The Third Law In The Third World

In previous posts, I've said that something like a corollary of Newton's Third Law of Motion seems to operate in the realm of transgender acceptance and equality.

Briefly, Newton's Third Law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  We see a parallel to it whenever some jurisdiction passes a law to protect us from discrimination or every time there's some favorable image of one of us in the media:  The bigots double down their ignorance, hatred  and violence against us.  

Backwater preachers and Neanderthal politicians (and others) come up with ever-more ridiculous ways of rationalizing their bigotry.  And, unfortunately, the level of violence against us is ramped up:  The beatings, stabbings and shootings become more frequent and gruesome. 

It also seems that as acceptance of us grows in secular Western societies--as seems to have happened in the wake of Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn--conservative societies become even more repressive and brutal.  Such is the case in Egypt where, according to at least one report, trans people (especially women) have been targeted.  During the past year, 150 trans women have been arrested in Cairo alone.

Now, while Egypt is a predominantly Muslim country, it's not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Still, the old ideas about gender and sexuality prevail:  It's very difficult to change one's name, let alone gender, on official documentation, and many Egyptians continue to see trans women as gay men who have rejected their masculinity.

One result of their difficulty in getting IDs that reflect their true identity is that trans people have a hard time getting jobs.  To be fair, it's difficult for anyone to get a job in Egypt right now, but being trans only exacerbates that problem.  So--you guessed it--many trans people turn to sex work in order to survive.  That further stigmatizes them, in both legal and social senses, as Egypt's laws (like the laws in most places) criminalize the sex worker rather than his or her client and sex workers are seen as people "nobody will miss" if they're killed or disappeared.

So, as I've said earlier, it's great that more people are accepting us as we are.  But that also means we must be careful, as those who don't accept us will become more adamant in their hatred.

They're Pediatricians, Not Pedophiles!

Sexual-minority youth should not be considered abnormal.

At first glance, it just seems like a fancy way of saying "Queer kids ain't weird."

But that statement means so much more, especially since it was issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

As you can imagine, a lot of self-styled "pundits" are now convinced that the medical profession is being used to promote homosexuality among kids. Oh, right: Folks who take the Hippocratic Oath specifically to help kids are going to encourage them to adopt a "lifestyle" that leaves them vulnerable to ostracism, bullying and worse.  Just like Janice Raymond--and a onetime friend of mine who takes her words as gospel--got it right when they said people like me "change" genders because we want to take all of those women's studies faculty positions that should go to "real" women.

I'll admit that I don't know anything about the practice of medicine, let alone pediatrics.  However, I think I wouldn't be too far off in assuming that most practitioners are interested in healing and making their patients whole.  Telling said patients that they're sick or immoral because of whom they love is really going to help accomplish that, isn't it?

It seems to me that reactionaries are feeling the heat, now that trans people are not deemed mentally ill in DSM-V and a slightly-right-of-center judge wrote the Supreme Court's opinion that the so-called "Defense of Marriage" Act is unconstitutional.

I still remember when relatively mature and sane people actually thought that all lesbians, gays and transgenders were trying to "recruit" kids.  Recruit them to what, exactly?, I used to ask myself.

At least I haven't heard that canard in a while.  What it means, I guess, is that haters and other lunatics will come up with new bogus arguments in their attempts to win the day.  But they can only win one day, and another, and another.  Eventually, those with the facts on their side win the (instead of "the", "this" or "one") day.  It just takes a while sometimes.

National Coming Out Day

Today is the 25th National Coming Out Day.

When the first such day was held, "coming out", even for white lesbians and gay men and lesbians who were secure in their jobs and lives, was a risky proposition.  The so-called "Gay Liberation" of the 1970's boomeranged into a conservative backlash during the 1980s.  (I apologize for the mixed metaphors.)  

One reason was the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Of course, the election didn't happen in a vacuum:  There was a counter-revolution to the Gay Rights movement, just as there was for the Women's and Civil Rights movements.  That counter-revolution was not always visible or audible:  Most of the time, it was more like a series of tremors that one only felt when one happened to be in its path.  Those tremors culminated in the earthquake of Reagan's election.

Perhaps even more important, though, was the outbreak of HIV/AIDs.  In the early years of the epidemic, all of its known (or, at any rate, recorded) victims were believed to be gay men, intravenous drug users, Haitians or West Africans.  The last three groups I've mentioned were near the bottom of the American socio-economic ladder; the early path of the epidemic caused many Americans to lump gay men with them.  Naturally, that only helped to inflame existing prejudices against gay men.

Another reason, I believe, why "coming out" was difficult during the 1980's was that many people associated lesbians with the most shrill and hateful kinds of feminists (or pseudo-scholars who called themselves feminists, anyway).  The conservatives and religious hatemongers who were spouting anti-gay rhetoric tended to look none too kindly on feminists anyway; the association those conservatives made between feminists and lesbians surely made things worse for both.

If it was difficult for gays and lesbians to come out in 1988, you can only imagine how much worse things were for trans people.  Of the trans people I've met (which include everything from those who haven't yet begun-- or who have chosen not to-- to transition, to post-ops), it seems that there are, chronologically, two groups: the ones who transitioned during or before the early 1980's, and the ones who transitioned during or after the early 1990's.  

If my observations in any way reflect what has happened throughout the trans community, there is a "lost generation" of trans people--the ones who didn't transition during the decade or so between the two groups I've mentioned.  That period almost perfectly coincides with the conservative backlash I've mentioned against gays and lesbians, and that "lost generation" includes many who took their own lives or who died slower deaths from drug and alcohol abuse, as well as those who simply didn't transition and those--including yours truly--who transitioned later in their lives than they might have otherwise.

So, even though we have a long way to go, things are certainly better for us, in many ways, than they were in 1988.  National Coming Out Day is one reason for that.