I am a trans woman – but I think this woke world has gone too far

Trans people have lost the plot. Every day, an increasing amount of absurdity floods in as they do more harm than good. They scream for acceptance without realizing that the ones damaging their image aren't bigots, but themselves.

From anger directed at celebrities for the rational belief that parents shouldn't decide whether their three-year-old is trans, to a culture of outrage that freaks out at the most minor of offenses, transgender activists have become detrimental to my, and others', very existence.

Not helping matters is the fact that these people are laying bombs within our language in the hope they trigger, so they themselves can become triggered. Saying 'transgendered' instead of 'transgender' can see you labeled as transphobic, as can saying 'transwomen' instead of 'trans (notice the space) women.' This is a linguistic minefield with the sole intent of catching people off guard. And those who are caught in its blast are branded as bigots. 

This concept is nonsensical, as it's one thing to correct someone who made a grammatical mistake, but another thing altogether to get outright offended when someone makes a simple error, and that's what is occurring. A turn of events which only pushes people away as no one wants to associate with a group of people who become so easily upset.

Hampering things even further is the fact that the once-radical portion of the left has seemingly taken control, and now no one can speak up lest they become a target for the vitriol and abuse of which this conglomerate is composed. How do I know this? Because I'm a trans person myself, and my reward for speaking with rationality is to be labeled a 'self-loathing, bootlicking, trans-misogynistic terf.'

And if I can be called a transphobe, then your normal human being doesn't stand a chance – especially in an era when people are pushing an agenda that suggests you better suck d**k or you're a bigot.

I desperately wish I was making that last bit up.

In late August, journalist – or, let's be real – outrage merchant, Ana Valens, went on a tirade over at the Daily Dot about how it was transphobic to decline sex with a trans person on the basis that they are trans. Likewise, just last week, women's competitive cyclist Rachel McKinnon made multiple claims that are outright audacious. In one instance, she said"genital preferences are transphobic," and in another she boldly expressed that any sexual orientation other than pansexuality is immoral.

The media warned us that the recent release of 'Joker' was going to lead to an incel uprising, but I don't think they meant it quite like this.

Trans people want all the compassion and acceptance in the world, yet in many cases they're not willing to be equally as understanding. Last year, the flames of fury flared up when a woman named Kristi Hanna filed a human rights complaint against a women's shelter after she was forced to share a room with a transgender woman in Toronto.

Many people took it at face value and levied all sorts of hate at her, but the actual situation is more complex. Hanna is a rape victim, and her roommate was a pre-op trans woman who wasn't yet far enough into their transition to be passable, or even fully presentable. As was described by Ms Hanna, her roommate was male-bodied with facial and chest hair.

Parents and children take part in a LGBT pride parade after losing in the marriage equality referendum, in Kaohsiung November 25, 2018. © REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Now maybe it's because I'm a rape victim who battles my own forms of PTSD, but I too would be triggered by sharing a room with a complete stranger who looks like a man. I don't care what they identify as. In regards to Kristi Hanna, that's exactly what happened. As was reported by the National Post, the sharing of a room with someone who looked like a man caused her "stress, anxiety, rape flashbacks, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and sleep deprivation." When she reported this to the shelter staff, they offered to move her to a new room, but it lacked a door, therefore allowing no privacy, so she left the shelter altogether.

Yet to the trans community, none of that mattered, and Kristi was raked over the coals. Even I was attacked for trying to defend her. Worse still is the fact that shelters which exclude trans women are now being vandalized. Never mind that they help women who need it.

To the petulant children who make up what I call the 'pronoun police,' all they can think of is their own selfish and self-centric world views. Few in this 'community,' to which I've been forcefully tied, seem to have any basic understanding of the various reasons why our presence may be triggering to some, especially in a women's shelter that houses rape victims. It shouldn't take a big brain to see why a male-looking individual with a floppy penis may not be the best fit.

A fact of reality is that I was born a boy. Even now, post-hormone replacement therapy, I have masculine traits that will never go away. When I die, if far off into the future I'm dug up, my bones will have archeologists pegging me as male, not female.

I bring that analogy up because many trans people seem to deny they were born as the gender opposite of what they identify as. But I am not 100 percent female, and I never will be. I'll never have a period, although some smooth-brained idiots like to argue that "some women have issues that prevent them from having periods, so does that mean you're saying they're not women too?" No, that's not what that means. It means I have a d**k and no potential even exists for me to have a period. Because, unlike biological women who may have conditions that effect how their bodies work, they still have the proper bodies of the sex it happens to be. 

I don't. My chromosomes are XY, and I was born a boy. I'll never have to worry about cervical cancer, though when I'm older I will want to have my prostate checked.

None of this means trans people shouldn't be respected as the gender they present themselves as. We are anomalies in that our brains for some reason developed on a course which differs from what our chromosomes dictate.

I'm not going to call being trans a mental illness, but it is an issue that stems from the brain. Even scans of that organ reveal people like me have brains more closely resembling the gender we present ourselves to be, and due to that, I'm a proponent of supporting transitioning, but that support comes with some caveats.

I, for one, don't think trans women should be competing against cis women in competitive sports. At least, not outside of specialized leagues where everyone consents to trans women being allowed. In normal events, we are seeing trans people destroy records in track, weightlifting, and other events, and that is not fair to biological females.

