Tranny Panic!

I love the Tranny Panic site – loads of gorgeous radical art from a trans perspective for everyone to print out and use for non-commercial purposes.

I loved these two graphics in particular:

I might have spoken about some of the similarities and connections between sex worker and trans experiences in this blog before. As someone partnered to a wonderful transman, he will often get clueless and offensive questions such as ‘so, what is in your pants, then?’ Whereas I’ll get the ‘so how old were you when you first started working/ had first sexual experience?’ or ‘do you use drugs or were you sexually abused?’ from random strangers. The kind of questions that the person would never think was acceptable to ask a cisgender person or a non-sex worker.

Sex workers, like trans people will sometimes choose, when they can to go stealth, or not reveal their status, not due to a desire to 'trick' others or to be deceptive, but to avoid stigma and discrimination..... and really, really stupid and offensive questions that we've all heard way too often.

From sex worker sensitivity training I've been involved with in the past, it seems that making connections between the experiences of different groups is important for the making of allies, and many of us have experienced at least a few episodes of marginalisation, or unfairness, even if it is simple school yard cruelty or bullying, so if we can tap into a sense of how that has felt, when we consider other communities, there is the possiblity to move beyond that fear of the other, and move towards understanding.