Transphobia affects all transgender folk

Trigger Warning: Transphobia and transmisogyny.

Of course, a celebrity is always an easy target. The excuse given is that Caitlyn Jenner isn’t all that great of a person to start with so whatever transphobic things said about her are most assuredly okay. Because, that’s how the world works, yes? If a white person disagrees with a person of color, this makes racism okay? If a man disagrees with a woman, this makes sexism okay? Of course not. And still it persists. The grotesque things said of Caitlyn Jenner, the misgendering, the deadnaming, the dehumanizing things said. None of which is okay even by the smallest measure of human decency.

It’s the reason why transgender folks like me cringe when Jenner came out publicly. Yes, it’s uplifting. Yes, it does a massive service to transgender folk. But visibility often comes with a cost. A cost the likes of which cisgender people often don’t appreciate when they call Jenner a freak or a science experiment. It’s difficult to explain that the damage is real to all transgender people, both emotionally and what it does to us socially, economically, politically in the long run. It’s difficult to highlight exactly why the ongoing claim that Jenner being a celebrity doesn’t exactly ameliorate the damage done to transgender folk when entitled cisgender folk take part in transphobia and transmisogyny.

The excuse is also given that Jenner is a bad person, that Jenner is a Republican, that Jenner is this, Jenner is that. I’m pretty sure bigotry is not a license you purchase at the expense of an entire group of marginalized people because you find fault with one person. More so, the moral high ground taken by those who criticize Jenner seem disingenuous when coupled with bigotry.

I’ve often written, in various places, in anger and frustration, that you do not get to be bigoted against anyone for any reason. If Jenner ate your children; if Jenner slapped your mother; if Jenner called you some unspeakable insult worthy of Monty Python; if she truly was the manifestation of evil in this world: you don’t get to be transphobic and say transphobic things about her. For the same reason terrible people who are from other marginalized backgrounds do not license other forms of bigoted abuse. A woman who is a serial killer does not license misogyny or sexism.

This is true because Jenner does not represent all transgender people, but transphobia affects all transgender people. That said, transphobia is not a convenient punishment or a go-to tool by which cisgender people get to retaliate against transgender people, individually or in general.

Another reason why this kind of transphobia is particularly harmful is because of how TERFs and MRAs and the worst kinds of people spread nonsense and hatred against transgender people at a time when merely wishing to walk down the street is dangerous for transgender people, particularly trans women who are POC. Transphobia isn’t merely a sport that gets to be played by the edgy kids sitting at the cool table. Transphobia and transmisogyny directly translate into violence against transgender people. Deadnaming can lose a transgender person their job, expose transgender people to abusive people, or get transgender people killed (I wish I could draw Mark Zuckerberg’s attention regarding that point).

The point is that cisgender people thinking that they have any license to employ transphobia are doing real violence against transgender people at a time when violence and fear are daily realities for many, many transgender people. So I implore you, if you are cisgender, think twice when you deadname a transgender person, or misgender them, or dehumanize them.

You are spending currency that doesn’t belong to you, accumulating a cost you’ll never have to pay.