AS i want to write something about us gid/transgender in Ireland, please contact me.

Lynda Sheridan.

I am so tired of hearing the “give them love” attitude of privileged, well placed, white and rewarded Transpeople who that it makes me feel like, Grrrrrrrrrr.

When transpeople start telling me to love they neighbor and that neighbor happens to be HRC, Barney Frank, the justice system in America today, etc. it makes me livid. But I try to bite my tongue to often for my own good, because the next thing they will be telling the first timer that walks in the door is “Angela is one of those”. An activist, a rebel, someone who wants to run the show, an angry person. That fear instilled in that new person is almost palpable when you finally get to talk to them and some actually say, “gee, your not like they painted you at all.” It’s very difficult to have two grown children and seven grandchildren and still stay angry with things in your life, but that is exactly what Transgender issues does to me as a person. It changes you from a conservative to a raving radical in a matter of seconds, because in any measure of what might be a conservative life for many others, you are immediately confronted with the bigotry, discrimination, injustice and cruelty that you find perpetrated on Transgender people and in any society those acts in dealing with other human beings, come as close as you can to describing “cultural genocide” as you can get. And that turns any responsible person’s stomach in what is publicized as a free nation, supposedly attentive to a Bill of Rights that makes us all equal.

A few other things that you left out Monica.

The blatant ignoring by Americans of the rest of the world when it comes to Transgender rights is inescapable.

The World Court in Brussels has declared that members of the European Union Nations should observe the fact that if they are not willing to stop the transitioning of a person from one gender to the other by creating laws to stop them, then they have the moral obligation to recognize that those same people have every right to the exact same treatment and equal rights of all other people. Simple point, but very valid. It’s almost like listening to someone explain to another person, Newton’s theory of gravity, or that all horses have four legs. It should be basic common sense to anyone that if they aren’t willing to step up and try to stop something, then they are going to have to find a way to accept and live with it, even if they think it may be wrong. Of course they also have the option of becoming angry and doing something about it, inside the confines of the law, but they don’t, and the reason why is because like Roe vs Wade, it’s none of their friggin business what I want to do or how I want to live so long as it is not hurting anyone else. It’s my body and I will do what I want with it and adorn it any way that I so choose to do so.

Another point that you missed Monica is that our anger doesn’t just start when we grow up and people don’t like what we are doing. It impacts us as children when we first realize that we are different from the way others would like us to be, and we become angry that someone wants us to be something that we don’t think we should. They stop us from being ourselves……the end result of which is rebellion in children, refusal to take advice about other things, alienation at a young age, fear to be able to talk about problems and concerns even with your parents or teachers, obfuscation of your true feelings for fear of punishment or abusive treatment and in essence child abuse to such a degree that any similar treatment would require the child to be taken away from their parents or at least justify family therapy. How many of us were threatened by our parents when they found that first catch of girls clothes? How many of us were denigrated for playing girls games and on the FtoM side playing boys games? How many of us were felt to feel less as humans and less loved because there was something “strange” about us.

Transgender people have learned how to deal with anger on a professional level since they were children. The only shocking thing about it is that more of us have not grown up to become anti-social, isolated hermits and social misfits who take out their anger on others in more anarchistic and rebellious ways. That anger is channeled by many of us into action at another level though. It is called activism and not because of what happened to us, but because of what we know it is still doing and being done to children today who are the adults of tomorrow. This is what truly justifies our anger at people like HRC and Barney Frank who should know and understand what we are feeling because in many instances they faced the exact same thing as us, until they finally were removed from the DSM and the sodomy laws were found not applicable to their behavior any longer.

All we are looking for with our channeled anger, called activism, is the same thing that they already have, removal from the DSM as an illness and the right to have our lives defended by our government in the face of open hostility, bullying, degradation, humiliation, injustice and discrimination in the workplace.
Anyone who does not agree with that, are the ones who should be punished, not Transgender people.

Lastly, as Polar Bear alluded to. Who are these lily white, Transgender, proponents of non-activism that throw around the fear of flame wars and have sold out to more generations and decades of abuse? Well, I think they are people who are just thinking about themselves and have their own personal agendas. If they were around during the American Revolution we would all still be talking the Queens English. They are traitors to their heritage of discrimination and abuse. And you know something? I have not found one Transgender person of color, even one, over the last 42 years who is not really pissed of at HRC and Barney Frank about ENDA, and the reason for that is obvious. They understand the true nature of discrimination from the time that they are children and take their first steps in the world. They are activists on many levels of human conscience and they know what the risk of being nice and quiet leads to, more discrimination and more child abuses.

I’d like to see some of these people who get on line and argue their “love” and “being nice” theories, face some of those fierce and experienced Transgender Black Americans and see how long they would last with their arguments.

Anger is a tool that needs to be brought out of the closet it is confined in and used much more often. But the real crime lies with those in our own community who relegate it to the classification of “unjustified, confrontational and disunifying or harmful” behavior on the part of others, when they should be the first to say that it is most assuredly justified in a society that refuses to change and continues to discriminate with people who only want their human rights.

That stated, I’ve seen online exchanges described lately as “flame wars”. I haven’t really seen a good old-fashioned online flame war since the 1990s. Usually those describing these are people who don’t agree with the positions expoused, and use the term “flame war” to stifle discussion.

We just live in tough times, and times where PR rules and vanilla is the chosen flavor.