I pointed out that a number of transgender activists are unhappy with the video. They feel it belittles the difficulties faced by transgenders in our society. By saying that she would change genders for a pay increase, she essentially negates the anguish most transgenders deal with over their gender identity, and whether to alter it. That was clearly not Silverman’s intent. Her intent was to use an edgy but humorous approach to talk about the inequities in wages between men and women.
There were several people who weighed in, most of whom largely dismissed the objections of the transgender activists. There is a contingent of radical ‘feminists’ who totally deny the femaleness of MTF transgenders. They want events and facilities which exclude transgenders. They say that MTF transgenders have benefitted from the patriarchal nature of society and cannot understand what ‘real women’ have experienced. Perhaps a quiet sharing of experiences between the cisgender and transgender women would help, though that becomes difficult when these radical feminists feel the need to completely exclude transgender women from even being considered women.
One person spoke of being in a locker room setting and seeing a pre-op transwoman there. She was disturbed when the person disrobed and she saw a penis in the women’s locker room. I understand her concern. Women have been and continue to be the victims of sexual harassment and violence, nearly always perpetrated by men. In that instance, I’d think some other sort of accommodation should have been made. It is one thing to share a restroom, where the individuals are going into stalls which they may lock. An open locker room with naked people is a bit different. At the same time, the transwoman should not be compelled to go to the men’s locker room. She would certainly have been subject to sexual harassment there, at the very least. I’d hope that post-surgical MTF transgenders would not be considered an issue by all but a tiny minority of cisgender women.
Some had the typical anti-transgender excuses of being afraid of sexual assault if MTF transgenders are allowed in women’s restrooms and such. Someone brought up one case of a male sexual predator who claimed to be transgender in order to prey on women. There might be a very few such cases, but I suspect they are unusual. Male sexual predators are not going to want to dress and appear female, with perhaps rare exceptions, even in order to prey on women. Being a sexual predator is less about the sex itself than about a feeling of power and control, which one assumes they lose some measure of by dressing in traditional women’s attire. Beyond which, the vast majority of transgender people suffer a level of sexual harassment that exceeds even what the average woman is subject to.
The overall point of Silverman’s video was that women continue to be paid less than men for the same work, in most instances. Some male activists try to claim that is only because of the types of work that women more typically do, or that it is because they take maternity leaves and such. There was a study of individual occupations that showed even within a specific occupation, for most of them, women were paid less. Out of more than one hundred occupations, there were six where women were paid very slightly more. For those few, the difference was 5% or less, as I recall, while in some of the others, women were paid as little at 60% of what the men made, for the exact same work. I applaud Silverman’s effort to use pointed comedy to bring the discussion back into the light. It is a real problem, much as some might want to dismiss it.
Some of the radical feminists said the issue was only about women – ‘real’ women – not transgenders, and to even mention transgenders was misogynistic. The fact is that transgenders, whether MTF or FTM are more likely to be unemployed than cisgender men or women. They are more likely to be harassed and discriminated against, and are far more likely to attempt or commit suicide. The MTF transgender women are likely to be paid more comparable to cisgender women. The FTM transgender men are only likely to be paid comparably to men so long as no one knows they are transgender. As an aside, a recent article said that the highest paid female CEO in the country was a MTF transgender. I suspect her overall pay level was set before she transitioned, though it was not so stated. Men who transition to female do not see their pay cut, (assuming they don’t lose their job altogether) but do tend to see their raises decrease, which tends to move them closer to female pay levels as time passes. The problems are real and need to be seriously addressed.
What was bothersome was that some of the women had a genuine animosity towards even mentioning that transgender people suffer discrimination, or that they might be offended at such a glib use of transgender surgery in Silverman’s comic skit. To these women it was all about the indignities that ‘real’ women suffer, and they dismissed any indignities or insults suffered by transgender individuals.
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