Gender Issues Involving Gender Inequality

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When the subject of gender issues is brought up, people generally split into two sides to argue about either women or men and the inequalities they face. While these arguments are all perfectly valid, a lot is left out that most people wouldn’t notice. Many of the issues that are rarely discussed involve people who lie outside the binary labels of ‘male’ and ‘female’. These people have many issues involving gender inequality, but the only time they’re ever discussed is when something tragic happens to them. As Sydette Harry, a writer, puts it, “I’d like to wake up one morning see a picture of a beautiful black trans woman without a murder headline next to it” (Devereaux). Men and women’s failures, issues, and successes within the realm of gender are broadcasted daily, but where is everyone else? These people shouldn’t have to be murdered in order for their voices to be heard. Transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary individuals are victims to issues and inequalities that are real, prominent, and just as important as those of binary genders.
Transgender women face just as much misogyny as cisgendered women, and often times more. “The worst insult for a boy is that he acts ‘like a girl.’ In a transmisogynistic society, being trans is punished and being feminine is punished, but nothing is punished more than the femininity of people who are not ‘supposed’ to be women,” concurs Max Thornton, a journalist at Advocate (Thornton). This is just one example of the misogyny and stereotyping that trans women face on a daily basis. People’s ideals of hypermasculinity nowadays creates even more of a stigma against these women than there might be otherwise. Even more so than there is for trans men, as Kortney Ziegler, another jou...

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...the justification that learning someone’s trans identity is so shocking that killing them is an understandable response” (Thornton). Trans panic is a legal excuse for murdering someone trans that can be used in 49 states. Not only is this inhumane, but it seems to go directly against the constitution that those 49 states are obligated to abide by. With these kinds of oppression still common in 2015, things aren’t looking good for the ‘land of the free.’ However, this can still change. Transmisogyny is one of many cases in which one person can change the world, because education and open dialogue are misogyny’s kryptonite. The only thing keeping these issues present is stigma, but get rid of stigma and the issues suddenly don’t seem so big. Everyone has the power to change all of the issues that trans men and women and nonbinary individuals face, so why not try?

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