Thursday, March 10, 2011

Stop Challenging My Humanity

'To deny any person their human rights is to challenge their very humanity'     Nelson Mandela

While I was watching yesterday's HB 235 hearings in Maryland online I thought about that Mandela quote as I heard our opponents repeatedly lie about who transpeople are.    I watched our (In) Equality Maryland 'alles'  lie twice and claim we supported a flawed bill, and claim the community was over the 2001 drama in which transpeople were cut out of a GLB bill that surprise surprise has public accommodations language in it.

I'll gripe about that later.   What I'm beyond sick and tired of is fauxgressive friends and foes challenging our humanity.

I'm tired of predominately white radical lesbian feminists continuing to pimp their disco era hate speech directed at transwomen.    I'm tired of gays and lesbians who haven't read their history books asserting we aren't part of 'their' movement.   I'm tired of gay and lesbian people being in many cases a bigger impediment to us gaining our human rights than the Religious Right and the conservafool movement.

I'm tired of a small, noisy faction of disgruntled post ops wallowing in vanilla scented privilege presuming they are the arbiters of who is and isn't trans and denigrating others in the community because they spent $10-20K on their SRS. 


And yes, I'm tired of so called Christians bearing false witness against my community for their own political gain.   Their lies have deleterious effects on my community and result in the violence and discrimination that negatively impact our lives.. .

So what do we transpeople want?   All we want are the same basic human rights, fairness, respect and freedoms that cispeople enjoy in the various nations we inhabit on this planet as spelled out in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Yogyakarta Principles.    We're mystified as to why people are so dead set against other human beings having the same basic civil rights that you enjoy for yourselves and would be up in arms about if they were denied to you.


Medical science and our continued presence across Planet Earth continues to drive home the point that we are part of the diverse mosaic of human life.   You haters just need to accept that reality, get yourself some business and stay out of mine.

 So no, my humanity and the humanity of my fellow transpersons is not up for debate.   It's way past time for y'all haters to stop challenging it.