Transgender Issues: Segregation vs. Unassailable Rights
February 15, 2012. 9:56 am • Section: Trans Talk
Posted by: Jillian Page
http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2012/02/15/transgender-issues-segregation-vs-unassailable-rights/Many moons ago (ie. the 1960s) in my high-school history class, the teacher asked the students to fill out a survey he had created. It was about discrimination against black people, and he asked questions like: "Would you be seen in public with a black person?"
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Flash-forward to the present . . . When I see columnists and commentators questioning and challenging the rights of trans people to live in society as equals, I am reminded of that history class. Yes, history is repeating itself. When a columnist, for example, challenges the right of trans people to use the washroom or to bear children or whatever, they are taking an elitist stand, as if they have some say in how trans people should live, as if they can dictate whether we should be treated as equals or not.
It doesn't matter to them that medical science is offering explanations for transsexualism, it doesn't matter that we are born this way, and that it is NOT a sickness. They don't care. We don't fit neatly into their neat binary system, and they are repulsed by that . . . so they find subtle ways to discriminate against us, or not-so-subtle ways.
