Recently the media has become obsessed with the subject of transgenderism, the irony of which being, it is mainly people outside of the community like Ben Shapiro or J K Rowling that have the largest voices when it comes to debating their rights.
It is not “transphobic” to say that the government cannot and should not compel people to use biologically inaccurate pronouns. (And by the way, I have said that in private, non-political situations, I would do so for the sake of sensitivity.) https://t.co/U1jGDlyn7q
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 7, 2018
If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
A transgender person can be defined as someone who has a gender identity that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth; these people often suffer from body dysphoria, a mental illness that makes the afflicted person hate the way their body looks. In transgender people, this is because their body does not match up with their gender identity. On the other side of the spectrum, people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are known as cisgender.
Leo White is a 20-year-old transgender man, he believes people are so concerned with trans people “because it’s the stuff that isn’t taught unless you know someone who’s trans, you don’t see much representation, except the people who do it for attention”.
When it comes to anti-transgender commentators, they tend to focus on the small percentage of young people who end up de-transitioning because they are not transgender, but due to other underlying problems believe that they are. These people are often known in the community as “trenders”, but what is often not mentioned is that these cases are very rare.
Leo says “they want something to make them feel special and different and it’s usually people like them that get on the HRT (hormone replacement therapy) lists, and once they’ve got it, change their minds and de-transition. People only see that kind of stuff.”
The media can have negative impacts on the way transgender people are treated, and the way forward is to de-mystify the subject of gender. Anti-trans content is often created by cisgender people who are misinformed about the subject of transgenderism because it is so foreign to them.
Oli is an 18-year-old trans-masculine person who does not identify with a gender, and they sum it up like this: “I think a lot of it has to do with the idea that its this thing that just popped up out of nowhere to western white people because some of the most gender non-conforming and accepting communities were people of colour, especially indigenous people whose beliefs were erased and labeled as savage by colonisers”.
Gender non-conformity is not a new idea, in fact in some native American tribes, they recognise a third gender, so these concepts are not new, they are just foreign in a white society. Oli says “Trans people are so much more inclusive and accepting that it seems alien to normal people, like a whole different world, and that scares them so they treat us badly”.
Jason Lewis is a 20-year-old transgender man, and he falls more on the conservative side of the political spectrum. Jason believes you need dysphoria to be transgender, which is a controversial thing to say in the trans community. “In my opinion as a trans person, if you don’t have dysphoria why are you transitioning? For a laugh? To fit in?”.
Jason holds the opinion that being transgender is a mental health condition that is cured by transitioning. To a certain extent, this is a proven fact, transgender was defined as a mental illness in the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), up until 2013 when the listing of transgender was changed to gender dysphoria.
Many misconceptions of the trans community revolve around the idea that they are all a part of the far-left agenda, however, it is a large community with many differing opinions. Jason says “I think a lot of people get annoyed at trans people because of leftist propaganda that portrays transgender people in an entitled way, which in reality is just leftist bias media that try to anger people for the shock factor.”.
People are obsessed with things that they do not understand, and unfortunately, the subject of transgender people is one of them, and often times their negative portrayal in the media can have real-life consequences of them fearing for their safety and basic human rights.
These people are just people trying to live their lives in a way that makes them happy. In order to understand them, you have to first learn how to listen to what they are saying, rather than making instant assumptions due to the media’s role in creating a bias against them.
