Human rights vs. humanising

In the early days after my transition, I was concerned about my parents were handling this - not a lack of acceptance of me, but fears that they had that had done something wrong. This was something that they had known about since the 70s, but they evidently thought I wasn’t going to transition, whereas I was just exploring - with professional help - a wide range of ... shall we say, options/explanations. 

In those days, when relatively little was known about gender identity, such reactions were understandable - in this day and age, after decades of excellent advocacy and education, they’re not. 

However, at that time, when I raised the issue, I had other activists literally snarl back at me that the only thing that mattered was human rights, and that was all I needed to say to my parents.

Those people may well have had parents and others who were aggressive, rather than supportive, but that is no excuse for not considering the issue properly.

Here’s my view: 

• human rights laws are necessary to: 
• deal with those bigots who need it - the heartless who need to be restrained, in the Martin Luther King quote;
• to overcome moment in established organisations and systems and drive change - especially structural; 
• to give members of minorities a chance to live, including, in the case of trans and gender diverse (TGD) people, time to transition and get lives established before dealing with family members; 
• human rights and other laws apply in families as well as everywhere else in society.
  

Human rights laws give people a break to get on with life, survive, and then go back to those who have been left behind, or chose to stay behind, progressive changes. 

When people take the time to do that explaining and educating, there is a major benefit in my view: 

• it helps to prevent/deal with backlash by: 
• reducing the number of people who are likely to be part of that backlash, because they have a basic and realistic understanding; 
• building the numbers of allies who are more likely to pre-empt or counter any backlash; 
• have more widespread acceptance amongst “everyday people” of the real facts, rather than extremist conspiracy fantasies.
  

So ... working for human rights laws is essential; so is humanising the people who will most directly benefit from those laws. 

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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.