June 27, 2009

More strange tales from the internet: Tranny Alert

I don't even know where to start with this...well, one day I took a nap and woke up to my Twitter page all a-flutter with tweets condemning a place called "Tranny Alert". I honed in on the word "tranny" and thought, "This won't bode well" and indeed it didn't.


I started catching myself up a little since (and here at Feministe, it looks like GLAAD is involved now, nice) my love of sleeping always makes me late for shit, but there isn't much to tell except Tranny Alert is a website that shows their admiration for trans women (or whomever they suspect to be transgender whether they actually are or not) by outing them and thus putting their lives at risk.

If you hit the site you'll also notice they use really outdated & offensive terms like, uh, "tranny". They were also kind enough to remove pictures of women they didn't have permission to put up which I imagine was MANY other than the ones they stumble across. In addition a lot of the women they assume are transgender aren't even. Because every woman with a squarish jaw & athletic build is...no.

But let's get back to what's what--this site doesn't admire or respect trans women, it's exploiting them. Even if you kindly removed the fotos you didn't have permission for you still put them up in the first place and continue to defend yourself with "just look at the site first" or "you just need a sense of humor!" Well I looked and as offbeat as my sense of humor is (if you can call it that) I didn't find any of that particularly funny or enlightening. Why would it be? If you truly respected the trans community (and just flat out women) you wouldn't be this fucking stupid and treating them like objects with no feelings or personal lives. This isn't empowering, this is seriously dangerous.

What's interesting me the most is the site plans on putting out a statement regarding the backlash against them. How rich. I want to see if I can call it:

-Some sort of fauxpology
-"You all just need a sense of humor!"
-"Our tranny friends love it!"
-"It's a celebration bitches!" /Dave Chappelle
-They really do respect trans women, really
-No harm intended
-FRRRREEEE SPEECH!/and or image rights
-Our readers seem to think it's okay
-You're all a bunch of stuck up bitches
-Omg censorship!!!11!! NEVAR FORGET

Other than something fitting in those categories or just taking the site down (which would be nice), I don't know what they could really say? We'll have to keep checking.

Edyt potentially of little consequence: Interesting, guess I missed some tropes. The site is no longer up (on Blogger at least) and now over Twitter they're trying to whip up support because GLAAD "attacked" them...yeah I don't think Perez Hilton is going to be supporting anyone right about now, even if he were would we take him seriously?

(no.)




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