I've noticed a problem lately, and it needs addressed. This is useful information whether you're gay, straight, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, queer, a friend of the LGBT community, or any other stupid label we're in the process of appending to the abbreviation to further confuse and confound the public.
Let's get a few preliminary things out of the way.
Straight people: Stop pretending you're an expert on social activism and that YOUR voice needs to be heard in the debate surrounding equal rights and the treatment of LGBT individuals in society.
Why? you may ask. Why would you want less peoples' voices heard in this discussion? Because honestly, I could give a fuck less about your opinion. You support gay marriage? Cool. If it hits the ballot, cast your vote. Let democracy work. In the meantime, I am issuing a cease and desist to all heterosexuals constantly posting pictures and statuses on Facebook with regards to equal rights and marriage equality. Enough is enough. Your self-aggrandizing bullshit has gone on long enough. You're only doing it to feel good about yourself, to put yourself on the "right side" of history, so you can talk down to and frown at your peers who aren't nearly as "progressive" as you, who aren't nearly as bleeding edge with their liberal viewpoints.
If you really love gay people, show support and solidarity for your homosexual peers simply by being their friend, by not treating them any differently than you would a "regular" person. It's okay to stand up for someone if they're being bullied, sure, but we are not children. We are not babies. We do not need your protection. We do not need to be coddled or sheltered. We are not a battered wives club.
Gay people: Stop pouncing on every perceived slight against you or your brethren like it's some kind of mortal sin. Your hypersensitive, reactionary behavior is only reinforcing the stereotypes, believe it or not, and isn't doing a damn thing at this point to further our cause.
Case in point:
The other day, a [straight] girl I went to high school with posted a link to her friend's blog, who goes to school in Illinois. This friend is transgender, identifies as female, was born a male. Is still technically a male, but is going to transition to female. Apparently he got 'kicked out' of school [or maybe walked out, it's not made entirely clear] for demanding that he be allowed to use the girls' bathroom. After being told repeatedly he was not allowed to, he took it upon himself to use the facilities anyway, and was thereby punished (perhaps suspended? or something). Now this friend is going to the media, demanding that his school be thrown under a microscope, criticized, and forced to "get with the times" as it were, since clearly they are so backwards. The friend of mine who posted the link to this blog also mentioned that everyone should send angry emails to the principal of the school, and included his address in the post.
Does anyone else see the problem with this?
I did, and decided to make myself known. I aimed to present my viewpoint in a purely logical, detached way, not passing judgment, careful not to cross any lines or appear bigoted (because I'm really not, when it comes down to it. I don't "get" transgender people but hey, they're people too. People don't get me either, and I don't expect them to). I asked if he had transitioned to female yet. The answer is no. He still has his boy parts. So, I said, I don't see the issue here. He should use the boys' bathroom because he does, in fact, have boy parts.
Oh boy. Here's where the trouble started.
As you can see, I've been referring all this time to the transgender individual as "he." Why? Because we as a society need labels. You may not like them, but you cannot deny their convenience. They help us easily understand something without having to devolve into a discussion of semantics (but we'll probably end up doing that later anyway). The entire time I was having this discussion, my old high school buddy kept calling the individual "her." She clearly did not like the fact that I saw him as a male (because he has boy parts).
But anyway, I digress. She cried foul. Said, "it's the principle of the thing." 'She' should be allowed to use the girls' restroom because she identifies as such and wants to be treated as such.
Hmm...Yes, I surmised. It is indeed the "principle of the thing." The principle being, he should swallow his pride and use the bathroom with all the other boys until he transitions. Then he can urinate with the ladies all he wants.
You'd think I'd just suggested genocide. It's an outrage! 'She' should be allowed to use whatever bathroom 'she' wants! But no, instead she's being forced to use the unisex bathroom.
I nearly shit my pants at this revelation. This high school actually has a unisex bathroom, and our transgender friend is bent out of shape because he can't use the girls-only room? Okay, seriously. Now I'm starting to get a little upset. This is the sort of behavior nowadays I'm ashamed of, both from straight people and the LGBT community. All right, I said, I seriously don't see the problem here. He should just use the boys' bathroom, or the unisex bathroom. "But she has the law on her side," my friend said.
Oh really? These law codes (both Illinois state law and federal) were then provided to me. I can't reprint them here, because the person with whom I was having this conversation has since un-friended me and I can't go back and reproduce the thread word-for-word. Feel free to look it up yourself, but if you don't have the time or inclination I'll summarize: the law states that no person should be denied access to a fair and equal education, be discriminated against, or be excluded from the school and all educational facilities based on race, creed, etc., including gender identity. Okay, fair enough. But I still don't see the problem. I said, no one's being excluded here! This person has equal access to the restrooms just like every other student! They're just not allowed to use whatever restroom they want. There's a difference between equal access and preferred access.
I'm not a law student, I'm an English major, but even that much was obvious to me. But no! The would-be heroes of social justice were not to be deterred!
It was at this point that my friend insinuated that my perception of equality must be skewed, since I'm free to get married, just not to a man.
Ouch.
Okay, now I'm pissed. First of all, you're right and wrong. Right; because that's what the federal law says. Wrong; because that has fucking nothing to do with the topic at hand. Mustering up all the patience and restraint available to me in the moment, I replied that she should not compare her struggle to allow boys to use girls' bathrooms to my struggle for equal rights, and that she was "treading on extremely thin ice" and that her friend, which at this point, fed up with the dispute over pronouns, I simply referred to as "he/she", was not being discriminated against. End of story.
Then I got un-friended.
Looking back, this entire exchange was completely asinine and relatively pointless. But I'm still upset. Why? It's not just the fact that the transgender individual's argument was "because I want to" and that it would basically be the same as a girl deciding to shit on the establishment because they wouldn't let her go into the boys' bathroom and piss standing up. And at the end of the day, I hope his case goes nowhere. I hope that he might see the error of his ways and accept that life is full of disappointment. I also hope my friend might gain a little perspective. But they probably won't.
And that's still not even why I'm upset. I'll let the retards of the world persist.
No, I'm upset for one reason: this is indicative of a larger issue that I outlined in the beginning of this post. A heterosexual person actually thinking they were somehow more informed on the subject of equality and fair treatment than I was, and this was mostly centered on the fact that I kept referring to the transgender person as "he." I was planning on ending this post with a diatribe on gender as a social construct and the roles we assign in terms of labels and whether or not they're healthy, but I'm too tired and at the end of the day I don't really see the need. If you're offended by my usage, you can fuck off.
To reiterate: We do not need any more straight people soapboxing and spouting off their ideas out of some misguided notion that doing so will lend more credibility to the ongoing debate. Furthermore, and more importantly, I'm tired of people (gay and straight alike) thinking that "the man" is somehow out to get us, trample us, and keep us down. All this overly-reflexive anger amounts to is sweating the small stuff and letting the tiny details cloud the big picture. The entire argument resulted from a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that a transgender person was involved and I wasn't on their side. And that's really sad.
P.S. Political correctness is for losers.