I'm also opposed to letting kids take various meds. By all means, if your child is trans, it's for the best to support and love them, but growing up is a confusing time, and it's maybe not a good idea to let them begin a full-on transition.

These days it's simply too easy to get a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and I fear the repercussions. I have zero doubts in my mind that soon enough we will have teens and adults stepping forward who were convinced they were trans at a young age, only to grow up and realize they aren't. Some boys are just effeminate and some girls are just a bit masculine, but today, society is going out of its way to tell them they're trans.

A scary thought for a community that seems to already run on fear.

In 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center sent out a tweet linking an article about transgender hate murders. In a follow up tweet, they listed names of all the trans people who had been murdered that year. The placement of the names below an article about hate murders seems to imply all of the listed names were the victims of hate crimes.

As is so often the case, this isn't true. Of the names listed, three stand out. Sean Hake, Kiwi Herring, and Scout Schultz. What's important about these people is that they weren't killed for anything related to their gender identities. All three were shot by police in different states after charging at law enforcement with knives. That same year, multiple non-trans people were killed by police for the very same reason.

Yet the trans individuals' deaths are tallied and used as examples of a rising trend in the murder of transgender people – a trend that has been occurring for years. What's most disingenuous is that, in many cases, there's little to no proof that their murders are linked to their status of being trans. Some are sex workers in dangerous areas where cis women are also found murdered each year, or they're just victims of normal everyday violence.

It sucks, but a lot of people just happen to get shot in the United States, and for a myriad of reasons.

L.G.B.T. activists and their supporters rally in support of transgender people on the steps of New York City Hall, October 24, 2018 © GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP / Drew Angerer

Just this year, Claire Legato, a trans woman in Ohio, was shot dead after her mother got into an altercation with a man in their yard about an issue relating to theft. Jordan Cofer, also from Ohio, was tragically killed when a gunman went on a mass shooting in Dayton. These two deaths are included on the Human Rights Campaign's list of "violence against the transgender community."The list ends with this sentence: "HRC has been tracking reports of fatal anti-transgender violence for the past several years."

"Anti-transgender" violence. Hmm, weird, I didn't know the Dayton, Ohio gunman did all that for a single person.

Even in cases where a transgender person kills themselves, if an agenda can be pushed, this community will immediately take a still-warm corpse and bludgeon people with it.

This week, comedian and actress Daphne Dorman took her own life. She was cited by Dave Chappelle in his most recent Netflix standup as the person who "was laughing the hardest" at his trans jokes. In case you're unaware, this is the standup special that caused many in the media to cry foul and call Chapelle 'transphobic.'

Daphne, on the other hand, thought he was hilarious, and would go on to tweet in support of her friend. Her words don't matter anymore though, because now that she can't defend herself, her existence has been retconned and it is now Dave Chappelle's fault she died; a frankly just sickening and frustrating turn of events. Although it is one that makes sense when you look a bit deeper.

In 2017, at the HRC National Dinner, president Chad Griffin gave an eye-opening speech. He began by thanking Hillary Clinton who had a speaking role that year, before then repeatedly emphasizing how things for LGBT individuals were much brighter under Obama. This is important because the HRC is a major supporter of Democratic candidates and politicians.

He eventually went on to discuss 'HRC Rising,' or what he labeled as the single largest grassroots expansion in the organization's history. This was important to him, as he proceeded to say: "It's critical we organize and mobilize the 10 million-plus LGBTQ voters in this country. Which by the way, is a voting bloc that is larger than the margin of victory of every presidential election since 1984."

For a couple years now, this speech hasn't sat well with me. I look at our media landscape and watch as fearmongering rules the day. A narrative has been created which paints anyone on the right as a hateful bigot, and has gay and trans people fearful that they're going to die.

Trans lists over-conflate and simplify the reasons people are murdered. Comedians are blamed for suicides that have nothing to do with anything they've done. And anyone who so much as questions the absurdity of what's happening is torn down, and labeled every negative thing that will stick.

Why this keeps happening is clear. An environment has been created that is pushing people to conform to a particular mindset by brute-force scare tactics, and this is inevitably convincing them to vote a certain way. The left is ruling by division and fear. Browse social media and the trans-death stat is cited ad nauseam. These people legitimately believe they're going to die. All the while, the actual issues that caused those deaths aren't being discussed.

Inner city crime and prostitution are big factors, as is poor mental health. I mean, sane people don't go charging at police with knives. Yet those issues don't get blamed, nor are they being adequately discussed. Daphne Dorman, in these people's eyes, didn't join the 41 percent because she had deep-rooted issues. No, it's Chappelle's fault. It's the right's fault. It's the bigot's fault.

And as a right-leaning individual myself, who also happens to be trans, I know this to be false. I'm embraced by my community. They aren't transphobic, they don't want me dead; they just have issues with much of the same stuff I do.

A lot of trans people call me a self-loather, but I don't loathe myself, nor do I loathe the fact that I'm trans. I just loathe the community I've been forcefully grouped into, and I think it's understandable why a lot of other people do too. Trannies and their allies are now their own worst enemies, but unlike them, I refuse to shoot myself in the foot.

Sophia Narwitz is a writer & game journalist from the US.