Transphobia, Clothes, Gender, Media, and the Rest of It

A friend asked a question on my wall on FB, and I confess, I was pretty enamored of my answer. So much so that I am reposting it here, with some edits and a lot of additions. What can I say--not humble in this case, but very committed! Your comments extremely invited.

Josh asked: "OK, I admit it. I can be dense sometimes. But I have friends who are less so. Can you explain to me how this ad was offensive to the transgendered? I mean, its clearly a parody of the T-Mobile ad, and its a picture of a guy in a dress, not a picture of a woman who used to be a man or vice versa. I just don't get it. Help?"

He's referring to this link:

http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/20110510/sprint-funded-ad-pulled-after-complaints-from-transgender-community/?mod=ATD_rss

My edited and added-to reply:

OK, so let me take a brief crack at this...I think it's important to recognize that "transgender" is not just the new word for "transsexual"--i.e. I used to be a man, now I'm a woman, or vice versa. The category of people who identify as "transgender" (or "trans" for short), includes people who now present with a different gender identity than that assigned at birth (whether they have had surgery and/or take hormones or not), as well as people who identify as somewhere on the gender spectrum besides the binary choices of male and female, and off that spectrum entirely--some of whom identify with the label "genderqueer".

In short, the category of people who identify as "transgender" stand collectively as a testament to the idea that there is not an inevitable linkage (only a cultural one, and often an oppressive one at that) between one's biological characteristics (outer or inner) and all the things we think of as going along with boy and girl, man and woman. What that means in this context is that riffing off the idea of "how funny is it for a man to be wearing a dress!" reflects a worldview in which it is laughable and mockable for people to dress how they want to dress and not the way that the societal gender police think they should dress. This is an attitude that has gotten people beaten and killed (the Stonewall Riots emerged in a context in which it was illegal in NYC for a person to go out in public wearing less than 3 obvious garments associated with their biological sex. Seriously.) and so transgender people and their allies are understandably sensitive about it.

No, I don't think this is the most egregous examples of transphobia in the world, but one of my core standard check thought questions is: Your own child is trans. You want them to feel safe in the world. Does this make it harder for them to feel that way? I think the answer is pretty clear. In fact, I'll go a step further: It doesn't make me feel safe for my kids who I have no reason to think are trans, to have them grow up in a world where people think it is just so ha-ha funny for a man to wear a dress.

There are some very real ways in which men suffer more than woman from sexism, and one is the incredible constraints on boys and men from early on in how they are supposed to act and what they can wear, which they deviate from at their peril. E, my 8-year-old daughter, can wear 95-plus% of the same clothes that her brother wears without anyone batting an eye--at most, people would think of her as sporty or a tomboy, like many girls they know. But if M, her twin brother, were to want to wear a pretty dress sometimes besides dress up? He would not only be the instant victim of homophobia and transphobia--if he did so, especially as a teenager or adult male, he could, literally, get himself killed.

It's not that I find it surprising that people would find it strange for a man to wear a dress. I get that's where a lot of people are. And I'd be less than honest if I didn't admit that it doesn't always make me comfortable. But that, frankly, and clearly, is my problem.