Dana Beyer
Executive Director, Gender Rights Maryland
The Fundamentals of Transphobia
Posted: 10/31/2013 6:08 pm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/the-fundamentals-of-transphobia_b_4183760.html?utm_hp_ref=transgender (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/the-fundamentals-of-transphobia_b_4183760.html?utm_hp_ref=transgender)
In recent posts I've touched on a current political issue, California's A.B. 1266, the "School Success and Opportunity Act of 2013," which explicitly gives trans students the same rights as all other students. It should be noted that those rights are already part of state law, so this bill simply codifies those protections with language specific to trans students. And it should also be noted that the Los Angeles and San Francisco school systems have had such protections for even longer and have never had a problem.
However, the extreme, conservative, reactionary fringe, having thrown in the towel on gay issues, to a large degree (note the recent Daily Show sketch on attitudes toward homosexuality in Alabama and Mississippi), is now targeting those trans students in California. My friend Zack Ford recently blogged on this issue on ThinkProgress. Yes, the opposition is very confused about the differences between sex and gender, gender identity and sexual orientation, and a lot of other issues as well. But the problem is more fundamental than that, and it is a more general one: Most Americans do not have a basic understanding of human biology and simply, reflexively, equate "biology" and "sex" with genitals.
The U.S. courts use the words "sex" and "gender" interchangeably in legal contexts, but medicine and academia generally use them to distinguish between biology and the psychosocial manifestations of that biology. "Sex" includes the cellular materials that make up the sexual anatomy and physiology of a human being, including:
Shana thanks for the article! :)
I think there's another basis to transphobia beyond simply fear of our erasing gender roles and mysogyny.
I think transwomen are seen as "deceivers". The see us as trying to enter female restrooms under false pretenses, titillating straight males with feminine attractiveness masking male bodies, and basically trying to be people they insist we're not.
What we have here is a teachable moment.
I spent the better part of two weeks explaining to the "great unwashed" the difference between "sex" and "gender," as well as the difference "gender identity" and "sexual orientation."