Back in the 1990’s the joke was told that if the world were to end, liberal newspapers would write, “World to End – Women and Children Hurt Worst.” Flash forward to today and the headline would read “World to End – Illegal Immigrants and Transgenders Hurt Worst.”
Sure enough, this week the New York Times – having temporarily exhausted its “abused immigrant” coverage – is adding a new layer of tear-jerker journalism: illegal immigrants who are transgender “women.” “Trans women in particular encounter persistent abuse and harassment in Mexico at the hands of drug traffickers, rogue immigration agents and other migrants, according to lawyers and activists,” says the Times. “Once they reach the United States, they regularly face hardship, as well.”
ICE operates a housing unit specifically for transgender detainees at the Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico, says the Times but many “trans women” are reluctant to relocate to the Cibola center “if it is far away from their lawyers or networks of family members.”
Like the immigrants fleeing to the U.S. from Central America over “gang violence,” there is presumably no safe place for abused “trans women” on the entire continent of South America which is 6,880,000 sq. miles so they have to come to the U.S. This is as much an insult to Americans’ intelligence as it is to our economy. “Maybe if we crossed the border illegally we’d get free housing, food and medical care too,” an American homeless person recently remarked to me.)
The New York Times does not limit its pleas for sovereign countries to provide better handouts for immigrants to the U.S. It recently bristled that the children of immigrants in Denmark “must be separated from their families for at least 25 hours a week, not including nap time, for mandatory instruction in ‘Danish values,’ including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language.” And all the harbored immigrants get in return is free food, housing and medical care from their host country. What oppression!
No one wishes transgender people harm or discrimination. Most of us hope they get mental help (though not “gender reassignment” with taxpayer funded health programs). But let’s be realistic – transgender people represent only .03 percent of the U.S. population and even less in the world. Their numbers are considerably less than homeless Americans, poor Americans living without healthcare and important medicine, people living with debilitating diseases and yes – Americans living with daily gang violence. (Where do they flee?) The representation of transgendered people is way out of proportion to their numbers.
And as long as we are on the subject, no Bruce Jenner you are not a “woman” and your pretending to be one is an insult to women everywhere. As a woman, I am offended by you and others with your problem pretending that “being a woman” means nothing more than you get to wear pretty clothes, perfume, fancy hairstyles and make-up. Wouldn’t that be nice? For decades women have fought for equal pay, freedom from domestic violence and rape, reproductive health care and representation in government and industry. You reduce our efforts and womanhood itself to a sick and self-serving caricature.
