Do you support Transgender rights?

[PaulaQ]

@ gendermutt

Most employers don't fire bald guys, or refuse to hire them in the first place
Most rental companies won't deny an apartment to a bald guy
Most doctors don't shun bald guys because they'll "scare off their patients with hair"
Few women decide "OMG, I can no longer live with you - you lost your hair and YOU AREN'T A MAN ANYMORE!"
Bald dudes don't have to worry about someone calling the cops when they use the restroom, and having the cop demand "do you have a letter from your doctor?"
Bald dudes don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get their driver's licenses changed to "bald".
41% of bald dudes don't attempt suicide because their situation is so desperate.

They are just bald dudes. If they care enough - they can get cosmetic or medical treatment for their condition. No one thinks twice about it. No one tells them "OMG! Are you SURE you don't want to be bald anymore?"

Oh yeah, they probably don't have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get treatment for their baldness.

The local paper and local parents are unlikely to push for the removal of a bald teacher - because "young kids might be influenced by that at an impressionable age."

Please explain to me again how you think our issues are trivial. I don't see this stuff as much different than telling certain races that they need to ride on the back of the bus. Or that they can only live in certain parts of town, or have certain kinds of jobs.

@Katey - "We must hang together, ladies...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately" (with apologies for paraphrasing Ben Franklin)

We have to band together if we want these situations to improve. If you don't feel comfortable putting on your favorite garments and walking in public, going to your job, telling your wife, going about your daily life as yourself, or at least the fragment of yourself that needs to be let out from time to time, then you are part of the problem.

Society doesn't WANT you to exist, and they damn sure don't want transsexuals like me to exist. They'll sort of tolerate the really pretty, totally passable ones of us - because we can pretend we were born women, and they can too. (Well, if the state cooperates - some won't allow you to change your birth certificate in a way that hides your birth gender.)

It's really about numbers. I hope the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual folks keep doing the heavy lifting for us Transgender folks, I really do. If they don't, there simply aren't enough transsexuals to make a difference. And many of us go back in the closet post transition too, just trying to live the lives we felt we should've been born into. At best though, we are 0.3% of the population - it's simply not enough for them to care about us.

And indeed, the scary part is we make an EXCELLENT scapegoat for society's moral failures. Small, unpopular, invisible - perfect for politicians to use to rile up the folks.