A Quote by Dean Spade
More conservative advocacy work often encourages portrayals of trans people as people who deserve rights. Deservingness, of course, corresponds to national racial, gender and ability norms.
Related Quotes
One particular debate that I have seen play out again and again is whether trans people who have more traditional gender expressions or who "pass" more should be the ones who are represented. A recent advocacy guide focused on advocating around trans health care access produced by the largest trans advocacy organization in the US instructs readers that advocacy will be more successful if the message is delivered by people who pass as non-trans men and women.
Trans rights formation that mimics the models and strategies of the lesbian and gay rights framework is growing, and there are many significant strategy disagreements between those building that work and those doing racial and economic justice centered trans work.
When social movements engage in legal reform, they often mobilize images of people from their constituent population who most match national norms about what "deserving citizens" are like, and use those people as spokespeople and as lead plaintiffs in legal cases. This strategy requires that people who are experiencing intersectional harm - who are vulnerable through multiple vectors of demonization and marginalization - be further marginalized and disappeared by the advocacy.
As trans advocacy has institutionalized and developed, the context of the undemocratic nature of US non-profits and the ways that white, wealthy individuals can intensely influence the directions of advocacy have increasingly come to the surface for trans activists.
In reality, civil rights are more important than national rights. They're the content, the day-to-day: work, life. But people are sensitive to national rights.
Gender segregated shelters are inaccessible to many trans people, and trans women in particular are often forced to choose between going into a men's shelter where they face enormous danger, or remaining street homeless and facing the violence, harassment, arrest, and exposure risks of that.
Some trans people thought that in claiming that gender is performative that I was saying that it is all a fiction, and that a person's felt sense of gender was therefore "unreal." That was never my intention. I sought to expand our sense of what gender realities could be. But I think I needed to pay more attention to what people feel, how the primary experience of the body is registered, and the quite urgent and legitimate demand to have those aspects of sex recognized and supported.
I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that only gender non-conforming, non-binary, or trans people have a gender identity. But the truth is, everyone has a gender identity.
Trans people deserve something vital; they deserve your respect. From that respect comes a more compassionate community.
There's a culture war in this country. Americans in recent years, as you know, have become more secular. They don't go to church as often. Bible reading, prayers in public are now frowned upon. And, of course, in addition to that, a lot of people have become much more supportive of LGBT rights. And in reaction to that, biblically conservative Americans feel that their faith is under assault.
LGBTQ people deserve to live, work, raise families, and succeed just like anyone else - and LGBTQ kids deserve to grow up in a country that supports and encourages them.
We had so many milestones in America. We were on our way to universal healthcare. We had gay marriage. We were talking about gender fluidity and trans issues openly and discussing them with respect. It was almost to the point where educating people about transgender rights wasn't an issue. We were including trans people as a normal part of our conversations instead of seeing their presence as this shocking thing to the system. We forgot that those things can be taken away from you because there are people in the world that, for whatever f - king reason, can't live and let live.
Most poor people in America are white. The family breakdown issue is an issue that crosses all sorts of racial lines. High school dropout issues. But because of the flow of events which involve the racial component, we've sometimes confused racial issues with other issues which are trans-racial.
People assume that trans people will only be accepted as trans characters, or that there aren't enough trans writers, or that there aren't any trans producers or directors, there's that attitude.
Education could be a great vehicle for gender equity. It allows people to see what your rights are by reading. Quite often women, for example, may have rights that they are not in the position to actually make use of.
Drag has come a long way and people are respecting it, and giving drag queens and other people who defy gender norms more chances than they've ever been given before, but it's thanks to people like RuPaul, especially, who set that momentum going.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer