I Don't Need Your Permission To Have My Humanity Respected

In the latest example of white faux christian conservafool arrogance, a new anti-trans campaign with two white women as spokesmodels is trying to push the message that we trans people need to 'ask them first' before we push policies are are necessary because of their intolerance.

That's mighty white of them to demand that we 'ask them first' for policies that tell them they aren't allowed to disrespect and dehumanize us.

Not no, but hell no to this bull feces .  Trans people are not some late 20th century concept.  #WeExist, and we're tired of your attacks on our humanity that is not up for debate by you, right wing politicians or your loud and wrong pastors.

I didn't need your permission in 1994 when I transitioned and I damned sure don't need it now. Neither am I or anyone else in Trans World is going to beg you to deal with the reality that I and other trans people exist.

As me if I care if you trans oppressors like that or not.  Nor do I care for your extremely flawed interpretation of Scripture that you and other right wing organizations are using to try to mask the stench of your anti-trans hatred and bigotry.

Trans people are part of the diverse mosaic of human life, and we are perfectly made by and loved by God.  Contemplate that as you read Isaiah 56: 3-6, Matthew 19:12,  Galatians 3:28 at your next Bible study at your right wing hate megachurch.

We are exactly who we say we are.   Why does that scare you so much?

Get it through your skulls that I don't need your permission to have my humanity respected and my constitutional rights as a American citizen protected.

10 Things You're Saying When You Ignore Someone's Gender Pronouns

One of the quickest and easiest ways to show a trans person that you respect them is to use their preferred pronouns.  But there are people who for various reasons, either continue to use the wrong pronouns to the irritation of the trans person in question or willfully do so.

I like this meme, and while I didn't create it, I visualized its ten points as a way to expound on the importance of cis folks using the  pronouns that match our gender presentation,

When you're done reading it, I want y'all to realize that when you deliberately fail to recognize a trans person's preferred pronouns, it is taken by the trans person as a sign of blatant disrespect. You are also  subliminally sending a message to the trans person in question you don't care about or recognize them as the |human beings they are now.

Shall we begin?

1.  I know you better than you know yourself

We see this smug attitude crop up far too often in social media and elsewhere.

Naw cis homies and homettes, you don't.  Neither do you have the ability to tell what my chromosomes are or figure out my trans status just by looking at me.  Just get it through those skulls that trans men are men, trans women are women.

2.  I would rather hurt you repeatedly than change the way I speak about you.

We understand in Trans World that it takes time for family and friends to get used to your transition. But when we're pushing five, ten, twenty years post transition and you still are misgendering and deadnaming the trans person in question, you're being a microaggressive azzhole

3.  Your sense of safety is not important to me.
This is a pet peeve of many trans people, and especially trans women.  When you cis women mad because a trans woman is performing femininity better than you in the 'hood or the club sashay over to the cis male she's talking to or is making goo goo eyes at her and whisper 'That's a man' in his ear, you are setting that trans woman up not only for a hate crime, but legal trouble for yourself if the trans woman gets hurt or killed.  Some of us trans women just got it like that, so chill with that shady (and dangerous) crap.

And it's not cool to do this to a trans man either.  It opens them up to a beat down or worse.

4.  Your identity isn't real and shouldn't be acknowledged.

I don't care what your pastor, the TERF's, the GOP or other assorted haters said, a trans person knows their gender identity better than you and you need to respect and acknowledge that.  If you can't, as far as we trans peeps are concerned, you aren't a decent human being.

5.   I want to teach everyone around me to disrespect you.

The TERF's have been trying to do that since 1973 and now the right wing trans haters are doing so for political purposes.  They will fail because of the increased visibility of trans people.

6.   Offending you is fine if it makes me more comfortable.

When you are willfully offending me for your own selfish reasons, don't get mad when I diss you or start crying foul when I call you out for being a transphobic azzhole.

7.   I can hear you talking, but I'm not really listening.

And if you're not listening, then what's the point in me trying to educate you on my issues or tell you my trans story?

