However in the past few weeks, it feels as if some people now believe they’ve been given a licence to abuse, as the debate over LGBTI rights such as marriage equality and the families involved in such relationships, has hit fever pitch.
Those 12 words were said to me early last Wednesday morning. For the sake of a few minutes inconvenience while our landscaping supplies truck was safely lowering its crane, this was the nonsense that I had to deal with from a business guy who wasn’t happy with the fact that my part time boss AJ and I had been beautifying the top of the building where he pays to store his huge hulk of an SUV.
Between the F’s and the C’s I wasn’t particularly concerned, and just ignored it, while I waited to ensure that he could get past the truck safely. However when the aforementioned phrase was said by his rather loud vocal cords, a boundary was crossed. The abuse had become personalised. While I’ve got a particularly thick skin and a strong sense of self-worth to back me up, I was left feeling unsafe and scared in my workplace, purely because this man felt he could threaten me because of my appearance and identity.
Without flinching an inch, I waited the 45 seconds it takes for the delivery crane to return to the position where it was safe for me to let him proceed. But the tension, frustration and sheer annoyance that somebody thought they can throw slurs at me for no reason, stuck with me for the rest of the day. Furthermore, he mounted the curb as soon as I moved the witches hats aside, trying to intimidate me.
For many Trans people such as myself, the word “tranny” is a slur which ultimately strikes fear and intimidation into our hearts. Popularised by the pornography industry, sensationalised by parts of the media and regularly hollered in an extremely derogatory manner during hate crimes such as the assaults and murders of Transgender people, it’s a denigrating phrase which when used publicly, can make the minority that I’m a part of instantly fear that a projectile, weapon or fist is imminently coming our way. A relic of a by-gone era similar to the types of racial put-downs that many ethnic minorities around the world still face, it’s a term that I would dearly love to see consigned purely to the history books, even though as a freelance journalist I’m a dedicated defender of free speech.
Now with those thoughts in mind, I can’t help but wonder what was going through the heads of some of the people in our nation’s parliament, when they decided that it would be a good idea to green-light a debate, which would unfairly and in many ways cruelly, put the anxiety levels of people such as myself literally through the roof.
Did Malcolm Turnbull realise at the time that he was standing by the Coalition’s “election commitment” to have a plebiscite that he’d be potentially putting people like myself at physical risk, as a result of caving in to the pressure that the “No” campaigners from within both his own Cabinet and Coalition party room, were putting the government under?
Did Tony Abbott realise that while religious freedom (and freedom from religion) is important, that some people (on both sides of this totally unnecessary debate) don’t care if they hurt other people or not, as they’ve just got a mission in their lives to be nasty and that they’ll relish any excuse to engage it?
Furthermore, have some ideologues, content producers and executives within the media realised just how much hurt, self-loathing, hardship, abuse and frustration that they’ve caused amongst other things, by hyper-sensationalising people’s lives for the sake of ratings or by stating “Great CV, but we don’t feel as if our audience and newsroom is ready for a tranny yet” verbally, so that there’d be no written evidence for the anti-discrimination bodies?
Luckily for me, the guy operating the crane for our team and my boss both quickly noticed that something had happened and that I was struggling as a result. Kindness and empathy can be amazing when somebody is feeling distressed and traumatised due to something outside of their control, but they are absolutely priceless when you’ve just had an incident that has made you rationally or otherwise, ultimately fear for your life.
Whether you agree that two people of the same sex should have the same legal rights of commitment and life long partnership as their heterosexual peers or not, nobody should be made to feel unsafe within either their workplace or in any public setting, as a result of someone feeling as if they’ve got a licence to denigrate somebody else right down to their core, as a result of their physical attributes or other unchangeable characteristics. Unlike the recruitment like nature of religious proselytisation, sexuality and gender identity are two things that nobody can ever choose, even though it sure would solve some problems at times if we somehow could.
But while I’m still understandably hurt, humiliated, exhausted and extremely infuriated by what’s happened because some people (and one individual in particular) have decided to view me as something less than human, these are questions that I’d relish the opportunity to calmly and respectfully sit down with people like Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott with a beer over amongst others, because if any of us took the time to actually talk openly, honestly and without prejudice over, we’d be surprised by what we could all learn from one another.
Furthermore, as a result of my boss AJ reporting the aforementioned incident to the business guy’s workplace, calmly educating them about the traumatic significance of that slur and the business guy then acting politely and respectfully towards me upon encountering me on the street the following day, I’m also in a mood where I want to respectfully learn from what’s happened, even if others don’t.
As both my Buddhist best friend from my college days Jaie Leedham and a lovely Catholic Nun from Inverell called Judy both said upon hearing that I’d transitioned a few years ago:
“The world is full of unhappy people, so why hate upon somebody for being happy?”
Needless to say, I think that’s a question that’s worth everyone asking.