LETTER- Don't dehumanize transgenders

Tuesday, November 20, was Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day "set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice." The website rememberingourdead.org/day/what.html defines transgender as "a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant" individual.

 It's depressing that the Hook ran Cynthia Schroeder's interview in an article titled "Holiday howlers: The most blunderful time of the year" [November 29] the same week as the Transgender Day of Remembrance. 

I don't even get how this is a story. Let's break it down: A man wanted to try on women's clothing. The store owner let him. An unrelated woman then backed into the store owner's car. Since then, the store owner has decided men should not cross-dress. If this woman wants to exclude a group of people from her private business, fine, but it's ridiculous for the Hook to publish this as a humorous story that condones her bigotry.

The Hook dehumanizes cross-dressers and other transgender individuals with this story by making them a punch line in a joke and celebrating their exclusion from a business. It's exactly this kind of attitude that protects members of our society who commit violent acts against

transgender people merely because they do not conform to our notions of what it means to be a man or a woman.

  Rachel Vogus
Charlottesville

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