Addressing Transphobia
By Mollie Semple
I try to live my life with an openness to everything. I endeavour to be as fluid and as loving anywhere that I can. Cheryl Strayed with her advice column ‘Dear Sugar’ has been described as enacting something called ‘radical compassion’. That is something I strive towards. Radical compassion for myself, the people I am close to, and the wider population of my fellow human beings. People can be evil and selfish and cruel, but I believe that most individuals are hurting in some way when they behave badly and that if we all acted with radical compassion our hate and our pain would diminish significantly.
This is why when it comes to the various ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’ of this world I get stuck. Why express hatred and intolerance towards a person who has not done you or anyone else any harm? The thing is, I actually think this ultimately has an easy answer: people are scared. When others live differently to the status quo, those who feel protected by the status quo get frightened and act out. When their world gets deconstructed, they want to find someone to blame. This is particularly obvious to me when it comes to transphobia. We have been so strict in the dichotomy of gender and have weighted so much of our identity on the determination of our sex that the idea of anyone who falls outside of that binary can seem like a threat.
This is darkly ironic given that transgender people suffer an enormous amount of violence and prejudice all over the world. The threat, as usual, are the people who fail to tolerate and accept difference and instead act out in cruel ways. According to the World Health Organisation, for example, transgender women are 49 times more likely to be living with HIV. This is specifically problematic because transgender people have low rates of access to health and HIV services due to a range of issues such as violence, legal barriers, stigma and discrimination. Even more distressingly, according to a Forbes article in 2019 331 trans and gender diverse people were murdered all over the world. It is so jarring to think that in the 21st century you can be targeted and killed just for the way that you live your life. Unfortunately, this is the stark reality for any person who identifies as trans or non-binary.
Sadly, I don’t think that transphobia, like many forms of discrimination, is going to end over night. It is a slow and patient game of education and awareness. I was educated out of transphobic views that I held and I am so immensely grateful for it. My life and my compassion grew with learning and accepting other ways of being. There is no downside to the acceptance of differences. I am still learning, still growing, and that can only be a positive thing. If I ever shut down and refuse to listen and be educated I will know that something has gone wrong.
I think that some people feel that by accepting everything and everyone that means we stop holding humans accountable for their actions, that we let order go to the wayside and we will all enter some apocalyptic, anarchic nightmare. This fundamentally isn’t true but it happens with any social shift. If we look back to the way that homosexuality was viewed in some countries (and still is in places) the same arguments were made for the legalisation of same-sex relationships. It was a threat to the status quo and by accepting it we were all going to ruin. Thankfully same-sex couples can live much more safely and openly in a lot of countries and it hasn’t been to the detriment of any community. There has only been more love and more human connection.
Accepting the existence of differences and making sure people are protected and given equal rights no matter how they live or identify is not a problem for humanity. It does not mean that a transperson or a gay person is an inherently good human and can get away with anything. The same rules of kindness and compassion apply for anyone, but the fact of the matter is that when we live in a world where being one’s true self can get you killed or marginalised or hurt we are not doing well enough. The world has to get better at listening and learning, at representing all colours of the rainbow, because life is a rich tapestry and why on earth would any of us want to miss out on any of it?
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