Well, it's been a bit over a year since I last wrote anything here. Lots has happened, including lots of thinking. Recently, some of that thinking led me to a startlingly simple conclusion: homophobia and transphobia largely exist because our society, as a whole, hates women.
If you were growing up as a boy, what was the worst thing anyone could call you? A girl, right? Even now other kids and parents will insult a little boy by saying he throws like a girl, or to stop being such a little girl about things or similar stuff. Why is this? Why do we hate girls so much? There's no reason for it, and it is this irrational, institutionalized hatred of the female gender that is killing our society, especially on the LGBTQQA-what-the-fuck-ever-letters-have-been-added-in-the-last-five-minutes- side of things.
Now, I'm not trying to downgrade the hatred and violence shown towards lesbians and FTM transexuals, but the brunt of the violence has traditionally been borne by gay men and transwomen. There's a reason for this: in many cases, if someone who is anti-gay sees two women holding hands or kissing in public, they go through a thought process that tells them that this is a wrong thing, but if they see two guys kissing, there is an immediate, visceral reaction. They don't have to run through a thought process; their GUT is what's telling them it's wrong. This is, of course, a generalization, but I don't really have the time or resources to work through every exception out there, so generalizations will have to do for now.
So what's the difference? Why is opposition to lesbians (and by loose extension transmen) less immediate and severe than that to gays and transwomen? It comes right back to institutionalized misogyny. I don't know what the reasons for society's hatred of women, but as a whole, we have this concept that they are inferior. And it is offensive to the mind that someone would willingly place themselves in an inferior position. Which brings us back to gays and transwomen. The anti-gay types have the general idea that gay men, especially effeminate bottoms, are placing themselves in the role of women, which is offensive to their concept that men are naturally superior. Why would anyone place themselves in the inferior role? Holy crap, if someone is voluntarily taking that role when they have male privilege, then maybe women aren't naturally inferior and that means that... ABORT!!! ABORT!!! Broken Logic!! Attack the thing that's making my brain hurt!!!
So if gay men elicit that response, how much worse is it for us transwomen? We are not only placing ourselves in that role sexually, but in every aspect of our lives! So the only excuse that the haters can come up with to maintain their illusion of superiority over women is that we must be crazy; we must have something wrong with our brains. They can dress it up with fancy titles like "gender dysphoria," but it's still saying that we have a mental illness because we aren't happy with the role we were cast in. It's bullshit, and it really needs to be just thrown out. I'm not saying there aren't psychological issues involved with being trans, but they are by-and-large reactions to how society treats us. If society didn't treat us like shit, we wouldn't have such fucked-up reactions to it. Just sayin'.
Of course, we have to bring lesbians and transmen back into this. Hatred of them is pretty much rooted in the opposite of this effect. They dare to rise up? They dare to act and dress as men? Who do they think they are? This is why some transmen get treated like little children playing dress-up; that's how some people see them. They're talked down to, not taken seriously, treated like kids. It all comes down to misogyny.
So, what can we do about this issue? Do we dare continue to fight for gay rights and ignore women's rights? I personally think that's just stupid. That's taking Tylenol to fight the fever from the infection rather in lieu of taking antibiotics to kill the infection. The best course of action is to treat the symptoms and the cause simultaneously. This is why the gay community as a whole needs to refocus and pour more energy into root causes and fight the patriarchal system we've got going.
Until women become people, gays won't be people either.
