Posting anti-trans stickers is an act of bullying done by people who are cowards. Those stickers should be pulled off and thrown in the trash – where they belong!
My husband and I were walking home from the grocery store, carrying canvas bags with a small amount of things we needed. I had just gotten my flu shot – something my immune system is usually not strong enough for. This year, however, my health practitioner determined that I was strong enough to get one.
As we were walking home I was mindful of potential symptoms that a flu shot could cause. I was wearing a mask from the moment I left my house. It was one way to prevent catching a virus that my immune system maybe wasn’t ready to fight.
We walked most of the way home, when I saw it. Over there, on a metal post, was an anti-trans sticker. It said the same nonsense that one would typically see from those who call themselves “gender critical” (and the rest of us call TERFS). The only purpose of those kinds of stickers is to harass and bully trans women.
“Oh, no!” I said as I stopped walking. This alarmed my husband, who must have thought I was experiencing side effects from the flu shot. After assuring him I was fine, I clarified that someone posted an anti-trans sticker on that pole. Above it, someone else had scrawled, in black marker “THIS IS BULLSHIT”, with an arrow pointing towards the sticker. Some of the letters had washed away, likely from the recent rain, but it was still legible.
I’ve never been a fan of bullies, especially cowardly ones who anonymously post something knowing full well that their ugly words are harmful. That’s the goal of bullies – they want to hurt people who are different from them. After posting the sticker, the bully ran away, terrified to face the consequences of their actions.
One would expect that a group of “mean girls” who seem to be obsessed with their definition of a woman would have more of an interest in how dictionaries define other words.
Here’s a definition from The Free Dictionary that they could learn something from:
punch down (slang): To make jokes at the expense of a person or group that is in a position of social, political, or economic weakness relative to oneself.
TERFS, and people who call themselves “gender critical” are bullies. They are typically white women who have more money than most (especially the one who used to write children’s books). These women have convinced themselves that the existence of trans women magically takes away their rights as women. I’m going to quote the person who used a marker on the post above the anti-trans sticker I found: “THIS IS BULLSHIT!”
They think they are being marginalized, but that’s not so. Marginalized people don’t end up on the BBC, or in opinion pieces in The Guardian, or on the right-wing extremist televised “news”, where they spew anti-trans hatred in the hopes of getting more attention focused on themselves. Personally, I find their “poor me” cries to be disingenuous.
Lambda Legal provided some real information on a post on their website about transgender rights:
Transgender people suffer persistent inequalities in aspects of life that intersect with all Lambda Legal’s issue area priorities. Transgender people experience rampant workplace discrimination, may be met with challenges to their parental relationships, lack sufficient access to quality healthcare free from discrimination and face difficulties in obtaining appropriate name and gender designations on their identity documents. Lambda Legal expands and defends protections for transgender people under federal, state and local laws and other policies.
Lambda Legal
Human Rights Campaign (HRC) reported that in 2021, at least 48 transgender or gender non-conforming people were fatally shot or killed by other violent means. Sometimes these stories are misreported (by using the person’s “deadname” instead of their chosen name). According to the Human Rights Campaign, the majority of these people were Black and Latinx transgender women.
It took me about two seconds to use my fingernail to rip the anti-trans sticker off the pole. I immediately crumbled it up and looked around for a trash can. There wasn’t one nearby, so I put in in the pocket of my hoodie and carried it away until I was able to toss the sticker in the trash where it belonged.
Anti-Trans Stickers Belong in the Trash is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites.
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