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It’s Easy for This Guy to Challenge Transphobia
Listen to Jon Stewart do it
The comedian Jon Stewart interviewed the Arkansas attorney general Leslie Rutledge about the SAFE Act on his show The Problem With Jon Stewart. The second season’s first episode, “The War Over Gender,” aired October 7.
It’s free to watch the whole 47-minute episode through Apple — or this 6-minute clip through Twitter, which, three days later, has passed 13 million views.
What Stewart Did Here Was Straightforward
Stewart’s approach was straightforward. He learned to see through organized transphobia.
To be clear: Trans people (and people perceived as trans/queer) often find it difficult to challenge transphobia because they are the ones being targeted by it, and the onslaught is exhausting in its repetition, and they are the ones who are at risk if they don’t succeed in dissuading the transphobes (and those who are accidentally complicit). But cis people who are not personally threatened by transphobia and associated bigotries may find themselves positioned to speak up, and they can and should do so, and they might find that it’s easier than they expected.
Here are three lines of argument he followed:
Stopping People From Transitioning Isn’t About Individual Education and Choice
Transphobes make it illegal for doctors to provide transgender-related care to kids in consultation with their parents. They brand this as inviting parents to seek “numerous opinions,” (as the Arkansas AG tried to put it in this interview), even though the state is obviously making the mainstream medical opinion illegal so it’ll be mandatory to follow the state’s opinion (the so-called second opinion). They’ll let you hear as many opinions…
