Quote:
Originally Posted by DanaC
And second is that, whilst right now what is at stake is at worst violent assault and at best the experience (hopefully temporary) of shame described by Pam, the stakes have been much higher at other times and yet...those people still engaged in gender performance which put them at risk of utter ruination or capital sentence.
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Dana, I hate to correct again, but violent assault is NOT the worst.
Being
dead is worse than being beaten.
Hundreds of us are murdered every year. Less than half are prosecuted. In the US, the most popular defense is the
trans panic defense. Despite it's weak legal standing, it has been advanced in many of the cases involving murder of a trans person.
There have been several high profile cases in the last ten years, most notably the
Gwen Araujo murder trial.
Most of the murders are never reported in the news and if they are, they get scant mention of any facts other than the trans-identity of the victim. Salacious information sells more advertising and garners more views than plain old information I guess. But then the news media almost inevitably get the gender wrong and refer to us as our birth gender and, if known, birth name. Even if the person's name had been legally changed. We just don't get no respect in major media outlets.
Even in the best of the options, shame is also a negative event. No one should be ashamed of who they are. You certainly are not. No one really is. Except us. And we are only ashamed until we learn to NOT be ashamed. And that process would be much faster and less traumatic if everyone else would just get over themselves and accept us for who we are and not what they think we are.
{off soapbox for now}
Pam