Personally, I think EVERYONE should know how to defend themselves, however, if you know you are going to be put in a position where it is more likely to have something happen, than they should take any and all precautions that could protect them.
I'm not saying it's right that it happens, but it does happen, so why wouldn't you want to do everything you can to make sure you will be okay?
I certainly didn't say that I don't want to be capable of physically defending myself if I am put in a situation where that is necessary. However, that's not going to stop me from also doing everything I can to encourage society to change so I and all the other people like me are not subject to having to defend ourselves from violence in the first place.
As for classes being full of violent bigots, that's a stereotype. First, not everyone in martial arts are violent bigots. You're sitting here saying people should educate themselves and you say something like that?
Second, there are places that offer lessons to women or men or any other group of people that might like to take the class in a safe environment. Not to mention you could find private lessons. And also, they teach how to disarm a person, as well.
That isn't what I said at all. I wasn't at any time referring to self defense
classes. I said that martial arts (skills) aren't/isn't going to be all that helpful when you're (out in public, getting attacked) surrounded by a group of possibly armed violent bigots.
I'm quite short and not athletic by any means. Certainly it would be nice to learn some methods to be able to defend myself and I'm not averse to doing so, however it's not realistic to expect that I should be able to take out a group of attackers on my own, unarmed, as one person. No amount of self defense or martial arts classes are going to bring me to such immense skill that I will be able to emulate an action movie hero in defending myself.
Racism is just as much an issue, IMO. There are still racist people out there, the KKK is still around, so I'm not sure why you are thinking that it
wouldn't be an issue if it was about race.
That again isn't what I said. Of course racism is still very much an issue.
What I wrote was: "I really don't think this would even be a matter of discussion if the subject at hand was, as one example, racism."
In other words, I don't think that telling -insert group of discriminated-against people here- that what they go through is no more important than what anyone else does, and therefore that no special effort should be made to make society more tolerant of them, would be a matter of discussion if the discriminated-against group at hand were ethnic minorities being subject to racism. I don't think anyone would be as eager to say that victims of racism should just toughen up and ignore harassment. We, as a society, know better now.
Yes, there was the civil rights movement and all that, but that took so many years and a war and a hell of a lot to make it happen. I'm not saying that people shouldn't support the LGBT community and their rights. I have friends in that community and yes, that includes transgender people. But even should it come that they get the same rights as people of a different race, that doesn't mean it will be better when it comes to violence and hate crimes.
I was referring to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. A lot of positive change was made in a relatively short amount of time. Life certainly was no cakewalk immediately after rights were won on paper, however it set in motion a drastic overhaul of how society perceived and treated ethnic minorities.
I also mentioned specifically gay rights, which is a great example of how things DO change. Life IS significantly better for openly gay people today than it was even just a few years ago. Change in society's perceptions and treatment of gay people has been so rapid and extreme in such a relatively short period of time that it's jawdropping in the best possible way.
Of course discrimination still exists and changes of these nature are gradual, but that just makes it all the more worth fighting for. And these changes certainly didn't come about from people being quiet on the matter and saying nothing when others spread harmful attitudes that would have brought us toward the other direction.
No, it's not too much to ask, but it's not entirely realistic either. Yes, some people will come around and see it, but those that commit the hate crimes and target people in the LBGT community are very unlikely to change.
The outlook for LGBT rights certainly doesn't seem so grim to me. There are so many examples of positive change taking place on this front that I couldn't even begin to cover them all. Most of these changes lately are centered specifically upon homosexual matters, however rights for and positive attitudes toward transgender people are growing as well.
As for who is viewing the thread, it could have just as much to do with the controversy of the topic and the drama it often brings with it. Yes, they are reading it, yes, they may feel compassion and support you, but it could also easily be that they view it as a train wreck. Something they don't really want to see, but they can't look away. I am NOT calling you or this thread a train wreck, btw.
Even if 99% of the people who viewed this thread did so because they were expecting to be entertained by a trainwreck, the 1% who may have decided to do what they can to make the world a better place for trans people as a result of reading it makes everything I wrote well worth it for me.
I will end this post by mentioning someone who is very inspiring to me, a Tokyo municipal official named Aya Kamikawa. She is the first and for now the only transgendered person to either seek or win an elected office in Japan.
It took a lot of fighting to win her place there, but she was able to demolish the initial negative reaction to her election campaign and got voters to warm up to her.
Within a couple years of her election, hundreds of transgendered Japanese people were able to change their gender and name on official documents for the first time, due to a change in law allowing them to do so. Aya was among them.
In 2003, on the subject of her first election, she is quoted as saying:
"As long as we keep silent, nothing is going to change," she said. "We need the courage to make a society which respects diversity."
