The opinion pieces are hot off the presses this morning, so I have some more words for you all.
You cannot separate the transphobia that bred this discourse from the conversation taking place. It is impossible. Trans people’s fear of tangible and real-world violence and discrimination is what has led us to have this conversation.
There is no witch hunt, there is no petty personal grievance. Trans people, including myself, are taking the time to explain paragraph by paragraph for you why these defenses of a transphobe do not hold water.
That is the conversation. We are talking about transphobia. We are talking about the transphobia of tolkien bloggers. We are talking about it publicly.
Where should we have resolved this? Privately? I imagine everyone would have preferred to sort this in a manner that drew less attention. I fully believe that private disputes should be resolved privately.
Transphobia is not a private crime. Trans people are not private victims. We are discussing it in public because it is already happening in public.
How do you prefer we discuss it publicly?
Without names? (Names of transphobes)
Without screenshots? (Screenshots of transphobic words)
We are replying directly and with evidence so that no argument can be made over what is true or false. We are replying directly so we might point out the specific instance of transphobia and define it.
I think that’s vastly preferable to the trite little op-ed posts mischaracterizing a score of trans people as bitter gossip-mongers.
