Of course, yet another discussion of “tranny” gets thrown in the comments to that thread. Again, the huge key with this word… or with any word, is IMO only the community which is impacted by hate speech gets to do the reclamation. Despite the very vague claims of one of the posters (I had an FTM friend who was beat up and they called him ‘tranny’) that term just ISN’T used against transmen or genderqueer people with any kind of regularity. It basically means man in a dress. Yet they are primarily the ones attempting to reclaim it (along with people involved in drag who live in their birth sex identities most of the time). It continues to be used a great deal by born-female-bodied gender activists as though they had a right to reclaim it. And whenever I’ve brought up “well, just try Googling ‘tranny’ and see what comes up and who they’re objectifying/ridiculing with the term” there’s this attitude of ‘lighten up, it’s just a word, words don’t own you.’ Spoken like someone who has the privilege of not being ridiculed by that specific term and doesn’t have the empathy to understand what it means. Not to mention the still huge number of gay men who apply “tranny” and “fierce” to every transwoman as though we’re supposed to be complimented they think drag queens and us are one in the same.
While I certainly see proper places for reclaimed speech (especially in humor by the group oppressed by it), the reality is, I don’t know of any hate term which, when used within a context of hate, doesn’t still retain its power, anger and repression.
Of course, yet another discussion of “tranny” gets thrown in the comments to that thread. Again, the huge key with this word… or with any word, is IMO only the community which is impacted by hate speech gets to do the reclamation. Despite the very vague claims of one of the posters (I had an FTM friend who was beat up and they called him ‘tranny’) that term just ISN’T used against transmen or genderqueer people with any kind of regularity. It basically means man in a dress. Yet they are primarily the ones attempting to reclaim it (along with people involved in drag who live in their birth sex identities most of the time). It continues to be used a great deal by born-female-bodied gender activists as though they had a right to reclaim it. And whenever I’ve brought up “well, just try Googling ‘tranny’ and see what comes up and who they’re objectifying/ridiculing with the term” there’s this attitude of ‘lighten up, it’s just a word, words don’t own you.’ Spoken like someone who has the privilege of not being ridiculed by that specific term and doesn’t have the empathy to understand what it means. Not to mention the still huge number of gay men who apply “tranny” and “fierce” to every transwoman as though we’re supposed to be complimented they think drag queens and us are one in the same.
While I certainly see proper places for reclaimed speech (especially in humor by the group oppressed by it), the reality is, I don’t know of any hate term which, when used within a context of hate, doesn’t still retain its power, anger and repression.