Tranny IS Just a Word
Thursday, February 5th, 2009By Monica F. Helms
(for those who have read this on The Bilerico Project, I added a new paragraph toward the end.)
I know that by expressing my opinion about this word in an article, I will make a lot of my trans friends angry. Seems that the quarterly label issue is brewing yet again and right on time. This article of mine came about because of an article my friend Donna Rose wrote on her blog called, “Tranny: Just a Word?” Please note that Donna happens to be one of my closest sisters, but like family, we can disagree on things. This is one of those times.
Human beings have a propensity for figuring out ways to verbally put down other people. Americans are absolute experts in this “field,” especially during a war with another country. In Wikipedia, you can find hundreds of words used for just ethnic slurs alone. It’s more fun for American to burn bridges rather than build them. If ethnic slurs are so prevalent, then it stands to reason that slurs directed at the LGBT community would be also in abundance. The questions now become, “Are some of these words actually worth getting upset about?” and “How do we neutralize them?”