These are the kinds of things that remind us exactly why it’s important to have events like the Transgender Day of Remembrance and confront the bigotry.
David W. Virtue, one of the leading anti-gay voices in the Anglican Church in Canada, posts the following excerpt:
“For sheer nuttiness and absurdity, it is TransGender Awareness Week while Saturday is the Day of Remembrance for all killed for being transgender, according to the Rev. Ann Fontaine, an Episcopal priest in Lander, Wyoming. Really. We at VOL are trying to find a transgendered person who has been killed to report back where he/she found him/herself after death and how anybody knew him/her was transgendered to begin with. One does not exactly see transgendered folk waving flags about it in the street. The only one I ever met, who went from being a him to a her, never felt threatened. In fact, I would never have known she was a he before he became a her.”
Well, the list of people we remember at the Transgender Day of Remembrance grows by an average of 30 verifiable people every year. The Trans Murder Monitoring project at Trans Respect versus Transphobia (TvT) contains many more, although not always verifiable or clearly connected to transphobic attitudes — this year, their number is 179 people, which at the very least indicates that there are many more worldwide than we know about. Their stories will vary — most times, we don’t broadcast that we’re trans, but that doesn’t mean that people never find out or get violent on it.
Timothy Bloedow gets even more mocking (trigger warning):
“Sex activists wear adult clothes but they have never grown up. Instead of recognizing natural reality and truth, they embrace perversion. When young people express confusion about their sexuality, these adolescent adults want to affirm them in the most perverse expressions of this confusion instead of guiding them into clarity and truth.
“Maybe some of these adults are predatory beasts who want to groom and desensitize youth and children to be their victims. Perhaps they are simply fools. But what a tragedy that on any day, let alone Universal Children’s Day, another group of sex activists wants to celebrate their confusion and a perversion that many say is a threat to children.
…
“… those who think they are “transgendered” are also tragic victims. They are not transgendered. They are confused. They are lost. They need the guidance and help from real men and real women. They need protection, including by the law, from those who would sexually, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually abuse them by affirming them in their confusion….”
He then goes on to raise fears about Bill C-389 using the “bathroom predator” myth, attack a representative from PFLAG, pontificate about parenting and that fathers aren’t masculine enough and (I’m reading between the lines now, but this was also what I learned from the pulpit that a “good Christian upbringing” was, that would surely steer a child straight) apparently don’t beat the $#!t out of their kids enough. He then, inexplicably, finishes by hyping a book entitled “Joyfully at Home” about how one woman’s “little-girl dreams of becoming a mommy were supplanted by bigger visions of winning the Pulitzer Prize or an Oscar and appearing on Oprah,” until she realized that God wanted her home and pregnant, rather than troubling her pretty little head about wanting a career. Silly women.
You may find it outrageous that I am allowed to exist, Mr. Bloedow, but fortunately most Canadians realize that we’ve moved past a stone-age mentality of debating who should be allowed to exist.
And as long as backwards, twisted attitudes like this are allowed to be the tipping point on whether we can or cannot work, reside, travel, have access to services and / or have violence done to us, Bill C-389 remains important.
Dented Blue Mercedes 
It’s a sad thing that in today’s era that there are still those who would blind themselves to the human realities in the world around them.
I have a few words for Timothy Bloedow:
Maybe some of these adults are predatory beasts who want to groom and desensitize youth and children to be their victims. Perhaps they are simply fools. But what a tragedy that on any day, let alone [The Day of Remembrance], another group of [“Christian”] activists wants to celebrate their confusion and a perversion that many say is a threat to children.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but if you mean to turn the tables on the confusion caused by religious doctrine that throws shame and hate around at everything, I doubt he’ll get it.
You wrote: “Maybe some of these adults are predatory beasts…”
But that’s just the point: it doesn’t happen. Trans protections exist in over a hundred jurisdictions on this continent, and the “scary” epidemic never happened. The “trans predator” is a straw man argument, and only works as long as people have never knowingly met an actual trans person.
Which is one of the best reasons for transpeople to live openly as complete human beings.
The more that we live in our communities as contributing members of society, the less material the fear-mongers like Bloedow have to work with.
I’m referring to the religionists as the predatory beasts. They provably indoctrinate children just as they accuse the queer population of doing and yet their choice to be religious is far more of a choice than ours is in being queer.
I’m saying that every nasty thing he’s saying about trans people is far more true of his church than it is of us.
Some of the most dangerous and unconfronted transphobia comes from within feminism and from within the queer community. Most of us should know the sack of manure that Ron Gold dumped on the Trans community with “No to the notion of transgender” (published at Bilerico) or the incessant, positively vicious slander published against trans people, and women specifically, by the “radical” “feminist” bloggers at “A Room Of Our Own” (you can search on it if you really want) and similar blogs. A person espousing these beliefs should be seen as neither radical nor feminist.
These people are allowed to get away with being hateful because they are seen as being at least partly “within” the community – many feminist bloggers are lesbian; Ron Gold was famous for being part of the push to remove homosexuality from the DSM. None of them are ever confronted because they’re still seen as part of “the community.”
What needs to happen is that these people need to be firmly, sharply repudiated. If you attack part of the community? You are NOT part of the community. Until this happens, queer transphobia will never die out.
Ron Gold was pretty sharply confronted at the time he posted his drivel, Bil made a non-apology and when the confrontation continued he finally took Ron’s post down. I don’t think Ron has posted at Bilerico since. Some queer folk are waking up to reality.
The Room of our Own people are too invested in their insular little community and policies of hatred and exclusion to be reasoned with. Ignoring them works better.