prostitutes or "stranger danger" serial killers. There was some concern that the film The Silence of the Lambs, featuring a villain who was making himself a "woman suit" out of women's skin, would be seen as perpetuating this stereotype of the twisted and violent trans woman, and hence a disclaimer was placed in the mouth of Jodie Foster's character to emphasize that there was no link between "transsexualism and violence", while the character was specifically identified as not actually being transgender.

In most movies, trans women are portrayed by cis male actors, perpetuating the notion that a trans woman is just a man in a dress. Less commonly (as in Transamerica and Ace Ventura), a cis woman is used. Trans women rarely are portrayed using trans women.

When a trans woman is on the news or in a documentary, many news organizations use the same stock tropes when shooting the footage. Many show the trans woman looking in a mirror, as if all trans people are obsessed with their appearance. Others may show the trans woman shaving or putting on makeup. Pre-transition photographs will almost invariably be shown.

Trans men are reported about disproportionately less, although the amount of trans men and women is relatively equal.

On 9 May 2014, the UK Press Complaints Commission ruled in Dr Kate Stone v Daily Mirror, that the publication of a person's transgender status is not relevant and that the disclosure of a person's previous name without consent was an unjustified intrusion into their privacy. Newspapers named in the original complaint complied with the ruling and removed reference to Dr. Stone's birth name and transgender status on-line. The media covering the PCC case, not involved in the original complaint, ignored the ruling, such as The Guardian with a piece written by feminist journalist Yvonne Roberts, who referred to Dr. Stone as "Transgender Kate Stone" before amending their story caption to "Scientist Kate Stone" six hours after publication, following complaints by readers (the story url however remains unchanged and visible as "transgender-kate-stone-press-complaints-commission-ruling").

In October 2014, when it was revealed an Australian Gold Coast murder victim known as Mayang Prasetyo was trans, the media switched from reporting it as a domestic violence incident to one engaging in sensationalism, embellishment, and victim blaming, after publishing stories with headlines "Monster chef and the she male" and "Ladyboy and the butcher".

The final episode of season six of the television drama series Pretty Little Liars has been condemned by a number of activist groups after it was revealed the identity of the psychopathic killer known as "A" was transgender. Director of advocacy group SPARTA, Brynn Tannehill, stated:

“”Using transgender people and their transitions as a twist, and a way to explain psychotic behavior, is just plain lazy writing and has been for 50 plus years. It's the 'big-bad unmasking' equivalent to revealing that all of the 9th season of Dallas was all just a dream.

Seeking asylum

Two trans women - Ashley Ihász and Stephanie McCarthy - fled Australia claiming humanitarian asylum status in Iceland, in June 2017. Both women allege they have feared for their lives following threats and harassment from the NSW Police. This follows a highly publicized, unprovoked violent attack on McCarthy at a Newtown hotel in 2015, in which the assailants served no jail time.

Conversely, a British trans woman was offered asylum by New Zealand after facing years of persecution.

Trans panic

This section requires more sources.

Trans panic is used as a defence by some assailants of trans women. The defendant states that he was meeting a woman for sex, but upon discovering at the crucial moment that the woman is trans, such is his shock and outrage that he could not help but attack her. The object is to gain the sympathy of any jurors who may harbour similar prejudices, or to reduce a potential conviction of murder to the less heavily punished manslaughter. This is a desperate move, however, and the defence of trans panic (along with the similar gay panic) is inadmissible in some jurisdictions.

The "trans panic" defense was used in the murder case of trans woman Gwen Araujo and Angie Zapata.

Some have loosely speculated a similar motive for the crimes of a fugitive caught by America's Most Wanted as Direct Result Capture #352.

Among fundamentalist Christians

Fundamentalist Christians do not, as a rule, think highly of transgender people. They generally base this opinion on a handful of biblical verses, such as Genesis 1:27-31: "And God created man in His image, in His likeness; male and female He created them... and it was very good." From this, through a generous bit of interpolation, conservative Christians conclude that transgender people (like gays) are either actively rebelling against God or have been socialized into it by bad parenting, the liberal media, and other such machinations of Satan. (If one could translate the Hebrew original of Genesis 1:27 into English as "male or female He created them", then transphobia might have a more secure Biblical basis, with less chance of allowing for anyone's "inner woman" or "inner man"...)

