TransPhobia

Everyone who's seen as different in our society is discriminated against in some way. For transexual people it's equally as hard, but recently a new predjudice has come to light, transphobia in the gay community. It's a bad thing, it's a sad thing and its transphobia...

Article written by (David) 14/05/02

Imagine wanting to be someone else, and never being happy until you become that person. For trans people this feeling dominates their lives day after day, and it doesn't help when members of an accepting community -the gay community turn their backs on trans people.

Microsoft's popular MSN services have recently been slammed for banning the word 'transexual' from their search engine, following a trend set by AOL and other american web services, but it's okay to look for anything that may contain the word 'bisexual' or even 'fag'. So Transphobia isn't just a problem for the gay community, it's something thatwe must all embrace and challenge.

The main reason that a lot of gay people are excluding trans people from their community is that there are a lot of straight transgendered and transexual people, this is where it gets confusing!

Transgendered people change themselves completely, their name, their clothes and very often they have gender reassignment surgery, whilst a transexual is someone who often has no sex at all, and would rather descrive themselves as 'between genders'. The reason that it is so confusing is that the similarities are the same, there are also many transexual people who call themselves transgendered because they prefer the name as the word transexual has many negative attatchements to it. Never confuse 'trans' with transvestives, many people do, as a transvestite is a straight man who dresses up as a women for fun, like a drag queen is a gay man who dresses up as a woman for fun but neither have the desire to really become a woman. If a gay women dresses up as a man for fun then that too is 'drag'.

Gender re-assignment surgery ios on the increase, MTF is male to female which is more common than FTM which is female to male.

Kim writes a little about how she is going though gender re-assignment surgery and therapy;

I started the treatment when I was 16, I wanted to get it done as soon as possible so I would be who I want to be for the majority of my adult lie. I lived my childhood as Richard, but now I am Kimbery (my grandmothers name), although I have almost completed the change over there is still a lot I must overcome, the first thing is predjucice. So many people just walked out of my life (well more like they did a running jump!) when I told everyone what was about to happen to me. I lost my job, my best friend, other close friends many of which are gay men and women and several family members no longer talk to me, but despite all of that I will be happier when Kimbery is 'grown up' as I like to say. On the day of my last operation I had my 'first birthday party', and I found out who my true friends are.

Kimberly's story is far too common, why is it that we can accept 'fag hags', 'dyke hikes' (straight men and women who are best mates with gay men and women) into our community, our youth groups and gay centres, clubs and bard, but when a trans person walks in we turn the other cheek? Of course there are issue which are only relevant to gay men, gay women, bisexual men and bisexual women which have the right to be addressed alone or together or any way we like but in its funny how bisexual people are as much a part of the straight community as a transexual or transgendered person could be but we still them the bisexual into our websites, our chat rooms, and our clubs and bars. The youth group that I used to go to would ask a trans person to leave but welcomed bisexuals with open arms.
Let me write a little poem just to put your mind to rest, especially if you've disagreed with me...

First they came for the jews, and no one stood up,
Then they came for the militants and no one stood up,
they then came for the ethnics and no one stood up,
then they came for me

and no one stood up...

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Richard became Kim when she was just 16, and was deserted by almost everyone she knew 

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