8.   Being who you truly are is an inconvenience to me.

I've spent a lot of time engaged in hard solid thinking about being trans, lots of money, and gone through hell to be me.  If it's an inconvenience for you to respect that and use the correct pronouns, then you need to step out of my life.

9.  I would prefer it if you stopped being honest with me.

If you can't handle my trans truth, buh bye.   Can't help it if you're insecure about your own gender identity or being our unapologetic selves bothers you.

10.  I am not an ally, a friend, or someone you can trust.

We don't need toxic frenemies in our lives because we get enough crap from the rest of the world about our lives or who don't have our backs.  There are others out there who are loving and kind enough to be ride or die friends for us, and those are the people I'd rather spend time with.

I Repeat, If We Tell You It's A Slur Word, Don't Use It

'Let me drive this point home once again.  You don't get to make the call as to what words are or aren't offensive to my community.  WE make that call.  If you respect our community as you claim you do, then heed our repeated request to simply NOT use the offensive slur words.'  
--TransGriot   April 30, 2014  'If We Tell You It's A Slur Word, Don't Use It' The white gay males throwing temper tantrums like spoiled two years olds because a majority of the trans community has told them not to use the t-word, have deployed yet another useful trans fool in their losing effort to justify the use of two words we have told them and the world are offensive to our community.

And they need to give it up.   We already know that if this situation was reversed, you would go frothing at the mouth crazy if any trans person wrote posts trying to justify use of the f-word, or repeatedly tried to justify doing so by finding contrarian white gay males who validated the loud and wrong viewpoint.   Note to Justin Vivian Bond (not surprisingly white, like the other previously deployed useful fools like Our Lady J, Andrea James and Calpernia Addams) and all you other people sucking up to white gays trying to justify use of a slur word:.  If you're so 'worried about trans unity', stop sucking up to the cadre of white gay males and a cluelessly ignorant Black gay male who petulantly want to keep dehumanizing us by using terms a majority of us have said in a loud voice are hurtful slurs.

And let me repeat this one more time for the cognitively challenged:  A majority of the trans community has said the t-word and s-word are hurtful slurs.  If you respect our community, don't use them, period. 

Words matter. Hate thoughts are expressed in hate words and hate speech that turns into hate violence.

And guess what two words come out of our oppressors mouths before they put their hands on transwomen to violently beat or kill us?  What words come out of someone's mouth when they want to dehumanize transwomen or deny us employment?

When you try to justify use of those words, you are tacitly saying by doing so you don't care, and your privilege trumps our humanity.  If you're a transwoman who thinks the slur words usage is okay, you just gave permission for our oppressors to dehumanize you. 

This is bigger than the slur words. It's about the trans community owning its power, drawing a line in the sand and telling friend, foe, frenemy and the world what is and is NOT acceptable to us.  

If you allies truly respect the trans community, you would accept that reality and move on.   But there are elements of the white gay male community who wish to continue disrespecting and hating trans women to pump up their own self esteem and we ain't having that.   

No matter how many trans useful fools you egg on into embarrassing themselves and risking pariah status in our community by trying to buttress your hypocritical and losing position, bottom line is we're not budging one millimeter on the point the t-word is a slur and you need to stop using it.

You need to stop using it because our community respectfully asked you in the beginning not to do so. 

Now we're telling you.

What Chad and Amiyah Can Teach Us About Respecting Trans Women

TransGriot Note: Interesting article from one of the people I had the pleasure of meeting during OUT on the Hill last year, Anti-Intellect, concerning the ignorance bubbling up once again in the Black gossip blogosphere concerning this recent photo Chad Johnson took with girl like us Amiyah Scott

The guest post at Funky Dineva is entitled 'What Chad Johnson and Amiyah Scott Can Teach Us About Respecting Transgender Women'.   

It's a call for the Black community to chill with the ignorance and disrespect aimed at trans women and start understanding and respecting the ones in their midst.

I agree.  And it needed to happen like yesterday.
I also got a little love in the post, too.

And yeah, ignorance alert in the comment threads. 

