Trans women are the most vulnerable group, with the fewest chances to protect themselves simply because they are so few in number. It makes them a very convenient target. Gay people, lesbians, migrants, or members of various sects and cults are far more numerous and often have their own lobbying power within social or state structures, as well as large support networks.
Trans women, meanwhile, are often left almost alone against hostility, prejudice, and violence. And that loneliness makes them especially fragile.
The numbers are the part people skate over. There are so few of us that most people have never knowingly met one, so whatever they think about us arrived secondhand and nobody ever gets corrected by an actual person standing in front of them.
It also makes us very cheap to legislate about. Nobody has ever lost an election over what was done to us.
Your analysis of how we got here is spot on. Before my husband came out to me as a trans woman I was getting bombarded with the message that trans women are biological women and there were no differences, and being told I had to accept it and that did not sit well with me. I never stopped to think about how we got there and your description of the algorithm explains it. Thank you for writing this. My trans wife (former husband, now wife, I prefer to switch gender descriptions based on timeline of the transition) often feels rage over our government’s attempts to legislate around trans women and I have to remind her that sometimes it is not worth spending every day angry over it.
That message never did any of us a favour. Telling a woman there are no differences when she can plainly see several is a very quick way to lose her, and it was never necessary either. I would far rather say I am a woman and obviously not the same as you, and let that sit where it lands.
And keep reminding her. The rage is entirely justified and it is also a full time job that pays nothing.
Trans women are the most vulnerable group, with the fewest chances to protect themselves simply because they are so few in number. It makes them a very convenient target. Gay people, lesbians, migrants, or members of various sects and cults are far more numerous and often have their own lobbying power within social or state structures, as well as large support networks.
Trans women, meanwhile, are often left almost alone against hostility, prejudice, and violence. And that loneliness makes them especially fragile.
The numbers are the part people skate over. There are so few of us that most people have never knowingly met one, so whatever they think about us arrived secondhand and nobody ever gets corrected by an actual person standing in front of them.
It also makes us very cheap to legislate about. Nobody has ever lost an election over what was done to us.
Your analysis of how we got here is spot on. Before my husband came out to me as a trans woman I was getting bombarded with the message that trans women are biological women and there were no differences, and being told I had to accept it and that did not sit well with me. I never stopped to think about how we got there and your description of the algorithm explains it. Thank you for writing this. My trans wife (former husband, now wife, I prefer to switch gender descriptions based on timeline of the transition) often feels rage over our government’s attempts to legislate around trans women and I have to remind her that sometimes it is not worth spending every day angry over it.
That message never did any of us a favour. Telling a woman there are no differences when she can plainly see several is a very quick way to lose her, and it was never necessary either. I would far rather say I am a woman and obviously not the same as you, and let that sit where it lands.
And keep reminding her. The rage is entirely justified and it is also a full time job that pays nothing.