God’s Grace And The Transsexual Next Door

In the Ex-Gay Watch blog, Autumn Sandeen writes a post describing the use of slurs against transgendered people, relating it to the slur used by Ann Coulter against John Edwards recently. The Ex-Gay leaders came down on Coulter for using that slur as demeaning and insulting to gay people. Autumn broaches the question of what about the slurs in the supposedly affirming Christian ex-gay movement about transsexuals?

Being called by the wrong pronouns, the wrong honourifics, the old name, all these really hurt the post-transition transgendered person. How can it be affirming when words like "tranny" are used to describe us? (I'm not at all clear about the reclaiming of that word, but it is rather demeaning.)

When someone calls me "sir" by mistake, it initially stings. I correct them, and when they look at me more carefully, they do say "OH! excuse me!" So there is a politeness around here that apparently is missing in other places.