Jesus… I hate it when bigotry is framed as an inherent right.

Before you can hate, you must first be taught to vilify and dehumanize your target. It’s only after this process has taken place that you can view an entire class of people with suspension and conclude that segregation is appropriate. This process is the only thing known hate groups have to offer. They coat this poison chalice in the sugar of tradition and obtuse hubris so that you never catch exactly why this class of people somehow gets to – unlike yourself – disregard laws prohibiting theft, rape, assault, stalking and/or public indecency/disturbance. Don’t believe me? Visit any “traditional” family coalition site and think about the rhetoric and why it’s used. Read the many news reports purporting to cover trans equality measures; consider how they’re framed as “Bathroom Bills” and the entire trans community is framed as potential rapists and peeping toms. Before you can hate, you must first be taught to vilify and dehumanize your target.

Think critically and learn to spot a bigots game when it’s being played. When reading “news” about a trans person wanting to do something all cisgender people get to do all the time without a second thought; when that “news” claims a tone of astonishment or frames bigoted ideas as simple “concerns,” ask yourself this: in what way will the trans person be allowed to disregard laws prohibiting rape, assault, stalking and/or public indecency/disturbance? If the answer is, “Um… She doesn’t. The law applies equally to people like her and people like me.” – CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve just broken the chain of anti-trans indoctrination!

Folks who fall for the indoctrination complain about “special rights” and frame those who speak out against their bigoted games as “PC Police.” Folks who fall for the indoctrination can’t understand how others don’t also view the target of their hate with the same seemingly inherent suspicion they feel. They’ll frame the suspicion they feel as “common sense” concerns and appeal to tradition. Then, in moments of absurdity, they’ll look you in the eye and claim that intolerance of intolerance is intolerance and that bigotry of bigotry is bigotry. The truth is far more insidious than stupid fallacies of equivocation or well-paid trolls who, we are told, are irrelevant (Hate Groups, TERFs, RadRight media, yellow journalists, etc). Those who want to encourage you to view trans folk with the same suspicion they feel seek to make you a co-architect of a system that the American Psychiatric Association describes thusly:

“Discrimination and lack of equal civil rights is damaging to the mental health of transgender and gender variant individuals. For example, gender-based discrimination and victimization were found to be independently associated with attempted suicide in a population of transgender individuals, 32% of whom had histories of trying to kill themselves, and in the largest survey to date of gender variant and transgender people 41% reported attempting suicide.

“The APA joins other organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, in endorsing strong policy statements deploring the discrimination experienced by gender variant and transgender individuals and calling for laws to protect their civil rights.

Should you fall for the mind games bigots hope to play with you, you’ll find yourself thinking that a system of segregating transgender people from cisgender people sounds like a common sense response to what you intuitively feel to be a possible threat. You’ll never be able to exactly explain how trans equality allows trans folk to circumvent laws prohibiting rape, assault, stalking and/or public indecency/disturbance, but you’ll somehow know that you need a system of segregation to just make sure that doesn’t happen… Because it’s just a matter of comment sense and anyway, being intolerant of intolerance is intolerance, right? You’ll just somehow understand that the rejection of past systems of segregation is completely and totally different than the system of common sense segregation you support, right?

“Listening to the opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment, you would think it was designed to… integrate public toilets, legalize rape…” – 6/16/1977, Ruston Daily Leader

“If they can integrate restrooms on the basis of race, why not on the basis of sex?” – 3/25/1973, The Anniston Star

“I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry.” – State Rep. Richard Floyd (R)

“We live under the constant threat of horrifying violence. We have to worry about what bathroom to use when our bladders are aching. We are forced to consider whether we’ll be dragged out of a bathroom and arrested or face a fist fight while our bladders are still aching. It’s an everyday reality for us. Human beings must use toilets… If I go into the women’s bathroom, am I prepared for the shouting and shaming? Will someone call security or the cops? If I use the men’s room, am I willing to fight my way out? Am I really ready for the violence that could ensue?” – Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue, p 68 – 69