What Chad and Amiyah Can Teach Us About Respecting Trans Women

July 21, 2013 ·

amiyah scottTransGriot Note: Interesting article from one of the people I had the pleasure of meeting during OUT on the Hill last year, Anti-Intellect, concerning the ignorance bubbling up once again in the Black gossip blogosphere concerning this recent photo Chad Johnson took with girl like us Amiyah Scott

The guest post at Funky Dineva is entitled ‘What Chad Johnson and Amiyah Scott Can Teach Us About Respecting Transgender Women’.

It’s a call for the Black community to chill with the ignorance and disrespect aimed at trans women and start understanding and respecting the ones in their midst.

I agree.  And it needed to happen like yesterday.
I also got a little love in the post, too.

And yeah, ignorance alert in the comment threads.

Here’s a taste of it:     

I look forward to the day when a straight man taking a picture with a trans woman is not an issue. If social media is any indication, we have a while to go before that vision becomes a reality. Over the weekend, a picture surfaced of former NFL player and reality star, Chad Johnson, posing with Amiyah Scott, a trans woman. Judging by the number of ignorant comments leveled at both Johnson and Scott, you would have thought that the two had committed a serious crime, and in a sense, they had. In our transphobic world, a straight man taking a picture with a trans woman is seen as a “crime”. What is the crime, you ask? The crime is respecting a transgender woman.

Media representation has the potential to make us comfortable with people from different walks of life, but it also has the potential to make us see a community in a monolithic way. Trans women have all too often only been seen as predators and/or comic relief. I am here to tell you, however, that the lives of trans woman are diverse and multifaceted. Yes, there are trans women who have not revealed their gender identity, often for good reason, but there are many who live there lives with honesty and openness. Trans women come from all walks of life, and it is long overdue that we start to recognize their diversity within their community. We need to look beyond the stereotypes to see the trans women who are enrolled in college and trade schools, the trans women who are journalists, motivational speakers, doctors, executive directors, hairstylists, actresses, wives, mothers, and almost any other role imaginable.

You can read the rest of it by clicking this link.

[alert type=”info”]Cross-posted from TransGriot[/alert]
Next Post

A Rant About MTF "Stealth"

Editor's Note: This is part of a series on "stealth." The goal of this series to examine the nuanced ways trans opinion leaders conceptualize stealth and how they feel about it. Suzan Cooke kicked off the series with her article,…
Read
Previous Post

Memo to Proven Liar Victoria Brownworth

A former Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader won her defamation lawsuit against a gossip website and its operator, with a jury awarding her $338,000 in damages Thursday. Jurors in federal court in Covington found that posts about Sarah Jones on the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based website thedirty.com in 2009…
Read
Random Post

The Towlenut Gallery

Even when The Towle has a reasonable post on a trans issue – here, the Cemia Acoff murder – one can count on the Chorus du Transphobique to show what the entitled really believe that they have the right to…
Read
Random Post

Four Years Later, Still No Answers.

Ethan St. Pierre of Transfm.org and The Radical Trannies recently interviewed Tim Cwiek. Tim is an investigative journalist for Philadelphia Gay News and has looked into the suspected police involvement of the death of transgender woman, Nizah Morris. http://radicalguy.podomatic.com/enclosure/2007-02-12T12_39_53-08_00.mp3
Read
Random Post

What Say You Now, Suzanne ‘Brazilian Transsexual’ Moore?

After all, the Julie Birch Ill Society probably just cheers whenever a transsexual woman gets ‘cut out.’ From Pink News: It’s being reported that a transwoman has been shot dead in Brazil. According to the ‘Guerrilla Angel Report’ blog site, it is claimed the victim, named…
Read
Random Post

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

Bird Of Paradox their 'crisis of faith’ with feminism, This Ain't Livin posted about discussing how your gender gender effects you, and Planet Transgender posted about Columbus Ohio'd City Council passing a transgender anti-discrimination law.
Read

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.