When someone in a gender or sexual minority is faced with physical abuse, street harassment or more blatantly unethical slurs (e.g. f*ggot, tr*nny), it is quite clear that they are suffering from homo or transphobia. However, there are points in our daily lives when we might, if subconsciously, allow trans or homophobic comments slip under the rug. When does this occur? Why do we sometimes miss it?
Here is a casual comment I heard that was discriminative towards the trans community: I was recently at a friend’s house, and within 5 minutes of turning on the first thing that was on TV, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ to be specific, there was a transphobic comment. Two CIS men in their workplace were discussing a group of women models who were currently down the corridor, and one of them joked “I always like to guess which one of them used to be a man”. This is ironic, because the character who said this was played by Neil Patrick Harris, who is a gay man. The thought that he would brush off a comment made to demean and undermine a member of his own community is shocking, right? Well, only if you think about it hard enough…
There are many slurs towards people in the LGBTQ community that are even integrated into ordinary speech, too. Particularly among men, young men, to be specific, a common adjective is to call something someone else does/likes ‘gay’ – and it definitely isn’t in reference to the old, rarely-used term for ‘happy’ or ‘joyful’. This is usually used to suggest that the subject of the conversation, an activity, action or a form of entertainment, is not masculine, and is therefore ‘gay’. The word, in this context, is almost always used as an insult outside of the gay community. To call anything one subjectively thinks of as not masculine and to therefore pronounce it ‘gay’ is to A) make a sweeping generalisation of all LGBTQ people, and to assume no LGBTQ person can be masculine (particularly gay men, as it is typically heterosexual men who use this term with regard to other men). B), it automatically labels being LGBTQ as being negative and less impressive or desirable (explore the Twitter hashtag ‘#MasculinitySoFragile’ for more context on these views…).
So, why would people allow comments like this to slide? Why would people pass them off as normal or not see them as a problem?
First, because LGBTQ issues are constantly pushed to the backburner. There seems to be more media coverage and therefore more discussion about misogynistic and racial issues, so people automatically, mostly without even realising it, consider those matters more pressing. While the afore-mentioned issues are endlessly important and they will always deserve as much coverage as they receive and beyond, people often tag LGBTQ rights and problems onto the end of things, perhaps to tick a box or merely so they won’t forget about it. In fact, in most places, more often than not they aren’t included at all. Despite this, if you look in the right places (which I personally do) there are hundreds of sites and social media accounts dedicated to reporting on LGBTQ news. Even searching those two words will bring you instant results. So, LGBTQ issues are not covered as much as others and therefore not attended to as much, but that does not mean problems for the LGBTQ community are not occurring frequently and in large quantities, like issues concerning race and misogyny.
On top of this, it isn’t necessarily an outright act of hatred. If a person shouts at someone in a public place or writes a hate message online, an alarm immediately goes off in everyone’s heads saying ‘Discrimination! Homophobia! Transphobia!’ In contrast, a passing comment might not register in someone’s mind because it is subtle, or the fact that it is so dissolved in society. Another example of this would be in the film ‘Zoolander 2’, where a character who was a model was asked ‘are you a male model or a female model?’ and then, ‘I think he’s asking, do you have a hot dog or a bun?’, evidently subtext for genitals. Things might not always sound transphobic and could come across as a genuine question, but comments referring to not being able to tell someone’s gender or genitals are always disrespectful. You can never tell if someone is or isn’t trans, because there isn’t a criteria to fill, and to question whether someone is trans or not based on their appearance (in this case, the people asking the questions thought the person looked biologically like a male but possessed feminine qualities in voluntary appearance) is to be extremely rude.
Finally, some hold the attitude, ‘gay people can say it, so surely I can say it’. The LGBTQ community, similar to other communities, have re-owned several slurs that people use for them in the past few years. An LGBTQ person can label themselves objectively as ‘queer’, because it has become another umbrella term for LGBTQ that can be used within the community without negative connotations (although not everyone in the community is comfortable with using it for themselves). However, this is not an excuse for a heterosexual person to use the word ‘queer’ as a judgemental term, insult or slur. The list of previous slurs goes on. Do LGBTQ people find it acceptable to call themselves and others within their community some previous slurs? Yes. Does that mean heterosexual people can still get away with using them in the way they used to/some still do, under any circumstance, even if it’s casual or in passing? No.
The problem obviously won’t disappear overnight, but if you do hear a casual discriminative form of speech regarding trans or gay people, don’t hesitate to speak up. If one person calling someone out on one thing, it might not make a significant difference, but if we all push together, it can.
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