EDIT: The original version of this piece assumed that the piece on Crash was written in response to the recent Oscars rather than the 2012 ones. The references have been corrected.
[Content Notice for Whorephobia & Transmisogyny]If profiting from the suicide of a trans woman isn’t enough, why not justify it with a long screed about how hard your feelings are hurting without paying much attention to her feelings? That’s what Grantland did when one of their writers, Caleb Hannan (who has since gone silent online), published a voyeuristic piece in which he outed a trans woman. After being called out, they didn’t take down the piece and hardly considered Dr. V herself in their “apology.”
They did, however, say:
We will learn from what happened. We will remember what Wooden said — “If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing anything” — and we’re going to keep trying to get better. That’s all we can do.
The piece on Dr. V turned out to be far from the only one on Grantland invoking transmisogynistic sentiments.
Here’s another bit of off-topic transmisogyny has managed to be published in a Grantland article. To add insult to injury, the “joke” also takes a dig at sex workers. The article is, of all things, a liveblog of that awful Oscar winner, Crash.
In case you don’t get it, this writer is saying that he has to try to not notice the Adam’s apple on a sex worker. Because trans women charge less for sex work than cis women (if burritos at this place are less than $4, imagine how cheap the tacos might be), and you have to pretend to not notice certain traits associated with trans women to get sex work for the price of cheap tacos.
Hardee har har.
The problem isn’t just with the bullying of Dr. V. The problem here is that people all too often don’t stop to think about how far down they punch.
