Summary Of Christina's Essay 'Trans People And Basic Human Rights'

Greta Christina’s observation and opinion is clearly stated in her essay, “Trans People and Basic Human Rights.” Christina addresses one of the biggest topics that is greatly discussed about today, cisgender people and their botheration with transgender people. Her thesis, why do cisgender people care, is straightforward in that she starts off by agreeing with the opposing side and going to explain why cisgender people care and how they should not care. Although Christina’s point of view is skewed toward her opinion, she clearly explains the process she goes through when accepting transgender people, how she cannot be the voice of transgender for she is not one herself, and later goes into statistics that support her point. However, her argument is invalid because of the fact that she herself is not transgender (as she states) and her attempts at bringing down the opposing argument are weak. Christina’s first paragraph in her article begins as though bringing up a topic in a conversation. She continues to explain what cisgender means and how transgender people are taking it upon themselves to implement and use vocabulary that best describes them, as it is their right. Her thesis is brought up abundantly, “So what? How could it possibly affect you? What business is it of yours? If someone else is identifying with a gender that you personally think

“To quote Miss Manners, “The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish to be addressed.”” (Christina). Christina also says, “Mis-gendering trans people isn’t just a casual bit of poor manners…” (Christina). Implying that cisgender people have poor manner because they mis-gender trans people; and it make sense due to the fact that it can be difficult to figure out someone’s gender, except for the fact that a simple question can go a long way in figuring out someone’s