Trans people are hurt by being portrayed as dangerous
Dr Helen Webberley on Robby Starbuck: transition and children, Robby Starbuck
Trans people, and especially trans women, are a threat to others in shared spaces. The image that gets repeated is a predatory one: dangerous, sexually deviant, a risk to women. It is not a fringe view. It is the one that travels furthest and sticks hardest.
What I was trying to say in that moment is that there are real people on the other side of this rhetoric, and they are not the threat. They are the ones being threatened. Every time that image of the dangerous, deviant trans person gets broadcast, a real trans person somewhere hears it about themselves. They hear it from strangers, from colleagues, sometimes from their own families. The harm is not abstract. It is daily, cumulative, and it comes directly from the way trans people are portrayed in conversations exactly like that one. The transgender community does not need defending from me. They need the people doing the portraying to stop and think about who is actually being hurt.
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