Did'ya hear the one about the transman who'd like to be accepted?

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02/05/2008

by Jeremy Hooper

Hapete In order to combat transphobia and correct any misconceptions that participants might have, The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force has decided to include a portion on "Transgender Etiquette" in the program for their upcoming Creating Change Conference. An inclusion that has prompted Peter LaBarbera to say the following:

If you gathered 20 witty foes of homosexuality in a room and instructed them to make up something to embarrass the “gay” movement, they couldn’t come up with anything this bizarre. And yet, Creating Change is a serious affair — funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Ford Foundation alike — where sexual revolutionaries learn how to work the political system to break down America’s traditional sexual and gender norms.

We reply to Pete:

No, Pete? The quick wits on your side of the issue couldn't come up with anything as "bizarre" as accepting transgender people? But what about the idea that "marriage is under attack"? That one's pretty funny. Or how about the idea that by pushing discrimination into government documents, your side is "pro-marriage" rather than anti-gay? The absurdity of that notion has always made us chuckle. There are also the flawed ideas that gays are "indoctrinating children" when they encourage acceptance; wasting taxpayer funds when those funds are utilized to incorporate queer taxpayers; and that to be a person of strong moral fortitude, one must aggressively cast stones at the people and things that they do not understand. All of those notions, Pete, are ludicrously funny (in the "we laugh so as not to cry" sort of way).

So while you, Pete, may think that promoting understanding of one of our nation's most stigmatized, marginalized, harassed, and bullied groups would confound the creative impulses of your side's comedic brain trusts, we who follow your movement feel that your jesters have concocted opinions that are far wackier than any joke we ever could've written. But whereas our trans-inclusive "silliness" is designed only to lead to peace and harmony, your side's "humor" is designed to keep the heterosexual, Christian, biologically-born man placed on a moral pedestal to which all others can only aspire. That self-adulation can make your punch lines feel more like punches. Your side's knee-slappers manifest within our bodies as astonished head-slappings. Your gags tend to make us do the same.

Fortunately, Pete, we've never wavered in our confidence that those of us who believe the spectrum of society can accommodate ALL will ultimately have the last laugh. That's what keeps us from throwing tomatoes and heckling, and instead throwing reasoned refutations at your destined-to-fail hijinks.

T’-Party at Creating Change in Detroit - ‘Each of Us Can Decide for Ourselves in which Bathroom We Belong’ [AFT]

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