http://www.transequality.org/PDFs/NTDS_Report.pdf

Jokes are all over the internet, on Reddit, Facebook, and other sites that distribute these “ memes”.  Many places now, children are growing up reading these posts about “ traps”. A trap is someone who was assigned male at birth and presents as female, the implication behind this is that this “ trap” is trying to trick a male into believing they are a women. These jokes  no matter how insensitive and offensive are often talked about as just jokes.

However, these jokes are a marker of our society’s thoughts on transgendered people.

The respondents to these were thousands of trans men and women. The statistics of violence on trans people are staggering. This is because our society has adopted the norm to look at trans people as “traps”. When we look at these statistics of trans issues in the same view as rape and violence toward women. We quickly see that society has deemed it ok, for assault and domination to be enacted upon trans people. Over half of trans women will experience sexual assault. It is almost expected for a trans women to be assaulted in our culture today, yet our conversation on the topic is very limited.

My perspective may come into play, for I am a trans women, when I state that these acts of violence are normalized and perpetuated by these jokes. In movies such as “White Girls”

 

where men dress as women to as a means to achieve people for their end goal, or there is an idea in many portrayals of cross dressing and trans women in cartoons, as only trying to trick a male into “believing she is biologically female”. we perpetuate the idea that trans identities are not real, and only used to achieve an end.

These statistics seem to indicate then that our reaction in real life to this “trickery”  shown in the media is violence and discrimination. There are very obvious acts such as beatings, and sexual assault, but it also reaches deeper into our everyday conversation.  When transgender people are deliberately misgendered it is an act of violence. While the physical threat or sexual domination is not present, it does push home the idea that the cultural does not see them as the gender they are, therefore dehumanizing them by invalidating their identity. Deliberate misgendering is very present in our society, in things such as movies and jokes, this causes harm to the individual. I have no qualms in saying the rate of suicide is the result of society’s portrayal and view of trans and can be changed. This act of continual dehumanization and invalidation, is a constant reminder that society thinks they are “tricking” people about their identity and acts of violence both sexual and physical encourage suicide. It suggest that society does not want them around. When one is under constant threat based on their own identity it becomes societies problem when these people die and not necessarily mental illness. In fact up until the recent addition of the DSM (The Diagnostic and statistical manual), which is used to diagnose mental illnesses,  being trans was labeled as a mental disorder, a course of thought many health professionals still sadly use. As a culture we must address this discrimination. 

These statistics are often 5 and even 40 times higher than national averages. I will again highlight my perspective as a trans woman myself, I can not see a way in which we can progress in human rights in our country without trying to drastically change the perception of transgender in our media and our speech. It is a danger to many people and can generate constant fear in the lives of thousands. For very good reasons. The threat of not only discrimination but violence, death, and suicidal tendencies is a result of our mockery and what seems like distrust and disgust of trans based in many parts of our society.