Transgender People And Bathroom Summary

In “Everything You Need To Know About the Debate Over Transgender People and Bathrooms” by Katy Steinmetz, there is talk about how transgender people have to fight for their authenticity and equality, they are constantly questioned. From early childhood, to adulthood, whether from a young age where the parents wonder if it’s a phase, to being older and wondering if they are doing it simply for attention. They constantly have to validate their existence, and their own personal preferences. This constant barrage of being told they are not individuals, they are wrong, they should conform to societal standards is very reminiscent of racial segregation in the 1950’s. In “The Souls of Black Folk” by W.E.B. DuBois, he writes about his own realization

By looking past our differences, such as race, class, and gender, we can then form a connection among each other and rely less on adhering to comparing and ranking oppressions. By viewing oppression as a fight between domination and subordination, we can then lessen the impact in which race, class, and gender play, and focus on the inequality between the two structural bases. Changing our view on oppression is important, but we also need to change our view of people. Stereotypes of people based on their race, class-status, or gender is the problematic piece to this new vision of oppression, as it lessens emotional impact and may cause ill intentions toward certain individuals or groups. Collins states we need “new categories of connection, new visions of what our relationship with one another can be…”.(p. 454, Collins) In order for us to reconceptualize race, class, and gender as categories of analysis, Collins says we need to stop focusing on our differences as ways of conceptualizing terms such as Black/White, man/woman, gay/straight and thought/feeling. We continue to try and classify everything, and fit certain things into certain categories. It’s what we do because it gives us a sense of control and, in some cases, belonging. If a certain person does not fit a certain category, instead of accepting it, we place them into other categories, or add them into new categories, because, as humans, we are afraid of what we do not