Transgender issues move to the forefront

Milam's Musings

The next front in social justice seems to be pivoting toward transgender issues and if so, it's a welcome pivot.

Diane Sawyer interviewed Bruce Jenner on ABC's 20/20 about being transgender.

Jenner was the 1976 Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon and perhaps most known to the current generation as the dad on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians."

He was the idealized image of masculinity, showcased famously on the box of Wheaties two year after his gold medal win. Amidst palpable Cold War tensions in that time, his success was translated as a nation's success.

When Bruce was appearing on the Wheaties box, 43 percent of Americans didn't think sex between gay or lesbian adults should be legal.

Today, 37 states now recognize same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court will likely force the hand of the other 13 states.

Gay marriage, the central focus of the LGBT community and other advocates for the last 10 years, has been won, largely.

According to the New York Times, Cincinnati 10 years ago was known by gay rights advocates as "the most anti-gay city in America." Then in 2011 the city elected Chris Seelbach its first openly gay councilman.

City employees were extended "transgender inclusive" health benefits, including hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery, as well, according to The Times.

However, even in marginalized movements trying to gain steam, smaller voices get left behind. Within the LGBT community, the voices of transgenders have largely been that of the voiceless.

This, despite the overwhelming disparity in violence and sexual violence perpetrated against transgenders, especially those of color.

In 2014, according to a joint report between Human Rights Watch and the Trans People of Color Coalition, 13 transgender women were murder in the United States, all of them were black or Latino except one.

"Their deaths were gruesome - involving gunshots, burning, strangulation and beating - and most have gone unsolved, with only a few suspects arrested," the report states.

According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) 2013 report of violence against LGBTQ and HIV-affected persons, 72 percent of the victims were transgender women and 67 percent of them were of color.

Compounding the awfulness of this disparity is how often these transgender women face abuse from the police; NCAVP found that transgender people of color were six times more likely to experience physical violence from the police than their counterparts in the community.

Laverne Cox, known as Sophia Burset on Orange Is the New Black, really helped blaze the trail in recent times, as not only a transgender woman, but one of color.

But Bruce Jenner's interview with Diane Sawyer offers further hope and education. According to Vulture, the interview was seen by just under 17 million people, which is impressive since Friday usually is one of the worst nights for television.

Jenner said that "for all intents and purposes, I'm a woman."

"People look at me differently. They see you as this macho male, but my heart and my soul and everything that I do in life - it is part of me," Jenner said.

If you're wondering about the "he" pronoun Sawyer used in the interview and I have here, LGBT advocacy group GLAAD released a statement clarifying:

"At this time, Bruce Jenner has not requested that a new name or pronoun be used, therefore we are respecting his wishes and will continue to refer to Jenner by his current name and with male pronouns."

There's still a lot of confusion about transgender issues and those advocating for transgender rights need not burn those people at the stake. As the Jenner's and the Cox's of the world normalize transgender issues in popular culture, education and then acceptance follows.

It's the same pattern we saw with homosexuality. It's hard to maintain hate once education occurs and more importantly, once you realize, yeah, Neil Patrick Harris is gay, but he's also really funny. Normalizing is the operative word, then.

Wolfgang von Goethe said, "There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."

Let this be an introduction into the topic then: Gender and sex are not interchangeable terms. Sex denotes the biological reproductive organs one is born with. Gender, on the other hand, is purely a social construction, designating a person either "male" or "female."

Some people reject the gender identity they were given at birth and some reject the binary altogether and fall somewhere outside the male and female scale.

Gender identity ia a fluid scale rather than two narrow choices.

Moreover, it is not the case that all transgender individuals undergo a sex change operation. A sex change operation, if it is utilized, is only one component of someone's transgender identity.

As Jenner acknowledged on 20/20, he still has a penis. Such is irrelevant to his gender identity, however.

I'm only scratching the surface here, but as transgender issues gain more cultural, social and political currency, these misconceptions and the need to correct them are going to become more salient.

For the longest time, the mantra from those unwilling to relinquish their hold on ignorance regarding gay marriage was, "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Fortunately, such empty, nauseating mantras have been pushed to the margins.

Unfortunately, before and after Jenner's interview on 20/20, the new mantra seems to be, "Once a man, always a man."

Awareness breaks the chains of ignorance, if one's willing and in today's vastly interconnected world with the Internet, there's no excuse for such empty mantras that further the stigmatization against being transgender.

Maybe I won't be able to court such people as allies in the movement, but if I can at least get them to change their vitriol and not be adversaries, then that'll be a much welcome step forward.

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