Defining Transphobia

[EnderD_503]

Originally Posted by guihong

I think "transphobia" is like "porn"-hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Example #1-way before I came out, one of my professors in university transitioned MtF. Some turned her into a butt of jokes, and one of her best friends ended the friendship . I think about her a lot, ever since I came out years later.

Example #2-when I worked at the grocery, one of my regular customers was MtF. I knew immediately. While on break, some of my coworkers asked about her, if I knew she was "tranny", and did this make me uncomfortable? I replied that she had great ideas for preparing vegetables and her money was as green as mine .

I've wondered about movies such as Some Like It Hot, in which Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis disguise themselves as women to avoid a mob hit. But to me, that's not about transsexuality; that's cross-dressing, a different animal altogether. Both of them play otherwise straight men forced into a ridiculous situation for a comedy.

We fear what we don't understand, so transphobia to me is fear of someone "different", and the ways that fear is expressed, through jokes, shunning, or gossip.

Thanks for posting, guihong. The bolded part of your post really highlights what I'm trying to get at here, which is that most people really don't know transphobia when they see it or when they are making a transophobic/insensitive comment, unfortunately. So how to raise awareness about its existence in the mainstream, and to deal with attitudes that try to erase it as a real form of discrimination?

Personally, I would still say that movies like those that you mentioned are transphobic even if they don't deal visibly with transsexuality (since trans can also encompass crossdressing). Many in the mainstream public don't see the difference between transsexuality and crossdressing to begin with. It's another display of the fact that "humour" for mainstream society often takes on the form of ridiculing groups like trans people, queer people, poc, physical disability, mental health issues etc.

Anyways, what do you think about methods to raise awareness so that transphobia is at least recognised on par with homophobia instead of as an afterthought of homophobia?