The Silent T: Rachael Gilbert

The Silent T

I want to start my speech with the most well-loved tool used by speech givers everywhere-good old fashioned audience participation. I promise this won’t be too difficult or time consuming. All I want you to do is listen as I describe an event to you. Then think to yourself what year you believe this event occurred in. What political, social and economic climate might have taken place to lead up to these events?  

          First: a young boy is beaten and killed in Texas on his way to school. The two men who attacked him are pardoned due to “lack of witnesses” despite the young boy’s sister being present at the scene of the crime.

          (pause) 1953.

          Second: A seventeen year-old boy in Alabama is tied to the back of a truck and drug through the streets. Alive. His body is found several days later, and despite the case being pursued the perpetrator is never found.

          (pause) 1981.

          Third: A young man is attacked, raped, and then murdered on his way home from work in New York City. His body is found four days after the incident, disfigured by slurs carved into him post mortem. The attackers are never found, but an article published later that year in Louisiana praises the unknown attacker’s handiwork, calling it “the work of god”.

          (pause) 2014.

The first was a victim of racism. The second, homophobia. And the third, transphobia.

In 2015 we like to consider ourselves above violence and hatred. We believe ourselves to be a progressive society, one that accepts rather than rejects. But through these events we can see that that cannot be true. Instead, our hatred has shifted from one minority to another, burning a path of violence through our “enlightened” day and age. So today I will try to enlighten the already “enlightened”. Try to humanize an already “accepting” society. Today we will strive to understand that hatred of these groups comes from a lack of understanding and incorrect projection in the media and lends itself to destruction on either side of the issue.

How many transgender people can you name? If you are like most people in 2015 you can come up with one, maybe two names. The most obvious one is Caitlyn Jenner, and if you watch Orange is the New Black you may recognize the name Laverne Cox.

But that’s it.

So when I drop the statistic on you that one in one hundred people identify as transgender it may shock you (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force). The media tends to propagate the belief that being transgender is strange, uncommon, even wrong. Not only that, but most large media outlets lead their audience to believe that being transgender is a choice. When Caitlyn Jenner came out it took news channels an average of 3.6 months to use the correct name and gender pronouns. And many interviews used destructive phrases such as

“So when you chose to be transgender…” and
          “Obviously this was a huge decision”

This type of language only solidifies viewer’s equation of transgender with “abnormal” or “unnecessary”, and attempts to legitimize the stereotypes made against the community.

Portrayal in movies and television is no better. Currently only two shows airing in America contain transgender characters, both of them minor. The few times trans* characters are portrayed they are typically used as the butt of some joke or as a “minority sidekick” to diversify a cast. A good example of this is the film Stonewall, which was aimed at portraying events in New York City in 1969 when members of the LGBTQ+ community rallied against discrimination and violence (Stonewall). The central leaders of these riots were Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, both transgender women of color. The film however, chose to present the ringleaders of the movement as cis gay white men, when questioned on the choice, director Roland Emmerich stated that he wanted “to legitimize the movement and attract a wider audience” (Land, Abbe).

It is simple acts like these that have detrimental effects.

Firstly, it leads trans* youth to believe they are somehow broken. Lack of accurate, or even any, representation in the media, leads many to believe they are alone. A 17 year old trans man states

“When I was first coming out, even to myself, it was really hard…y’know? I didn’t even know trans* was a thing until I was fourteen, fifteen. Some of the worst years of my life were me believing that I was just screwed up.” (BuzzfeedYellow)

By the age of eighteen, 90% of trans* youth will have considered suicide, 65% will have attempted, and 30% will be successful (Office of Justice Programs). The suicide rate in the trans* community is over ten times higher that of the normal population. This statistic is something that can be rectified with simple understanding and representation rather than rejection.

Secondly, an uneducated public is a dangerous one. It has been proven time and again in laboratories and through history that ignorance leads to violence. People are afraid of, and want to destroy that which they do not know. Violence against trans* folks is at an all-time high as of August of 2015, when two out of three trans* people reported being victims of a violent hate crime (Land, Abbe). And by the same study, one in ten will die from that violent hate crime. People destroy. Tear apart. Shatter. Break. What they do not understand. And unfortunately that is spelled out clearly in the lives of trans* folk lost to violence.

Transgender oppression permeates throughout all of society as well. In the state of Kentucky landlords are still legally able to deny living spaces, businesses able to deny employment and colleges able to deny admission to people because of their gender-identity (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force). These acts of discrimination are present in our society because the majority of us don’t bother to even care enough to learn about the issue.

So today, I will educate you. Being trans* is not a choice as some may believe. It’s a fact of life, and not a defining one. Much like you are more than students or athletes or teachers, trans* people are more than a simple word. Gender Dysphoria, a “symptom” if you will of being trans* is a medically diagnosable issue that leads to daily anxiety and depression (Office of Justice Programs). The way to alleviate those issues, presenting and being identified as their true gender. Easy.

Gender, much like sexuality is a spectrum as well. Agender, Bigender, Genderqueer and Transgender are just as legitimate as Cis, or identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth.

My eight and a half minutes are coming quickly to a close, in just a few moments I will step down from this podium and sit in my seat. In less than an hour we will get up and leave this room. And as we leave, some of you will question my gender-identity or my sexuality. And if you ask either of those questions I will answer truthfully. If only you grant me a question in return.

Why is it that I must be a member of this minority in order to speak out against a blatant injustice? Why can only the oppressed speak out against their oppression? By asking questions like the ones I’m sure many of you are wondering we are propagating the same oppression and discrimination that we claim to abhor. We do not have to be part of a minority in order to care for it. We just have to be part of the human race. Today, I’m not going to ask you to make donations, I’m not going to ask you to devote your life to a cause you may just have become aware of. I'm asking you to recognize and understand those around you. I’m asking you to replace one simple word with another. Replace Ignorance with Understanding. Injustice with Hope. Hate with Love.

Thank you.

Bibliography (whoop whoop)

Land, Abbe. “Recognizing Transgender Awareness Week”. The Trevor Project. Huffington Post, 19 November 2014. Web. 11 December 2015.

“Responding to Transgender Victims of Assault”. Office of Justice Programs. Office for Victims of Crime, n.d. Web. 11 December 2015.

“Injustice at Every Turn: A Report from the National Transgender Survey”. Enddisrcrimination.org. National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, n.d. Web. 11 December 2015.

BuzzfeedYellow. “Transgender People Talk About Coming Out”. Online Video Clip. YouTube. YouTube, 28 May 2015. Web. 10 November 2015.

Stonewall. Dir. Roland Emmerich. Perf. Jeremy Irvine, Joey King, Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Roadside Attractions, 2015. DVD.