Reply To: General Discussion of Transgender Issues

[Anonymous]

Has anybody ever noticed that the word Transphobia (and its variants) seems kind of incorrectly named? What I mean is that normally when a word ends in “phobia,” it means “fear of,” not hatred of or looking down on or what have you (Arachnophobia = fear of spiders, Claustrophobia = fear of small places, etc.). I came to realize this when I was trying to do some research on people who don’t hate or disapprove of trans people, but they are perhaps somehow just uncomfortable with trans people or even just the idea of people being or becoming trans. I started thinking along the lines of, “Maybe I can find some interesting information or theories on ‘Transphobia’ if I search for it. Of course, everything that came up was simply the pointing out evidence of people being outright prejudiced towards trans people.

It seems like there is no “official” word that actually represents the kind of thing I was thinking about. Of course, its easy for one to form some theories: People who are transphobic were raised with prejudiced views built into them by their transphobic parents. Or, People very often feel uncomfortable with new ideas that really challenge their worldview (like the idea that there are men, and women, and not a whole lot in-between.) I would really like to see articles on this kind of thing, but if they even exist they seem to be extremely elusive.

I think it would be useful for people to encourage critical analysis about how and why people develop transphobia in any sense of the word, in order to better help people rid themselves of it, or even just become aware that they are transphobic in the first place (and that its not good to be transphobic).