The readings this week were all so thought provoking I honestly had trouble deciding what to write about. In today's class we watched a short segment of an interview with Cece McDonald and Laverne Cox and I found the emotion in that interview overwhelming. The part that struck me the most was when Cece was talking about how you never hear of a trans* woman just being happy, living her life, and dying of old age. Our society is not creating a space for trans* individuals to be happy. The structure of our society is fashioned in such a way that the comfort of one group is placed higher than the other, so much so the "lower" group does not have a place to grow old and die of old age. I could not find a consistent number but on average articles said that the life span of a trans* person is 30-32 years while the life span of the average male is 76.4 years. To me, those numbers alone prove serious structural inequality.
In the interview segment we saw interviews from trans* individuals at a rally for a trans* individual that had been brutally attacked and murdered. One individual being interviewed reiterated something that every minority group is striving for, "we don't want special rights, we just want equal rights, human rights." This is something seemingly so simple but apparently impossible to achieve.
Why is this such a hard concept for our society to grasp? When I was reading the Dear BB article the writer says something that I think relates to this inability to understand: "until dudes have the opportunity and reason to think through how their socialization has groomed them to be rapists, we'll always believe rape is inconceivable - too big, too irreproachably evil to even consider, let alone deconstruct or eradicate." 'Dudes,' unfortunately and annoyingly, need to be given the opportunity AND reason to give other groups equal rights and the onus on teaching people not to rape (or teaching people about the lack of equal rights), as Dear BB says, "is work that is disproportionately performed by the people who are raped most often."
The readings this week brought up a lot of frustration and anger but it is anger I know I will be able to use in productive ways, ways to hopefully promote change.
It is so upsetting and frustrating to think of how you never hear of trans women living a happy, long, life as Cece mentioned because of who they are. Our society is targeting trans women specifically and the justice system doesn't seem to be doing its job and protecting every citizen of their community which is an enormous issue. If the justice system protected trans women more, I believe that they would set the standards of respecting trans people for the community to follow.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as you mentioned, I can't comprehend the idea of people not understanding what equal rights and human rights mean. It would seem like it is such a simple, easy, concept that people should automatically fathom and the fact that they don't is astounding.
It is good to have this anger because it can promote change but I just wish that change would be as easy as snapping your fingers.