Professor Robert P. George, a noted homophobe "anti-homosexualist" supporter of traditional marriage, articulates another common objection to transgender people in his sweepingly titled book Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism. This argument essentially claims that trans people are rejecting their perfect God-given bodies for no good reason and sacrilegiously questioning God's plan for them—after all, God doesn't make mistakes! Oh, and physical transition is an unholy abomination that "mutilates" a person's beautiful, flawless, blessed flesh. Proponents of such an argument are silent as to whether... oh, congenital heart defects, say, are also part of God's holy plan, and therefore should not be treated surgically—clearly God wants those innocent infants to die.

Some fundamentalists, such as Pastor Sean Harris of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, have advocated beating children at the first sign of "gender-inappropriate" behavior; for example, says the pastor, when a four-year-old boy lets his wrist go limp, his father needs to paste him one in the jaw, and if his daughter starts acting too butch, he needs to demand that she make herself attractive.

As transgender or gender-nonconforming human beings become more prominent, transphobia also becomes a front in the culture war. For example, back in the bad old days of 2011, Fox News psychologist Keith Ablow lost his shit over a J.Crew ad which featured a boy having his toenails painted pink. Emily J. Miller of the Moonies' newspaper The Washington Times ranted over referring to Chelsea Manning as a woman.

Radical feminism and transphobia

Several radical feminists indulge in and have been accused of transphobia, such as Julie Bindel, Cathy Brennan, Germaine Greer, Sheila Jeffreys, Mary Daly, and Janice Raymond. A quote from Raymond's book The Transsexual Empire, saying roughly the same thing of transgender women as radical feminists have always said of men, serves as a good example of radical feminist transphobia:

“”All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves.

Academic radical feminism is premised upon the idea that gender is entirely a social construct, and that it must be destroyed to end the oppression of women. Transgender people tend to maintain, on the other hand, that gender identity is to some extent intrinsic.

As frequently happens, when ideology runs up against someone else's lived experiences, ideologues respond by trying to hammer the problem flat until it fits with what they already believe. There has been, and continues to be, a rich current of anti-transgender bigotry underlying much of radical feminist thought. The radical feminist critique of transgenderism maintains (generally contrary to what trans people themselves have said about their own identities) that trans women are nothing more than effeminate men who have been relegated by the patriarchal gender binary to the status of women (whereas trans men, when they bother to mention them at all, are just women trying to claim male privilege for themselves). Thus they slam transgender people in general for "reifying the gender binary." There is no out, however, for transgender people who do not embody the stereotypes of their adopted genders either; lesbian trans women, for example, are dismissed as men who only transitioned in order to infiltrate women-only spaces.

A great amount of the problem, especially regarding trans women in particular, has to do with privilege. Radfem transphobes insist on referring to trans women as men, and treating them as if they're privileged as such, ignoring the fact that social and other aspects of transition (or to a lesser extent merely contemplating those) are generally met with hostility and derided socially. Considering them to be men, such radfem transphobes might also deny that trans women are subjected to misogyny more than men. Much like transphobes generally, radfem transphobes typically reject the concepts of cisgender privilege and cissexism, even claiming that "cis" is not a neutral description of one's gender alignment but is a misogynistic slur.

The term TERF (nominally stands for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist") has come into use to describe this faction to distinguish them from radical feminists who aren't transphobic. They tend to not like this term, as it violates their attempt to claim ownership of the word "feminist".

Neopagan transphobia

Largely overlapping with the radical feminist transphobia, certain members of the neopagan community have also expressed sentiments and/or acted to exclude transgender people. This is especially common in Dianic Wiccan circles, and transgender women have been excluded from events at nominally ecumenical neopagan gatherings. Z Budapest, one of the progenitors of the Dianic Wicca community, stated (spelling and grammar errors in the original):

“”This struggle has been going since the Women’s Mysteries first appeared. These individuals selfishly never think about the following: if women allow men to be incorporated into Dianic Mysteries,What will women own on their own? Nothing! Again! Transies who attack us only care about themselves. We women need our own culture, our own resourcing, our own traditions. You can tell these are men, They don’t care if women loose the Only tradition reclaimed after much research and practice ,the Dianic Tradition. Men simply want in. its their will. How dare us women not let them in and give away the ONLY spiritual home we have! Men want to worship the Goddess? Why not put in the WORK and create your own trads. The order of ATTIS for example,(dormant since the 4rth century) used to be for trans gendered people, also the castrata, men who castrated themselves to be more like the Goddess. Why are we the ONLY tradition they want? Go Gardnerian!Go Druid! Go Ecclectic! Filled with women, and men. They would fit fine. But if you claim to be one of us, you have to have sometimes in your life a womb, and overies and MOON bleed and not die. Women are born not made by men on operating tables.

