Trans Rights / Human Rights
http://sugarandmedicine.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/trans-rights-human-rights/9/3/09
I am using some legal cases here to reflect on the way that human rights issues for transfolk are focused on "trans" rather than "human" meme-ology. This may be a little winded, a bit obtuse, just hair-splitting or whatever, but I didn't have the heart to bury it in the dead draft pile... (inspired by a post Passing and the Politicalization of the Third Sex at Gender-ID Blog – where I made a comment and now it's bred into this... )
The nomenclature we use to position ourselves weighs heavily over time. If we want trans rights, that puts the focus on us as trans rather than human. The power of memes is something that is most often viewed in retrospect, because we are generally short-sighted creatures, and memes happen by general subconscious attachment – almost by accident. Recognizing the power of memes, big business learned to orchestrate construction of memes through advertising and corporate branding. Occasionally in the realm of activism memes are consciously created – eg. – women born transsexual. (note: the identification and study of memes is relatively new: Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)
