Posted by Zoe Brain at AE Brain
28 November 2008
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/11/personal-thanksgiving.html (http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2008/11/personal-thanksgiving.html)
I'm Australian, so we don't have the peculiarly USAian custom of eating ethnic foods of various varieties - native birds and native berries, not forgetting chimerae like the Turducken.
By I have my own personal Thanksgiving. It was entirely out of pure, blind luck that I kept my mouth shut when young. I didn't know how transsexuals were treated - or rather, maltreated and mistreated - in the 60's and 70's. Had I known, I would have been terrified. And the mistreatment continues to a lesser extent.
I'm not sure it is. I do feel though, and feel strongly, that an in-depth and very public investigation of past treatment should be conducted. Not so much a "Nuremberg" looking to punish the guilty, but an inquisitorial fact-finding inquiry into what has been done in the past, and what all too often continues to be done to children, right here and now.
The apology can come later. First comes the acknowledgement of the crimes, and most importantly, ceasing to commit them.