Chaz, Larry, and Me

This has been a bad week for trans-butches like me and my friends.
A few days ago, right-wing groups and a psychiatrist warned American families not to watch a trangendered man, Chaz Bono, dance on TV. They say children will be confused by Chaz Bono.

But the children are already confused. A 14 year old young white boy, Brandon, had taken a gun to school and killed classmate Larry, a mixed race boy, aged 15—with a gun he got from Dad. The case ended in a mistrial a few days ago.
The reason: Larry dressed in girl’s clothes.

Chaz dresses in boy’s clothes.
Do conservative parents realize that by stigmatizing queer kids they give permission to their kids to bully and kill—the queer, the mixed race, the effeminate, the butch, the Other?

I’m a cross-dressing butch that has managed to stay alive long enough to write this. No easy trick, since I’ve been assaulted by straight white men several times in my life — for wearing the wrong clothes.

Now Chaz is brave enough to be on TV. Larry is dead. And Brandon may face a retrial and get 50 years — tried as an adult for premeditated murder. The lives of these young people and their famous and not-so-famous family and friends will be forever changed, mostly for the worse, because children hate other children who don’t wear the right clothes.

I wonder who’s really teaching such “values” to their children?
I wear the wrong clothes.