—

Selective transphobia

A growing number of transphobes make exceptions for those deemed good enough. They make a distinction between true trans people and "transtrenders", who are supposedly only pretending to be trans as a fad. They may not have an issue with straight trans people, but take issue with gay trans men and trans lesbians. They question the identity of people who do not meet the stereotypical narrative of "wanting to play with dolls/trucks since the age of 2, and hating your genitals since the age of 5." Even talking the wrong way can get a trans person deemed a "transtrender".

This kind of transphobia even exists within parts of the trans community. YouTuber Blaire White criticized Riley Dennis (another trans YouTuber) for being a transtrender, even repeatedly calling her "he", because she supposedly has never been on hormones. White has stated that Riley was a heterosexual man, and not a trans lesbian, because she hasn't received surgery. When Dennis released a video revealing she has been on hormones, White apologized.

In pseudoscience

For main article, see Autogynephilia

Sex researchers Ray Blanchard and Kurt Freund in the 1980s attempted to create a "taxonomy" of trans women which classified them into one of two categories. Essentially, all trans women are either gay men who think being a woman would be easier, or perverts who get aroused by the thought of being a woman. The evidence that trans women have neural traits more similar to their identified sex than their assigned sex? Yeah, that's irrelevant because all trans women are either one of the gays or perverts.

Oh, and you might have also noticed something else: not a single part of this idiotic theory includes a single recognition that there are trans men, that is, someone assigned female at birth who identifies as a man. Ever seen Boys Don't Cry? Well, Hilary Swank's character, Brandon Teena, is was one of the people this theory completely ignores.

Another "theory" on trans people is that their gender identities are caused by autism. While reputable medical studies do indicate that gender dysphoria occurs more frequently in autistic people than in neurotypical populations, they are simple incidence studies and do not speculate as to the mechanism(s) behind this phenomenon. Conservative and trans-exclusionary doctors have not let that stop them from claiming that it is caused by autistic people's tendency to "fixate" on issues, and that gender dysphoria is no different from obsessing over numbers. Other "theorists" suggest that it has to do with wanting to "fit in" to society better. Still others suggest that both conditions are caused by high levels of testosterone in the womb, which would make sense for trans men, but not for trans women, who have had high levels of estrogen in the womb. On a similar note, people invalidate autistic trans women's identities since autistic people supposedly have extreme male brains, even though the extreme male brain theory isn't accurate.

In any case, correlation does not imply causation—a principle that people readily acknowledge when it comes to other medical conditions that co-occur frequently with autism. Funnily enough, no one is running around claiming that autistic people with ADHD are hyperactive because they're "fixated on exercise." Plenty of rational potential explanations for the autism/gender dysphoria correlation exist, ranging from trans people being more likely to see psychologists to gender dysphoria not appearing more frequently in autistic people as such, but instead just being acted upon more frequently by autistic people due to their reduced sensitivity to gendered socialization and lessened investment in social gender norms.

Parental transphobia

Many trans children face prejudice from their own parents. While trans people comprise 0.6% of the USA's population, between 20-40% of all homeless youth are trans. One trans kid said:

“I might actually end up homeless for a bit, which is going to suck,” he said. “It’s better than my family.”

Physically abusive, drug-addicted mother Anmarie Calgaro tried to sue her legally emancipated daughter for transitioning. When that failed, she turned her lawsuit towards the teachers and doctors who had supported her daughter. Her daughter, known only as E.J.K, had moved into her own apartment, put herself through high school and was handling her own finances after becoming legally emancipated aged 15.

See also

• Transgender
• Cisgender
• Transphobia and public restrooms
• Transmisogyny

External links

• Trans Media Watch
• Transgender Europe research into global transphobia
• Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Responding to the Feminist Anti-Transsexual Arguments, Alas A Blog!