How can we help people understand transgender individuals?
http://ambergoth.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/how-can-we-help-people-understand-transgender-individuals/ (http://ambergoth.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/how-can-we-help-people-understand-transgender-individuals/)
8/15/11
Olivia Foster, a lesbian who wrote a paper on transgender and homosexual individuals for her English class, recently commented how transgender and homosexual individuals are socially isolated from society. She asked: 'How do you think we could help people understand transgender individuals? I really want an inside opinion! Thank you so much!'
This was my reply, which I am repeating here as a separate posting:
Natasha, I enjoyed the link immensely. The response could also have generated a whole additional discussion (yet another response) about the need for understanding across other groups and not just with the LGBT community. I think the article's ending which raises the possibility that it was not just being 'read' that was a possibility for the hostility but that it was a group of women in a male domain as well. Quite possibly it was both and, then again, maybe it wasn't anything at all.
Regardless, it hints that fostering relationships with those willing within the feminist community would also be potentially worthwhile . The binary of male/female is much more expansive in the communities it impacts than just the LGBT community and it hurts many. ->-bleeped-<- challenges the often hidden (maybe not to us) degree to which the binary divide between the sexes has been accepted. Of course, the increasing recognition that there are shades of grey does not necessarily challenge what is often prioritized in my opinion (the masculine). Understanding across various communities is essential, if we are going to move forward. Part of that discussion needs to be about what these communities are hoping to build. Maybe, at first, they will only be positive, micro-communities of understanding but that is the ground for big picture change ultimately. I'll leave it there because it is leading me into all sorts of crazy meanderings that are more suitable for a Ph.D. thesis or some crazy manifesto. It is a weakness I have, which is likely to make everyone go starry eyed and run for the exits faster than anyone shouting fire in a cinema. Just wanted to say, enjoyed reading this and hope to read more...