Gender Panic!

You all have seen it, the backlash from transgender laws… “The bathrooms!” “OMG there will be boys in the girls’ bathroom”

I came across this article about “Gender Panic”,

How transgender policy sets off ‘gender panic’
University of Chicago
Posted by Mary Abowd-Chicago on November 5, 2013

When New York City moved in 2006 to make it easier for transgender people to revise the gender on their birth certificates, the proposal was widely expected to pass.

But the anti-discrimination measure failed, in part because of public opposition to removing the requirement that individuals have genital surgery before claiming a different gender.

“The backlash was intense,” says Kristen Schilt, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. “There was such a fervor over taking the surgery requirement out, a sense of, ‘Absolutely not. There’s going to be chaos.’”

Schilt calls this public reaction “gender panic,” a concept that she and co-author Laurel Westbrook explore in a new study in the journal Gender and Society.

We have seen it here when we passed the anti-discrimination law and we are seeing it Colorado and in California over AB1266.

In Schilt study she said that “gender panic” is,

Like the terms “moral panic” and “sex panic,” Schilt describes gender panic as a deep, cultural fear, set off in this case when the “naturalness” of a male-female gender binary is challenged. When such challenges affect public policy, Schilt says, “that’s when the panic starts to get really hot.”

If you happen to read any of the comments you can see the emotions that gender panic evokes in people, you also see the lack of understanding these people have about the law and gender identity. The article goes on to say that the fear is always directed toward women and children in situations where sexual predators pretending to be transgender in order to violate women and children and the allegation are never backed up with data. They create visions of little girls being assaulted by big grubby men with 3 day old beards. It is almost impossible to counter act these images and the opposition jnows it and are willing to lie to create these false images.

Usually what happens is that some rightwing conservative organization issues a press release with wild allegations and the main stream media picks it up without verifying the accuracy of the press release and the damage is done. Even if the news media prints a retraction or publishes another article with the facts it is almost impossible to change those false impressions.