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Here’s what it comes down to: telling a six-year old transgender girl that as she grows up she would would naturally make other girls uncomfortable (or that she would even represent a “threat“) because of her genitalia is actually somewhat comparable to telling a nine-year old cisgender girl that she is a “c*nt.”

In the latter case, society is attempting to teach a young woman to believe, “you are inherently to be devalued as a human being because of your genitalia, and your body has only sexual value. We have set your lot in life before you, and you are always to be victimized.”

Meanwhile, in the former case a young woman is also cruelly being taught, “You are inherently an aggressor because of your genitalia. Because of your body configuration itself, you can’t help yourself but subjugate someone or make them feel uncomfortable.”

One is teaching patriarchy from a victim-coercive perspective, the other teaches patriarchy from an oppressor-coercive perspective. They are two sides of the same coin, a misogynistic narrative that ultimately teaches us to reduce human beings to their body parts one way or the other.

See here for another compelling perspective from a different angle.

Update: See here for another great perspective that also focuses on the implicit sexualizing of children in the arguments against forcing this young woman out of the girl’s bathroom.

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Follow-up comment: I should have made acknowledgment in my comments above that there were very apparent racialized dynamics involved in how Hollywood and the media interacted with the nine-year old girl mentioned above at the Oscars.  It is difficult to imagine that such a horrific comment would ever be made about a nine-year old white girl, and I have no doubt that racism played a role, even if race was not explicitly mentioned in the Onion’s tweet itself.  (The tweet was almost certainly made in the context of or in response to the racialized interactions that others were already having with this young lady in the media).

Thanks to those who have pointed this oversight out to me (in the comments section below and elsewhere), as I should have included a comment to this effect from the beginning.

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