Daily Caller Mocks Trans* Students
By There are some people who think that Tucker Carlson is a nice guy, one of those conservatives that aren’t fire breathing radicals. They remember when he was on MSNBC, they look at the bowties that preceded Doctor Who but not Buckaroo Banzai, and think, “he’s not so bad.” But they would be wrong, at least when it comes to his website.
The Daily Caller actually has a habit of being awful, especially to trans* people, but this is somewhat of a new (not really new) low: being awful to trans* kids. On September 11, the Douche Canoe posted an article titled, “This week in transgender high schoolers running for homecoming king, queen, whatever“, a misgendering nightmare about school districts that are giving trans* students a hard time about running for the appropriate Homecoming title.
Other than a fairly consistent misgendering, Education Editor Eric Owens also makes a point of arguing that trans* man Kasey Caron isn’t being discriminated against because he was moved to the queen ballot and, though “in some undetermined early stage of gender reassignment surgery,” “still has a vagina and thus remains legally female,” which reveals that Owens knows as much about the law as he does about education.
This is yet another in a string of anti-LGBTQ fearmongering, at the DC, including consistent support for Russia’s anti-LGBTQ law, characterizing trans* issues as a “big fuss”, and expressing outrage that some books are about lesbians.
Prepare to see more of this kind of stuff. And to help with the inevitable bad taste that it will leave in your mouth, let me end with some good news.
One of my best friends is a high school teacher who was just informed by his devoutly Christian principle that they would be sure to be inclusive of the school’s trans* students. No word on Homecoming since it hasn’t come up, but at the very least the color-coordinated-by-gender graduation gowns will be given to the students based on their preferred gender, so trans* students will be able to wear the color that they are comfortable with. At least that’s good news.
I keep hoping that the reason that we are hearing so many stories about people saying/doing awful things directed at the trans* community is because decent people are not tolerating it anymore. They are in the news now not because this in new, but because people are outraged and shocked be the horrible behavior.