Thanks for this edition of the podcast, Kendra Arsenaux.
It’s always sad to hear stories about young people who fear being kicked out of school; who jobs are threatened; whose parents have disowned them, etc., etc., because they admit to being gay, transgender, or a member of another sexual minority. It was pretty wrenching hearing this part of Ari Bates’ story.
As I said in another post about this incident, I’m not sure what the stakes are for Southern AU. I don’t know why they are so compelled to make a person change their clothes who says — employing the common parlance — they are “a female trapped in a male body.”
In other words, if Ari is right, then let Ari wear women’s clothes. If Ari is wrong, Ari has bigger problems that sartorial ones.
What hit me tonight, though, is this: In most instances, if you’re asked to have compassion on and empathy for someone telling you their story, but their story contains a significant transposition in logic, usually what happens is you get suspicious. You don’t feel more sorry for them. Instead, what dawns is the sense you’re being set up, or conned.
I think this is the source of primeval discomfort many experience, not toward transgenderism, as such, but re: its militant variety; the sort which drives people to bellow, “I AM A WOMAN, PERIOD!”
I’ve never heard any woman I know say, “I am a woman, period.” Or to put it in other terms, after Rachel Dolezal, above, was found to have been impersonating being Black in 2015, the worst part about it, perhaps, was, even though busted, she kept on insisting she was Black.
The frequent counsel we receive from people who advocate for the LGBTQIAP community is we are to accept their noodly semantics per sex & gender with naught but a warm glow. If we don’t, we’re told, they will kill themselves.
This can’t be as exhausting as being trapped in the body of the opposite sex, I am certain. But it is its own little kind of cognitive oubliette.
I’m very much for transgender people’s healing, safety, job security, and happiness. I’m certain I don’t support everything they want, but nor do I know all they want, or how it affects me.
But, until this era, I’ve never encountered a belief system which required me to concur with another person’s thoughts; i.e., with who they think they are, lest I be deemed knuckle-dragging and bigoted.
I don’t necessarily think saying you’re a woman, based on how you feel, is going too far. Telling me I have to agree with you, though, truly is.
HA