Hi,
You may not have heard from me before but fret not – I’ve heard from you. Messages on social media, and comments on essays I’ve written for other websites – but, mostly, comments you leave here. You’ll have noticed that I don’t let them through which, I imagine, is the reaction you expect when you leave them. Talk of ‘echo chambers’ and the like.
Admittedly, I don’t want my readers to have to deal with that level of hatred but, mostly, I just don’t see the point of clicking ‘approve’ – not when the comments you leave can be found just about everywhere on the Internet wherever trans people are mentioned.
Because this is the thing – regardless of what I write about, the actual thrust of the piece, there are only ever three comments that you leave (I paraphrase for length, not content):
1. Trans people are sick in the head, and you’re a man in a dress. You all need to stop pretending/see a doctor/cease to exist. You disgust me.
2. Trans people are sick in the head and a threat to real women-born-women. You’re a man in a dress, and you all need to stop pretending/see a doctor/stop coming into women’s spaces/cease to exist. You disgust me.
3. Trans people are sick in the head and a threat to real women-born-women. You’re a confused woman, and you all you all need to stop pretending/see a doctor/stop coming into women’s spaces/cease to exist. You disgust me, but I pity you.
What’s with that? The stock responses – responses that remain the same regardless of whether you’re ‘replying’ to a piece on language, or relationships, or (most often) a comment on a comment lost somewhere way down in the archives. You seem to have taken the time to browse this blog – at length – and yet it all seems to trigger exactly the same set of sentiments in you. I take the time to write something that I hope has at least a little original value (though, obviously, hugely influenced by every theorist/activist I’ve ever read or worked with) – but nothing seems to make a difference to the comment that you leave.
And so, given that, the question I wanted to ask you is this: are you simply incapable of forming an individual response to the existence of trans people, or is it that you’re plain unwilling?
I guess there’s not much that can be done with the former, but the latter – why? Do you know? Do you want to know? Why would you not want to know? Does it actually make sense? Where did it come from?
And does it actually make your life, anyone’s life, any better? What are you so afraid of?
Filed under: trans
