You’re not hurting Ann Coulter by calling her transphobic names. But you are hurting somebody… Erin Nanasi explains.
–
Anytime I am forced by my fellow liberals into defending Ann Coulter, I get very pissed off. Although, in truth, I am not defending Ann Coulter. I am defending my transgender friends, and the transgender community. But I’m still pissed off. We, and by we I mean liberals and progressives who still fucking do this, have got to stop calling Ann Coulter “Man Coulter,” and “Stan Coulter.” Or “Trans Coulter,” or calling her a “tranny.” Do you know why it has to stop? Because we’re not hurting Ann Coulter one bit, we’re hurting an already vulnerable segment of society: transgender women.
First, some statistics on being a transgender woman in the United States. In 2012, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released their annual Hate Violence Report. According to that report, 53% of all anti-LGBT homicides were transgender women. FIFTY THREE PERCENT. And of that 53%, the majority were transgender women of color.
Last April, a 16-year old teenager in Florida shot a transgender woman named Coko McDonald. Police determined the teen, Tavares Spencer, shot Coko because she was transgender. On June 3, Lex and Terry, syndicated radio show personalities, referenced the shooting on their program:
There’s a teen that shot a tranny after finding out that it was a man after they had a little sexual encounter.
A co-host responded:
I don’t blame him. I would have shot his ass too.
Cemia Acoff, whose brutalized body was discovered in a pond about a month after her disappearance, was described by The Cleveland Plain Dealer as a man. The first headline read:
Brutal slaying marks the end of a Cleveland man’s fight for acceptance.*
*That headline was later changed to read “Clevelander.”
The second headline was:
Oddly dressed man found in Olmsted Township pond identified.*
*That headline was later changed to read “Oddly dressed body.”
GLAAD, and other advocates for transgender women, were outraged, and rightly so. Both articles used mugshots of Cemia to accompany the text, and in the second piece, the name under the photo is Carl Acoff. The entire handling of Cemia murder by “journalists” is something with which the transgender community is all too familiar.
The New York Post is infamous for their horrific treatment of transgender people, especially women. Their “reporting” on Claudia Charriez included the words “he-she,” “tranny,” and called Charriez a “pre-op transsexual hooker.” The Post has called transgender children “she-men,” and characterized murder victim Camila Guzman as “transgender hooker…Rodrigo Guzman.” Throughout the entire piece on Guzman, the Post uses male pronouns.
Transgender men and women attempt suicide at an alarming rate: 41% of people who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming. That’s nearly nine times the national average. Transgender people are verbally attacked, demonized, demeaned, discriminated against, assaulted, raped, murdered, and they are hated. Hated by “feminists,” hated by right wing “Christians,” and now, if not hated, at least not considered by, liberals and progressives.
If you really want to learn all the shit transgender people go through in this country, click this link. Trans Advocate.com is a magnificent website for the transgender community, allies, advocates, and anyone who wants an insight into what transgender men and women deal with. You’ll learn about TERFs-those “feminists” I mentioned above, trans history, politics, you can listen to podcasts, and there’s even a humor section. An article I just read Thursday highlights a real feminist, Poppy Northcutt. Poppy speaks with Cristan Williams about trans women in the feminist movement, and her own ideas about TERFs.
Conservatives have called me a “tranny,” maybe because of my short hair, or perhaps they thought that would make me cry. It didn’t, it pissed me off. I know transgender men and women, and they are bright, empathetic, funny, and they are fighters. Using hate speech to attack me doesn’t harm me; it harms the transgender community. When Todd Kincannon wrote that transgender people should be locked up in mental hospitals, it harmed the transgender community. Funny thing-it was Toddster’s little fanbase who called me a “tranny.”
And when liberals and progressives call Ann Coulter “Trans Coulter,” or “Tranny Coulter,” or state she’s a “transvestite,” you’re hurting the transgender community. Ann Coulter doesn’t give a shit about your comments or your names; she makes millions of dollars a year, inciting you to do exactly what you’re doing. But my friends care, my friends who have been yelled at, called freaks, and the transgender community cares. Why? Because your names for Ann Coulter sound a lot like the names bigots and haters call them. Is that what you want to do? Call Ann Coulter-who is, as I have written on many occasions, a truly horrible person-names that hurt vulnerable people?
In my ideal world, people like Ann Coulter would be relegated to the dust bin of history. Since that’s not happening any time soon, why don’t we split the difference, and relegate all those horrible, hateful, transantagonistic words to the dust bin of history instead?
–
Originally appeared at ForwardProgressives.com
–
Follow Erin Nanasi on Twitter @ENanasi
Great article. Always a good reminder about who is actually hurt when people slander others. I just prefer to call someone an “a$$H@)e”, but I suppose one day this word that will be off limits as well (<–a joke). While I choose to ignore people who make a living off bigotry, because of cultural assumptions and reactions, their vile vibrations often cannot be ignored. Looking at the photo above, I also find its many assumptions very interesting: a) we don't know it's "liberals" calling her these names. If it were liberals, then how do we define these so called liberals?… Read more »
I stopped reading about halfway through because I thought this article was going to be about the fact that Ann Coulter, though misguided, got exactly what she wanted…Attention and that there are still a bunch of girls missing from their parents. Can’t we just agree that that yes, we should stop calling her every epithet we can imagine, and that we should not, like her, hijack the issue at hand to slide in a point when there are much more pressing issues at hand.
Name calling is lazy and the refuge of the ignorant, uninformed and prejudiced. There are so many things wrong with Ann Coulter, so many lies and false statements that she proudly declares as facts on Fox and other outlets that give her a platform (another issue that needs attention), that calling her names is both useless and pathetic and mainly, again , simply lazy. We live in a rude and mediocre culture and Ann is the standard bearer for that. Let’s not help her by calling her names. Let’s simply mostly ignore her and spend some time calling her on… Read more »
I put her in the same category as Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson.
If only society could just collectively turn it’s back on Ann Coulter. We don’t need her, she has nothing to contribute. Even serious right-wingers must realise that she only makes them look inhumane. I’ve never heard anyone call her “man Coulter,” but the comparison makes no sense. Her gender identification isn’t what makes her a horrible person.
I think THEY think it makes sense because she seems manly to them.
While we’re at it, maybe we should stop making appearance the go-to insult for women, as if women “owed” men to be hot and a lack of hotness was the worst possible crime a woman could commit.
Many many boys/men do that all the time online. If you are a girlgamer, you are screwed – boys/men totally target you just to call you fat, ugly, a slut or whore (female sexuality oppression) and so on. Even some girls/women do that sometimes.
You clearly haven’t been gaming long. There’s a large portion of gamers that’re more than happy to see girl gamers, and treat them just fine. Also, they call guys just as horrible names. It’s because people are fucking stupid. If you can’t learn to ignore people then you don’t belong on online games.
Take it from a transgender gamer on the semi professional level.
I find it so much easier just not to call people rude names in general. Don’t need to rationalize it.
Seems reasonable.
I definitely think there are a TON of legitimate critiques of this professional troll, we simply don’t need ones that hurt anybody else.