First off, I’d like to state that I don’t condone violence, these videos truly have me conflicted. To be honest, I’m sitting at my computer right now, trying to piece together what I’m feeling so it will make sense in a blog post.
If you can’t or don’t want to watch the videos, I’ll summarize what happens. In the first video, a man is getting beat up by a trans woman. This man allegedly said “That’s a man.” While I don’t believe that woman deserved to have her identity and gender questioned and invalidated in such a way, I don’t think that man deserved to get the shit kicked out of him either. At the same time, seeing how he called her a bitch after she kicked his ass, I somehow don’t think a verbal debate or something of the like would have done much good, either. The second video is more difficult to discern what happened. There are so many people in the video and in the actual attack that it’s hard to make out what went on. In both videos, the actual events leading up to the attacks aren’t shown, so we’re basing this all on the what the posters of the videos are saying happened.
While it makes me proud to see queer and trans people standing up for themselves in such situations, (and I’m in no way saying they haven’t before) I’m also disappointed that it had to come blows. I can only speculate what was going through these people’s heads when it happened. Maybe they had a bad day, and this was just the straw that broke the camels back, but I think it’s more than likely that they were just sick of being a target for macho douchebags to use to assert their heterosexuality and masculinity. I truly hope that the actions of these individuals make people think twice before they start something like that. At the same time, I still believe that violence isn’t warranted unless it’s in self-defense.
It still boggles my mind that homophobic and transphobic attacks still take place in this day and age, but they do. Stay safe friends, and take care of one another. -Lincoln Gibbons