Here's a taste of it:    

I look forward to the day when a straight man taking a picture with a trans woman is not an issue. If social media is any indication, we have a while to go before that vision becomes a reality. Over the weekend, a picture surfaced of former NFL player and reality star, Chad Johnson, posing with Amiyah Scott, a trans woman. Judging by the number of ignorant comments leveled at both Johnson and Scott, you would have thought that the two had committed a serious crime, and in a sense, they had. In our transphobic world, a straight man taking a picture with a trans woman is seen as a “crime”. What is the crime, you ask? The crime is respecting a transgender woman.

Media representation has the potential to make us comfortable with people from different walks of life, but it also has the potential to make us see a community in a monolithic way. Trans women have all too often only been seen as predators and/or comic relief. I am here to tell you, however, that the lives of trans woman are diverse and multifaceted. Yes, there are trans women who have not revealed their gender identity, often for good reason, but there are many who live there lives with honesty and openness. Trans women come from all walks of life, and it is long overdue that we start to recognize their diversity within their community. We need to look beyond the stereotypes to see the trans women who are enrolled in college and trade schools, the trans women who are journalists, motivational speakers, doctors, executive directors, hairstylists, actresses, wives, mothers, and almost any other role imaginable.

You can read the rest of it by clicking this link. 

Can My Transsisters FINALLY Get Some Love This Holiday Season?

While we had the vice president of the United States stating that trans rights are the civil rights issue of our times, with us being just 31 days from Christmas Day, all I'm asking for Christmas this year is the same thing I've been asking for since I wrote the original post in 2009 and repeated the call in 2011.

Can me and my transsisters get some love during this holiday season?  

It shouldn't be that hard to live up the Golden Rule for 31 days and treat us the way you wish to be treated, even if you have to plaster a fake smile on your face to do so.  But it seems as though every year we have people who get their holiday jollies on disrespecting us and making our lives as miserable as possible.

And in far too many cases, the haters are going too far and taking our lives.  In some cases the holiday drama we go through is enough to drive our more emotionally fragile peeps to consider taking their own lives.

I ask this simple question once again.  For the holiday season, can me and my transsistahs just be allowed to live our lives without additional drama?

Deep down, I suspect I already know what the answer to that question is going to be, but I had to try to plant the seed in your minds and get you to at least think about it.

Treat Me With The Same Dignity And Respect You Demand For Yourself

Why is it so hard for some people to treat others with the same dignity and respect they demand for themselves? If you want me to give you the respect and dignity you deserve, then you must do the same.

It's a breathtakingly simple concept, but one far too many people don't put into practice.

Our Religious Reich and 'white' wing opponents scream long and loudly about how you're trampling on their 'religious freedoms', but are the first ones in line to exercise their faith based hatred and try to legislate yours out of existence.

There are our 'frenemies' in the gay and lesbian community who have spent more time since Stonewall bitterly fighting trans people tooth and nail and cutting us out of desperately needed civil rights legislation than they have being fierce advocates for our rights.

But the GL community are the first ones to bitch and complain when they feel that someone is impeding their civil rights progress or isn't working fast enough to overturn odious legislation aimed at them.

In the trans community we have a small segment of people who loudly scream they are being 'oppressed', but in the same breath are willfully misgendering anyone who disagrees with their misguided twisting of radfem doctrine.

Time out on all that BS.

As James Cone stated in his 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power

There are no degrees of human freedom or human dignity. Either a man respects another as a person or he does not.

It's that simple, people. Either you respect someone as a person or you don't. No excuses, no quantifications, no obfuscations, no bull.

We are human beings who are as I like to say, are undeniably part of the diverse mosaic of human life. To those of you don't like or dispute that, tough. You can take that discussion up with the Creator.

But as long as we reside on this planet, I and my trans brothers and sisters are not here on this planet to be your societal punching bags for whatever frustrations you have going on with your own lives.

We ain't going anywhere, and we demand and expect the same dignity and respect concerning our lives that you demand for yourselves.

The sooner y'all get that through y'all obstinately thick heads, the better world we can create together.