A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece on the topic of transsexuality. Since I first published it, though, there are areas in which I’ve begun to have second thoughts about some of the issues I raised.
Today, anti-trans violence is escalating, provoked by politically motivated propaganda, and discriminatory laws are being passed in state after state. To point out my minor gripes with the trans movement at such a moment is, at best, obtuse. While there might be times to raise objections, if I were the one currently fearing for my life and rights, I know I wouldn’t be receptive to hearing those objections.
The Black Lives Matter movement has taken flack even from the left for some of the more extreme protest measures they’ve taken. But for those who bring up mere property damage as an argument against the protests that rose from George Floyd’s murder, the apathy is plain to see.
Finding a delicate way to raise issue with the tactics surrounding struggles for equality is no easy task. In fact, it’s such a tightrope to walk that I’m not quite sure it’s possible.
Something else I’ve begun to wonder about since I first posted that last article is just how immune I am to media bias. I like to think I have a fairly keen sense of when I’m being manipulated. But I read last week that the vigor of the anti-trans campaign right now is in direct response to the right wing’s realization that their broader anti-LGBTQ messaging was losing its audience.
“[Republicans] have an interest in keeping the base riled up about one thing or another, and when one issue fades, as with same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage, they’ve got to find something else,” explained Dartmouth Professor Randall Balmer, according to the PBS article. “It’s almost frantic.”
As attitudes toward homosexuality began to shift, Republicans focused their time and energy on a more specific target: trans people. And judging by the number of laws that have been passed against them within just the last few weeks alone, it’s scarily clear that the campaign is working.
Maybe the reason I’ve felt as though my news feed is so centered around the trans issue is because this right wing propaganda strategy of theirs has branched out into the social media landscape, too. Maybe it’s by the design of the religious right that I’ve perceived trans people as wanting more of the floor when we enter into the conversations about the issues ailing us as a species.
With the divisive role that social media has played in our last few election cycles, this possibility is one I probably should have considered sooner. It’s difficult to deny the anti-trans argument has powerful weapons of manipulation in its arsenal.
The older I’ve grown, the more use I’ve found in trying to understand my adversaries. But while it’s a lot to expect the right wing to empathize with the struggles of gender identity, far greater is the challenge of asking the persecuted to empathize with their persecutors. It’s no easy time to be a trans person, and the past was little kinder to them.
Learning the deep roots to the hatred embedded within the human experience can take entire lifetimes. As we discovered through the Milgram Experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, and the atrocities that the world witnessed in Nazi Germany, normal people can be driven to do heinous things to one another. It’s important to understand the cruelty we’re capable of. We’re manipulable creatures. We listen to authorities. When propaganda is pedaled well enough, we eat it.
We’re not born with hate. But where we’re born might be hateful.
In the same way that religious affiliation has a significant geographic component to it, people born in Mississippi are unlikely to have very tolerant attitudes toward the trans community. But that transphobia can be reasonably well predicted based off of only our geography is a testament to what a deeply engrained prejudice this will be to overcome. The shouting coming from both sides of the aisle is unlikely to ever yield to civilized debate.
I made the point in my last piece that this gender controversy is an issue in which both sides can push each other to further extremes. While I think it’s true that the proliferation of pronouns and drag queens have a way of radicalizing conservatives, It’s clearly not both sides that deserve equal blame here. Fighting for a more accepting society is no act of violence, and when it’s the conservatives who have the ability to weaponize laws and institutions against endangered minority groups, it’s readily apparent that this battle isn’t taking place on a level playing field.
To ask empathy of the people whose rights and safety are endangered — toward those endangering it — well, it might demand a level of forgiveness that would impress even Jesus. But when I see the rabid militarism and lunacy within the right wing of this country, I think that the burden of turning the other cheek may fall unfortunately on the very most targeted individuals.
The fight for trans acceptance in this country, and in the world abroad, will be a truly enormous undertaking. Because the discomfort in our skin isn’t plain for the world to see, this trans equality struggle is likely the most complicated one that humanity has faced yet. It certainly won’t be over within the decade.
As Dave Chapelle pointed out in one of his routines on the subject, the black struggle for equality took centuries. The movement for trans rights has a steep uphill battle still ahead, and the cancellation of Chapelle and J.K. Rowling plays no part in it.
The calls to de-platform even non-violent objectors to some facets of the movement appear almost contradictory to the effort for acceptance. The demands seem sometimes to disregard the scope of the grand conflict ahead in interest of battles with people raising the most conscientious of criticisms. While I can’t defend all of Rowling’s stances, I’ll still defend her ability to have them.
After my last article, I was a little surprised with some of the backlash that I received. I had tried my best to take a measured approach to what’s certainly no simple subject. I made it clear I have no doubts that the trans experience is part of the normal gender spectrum, and that the threats against these minorities are to be taken seriously. But in those areas where I took fault with some of the elements I’ve seen at play within the movement, I found myself a Jew confronted with nazi accusations and comparisons to Hitler himself.
I’m no expert on the subject of gender, but I’ve done enough research that I think I can represent the middle ground here fairly well. There are plenty of people in this country who believe neither that trans people are lying or deluded, but still struggle to understand the social change that they see taking place.
While I don’t understand what it’s like to have been born in the wrong body, I understand that people deserve to feel safe. While I don’t totally understand what seems sometimes, from the outside looking in, like a disproportionate preoccupation on gender, I also don’t understand what it is to have been born into such a threatened minority group. Those with rights can’t tell the oppressed how to fight their fight. I can only say that the fight is a complicated one and those most affected by it can sometimes unwittingly label and alienate those who remain neutral, confused, conflicted or uninformed.
In the same way that gender exists on a spectrum, our opinions on the issue shouldn’t be crammed into binaries. It’s possible to recognize the trans struggle for acceptance and to call them by their preferred names while still acknowledging fault with some elements of the broader movement. It’s possible to be a male in a female’s body and still accept that others might struggle to understand the phenomenon.
What’s most important is that we try to remain empathetic, even when it seems hardest. Even when we’re confronting hate and violence and politicians who want our identities erased, it’s important to understand the larger context of this conflict. It’s important to understand sometimes that hate isn’t any more chosen than gender. But unlike gender, hatred can be unlearned.