Transphobia

Dear Blog,

It's occurred to me recently how transphobia is much more common than homophobia. This is most probably due to the fact that so many people are completely ignorant of what it means to be transgendered, and that even in the gay community people are completely clueless of what the 'T' in 'LGBT' stands for, with many people believing it just accounts for cross-dressers.

While the UK and other western governments have done a lot to protect the rights of LGB citizens, i.e. education in schools, laws to protect them etc. etc. etc. There is still a lack of  protection for transgendered individuals, and whilst homophobia is beginning to be tackled in most schools (even if it is mostly just lip service to the law) there is still open transphobia in schools and in the work place. I can remember when being faced with transphobia in the past I have often just been told to "tone [my] look down" or "act more like a guy". I find this terribly offensive and ignorant, you wouldn't tell a person of African origin to adopt clown make-up to tone their ethnicity down, or ask a woman who was a victim of sexual harrassment to try and adopt adrogyny or give up washing in order to put off possible attackers.

The problem with our culture at the minute is that people feel that the victim is partly to blame for being a victim of racism, sexism, homophobia and particularly transphobia. This idea of "tolerance" is irritating, I don't just want to be 'tolerated' and 'put up with' by people, I want to be accepted, I want to able to go into work, or walk down the streets and not receive ridiculing looks or comments by people.

Another issue is that in school there is a complete lack of education about homosexuality and transgenderism in the UK. I can remember having one lesson about homosexuality in school which featured a picture of two men holding hands and little explanation or education about the topic. Transgenderism isn't touched on at all in education, neither is definition about sex or gender.

To conclude we need to abandon this concept of just 'tolerating' minority groups and begin accepting people for how they are and teaching people from a young age about how people can be different but that at the end of the day we are all still human beings.

From

ConfusedGirl17