The day didn't start out all that great to begin with... so I guess there was no reason to expect that it would end on a good note.  So why not just vent, get it out of my system, and start fresh tomorrow?  So, after reading this article someone sent me ....

I guess it's good that ANY exposure will bode better for us... but are poorly written articles, no matter how well-intentioned, any better than those that sensationalize news and other stories when there just happens to be a transgender person involved?

I.     This article, while informative to cisgender people about the health issues of trans people (has to be for them 'cause we already knew this), does nothing to help dispell the beliefs and misconceptions too many cisgender people have about transgender people.  I think the reporter, Karen Kaplan, should learn a bit more before trying to take on a topic she obviously knows little about.   Even though most of her article is simply passing on information from a study, her opening lines nearly kept me from even reading the rest of the article.  Makes me sorta think she's meerly jumping on a bandwagon that she believes is suddenly popular and therefore a potentially better payday.*

II.    The reporter defines to her readers, most of whom I am sure are cisgender, what being transgender means, "their gender identity is not the same as their gender at birth."  Hmmmm.  This statement indicates that she clearly does not understand that that sex and gender are seperate, and that sex does NOT always guarantee a particular gender.  And how can anyone determine/dictate what a child's GENDER is at birth since that child cannot communicate that to anyone yet?  Of course the same applies to the reverse statement that followed.

III.   "Gender-majority?"  WTH is that??  I think we have a good cross-cut of people who come to this board - I've not seen the mention of anything called "gender-majority."   I see this [new?] term as nothing more than something else to further marginalize trans people.  To emphasize that we are no more than a minority.  That is what America did to the variety of peoples in this country - made smaller, especially non-white groups, "minorities."  And where does that term come from?  "Minor."  And what does "minor" mean?   Inferior.  Not serious.  Not up to par.  Secondary.  Less than.  And then what did I find further down in the article?  "Gender minority."  God, I hope this doesn't catch on!

So who coined this new term?  Surely it wasn't a transgender person.  I hope.  Was it the researchers from Brigham & Women’s Hospital  and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center?  I would think that such entities and the people who staff those places would own a good grasp of terminology.  Or was this a brain-fart of Kaplan's, thinking she'd come up with something that she could go down in the books for, or perhaps a term she thought her cisgender readers might better understand or relate to?  Or maybe to allow those who think that way, to continue to believe they are better than we are?

Okay.  Sorry for the rant.

I'm done.    

I thought about emailing Ms. Kaplan... I mean, since her email addy was right there at the bottom of the article, and all.  But I decided against it.  I'm not sure I am capable of a diplomatic butt-chewing.  And I wasn't in the mood to educate...  least ways, not right now...

* Of 25+ pages of so-called "recent articles" by Kaplan - all the way back to May 2015 - the article on the healthcare of trans people appears to be the first article she's ever written about trans people, despite the fact that she has many articles with topics for which she has reported on multiple times for one reason or another.  Even in an article about bullying, there was no mention of transgender people, or even LGBT people.  Why suddenly now?