The title of this article is borrowed from Kate Bornstein who coined it as a term describing people who fear, hate, pathologize and discriminate against those TG individuals after whom Bornstein titled her book, Gender Outlaw. What is it with these folks? Why are they sickened, threatened, scared, and resentful of transgender behaviors? Why are they transphobic? For a change, lets analyze those who target others as needing therapy, religion, or a good beating.
Several explanations present themselves. Bornstein sees the other side of revulsion as desire. An upheaval, a mal de mer of desire will express itself in nausea. And what is more disorienting than a straight male feeling desire (or admiration, or even appreciation) for a beautiful woman who reveals herself to be a biological male? Think of the questions he must face about his sexual orientation and consequently his highly valued place in the dominant culture. It could make anyone sick!
A Catch-22 created by gender defenders is the claim that transgendered people are deceptive by not being up front about their gender ambiguity. But those who are out of the shadows are then vulnerable to attacks upon person, reputation and status. In balance, it seems that secrecy is always more damaging to the keeper of the secret than to the deceived.
Another button that gets pushed in the gender defender occurs upon realization that transgendered people often refuse to adhere to the dictum that sex is for procreation. A transgender woman cannot be impregnated and an transgender man cannot inseminate. What, have sex just for fun?
Lastly, transgendered people represent an underpowered community, vulnerable to the slings and arrows of others who are disadvantaged mentally, intellectually, academically, socially, politically and in any way you can think of. Instead of banding together for strength, disempowered groups, including the TG community, splinter in the hopes that their sub-group will escape society's bottom rung. Post-ops ignore their pre-op and non-op brothers and sisters; passers bypass those who cannot pass; the financially secure provide too little help to their indigent siblings. This is a fertile field for exploitation and humiliation.
Dr. Anderson is a therapist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be reached at 415-776-0139. This article originally appeared in Devil Woman, the newsletter of the Diablo Valley Girls.
© 1996 by Barbara Anderson & 3-D Communications, Inc.