Transphobia costs lives, not just feelings
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
Transphobia is just offensive, not dangerous. People might find hostile attitudes hurtful, but hurt feelings are not a public health crisis. The real harm, if there is any, is being exaggerated for political effect.
What I was saying there is something I have watched play out in real lives, not in statistics on a page. The rates of self-harm and suicide among trans people in this country are not a talking point: they are a consequence, and they are rising. When someone is told, repeatedly and publicly, that their identity is a delusion or a danger, that message lands somewhere. It lands in the body. Attitudes are not abstract. They shape what a trans person hears from their family, their school, their doctor, their government, and eventually from the voice inside their own head. That is not hurt feelings. That is a life at risk.
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