As most of you have figured out, I'm a white straight cis man who has a lot of privilege. And I know it. Because of my work, though, I am rarely in places where the majority of people are like me. Yesterday, though, I did find myself in such a room when I signed up to hear a speaker from the former Trump administration talk about transgender laws. Which, in retrospect, might have been a mistake.
One thing that struck me was how aggrieved people in that room seemed to be-- they genuinely thought that they are the disadvantaged. This group, mostly affluent lawyers and law students, didn't strike me as suffering much, but apparently being expected to use people's pronouns-- or even have them identified publicly-- is very traumatic. Because, women's sports. Which they care about a lot. And which are being destroyed, except for the part where they are doing better than ever and riding a wave of public popularity never seen before. And that is very hard to see, this thing where women's sports are being destroyed. And where on a zoom meeting people say "She/her." It's the most important thing of all.
Sigh.
This next week is going to be long.
I will admit that I am awful with pronouns and prefer to use a persons name to avoid problems. I still haven't figured out the CIS thing. I really dislike that every unique aspect of our lives need to be categorized and subcategorized. We are human first and foremost.
ReplyDeleteIs the sports problem an issue below the college level? All of the trangender people in my life ( there are many) seem to start their transition in college except for my 90 yr old trust attorney. I can see it being more of an issue for trans women instead of men due to puberty.