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No, trans folk are not freaks
Pointing out freaks is a right-wing pass time, much like kick the immigrant and idly drawing swastikas on cover of school textbooks. You know the form, they all want everyone to be identikit, conservative look-a-likes that Owen Jones can then go an interview to show how absurd they actually are. Yet, amid the freak bating, they forget that it is the differences in life that make society richer, and demanding ideological purity is, frankly, boring.
Trans people have always been caught in the conservative cross-fire, the current 2020s iteration made all the more potent by social media. Trans people are not freaks, not the village clowns, and certainly not the bogey folk that the right wants to portray us as. Attacks against trans folk range from crude stereotyping of men in dresses through to the pernicious assumption that biology is the root of all human destiny. If someone shouts freak at a trans woman then they are essentially imposing a very narrow view of womanhood on society. They want all women to fit their definition and ideals of womanhood. Same for trans men who are attacked for not being walking testosterone personified. We are freaks because we atomise their assumptions, and their first weapon of choice is degradation of the soul.
It is a herd mentality that leads to dogpiles, often by folk who have no idea about the lives trans folk lead. For all the…
