How many times have the Radical Feminists and the rest of the Ultra Right made the exact same claim.
You know the one: If transsexual and transgender people are protected by anti-discrimination laws it will mean straight male perverts will be free to attack women in women’s restrooms.
Wait a second. Where did I hear that one before?
Oh yes. That was one of Phyllis Schlafly’s lies about why we couldn’t have the Equal Rights Amendment.
From Salon: http://www.salon.com/2013/08/19/conservative_media_wont_stop_trolling_transgender_people/
A video from the Media Research Center shows everything that’s wrong with the right-wing and Radical Feminist view of transgender rights
By Katie Mcdonough
Monday, Aug 19, 2013
The conservative Media Research Center responded to news of a California law that allows transgender youth to use school facilities and play on athletic teams that correspond to their gender identity with a blatantly transphobic video that equates transgender people with sexual predators.
In the video, reporter Dan Joseph “poses” as transgender (by affecting a slightly feminine voice) and asks a woman if she would be comfortable with him sharing the bathroom with her by saying, “I’m a transgender. So that means I have the man parts but inside I feel more like a woman. I was just wondering, is it okay if I go in there with you in there and change and shower and stuff?”
The video then cuts to a series of interviews in which Joseph indicates that the new California law will somehow lead people to openly expose their genitals in public restrooms or allow predatory men to spy on women while they are changing.
Joseph’s hateful framing is a perfect representation of how willfully ignorant (and openly hostile) conservative media outlets are to transgender rights, as National Center for Transgender Equality executive director Mara Keisling remarked to Raw Story on Monday: “[The people at MRC] know that there are real trans people. They know we’re not talking about boys who want to pretend that they’re girls or girls who want to pretend they’re boys. They know we’re talking about people who have a gender identity that want to safely use the restroom in a way which is the least disruptive.”
Beyond grossly misrepresenting the content of the law and the experiences of transgender people, Joseph’s video serves to “villainize a group of kids who have it really rough, and who the state of California’s just trying to make it a little easier on,” Keisling continued. “This [law] doesn’t put anybody else out. It’s really easy to scare people about it … nobody’s put out, nobody’s made unsafe, nobody’s made unmodest [by this law].”
Continue reading at: http://www.salon.com/2013/08/19/conservative_media_wont_stop_trolling_transgender_people/
See also:
Gay Star News: Conservative activist says he would claim to be transgender to watch girls changing
Media Matters: This Is What Conservative Media Think A Transgender Woman Looks Like
Raw Story: Trans activists slam ‘hateful’ conservative video in which man ‘dresses up’ as ‘a transgender’
