Well, memos actually:
…all being comments to this, from the Detroit News:
Shelley Hilliard, 19, a transgender woman, was about to be arrested for possession of marijuana Oct. 20 when police offered a way out, according to testimony during a court hearing Thursday. She could set up a drug deal.
With the police listening on speaker phone, Hilliard used her cellphone to call Qasim Raqib, telling him she had someone (an undercover agent) who wanted to buy $335 worth of cocaine and marijuana, according to testimony during Raqib’s preliminary examination Thursday in 36th District Court.
When Raqib arrived at the Motel 6 in Madison Heights 20 minutes later, police arrested him.
Raqib, 30, of Detroit, was released several hours later. Three days later, the mutilated body of Hilliard was discovered ablaze in the street on Detroit’s east side.
But the comments are also memos to the self-important transphobic turds who commented on The John’s recent attempt to rise above it all – you know, the way an angel rises above the afflicted….
Floaters such as this one:
which was a preditably clueless bark from someone who seemingly has never actually had to attempt to find redress against discrimination using the suffocatingly pro-hegemony – and increasingly Rube Goldbrg-esque - legal system of America (and, equally likely, possesses sufficient privilege to have never have experienced any real discrimination on any level.)
In fact, the bark was against this reality-based observation that could well have been an analytic distillation of the aforenoted Detroit News comment-spewings.
Transphobia against transwomen (speaking as a member of my subgroup) is often us being being included with gay men. “You’re just a man”, “your gay”, “gay man in a dress”, “f*g” etc. That is not only transphobia, it is also homophobia. We experience the same homophobia as gay males – hatred because of sexual orientation.
Homophobia must be fought on all fronts.
But lets not forget the most significant reason of all that trans people have demanded, are demanding and will continue to demand inclusion – no matter how much of a crimp it puts in the superiority desires of The John and/or any member of his chorus of gay (The?) John Birchers who would be perfectly happy with America’s socio-legal system as it existed circa 1930 just so long as it was tweaked to allow them to tweak and fuck as they please: We demand anti-discrimination protection not just from the likes of the christianist bastards who made those comments at the Detroit News, but from the equally transphobic gay men and women who have fought tooth and nail for decades to keep us out of gay rights discrimination. No one who fights that hard to make laws gay-only can be presumed not to be ready, willing and able to use – or presumed to not already have used, where applicable – the combination of gay protection and a lack of trans-inclusion to benefit themselves by ensuring that they will never have to suffer the indignity of seeing qualified trans people judged on their own merits and on an equal footing with non-trans gays and lesbians.
A question to trans people: How many of you out there consider your boat to be “floated” by a legal regime in which the John Aravosises, the Chris Crains, the Cathy Brennans, the Stephen Clarks, the Hilary Rosens and those of like mind as the author of that soundbite have – per the operation of law – the absolute, unfettered rights to NOT hire you, NOT rent to you and NOT even let you into their places of business while you, as trans people, if employers, landlords and/or proprietors, are, by operation of that same law, absolutely prohibited from making, even as an education-related form of protest, similar negative employment/rental/business-related decisions against the class of people responsible for such apartheid?
How ‘floated’ do you feel in Wisconsin? New Hampshire? Delaware? New York? Maryland?
How floated do you actually feel in Massachusetts?
Floating our boats, eh?
I guess all of the qualified trans people who have never been considered for employment by NGLTF during the time period that Sue ‘I openly supported discrimination against trans women when it was convenient, but now I want to continue to make a living claiming that I’m floating their boat along with mine’ Hyde should view ourselves as being comfortably ensconced in the royal quite of an Oilvia cruise, eh?
Oh wait…
Floating our boats?
More like a greed-addled iceberg, I say.
The stupidity and ignorance of fundamentalists has never been of interest to me in determining my rights.
To be quantitatively fair to the author of that remark, there is one thing trans people need more than protection from those fundamentalists.
Its protection from people like the author of that remark.
Every remark like it just adds to the tally of transphobia reparations that we are owed.
People like that whine about the possibility of waiting a bit for a trans-inclusive ENDA?
You deserve the wait – and while you’re waiting, think about all of the ahistorical nonsense that you’ve been snorting for the last few years (you know, like the clear implication in your we-must-wait-on-a-trans-inclusive-ENDA-because-the-needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-few psychosis, that somehow, there are fewer trans people than there are gays and lesbians who both want to and actually can, even under objective criteria,serve in the military) in order to convince yourselves that you deserve to get everything you want when you want it and that there is no rationale whatsoever for sacrifice to achieve trans-inclusion but that gay marriage – and nothing less – must be achieved at all costs…
particularly especially the possibility of ever dealing with trans rights.
Yes, transphobia reparations.
You could have done what was right 30, 20, 10 – or even five – years ago, but you wouldn’t.
Transphobia reparations.
Get used to the idea.
Posted by Katrina Rose 
