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School closed after parents declare ‘hunting season’ on twelve-year-old transgender student: ‘A good sharp knife will do the job’
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- Published
- Aug 14 2018
- Word count
- 484 words
Change is scary. They've never encountered this before and they don't know whether she's a threat or not. In fact, they probably don't realize she's a she, and not a he. They're used to boys being boys, and assume that someone in a male body going into a female restroom is there for nefarious purposes.
It's tragic, but sadly understandable. The best way to combat this from happening is to educate.
I have such a hard time wrapping my head around this concept. Even if they've never encountered a trans person before, why jump to the conclusion that she's a "threat". Why assume that any child, in any bathroom, anywhere, is in there for any other reason than the obvious?
Because sometimes boys do sneak into the girls restroom for nefarious purposes. Like, 0.000000001% of the time, but it happens and inevitably everyone hears about it. Or at least sees it in a movie or TV show.
I mean I get that the possibility exists - but the assumption that the least likely possible scenario is the "correct" one takes some serious mental gymnastics. These people don't assume every person walking near them on the street is definitely going to pull out a gun and mug them because sometimes that happens.
I agree we need more education on the subject but I feel like we're past the point where we can call their fear "understandable" :(
I dunno, many of these states have conceal carry and stand your ground laws. Many of these states have individuals who believe a "good guy with a gun" will solve all gun problems. It would not surprise me if a large number of these people think exactly what you are saying, perhaps moreso if the person in question is of a particular ethnicity or is dressed a certain way.
This, of course, is yet another educational challenge. It's simply incorrect in face of the evidence, and is only reasoned to be true by a combination of our innate biases and their education (or more aptly, lack thereof).
To be clear, I simply understand why they think they do. I disagree with the line of reasoning and find it frankly offensive. But I can comprehend why the problem exists and therefore can work towards eliminating the problem.
That's a bit generous. In their worldview, this kid has a penis and is therefore a boy. Full stop. You can tell them different until you're blue in the face, but they won't accept it.
They fully understand that the child's mother and the child themself both refer to the child as a girl, but they will refuse to condone that. Biology overrules everything to them.
The irony is that, if we scanned the child's brain, it would show biological signs of being a female brain. But we're not conditioned to associate male and female with brain structures: it's penises and vaginas all the way.
For general transphobia, yes, more education is required.
For these parents? They're adults and they're advocating violence against a child. They should fucking know better. They're past the point where I'm willing to have empathy and say "it's understandable".
To be clear, as I mentioned in another post, I'm not condoning their behavior whatsoever. It's shitty and its inexcusable and I think they are human garbage.
But I understand why they think this way.
Imagine wanting to stab a child while also thinking you're the good guy.
It is just so heartbreaking to hear this happening to a child.
The amount of hate directed towards the trans community is why they have such high levels of depressions and suicide. And then the fact that conservatives use those stats to call it a mental illness is just infuriating.
Just leave them alone and let them live for fucks sake.
Neither do I. Regardless of how someone may feel about, honestly anything, this is a child!
I hope they all get charged with hate crimes.
Me too, I don't see how it can be anything else.
Let's tack Conspiracy while we're at it.
I am shocked, shocked, that some bullies grew up to be adult bullies.
Can't be surprised, but definitely still sad...
It shows a clear bias.
Kevin Bickerstaff's post was terrible. He is a grown man suggesting a child gets beaten up..
As soon as I saw that article was about an OK school I knew it'd be a rough read.. I grew up in small town OK...
These are adults, if they don't like the situation, discuss it with some tact and behind the scenes with the staff. People just like to be loud mouths and shout their views.
Oh man poor kid. Life's already a lot rougher for her then it will probably ever be for many.
Well shit, thanks for correcting me.
Did you edit your original comment? I thought Tildes showed when comments were edited.
There is a 5 min window where you can edit it without the note popping up
Ah that makes sense, I suppose. Thank you.
Just clicked edit on the side. Yeah I was under the impression it would say last edited or something like that.
If you goggle the names of the Facebook commenters they are almost all the first result for their names now lol.
I don't mean to be that guy, but I can't help but feel this is as bad as it is because it is a boy identifying as a girl. I really don't want to sound ignorant or take away from anyone's struggle, but I feel like this kid might be getting it a little more rough / having a bigger deal made because
heshe was born a boy. And people look at it as a boy using the girl's restroom.Would grown adults really be suggesting a little girl get beaten up to teach her a lesson? And calling a little girl it and thing? I feel like people know the repercussions for that would be severe so they'd tow the line more.
Edit: I wasn't thinking on how I was writing, and called her he. I apologize.
A lot of transphobes forget trans men even exist. Their visibility has gone up a bit more recently (for better and worse, in different ways... more visibility and resources available, but also more transphobic garbage sent their way sometimes), but yeah... there’s a good bit in one of Julia Serano’s books where she suggests it may come from a place of engrained sexist thought - the idea that trans men are “moving up” in the world, and thus can’t be blamed, but trans women are “moving down” and thus make no sense to the average cishet guy, meaning they must be mentally ill or doing it for nefarious reasons. I think from what I remember she also suggested that it’s likely because it makes cis people have to confront that their gender may not be as much of a given as they thought, and that scares them.
It's a pretty good example of toxic masculinity in action, with a dash of casual-sexism.
We also, culturally, have a history of kinda just accepting masculine-women (e.g. Tomboys), and mocking or disparaging feminine-men (e.g. flamboyance, cross-dressing). Adding the abstract concept of gender — and a mismatched one at that — to the mix turns things up to 11.
There's a certain social "sanctity" of women as well. A woman gives up their virginity, not a man. A woman seeing a penis is no big deal, but a man seeing a vagina is.
I believe there's a good deal of bias because if you heard of a straight woman in a man's bathroom, most people don't really freak out. But a straight man in a woman's bathroom? All hell breaks loose.
Men are the perverts, not the women.
Some people (ignorant) assume it's a man wanting to be a woman, not a woman born in a man's body. They assume that it's a man wanting to see women pee (I'm not even sure how you'd do that, with stalls how they are), not a woman trying to be comfortable when they need to go to the bathroom.
I don’t really like saying trans men or trans women have it easier - we both have our own struggles and contrasts. Hormones do a lot for trans guys - dropping their voices and even causing facial hair to grow (testosterone is strong), but in contrast they often don’t have a choice on top surgery, other than just binding all the time. Additionally, for those who want it, phalloplasty isn’t as far along as vaginoplasty, from everything I hear. Meanwhile, for trans women, it can vary wildly, facial hair has to be removed by laser or electrolysis usually, voice has to be trained, etc, but trans women tend to have more of a chance of avoiding surgery (some get pretty impressive breasts tbh
and I’m jealous and want to steal them), and for those that want it, vaginoplasty is pretty impressive.Some absolutely would. You don't even have to look very far back in history - Ruby Bridges had to be escorted to school by federal marshals for weeks (and then police afterwards), as a 6-year-old girl that didn't even understand why people were angry.
That's a bit different. It was a much different time, and she was a young black woman. I just feel that situation doesn't quite compare to this. (The out and out racism during school integration was a much different experience and people viewed African Americans differently. So they behaved differently toward them.) I don't recall reading the race in the article, but the picture of the mother was white or was that a faculty member. I just have a hard time thinking they'd call a young white girl (and I say girl to explain my point, I know I should call a girl identifying as a boy he. I just mean people are still going to perceive the child as a girl and look at her as one when they heard the news of what happened.) it or thing and suggest she get beaten up as a way to get her to comply.
Edit To better explain what I mean, people had this perception of African American's back then. It was a widely held view. So there wasn't a lot of people saying, "Hey how dare you treat her that way." There wasn't a lot of backlash because the group think was more collective. It's like you had this large group with the same bigoted views, so when you did something you only had a minority who looked down on the bigoted views. There wasn't a large enough collective to have any major back lash. It's like when you have a group of people and then one person no one likes. No one in the group cares what the person no one likes has to say, but they sure as heck care what the collective group thinks.
Today, things are different and you have all of these people who are going to say, "Hey that isn't right!" It's just a different time period. And I do feel like race would place a major part in a situation like this and how people reacted. People know to tread lightly on certain things today because there are a lot more eyes and a lot more tolerant mindsets.
Because the aspects surrounding both situations were just different and there was different types of stigma. I just think it is two different kinds of bad. Not that one was worse, they were just very different situations in terms of how people look at the people.
Mostly because of the time that happened too. I more so meant in today's time I don't think adults would be as open to saying or behaving this way about a girl identifying as a boy because they know how society would lash out.
I mostly agree that trans women get it worse than trans men, but when talking about the child in this article, please refer to her as a girl. She's not a boy identifying as a girl, she's a girl who was assigned male at birth (AMAB). I know you're not being malicious, I'm just letting you know the mistake you've made.
Sorry, I didn't mean anything by it. I was focusing on getting my point across and didn't realize I called her he. I fixed it. Any other reference was just me explaining my point and referencing what they were assigned at birth, I don't mean to infer she is a boy.
Don't worry, it was clearly just an accident. Thanks for fixing it up.
Dumb question but is there any way to put a title like that behind a trigger warning?
Personally able to cope with it at this time but I can imagine others needing not to see this.
Hmm, I do not think so, but I could add "trigger warning" as a tag on this post.
Maybe there is a way that @deimos can add a special theme or color to a "trigger warning" tag to make it stand out?
I totally understand if we do make the "trigger warning" tag a colored one, but might it be better to standardize tagging individual things that could be triggers? I've seen too many groups in other places have every other post devolve into "does this really need a TW/CW?" and we could mostly sidestep that by encouraging users to filter out their specific triggers.
It's also a little less "one size fits all," if we rely too much on the TW tag, some users will be not seeing content they could engage with just fine while others will choose not to filter out that tag so they don't miss out and end up seeing things that they would much rather not.
Of course encouraging users to do both is also a good option, but I think being more specific might be better to focus on. Imo this element of tagging should be enforced pretty strictly.
That is another good point. So something like "TW rape" or "TW violence"? I have not really been involved in any communities that use trigger warnings, but understand its a serious concern for a lot of folks and don't want to diminish it.
I will add that to the post I will make over at ~tildes discussing this.
We have the "nsfw" and "spoiler" tags that have different appearances now, it's easy to add more if that's something that would be valuable.
Cool, thanks Deimos. I can make a post in ~tildes if that would be helpful.
is it possible to hide all from a specific tag, if so that could work!
Let's see what deimos has to say.
yes you can. Go to the sidebar, and at the bottom, you can select topic tags to filter.
Yeah, you can filter posts by different tags by going here in your settings
https://tildes.net/settings/filters
I have not set up any filters myself, but this would help if you want to never see any content with a trigger warning on it.