Ivy Hill is a founding director of Gender Benders, a transgender and gender-queer advocacy group in upstate South Carolina which CSE is proud to partner with. Ivy also serves on CSE’s Advisory Board.
Chelsea Manning has been getting a lot of buzz in the media lately. I’m not a scholar on her case, and I have no authority to judge her actions as it pertains to the document leaking situation. I am not approaching this topic in an effort to condemn her actions, nor to praise them. I do think this case has brought up some stuff that is worth talking about though. Like identity and the importance of respecting a person’s preferred pronouns. She is a human and for humans, identity is self defined.
When someone takes that first scary step out of the closet and openly shares their identity with us, it is not our job to judge that. It is not our job to try to figure out if that is “really” how they identify. Or to weigh out their femininity and masculinity and decide if we think they are “trans* enough” for us to make the effort to use proper pronouns. It is simply our job to respect their expressed wishes concerning their identity.
To refuse to use correct pronouns with a person who has openly shared their identity with you as a transgender woman who prefers feminine pronouns not only disrespects that woman, but it disrespects the entire transgender community. Actively and intentionally disrespecting someone’s identity perpetuates the stigmatism associated with our community. This breeds transphobia which gives birth to violence, because people are scared of what they don’t understand.
I am here to tell you there is nothing scary about transgender women. I am a co-founder and co-leader of a grassroots group out of Upstate, SC for transgender and gender variant folks called Gender Benders. We have over 200 members, and many of them are trans* women. They aren’t scary. They are beautiful, smart, and funny. They do laundry and dishes. Some of them work on cars and do home repair. But mostly they are just normal. They are normal women with diverse interests and personalities, who have walked a journey tougher than most have ever experienced. This community has faced adversity and discrimination by the truck load. We have faced physical violence, and many of us have feared for our lives because of our difference, and the anger that insights in people.
Suicide is the number one killer among the transgender community. Statistics show that about 45% of our community has attempted to take their own life. It is a difficult path, which you cannot fully understand to unless you have also walked that path. What you can do though is think about how you are referring to Chelsea Manning in your comments online and how that may make that young trans* girl who is sitting at home reading your comments feel. You can ask yourself if you are helping that suicide rate go down by showing that young trans* girl that there are plenty of people out there who will respect her identity when she works up the courage to come out one day.
Chelsea Manning has certainly increased visibility of the transgender community recently. There is much controversy over that being positive or negative for our community due to her particular set of circumstances. I think it can be as positive or negative as we make it. If we take this opportunity to increase awareness and soften someone’s heart around this polarizing and sensitive issue of identity and pronoun preferences then I think that is a win.
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