The Transphoberization of America
Humans can't help fearing what we don't understand, but we have control over what we do with that fear
I used to teach a class to kids about the history of the English language, and one of their favorite games was to create made-up words with Latin and Greek roots. Transphoberization isn’t actually a word, but since English is handy at making new words when the need arises, here it is. It’s tragic we have a need for a verb that means “to dupe a nation into fearing transgender folks.”
Last month’s guest on The Babblery, Stephanie Jacobs, knows the need for this word. Stephanie transitioned socially and medically at the age of 67 after a career as a news producer at CBS. The full episode is mostly about her career and politics, but I’ve published a Minibabble focusing on her transition and her analysis of the politics of transphobia.
I’d like to do a little reflection here, and it goes like this: What the heck is wrong with people?
Fear is natural; spreading fear is toxic
I’m a bit of a brain research junkie, and I know that it’s very hard for humans to control our fear of the “other,”1 in this case, “strange” humans who aren’t like us. This fear is rooted deeply in our biology, and it can serve a useful function. Unfortunately, not all humans are safe to be around and when someone gives you the willies, it’s worth checking out that feeling.
In a multifaceted society like ours, however, this biological response can be triggered pretty easily. Every day we encounter an “other,” whether it’s someone of a different race, a different culture, or exhibiting behaviors that seem unusual. Before this explosion of transphoberism, fewer people than ever were willing to spread their fear response outward by openly advocating bias. Yes, people still spread their bias using “dog whistles”—whiffs of bias that we sense but can’t hear. But what’s happening now to transgender people is more like a police whistle.
Open fear, vilification, and denial of transgender people is on the rise.
Bathroom bills, “don’t say gay” bills, and now the restriction of trans medical care are reminiscent of a time when white people were comfortable legislating their racial bias. Complicating the issue, the bias is being applied to a tiny minority. Transphoberization has become so successful because most people don’t know whether they know a transgender person. Trans people can continue to be a permanent “other.”
But let’s get back to my essential question: What the heck is wrong with people?
We should know this: living in fear of “the other” hurts everyone, not just the other. This was a lesson taught to me in my rather conservative elementary school, on Sesame Street, in Free to Be You and Me. And yes, it’s hard to tamp down something rooted in our biology, but we’re not just talking about each individual’s fear here. We’re talking about an entire society that is hearing the call of persecuting the other and responding to it.
Fear eats the soul
Fear eats the soul. Let’s look at what we get from fearing this “other”: we get families fleeing their communities; we get families breaking up; we get adult-approved schoolyard bullying; we get adults screaming at each other at school board meetings; we get doctors closing clinics. None of this is productive, and it hurts entire communities, not just the small number of people it targets.
Fear of the “other” may be rooted in our biology, but nothing good comes from spreading it. If you have been poisoned by transphoberism, reach out and educate yourself. Read or watch media that humanizes rather than cuts down. Avoid the hysterical—you don’t need more fear. Open your heart rather than shutting it off.
To cap off the interview, Steph said this:
“However severe the next four years may be, however vertiginous and rocky they may be, threatening to large segments of communities, there will be a time in which the pendulum of politics will swing back to the center, that the essential character of Americans will turn out to be not misogynistic, not racist, not anti-trans.”
I desperately want to believe her. But this can’t happen unless many of us check our fear response and let others live their lives.
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Perhaps you don’t perceive this reaction as “fear.” But unless you have achieved complete enlightenment, you do have this reaction, call it what you will. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/24894-amygdala