There Is No Trans Debate, You’re Just a Transphobe
People are not debatable.
I’m really, really sick of all of these right-wing nutjobs and TERFs trying to legislate trans folx away. Banning gender-affirming therapies, the whole “don’t say gay” nonsense, and making parents of trans kids into criminals to take their kids away is monstrous. All of these things — the debate over whether kids know if they’re trans or not, the arguments over bathroom bills, the whole “should trans women compete in sports??????” thing — need to stop.
They are smokescreens for the real issue here, which is that the right and TERFs, in general, are transphobes. There is no real debate over whether trans people should be what they are — the “trans debate” is just another variant of “the Jewish question” or “the Negro problem” or “the immigrant issue.”
These are not subjects for some sort of logical debate or ethical quandary posed to a Philosophy 102 class. These are people. People who deserve their rights and freedoms, just as all people deserve. Trans folx are not some sort of bogeyman or fad or hypothetical thing: they are real, living, breathing people.
People are not debatable.
We should never debate whether trans folx have the right to use the bathroom, just as we shouldn’t debate whether black or Jewish people should use the same bathrooms as us. Trans folx pee and poop too; just let them do it in peace.
Oh, you’re afraid that they’ll creep on women in the bathroom? Cis women who are lesbians, bi, or pan manage to use women’s restrooms all the time without being creeps. What you’re actually afraid of is cis men who are predators, and that is already illegal.
What about participating in sports? Why should trans women not be allowed to participate in sports along with cis women? Is it because they were born biologically male and you’re worried that it’s basically just a dude who’s going to beat all the poor female athletes?
First off, maybe 1% of the population is trans, and second, we’re still figuring out the differences between cis and trans women, but it looks like quite a few sports exhibit minimal differences. This also only accounts for trans women who went through puberty, so if we allow trans kids to take puberty blockers and transition beforehand, it won’t be a problem, right? Right?
Also, note that both of these examples use trans women as the punching bag, which is how it masquerades as “feminist” while being exactly not feminist at all. You can’t be a feminist and simultaneously not support trans women. Explicitly excluding trans women is counter to the point of feminism as a whole because policing trans women is oppressing cis women as well. Forcing any woman, cis or trans, to reveal their genitals to whoever is asking is disgusting and wrong.
(As a side note, why the heck are all these anti-trans people so hell-bent on knowing what any given person’s genitals look like?)
The upshot of all of this is that there is no trans debate because, and I can’t believe I have to say this at all, people are not debatable. When we start to debate the legitimacy of a person’s right to exist, we get things like the holocaust. I do not think I have to tell you that this is a bad thing.
The people who will try to hem and haw and say things like “well, it’s all about” [protecting women] or [fairness] or [keeping children safe] or whatever bullshit argument are just putting up smokescreens to hide their transphobia. For some reason or another — although more often than not it’s their “Christian faith” — these people hate trans folx.
Pro tip: if the spiritual leader and namesake of your entire faith famously said “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,” and you choose to hate someone, you are not a good example of your faith in action.
Yes, these people hate trans folx for whatever reason and simply cannot abide that someone who is different from them has rights to things like privacy and safety and not being brutally murdered by bigots. Because that’s the whole point of all of this, isn’t it? To either drive trans folx back underground and into the closet or to kill them, whether through murder or suicide.
Trans folx in particular have high rates of suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts; The Trevor Project found that 52% of trans youth contemplated suicide and 20% had attempted. Trans folx are also increasingly the victims of hate crimes and are four times more likely than cis people to be murdered. Last year (2021) broke the record for murders of trans folx in America, with most being trans women of color, and as of this writing, at least six trans folx — all women of color — have been murdered in 2022.
Trans folx are here, they’ve always been here, and they always will be here. Trying to legislate away trans people will not make them magically go away somehow, just as trying to legislate away gay people didn’t make them magically go away. Unfortunately, the right-wing playbook for trans folx today is the same as it was for gay folx — make sure as many of them die from preventable causes (AIDS in the 80s, hate crimes and suicide today) as possible.
By perpetuating the “trans debate,” which, again, should not be a thing, the transphobes are perpetuating a culture of hate amongst people who might otherwise be ambivalent or even accepting. Passing laws and preaching hate and otherness against trans folx from the pulpit is meant to weaponize laypeople and everyday citizens against trans folx. It is normalizing the otherness of trans folx, saying “these are second-class citizens and sinners, and we should treat them as such.”
Never, in the history of anything, has someone said the words “these people are not equal” and been correct about it. Not with black people, not with Jewish people, not with immigrants, not with prisoners, not with anyone. We have fought wars over this many, many times, and there have been numerous protests and riots that have punctuated the fight for equality for all, and in every case, the people on the wrong side of history were the ones declaring some broad group of people to be lesser.
Everyone needs to be equal. Period. We are all people, and all people deserve rights, liberty, and justice. I continue shouting this every time I can: we are all entitled to those three little promises in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All people deserve that, and all people deserve to be equal. And so, I end this by repeating the same four words once more. For those of you who didn’t hear the first few times I said it. For those of you who don’t want to acknowledge it. For those of you who simply need to hear them once more so you can be reminded that you, too, are valid just as you are:
People are not debatable.
If you appreciate my work, why not join Medium as a paying member, which allows you access to unlimited stories (not just three free stories per month). Click this link or the image below. I will receive a little portion of your membership fee, but it won’t cost you any extra.
If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!
Here’s something else I wrote:
