Not going to dispute a single point. Not my field of expertise by a long shot, and when you've got that one lone passionate voice vs. what's become standard practice everywhere else, one can usually guess he's howling in the woods. But he's howling in the woods in the Wall Street Journal. That's pretty much my point - when one wants to prompt culture change, rather than culture war, the sensitivities of the people who hate you count more than the people who are on your side. I think Matthew Shepard might as well have lived during the Stonewall Riots, as far as most 20somethings are concerned today. And yeah, I'm old enough to be their dad but there were no openly gay kids in my school. Beating someone up "because he looked like a fag" was perfectly acceptable. One of my teachers nearly lost her job for having a couple guys with HIV come to talk with us. GLBT rights are a long, long time coming, but they're also borderline miraculous. And I'm worried about clawback. 1973 - Poof! abortion is legal. End result? The knuckle-draggers have been eroding the practice of abortion ever since to the point where there are now fewer than seven abortion clinics in Texas and zero in many southern states. Your article pointed out some shamefully disrespectful coverage of transgender issues. That will go away slowly, I think. My worry is that hammering on the shamefully disrespectful coverage rather than the Holy shitballs amazing Caitlin Jenner in Vanity Fair coverage the media ends up covering the snooty, entitled trans movement rather than the noble, human trans movement.
I worry too, about clawback, about the "gentrification" of the trans movement. I count how lucky I am every day - supportive family, living in a place where surgery is covered and HRT is cheap, being white. There are so many trans people who don't have what I have, and I've got nothing compared to Caitlin Jenner. All i can do is try to amplify their voices as much as I can. However, one has to be careful to amplify the right things, and be critical of the right things (as you're pointing out, I think). I think your point's totally valid. I guess it was just nice to have the media pissing into someone else's face for once. Sounds like I need to temper my Schadenfreude.
And you shouldn't have to feel thankful for what you have. That you are required to is an injustice. Transsexuals are about as "other" as humans come, though and you tip easily into the uncanny valley. Humans are basically tribal; we align based on what we aren't and nearly all of us aren't transgender. It's a problem minorities will always face from majorities - majorities will be unwittingly prejudicial against minorities, minorities will complain about it, majorities will go "WTF we're just trying to live our lives" and now both sides are hostile rather than just one. There's no way to win, and nothing changes without the majority being made uncomfortable. This is just one of those things where I think the progressive corners of the country underestimate just how uncomfortable the rednecks already are.
This is actually one of the tools which I've used to explain to others why some people hate trans people, or find us somehow evil. I mean, the whole concept of the "Trap", or a trans woman who passes "too" well and is preying on unsuspecting men flows back to the idea of trans women being an "other", and people being unsure whether we are a threat or not. This is my favourite video on the uncanny valley (I love Vsauce) I think the worst part is that Trans people who do not "Pass" are the ones who have the hardest time, because they fall right into the trough of the uncanny valley. So much of this has to do with exposure, in my opinion. How many of these people have ever had to deal with a gay person for a few weeks? or met a trans woman? Or a trans MAN (who are so often completely invisible in this whole conversation)? How often do you hear of stories like this where the one black family in town were "the good kind of black people"? People fear what they don't understand, and that's often why people who are in the QUILTBAG fall into the Uncanny Valley. (side note, i'm going to use QUILTBAG instead of LGBT forever now because it's hilarious. well, probably not actually, but it is funny. Who doesn't love Acronyms over Initialisms, anyways?)you tip easily into the uncanny valley.
This is just one of those things where I think the progressive corners of the country underestimate just how uncomfortable the rednecks already are.