North Texas Daily

One would think that all marginalized demographics would inevitably have some degree of sympathy for one another, but unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Women can be racist, people of color can be homophobic, people in the LGBTQ+ community can be sexist and more. Sometimes, these prejudices even turn inward on the communities themselves.

The strides that have been made in regards to LGBTQ+ rights would ostensibly still be denied to us if it weren’t for the efforts of transgender women of color, yet they find themselves and their very identities scapegoated in the spaces that they themselves created. There is this tunnel vision sentiment that somehow transgender identities invalidate queer sexualities, either by virtue of using pronouns that “trivialize” the queer experience or by pressuring other LGBTQ+ individuals into dating people they aren’t attracted to.

If this all sounds like convoluted nonsense, that’s because it is. First off, homophobes have no intention of respecting anyone’s pronouns, and queer people are not responsible for homophobia or for making more queerness palatable to the masses. Second off, no one is forcing anyone into an arranged marriage with a trans person in accordance with political correctness law, and trans people vary just as much in appearance and personality as any other eligible person, so getting hung up on their transness when it comes to determining compatibility is kind of suspect.

These very niche discourses are infuriatingly frivolous, sure, but they also have very real world consequences in that they deprive one of the most marginalized demographics in the world of a safe space, one said demographic actually laid the initial groundwork for. Transgender women of color are being murdered at an alarmingly disproportionate rate, Arkansas just passed a bill banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender children and other states appear to be following suit.

I don’t mean to imply that anti-trans sentiment originated in the LGBTQ+ community, and would in fact like to reiterate the relatively obvious, that homophobes are responsible for homophobia. But infighting makes it laughably easy for bigots to invoke divide and conquer, and letting them do so makes us undeniably culpable for the suffering our transgender siblings endure. Nothing we as a community can do will endear us to people hell-bent on our destruction, not even throwing one another under the bus.

I cannot for the life of me imagine why another LGBTQ+ person would be so eager to swallow narratives perpetrated primarily by their oppressors. It paints a stark picture of humanity as a whole that people seem to run with every given opportunity to vilify one another, even at their own expense. Scapegoating transgender and nonbinary people isn’t going to legitimize the LGBTQ+ community in the eyes of a still largely homophobic public, and it isn’t going to do anything to prevent unwanted advances made on the part of those with no regard for LGBTQ+ identities. Banding together is the only way we can protect ourselves and one another, and hopefully, more people will recognize that as it becomes even more abundantly clear.

Featured Illustration by Olivia Varnell