Seriously, USA?

Submitted by edge-of-gloreee:

Transgender people are some of the least protected, most persecuted people in the United States. In a recent study of transgender students, nearly half said they’d been “punched, kicked, or injured with a weapon” at least once in the last year. On average, a transgender person is murdered because of their identity every month, according to the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 2008, for instance, Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old Colorado woman, was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher when her attacker—a man she met through a social-networking site—realized that she was born male.

Transgender people are regularly evicted from their homes, fired from their jobs, and denied medical treatment. Last July, emergency room staff in an Indiana hospital refused to help a trans woman who was coughing up blood, referring to her as “it.” More than a quarter of transgender people surveyed say they have lost a job because of discrimination. Transgender people are more likely to become homeless (at an average age of 13, in New York City). And then there is the obstacle course of inconveniences that reminds transgender people every day that they don’t belong. One trans woman told me her company requires her to lock herself in when she uses the restroom—even though it’s multi-occupancy—so she is acutely aware of making other women wait. In some states, a court order is required to change a person’s gender on a driver’s license. Many health insurance plans only cover procedures for one gender, so a person born male who transitions to female can’t get both a prostate check and a mammogram.

For some, these challenges prove insurmountable. Four years ago, Mike Penner, a longtime sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times, came out to the world as Christine Daniels. But, after a year and a half, unable to cope with the scrutiny, she changed her name back to Mike and returned to living as a man. A year later, she killed herself. Daniels’s story was tragically typical: More than one in three transgender people attempt suicide at some point in their lives.

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sinidentidades:

Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan say that there was nothing they could do after Bible-preaching protesters threatened to rape and murder pro-LGBT activists at a “Gay Day” event over the weekend.

In a video posted to YouTube, several protesters with Bibles can be seen shouting at a woman celebrating in the inaugural “Gay Day” celebration, an event organized by the human rights group Tolerance, Equality and Awareness Movement (TEAM) to showcase the community’s diversity.

“Back in the day there was no free power, there was no going to the mall,” one protester tells the woman. “There was, ‘sit your ass in this house until I bring my ass home.’”

“And if your ass get to going out there like you said, guess what?” a second protester adds. “You get raped. And that’s what’s going to happen to you. … Keep your pussy clean, that’s all you need to do. Do you understand?”

After one man claims, “the Lord said that,” the woman challenges him to find the corresponding Bible verse.

He responds with Isaiah 13: “Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.”

“What does ‘ravished’ mean? It means, we going to rape your ass,” the protester explains. “And I’m going to have fun doing that shit. And you going to like that. I promise you.”

After briefly arguing that he is misinterpreting the Bible, the woman observes, “Anything I say, you say it doesn’t matter.”

“It’s going to matter right now,” the man shoots back. “It’s going to matter when your clothes off and I’m going inside of you repeatedly. That’s when it’s going to matter. Because you going to enjoy yourself.”

The woman in the video told WWMT that the men also recited her boyfriend’s license plate number and promised to find and kill him. She said she called 911, but the Grand Rapids Police Department officer told her that there was nothing he could do.

fuckyeahfeminists:

A real, thought-provoking post about the commodification of identities on television:

Yet this strategy leaves trans people behind. It puts their experiences in the hands of privileged wealthy, white, cisgender gay men who ignore the realities of trans experiences. In the first two episodes of the show, viewers watch as Tyler is silenced by Zach Woodlee, the show’s choreographer. While Tyler repeatedly explains that he is uncomfortable dancing because his body is literally in transition, Woodlee reduces Tyler’s discomfort to internal confusion and claims that Tyler should just “get over it.” It’s as if Tyler’s problems must be in his head: he becomes inadequate and mentally unstable and he just need to “work harder” in order to succeed. In this framing, trans people like Tyler—and not the society in which they exist—become the (apparently easily fixable) problem.

This is not only a misunderstanding of trans issues: it is a reproduction of a power structure that gives permission to white cisgender adults to dismiss the experiences of a young trans person of color. It simultaneously reproduces the neoliberal ideal that minorities just need to “push themselves” to succeed beyond inequalities. Reproducing this power structure is dangerous in a world in which the experiences of trans people of color are ignored by the social, legal, medical, and educational institutions that should service them.

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