Tell Fox News: Remove Dr. Ablow's Transphobic Article From Their Website.

TRIGGER WARNING: Transphobia, medical violence (psychology)

shortformblog:

reallyfoxnews:

The article is a relentless, transphobic and disrespectful attack against Chaz Bono that reflect’s Fox News’ support for Dr. Ablow’s stream of heteronormative and offensive articles. Coupled with his earlier (removed) post about Bono and his tirade against J. Crew’s Jenna Lyons, Fox News has repeatedly demonstrated that they have no problem publishing and backing Ablow’s hateful words as reflective of their news organization.

Fox News has previously removed an article Ablow wrote about Bono, following criticism from blogs and other news outlets. The current article, called “Don’t Let Your Kids Watch Chaz Bono on Dancing With The Stars,”  promotes the idea that Chaz Bono is dangerous for children, likens sexual reassignment surgery to willingly amputating both of your arms or changing your species, discounts Bono’s transition as someone who “thinks she is a man,” and calls supporting transgender surgery a “tragic celebration.” 

Sign our petition and tell Fox News that their continual support for Dr. Ablow - Fox News’ resident psychiatrist, is unacceptable. Transphobia should be and cannot be supported by a national news network.

If you don’t sign it, please send it around. 

As we pointed out in our piece about the article, what Dr. Ablow wrote was beyond the pale. It’s a damaging article as a whole, and if you feel that it should be removed, you should probably sign this.

Ablow decided to kick his transphobic hatefulness up a notch—I say this by way of warning, for those who follow the link back to the source.

(via shortformblog)

These calls for strong female characters start to run into trouble with trans women, nonwhite women, and women of colour in pop culture. Because women in all three of these categories are automatically expected to be strong. It is, in fact, part of their characterisation. Trans women are frequently framed as secret men (ah!) and thus can be expected to display physical strength and emotional toughness, because it’s part of the game the creator wants to play with you. These women aren’t ‘real women,’ because they’re strong. Those masculine traits aren’t empowering, in this case, aren’t an affirmation that girls can do anything. Just the opposite. They are dehumanising and violent. They are a reminder to viewers that trans women are not real because they are really, at heart, masculine. Yet, to depict them as emotionally vulnerable, even fragile, is to play into other stereotypes about women, leaving them in a double bind; they cannot be strong, they cannot be weak. They cannot exist.

Women of colour and nonwhite women have also been subjected to the physically strong, solemn or stoic archetype since time immemorial. When pop culture bothers to include them at all, they are often heavily masculinised. Loud. Oversexed. Spicy. Overwhelming in their physicality. Or, on the flip side of things, especially for Asian women, meek and submissive; objects of sexual fetish. Bodies inherently charged with sexuality that are treated as objects in pop culture narratives. Do we need more ‘strong female characters’ when it comes to women of colour, in a media that repeatedly reiterates stereotypes about stoic, unemotional, physically strong Black women, for example?

What do you mean when you say you want strong female characters? s.e smith, for Tiger Beatdown.

The feminist movement does not believe I am a human being. It dehumanises me. It uses my body and my lived experiences for its own ends and throws me away when it’s done. I am something disposable; I am the sacrificial planking on the hull of the feminist movement. It took me a long time to learn that I was being left out for the sea worms to eat, not actually playing an integral role in the movement, to learn that, fundamentally, many people believed that ‘my issues’ were not feminist.

My ‘issues’ being things like the rape of people in institutions, the fact that the average transgender person can expect to live for 23 years, forcible institutionalisation of people whom society doesn’t want to look at, ridiculously high domestic violence and sexual assault rates for transgender people and people with disabilities. The widening pay gap between white women and women of colour, the fact that the median net worth for Black women is $5. The fact that fat patients die without treatment due to fat hatred in the medical community. The fact that industrial pollution disproportionately impacts communities of colour, that class mobility is at an all time low, that the rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer, that protections for worker safety are steadily being eroded, that unions are under attack in the United States.

These barely scratch the surface of ‘my issues.’ Because I believe that no human is free until all humans are free, no human is equal until all humans are equal, no gains for one group at the cost of another are acceptable. I believe in social justice, in liberty for all. These are my issues. And many people who identify themselves as feminists tell me the issues need to wait. They pay lip service to them until something more important comes along and then it becomes all-consuming. They repeat the same mistakes make by older generations and appear surprised at the inevitable outcome.

s.e. smith, Why I’m Leaving Feminism.

Source: meloukhia.net

where nothing ever burns: On The Argument That Trans Women Are Triggering

thepeacockangel:

This was written by someone I really respect, and I think it’s a fantastic fucking article on the importance of the inclusion of trans women in women’s only spaces:

When people use the old “trans women can’t be in women’s space because they are triggering” argument I just…

Great post.

(via alliterate-deactivated20120901)

Source: trigger-warning.blogspot.com