Today is the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, where we take a moment to remember the lives of our fallen trans brothers and sisters, including folks like Angie Zapata and Nanny Boo and Victoria Carmen White (pictured). Bullying and phobia and intolerance are something The Gays know well, but The Ts often live in this hell everyday. But that’s not true for everybody: Transgender Americans are making strides worldwide, whether on the basketball court or the sorority house or the workplace, and that’s because of increased visibility and the queer community supporting members of our own. I both hate and cherish days like this, because while they are reminders that insufferable bigotry is still very much alive and well — so much so that it claims lives — it’s also a chance to lift our heads up to note how far we’ve actually come.
j
Spot on queerty.
Freeman
Transphobia no more!
Shanya Rawls
You know what else is a reminder that “insufferable bigotry is still very much alive and well”? Your use of the word queer to describe gay people and, in this case, trans people. It is offensive and wrong. Some fools may have thought it was cool 20 years ago, but it wasn’t then and it isn’t now. Stop it. You are promoting hate.
Queer and LGBT are concepts dreamed up by privileged white gay academics who want to subordinate both gays and trans people to their own agenda. When you hear someone using either one of these terms, call them on it.
Jeffree
@Shanya Rawls: You have written this same post at least 4 times using various names, yet never substantiate your statements with logic or fact s. Using the Transgender Day of Rememberance to trot out your own political issues is in poor taste.
I spent some time yesterday reading articles recommended elsewhere re: T history, which was very eye-opening becauase I hadn’t really studied very much at all. There’s a lot for me to learn still.
Jonathan
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/She-lived-as-a-woman-address-her-as-a-woman.html
RIP Stacey Blahnik
missanthrope
@Shanya Rawls:
What’s insufferable is you thinking that you have the right to speak for other people and use TDOR as an excuse to ride your little hobbyhorse issue. You don’t speak for this queer and trans person and stop pretending that you do.
gina
Personally, I also think using “queer” to globally encompass the trans community is wrong. But this isn’t the thread in which to discuss that issue.
But mostly I’m wondering why Queerty chose to have a male, non-trans, white person discussing the TDOR… an event which is overwhelmingly about trans women of color and the violence they deal with?
And just to correct an error: Ms. Mack’s nickname was Nana Boo, not nanny boo and I really wish you wouldn’t link to a Queerty story which insensitively referred to her by her male birth name… that’s not respecting the dead.