Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Trans Women on the Margins
Dr. Cary Gabriel Costello
http://trans-fusion.blogspot.com/2011/07/trans-women-on-margins.html?spref=twThis is a post aimed at my queer community allies, with some simple illustrative charts.
As a trans man, I need to say that I am sick of seeing queer people dump on trans women.
Why would people marginalize others who are supposed to be part of the same LGBTQIA community? Occasionally I encounter it when I'm speaking with older lesbians who still buy the Evil Empire rhetoric that trans women are really men who are trying to smuggle their phallic privilege into women's safe spaces, in order to run the whole world and sneak peeks in women's bathrooms. More often I'm in a space dominated by gay male politicos where trans issues as a whole are thought of as distracting--something that scares off the Main Street straight supporters who might otherwise support same-sex marriage. But sadly, I run into it regularly in the sort of spaces I'm told should be most comfortable for me: spaces full of educated, activist, third-wave-feminist queer folks. The kind of places, ironically, where androgyny and genderquerity are celebrated as radical and transformational.
