Transphobia Persists

Casual transphobia gets tiring, but you never get used to it. In Starshine Roshell’s second article about transgender people within the past year, I was not reassured. I was hoping that her first article bashing they/them pronouns (which I, as an agender person, use) was just a bad first impression that I could put behind me. After this second article came out, I am truly sad to say that I was wrong.

Specifically, Starshine never refers to a transgender person correctly or respectfully even once. One should not say “when he was a she” or similar, quite simply because it doesn’t work like that. Instead, it is respectful to say “before he came out as a trans man” or similar. For instance, I wasn’t once my assigned-at-birth gender. I always have been and always will be agender — which means I don’t identify with any gender, or am genderless — but it took me some time to realize that.

I was also extremely upset that Starshine used my friend’s birthname in the article — this is referred to as deadnaming and is one of the most disrespectful things someone can do to a transgender person without physically harming them.

The bottom line is that there are now “more” transgender teens (read: out transgender teens) because we now have the vocabulary to describe our identities, and we’re simply tired of hiding. Next time you decide to publish an article about transgender people, maybe you should have a trans person who knows what they’re talking about write it.