Is There a Law That States How We Should Dress?

Today’s film was very interesting. I never knew San Francisco had had such an important role in the transgender community. In class we’ve read a lot about violence against transgender people, but seeing it is a very different experience. We saw how the police would search for transgender people and lock them up for “impersonating a female.” This made me wonder, is there a law against dressing like the opposite sex? Is there a distinct way the law says we’re supposed to dress? Can people be locked up for dressing like a girl, but being a boy now?

            There was a short clip in the film of a TV show where the host said, “all these charming ladies are breaking the law,” were they breaking the law, or a societal law? I think often people assume that normality is a law. When something is out of the ordinary people jump to the conclusion that this person has committed a felony and they can be persecuted, but I definitely don’t feel that the ladies of the Tenderloin district were breaking any laws. These women were just trying to be who they are and instead of being left alone, the police would come and beat them up. Why would the police waste their time fighting these women, instead of finding crooks off the streets? Maybe because they thought of themselves as manly men and thought it was weird to be transgender.  Or maybe because they were too lazy to fight real crime. Or maybe they were just trying to get rid of a minority. There are so many possibilities, but I think the most obvious was because to them, transgender people aren’t normal and hence breaking the law.

African American Members of the Transgender Community

It is true that we don’t live in a very accepting world. Discrimination happens frequently in jobs, at school, while at the store, etc. However, I never stopped to think about those people who fit more than one of the discriminated categories. It’s hard to deal when being discriminated for one reason such as weight, color, race, etc but being lower than low on the social totem pole is something I never thought of. Even within the discriminated community, some are discriminated more than others.  As Monica Roberts puts it “There is this saying that when white America has a cold, black America has a fever. Well, when black America has a fever, black transgender America has pneumonia”

A transgender African American will be discriminated not only for being African American, but for being transgender as well. These two reasons are what they are. And by discriminating them for being transgender and African American people are telling them they shouldn’t be who they are. But what reason do others have to stop another from being themselves? We wouldn’t tell a figure skater to quit skating if that is what they associate best with; for that same reason we shouldn’t tell transgender people to stop being who they are. I used to think members of the LGBTQ society were just looking for attention and going through a phase, but after having to read so many articles written by members of this community I have come to realize that expressing yourself in such a way is a difficult task. No one would face such hardship if it weren’t so meaningful. Being transgender requires a lot of effort and an admirable amount of resilience. They may be some of the strongest people out there, but they’re being undermined because of who they are.