Willow
2012-08-07 16:42:52 UTC
There are some things you simply cannot change…
This morning I started off with my normal reads. Huffington Post, Salon, Slate, some newspapers and Time. A browse on Facebook and then on to Mail. A morning ritural…
There were at least ten articles on transgendered matters. Most were positive. No – all were positive. Granted, many were from Canada or Europe where matters are further along than in the United States. Still, the word – that word – “transgender” was used and used again. The woman who entered the Miss World (or Universe?) contest from Vancouver had a place of pride in the PRIDE Vancouver parade and many more stories.
So, a few angry and rather unpleasant voices are going to turn back this tide? I think not. Rant and rave as much as they might, the world has accepted the usage of transgender as an umbrella term to cover a variety of different peoples, including transsexual. Like it or not, it has gone mainstream and from that is no turning back.
In a chapter prepared for SEX & THE MEDIA, a text for college students released by Gage, I wrote a chapter on “Transgender Images in the Media”. It may still be read on the Web:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=UrEIJ2MzMtYC&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=Transgender+image+in+the+Media++Willow&source=bl&ots=9kYi8Nkhm2&sig=Kx62mjgh3MtE79mdN5DlG3AfiY4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hkIhUILODqjL2QXtroHQCw&sqi=2&ved=0CF0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Transgender%20image%20in%20the%20Media%20%20Willow&f=false
Rather dated now. Transgender has become the default which was bound to happen. Reporters and others are far to busy to stop and look up the “correct” term demanded by a small minority. If is far easier to simply use an umbrella term such as “transgendered” and after a few times in print, that becomes the standard regardless of what a fanatical few might demand.
Sonia and I recently attended an event hosted by PRIDE from UNBC. The audience was of all types that rest under the umbrella. Most were younger types. None evidenced any concern about the use of “transgender” as a term under which they all could fit. There was not one fanatic standing up to demand that the transsexuals be “cut out of the herd” and treated in any special manner. That was rather pleasant. I don’t attend these events often - this as the first in years and that only due to an invitation - but it was nice to see that transgender types of all kinds could comfortably meet without rancour and bitterness. I am very confident that had anyone demanded special recognition for one group – no matter how “different” that group was - from the others present, the very idea would have been treated as an antique, an issue long ago resolved.
Turn back this tide? Rant as one might, I doubt it…
Willow
This morning I started off with my normal reads. Huffington Post, Salon, Slate, some newspapers and Time. A browse on Facebook and then on to Mail. A morning ritural…
There were at least ten articles on transgendered matters. Most were positive. No – all were positive. Granted, many were from Canada or Europe where matters are further along than in the United States. Still, the word – that word – “transgender” was used and used again. The woman who entered the Miss World (or Universe?) contest from Vancouver had a place of pride in the PRIDE Vancouver parade and many more stories.
So, a few angry and rather unpleasant voices are going to turn back this tide? I think not. Rant and rave as much as they might, the world has accepted the usage of transgender as an umbrella term to cover a variety of different peoples, including transsexual. Like it or not, it has gone mainstream and from that is no turning back.
In a chapter prepared for SEX & THE MEDIA, a text for college students released by Gage, I wrote a chapter on “Transgender Images in the Media”. It may still be read on the Web:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=UrEIJ2MzMtYC&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=Transgender+image+in+the+Media++Willow&source=bl&ots=9kYi8Nkhm2&sig=Kx62mjgh3MtE79mdN5DlG3AfiY4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hkIhUILODqjL2QXtroHQCw&sqi=2&ved=0CF0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Transgender%20image%20in%20the%20Media%20%20Willow&f=false
Rather dated now. Transgender has become the default which was bound to happen. Reporters and others are far to busy to stop and look up the “correct” term demanded by a small minority. If is far easier to simply use an umbrella term such as “transgendered” and after a few times in print, that becomes the standard regardless of what a fanatical few might demand.
Sonia and I recently attended an event hosted by PRIDE from UNBC. The audience was of all types that rest under the umbrella. Most were younger types. None evidenced any concern about the use of “transgender” as a term under which they all could fit. There was not one fanatic standing up to demand that the transsexuals be “cut out of the herd” and treated in any special manner. That was rather pleasant. I don’t attend these events often - this as the first in years and that only due to an invitation - but it was nice to see that transgender types of all kinds could comfortably meet without rancour and bitterness. I am very confident that had anyone demanded special recognition for one group – no matter how “different” that group was - from the others present, the very idea would have been treated as an antique, an issue long ago resolved.
Turn back this tide? Rant as one might, I doubt it…
Willow