The 37-year-old, who has had the hair loss condition since she was a child, said she was left shocked when a cleaner at the Trinity Square shop asked her “Are you aware you’re in the female toilet?” She said she became distressed and burst into tears.
Transphobia harms everyone, not just trans people. It’s sad that this argument needs to be used, but I’ve heard some cis people find it convincing.
Two cynical takes on “transphobia harms everyone”:
(Not apologizing for transphobia, just deconstructing the thought)
Sure, ideally the way it impacts trans people should be enough. But anything that affects more people negatively is a worse thing.
If I wanted to influence car safety policy, and I can pick from two examples to make my case:
I’d be a fool not to use 2 as an example.
I often think about this. I don’t think it’s wrong to provide selfish reasons to do the right thing.
In the end, the world is full of people with different priorities and ways of thinking, if you restrict yourself to only the “pure” morality arguments it’s not like you can use the purity of your argument to correct the brains of all the people who are not swayed. But if you provide a variety of arguments you’ll convince lots more people.
And in reality most people are not pure selfish or pure selfless. Spoonful of sugar (selfish benefit) helps the medicine (selfless morals) go down.
Not trying to entirely quench your cynicism, just lightly cool it.
I need to copy this down. What a mature and well-reasoned response to much of what is fucked up in the world and how to answer it.
Thats pretty much my stance, but you must always be thinking “if it can happen to them it can happen to me”
Sadly even this doesn’t help with some people.
I once had a conversation with a particularly tall cis woman who’d briefly been the target of transphobic abuse in a womens’ toilet. She somehow managed to blame this on the existence of trans people 🤷