This isn't even just a WTF. This is an "Are you fucking kidding me?" This is a "What the flying fluffy fuck on a flaming stack of fuck?"
Via Gudbuytjane on Feministing Community, I found out today about a site called Tranny Alert, a site which collects and publishes member-submitted photos of drag queens and women suspected to be trans. They encourage their members: "Remember, if you spot a tranny: snap your fingers, snap a pic, and e-mail those photos to: mayday@tranny-alert.com !"
Because, you know, it's totally not dangerous to be outed as a transwoman. Just ask Angie Zapata (beaten to death by her boyfriend, who later called her "it" in statements from jail), or Duanna Johnson (discovered shot in Memphis a few weeks after suing the Memphis police department for the abuse she suffered at their hands), or Gwen Araujo (beaten and strangled at the age of 17 after some male classmates discovered she still had male genitalia), or any of the other 350 trans people on the Remembering Our Dead list, all of whom were murdered for daring to live as the gender they were and not the sex they were born (and the many more who have died in such a manner but are not on the list).
Tranny Alert claims to be "admiring" the transwomen it outs, of course. Their disclaimer reads: This site is in no way meant to disparage or belittle any member of the LGBT community. We here at Tranny Alert are simply admirers of the bravery and uniqueness of the entire trans-community. While there is a comedic element to our site, under no circumstance do we condone any mistreatment of any member of the LGBT community and support full and equal rights for all. For more information please visit the National Center for Transgender Equality at http://www.nctequality.org/.
You know what? The folks at Operation Rescue and other rabid anti-choice organizations were only "providing information" on abortion providers, and as soon as Dr. Tiller was murdered, they piled over each other to proclaim their innocence and insist that they would never condone such violence, never! But they provided the rhetoric, and the information, and their actions helped a man kill. And in a world where "trans panic" is still considered a viable defense strategy when a cis man kills a trans woman, in a world where only about half of U.S. states have hate-crimes legislation or non-discrimination statutes that include protection for gender identity, in a world where politicians are perfectly comfortable painting a trans-inclusive federal hate crimes act as "pedophile's rights", taking and posting photos of women someone thinks are trans is equivalent to painting a target on their backs, whether they're actually trans or not.
To the sick fucks behind TrannyAlert: trans women's lives are not a joke. They are not props for your website, toys for your fetish. Your casual and continual use of the offensive term "tranny" dehumanizes the women you claim to admire. Even if we take your disclaimer at face value and assume that you really do "admire" trans women, that you would never harm one or advocate that someone else do so, we live in a world where there are all too many who would. Stop outing these women. Stop endangering their lives. They deserve better.
