One of the things that annoys me about the transgender community is the conclusion jump. It's a tendency to take a snippet of information and come up with a pessimistic scenario severely out of whack with the available evidence or presume that the jumped conclusion is true even though the weight of evidence doesn't support it.
We have that going on right now in the wake of Randi Rhodes' on-air comments slamming Ann Coulter.
…Y’know, one of my very, very gay women friends wrote me an email and said Honey, let me just explain something to you. When transsexual, when…when they’re going through the…the…the transgender op…they infuse the man with the female hormones, and they go wack-a-doodle on you. And, ah, Ann [Coulter] is obviously getting the hormones…big doses. That’s why she’s so bizarre right now.
Okay, I’m telling you, it was amazing to me to get that information.
This comment has one blogger comparing her to Michael Savage and another calling her a transphobe.
Hold up.
I agree that liberal/progressives have the potential to make negative statements about us and sometimes do. They have the potential to be transphobes. I have the knife wounds in my back from dealings and lobbying efforts with so-called allies over the last decade to prove it. Some of our progressive allies have done things that are just as nasty and neglectful of our community as anything the Reichers could throw at us.
While I don't like Randi's comment (but love her show), and have decried the tendency of genetic females and other peeps (straight and gay) to call women they don't like trannies, I like Ann Coulter even less and I've said nastier things about her in private conversation. Frankly, I think that we should smack Coulter around more frequently than we do now and feed her own words back to her.But I think it's going a bit too far and it's a tad irresponsible when you assert that Randi Rhodes is a transphobe equivalent to Michael Savage and the evidence doesn't support it.
Michael Savage has a long history of making derogatory and racist comments on a wide range of people, including these winners about transgender peeps;
"The wages of sin are death. You're gonna cut off your willy, you're gonna wear women clothes, you're gonna hook, you're gonna wind up dead under a freeway, Johnson."
"You're never gonna make me respect the freak. I don't want to respect the freak. The freak ought to be glad they're allowed to walk around without begging for something."
One difference is that Michael Savage supports a political philosophy in which many of its adherents echo those statements. Some of them are in positions of power that enable them to carry out those wishes verbalized by him and convert them to public policy.
The other difference is that Randi is educable on transgender issues and Savage isn't.
BEFORE you throw out the baby with the bath water, please STOP and think about this. Randi is not a HATER. Her entire career is based on promoting JUSTICE. She has dedicated her LIFE to protecting all of our rights, maybe at the expense of her own. You have selected some statements that have hurt your feelings because you feel years of pain and injustice. I am not minimizing the impact that her words have had on individuals and the community, but Randi IS NOT the enemy here. She is MAD as hell at Ann Coulter because of ANN'S hate mongering, because she is part of the machine that likes to chew us up and spit us out then belch with self satisfaction and a laugh or two at our expense. Tell Randi what she needs to do to become more aware, she will listen. Instead of perpetuating HATE and meanness, talk to her, give her a chance. She is the one who CARES about you enough to put her neck out there to fight every day against people who would like to blast us back to the stone ages. Call her show on Monday and talk to her. She has a voice and a place for your voice to be heard. I listen to her when I can and I really know her to be genuine and deeply caring.
ReplyDeleteWhat we ahve here Auntie Ree is a failure of communication.
ReplyDeleteI'm not calling Randi Rhodes a transphobe. The linked blogs that are in the post are.
This is my comment on it:
But I think it's going a bit too far and it's a tad irresponsible when you assert that Randi Rhodes is a transphobe equivalent to Michael Savage and the evidence doesn't support it.
As I noted elsewhere, it's a classic example of someone having absolutely no problem with what someones says, so as long as it's not about them.
ReplyDeleteIt's hypocrisy.