Tranny-Alert.com, Redux

It is, apparently, the site that will not die. Remember Tranny-Alert.com, the horrifying and offensive site that advised readers, if they saw a suspected "tranny", to "snap your fingers, snap a pic, and email those photos to: mayday@tranny-alert.com!", and then posted the reader-submitted pics of women, be they transwomen, drag queens, or not-feminine-enough ciswomen, to the blog? The one we rallied against, last summer, until it shut down?

It's back.

An anonymous commenter on the original post tipped me off to the zombification of this trans-hating monstrosity, and I went to check it out. It is, for a mercy, reborn without the outing-transwomen aspect that I originally objected to in such strong terms. Now, it seems to be content with posting news and fashion items that relate in any way to transwomen or crossdressing. Which is at least an improvement.

BUT. You knew there had to be a but to this, didn't you? BUT. They are still throwing the word "tranny" around like it's going out of style (had a Freudian slip of the fingers there and wrote "stale"...) and sensationalizing transwomen as some kind of sideshow to chronicle and stare at. This new version is not so much better, as it is just less worse.

While the new T-A.com doesn't directly endanger the lives of individual transwomen with pictures and outing anymore, it still contributes to an atmosphere and a culture in which transwomen are freaks, a joke, blogged about not for any purpose of actually advancing the acceptance and de-Othering of transpeople into society, but for the amusement and shock value. They are no longer saying "Here's a transwoman! Get her!" But they are still saying "Transwomen are something to be looked out for, and laughed at." Which indirectly supports the kind of culture in which shit like the original T-A.com was possible, in which transwomen face a murder rate some six times the average and the constant dangers of trans-bashing, in which transwomen cannot just go about living their lives and not constantly being noticed, pointed out, marginalized, and Othered.

Sadly, since they've left off the most directly threatening part of their mission, it'll be harder to get it closed down again through official complaints, if it's possible at all. But my teaspoon will be in evidence nonetheless, this time taking the form of a direct email to the trans-haters in question. Maybe we can't get it taken down, but we can certainly make them feel the force of our displeasure! Who's with me?