The jokes are made roughly 1,256,928 times per day — “You identify as a man/woman? Then I identify as an Apache Attack Helicopter.” Better yet, “I identify as a cat — treat me accordingly.” Well, Jeff, considering that you were excited to drop a deuce in a public playground’s sandbox after leaving the bar last weekend, I guess that’s only fair.
On their faces, these jokes are easy to brush off as uneducated; after all, they’re typically posted on Facebook by people who think being gay was invented in 1968 in order to create new bars with shorter lines. However, a new study by Columbia University indicates that there’s more to the story.
The study, which included participants from all over the United States, found that 67% of transphobic people self-identify as members of the Confederacy. The Confederacy existed from 1861 to 1865, when the unrecognized sovereign nation was defeated by a bunch of, in today’s vernacular, “libtards.”
Compounding the confusion is that nearly 49% of those who identify as sons and daughters of the Confederacy are not from a state that fought against the Union during the Civil War. Instead, nearly half of these subjects were born in places like Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Alaska, which wasn’t even a state until 1959. Further, most of the participants did not have ancestors in the United States until the 20th century, meaning that they had zero familial ties to the Civil War era.
Many people are concerned about transgender people receiving gender reassignment surgery. After all, it’s a permanent change to one’s body based on a feeling that could potentially change down the line — it’s like Confederate flag tattoos that way.
Even so, while trans people wear clothes to cover their Kibbles ‘n Bits, it’s gonna take more than a “Female Body Inspector” baseball cap to make people forget that uncle Jim has a bright red and blue Confederate flag inked onto his shiny noggin.
The irony of identifying as part of the Confederacy while invalidating the scientifically-backed transgender community was pointed out to the participants. Yet, many didn’t see the similarities. To be fair, transgender people want to feel comfortable in their own bodies, whereas the Confederacy wanted to own and brutalize other people’s bodies using a whip with glass and nails tied to the end — that’s not at all the same thing.
Many modern-day Confederacy supporters say that the war was fought over states’ rights. Namely, the right to steal Black people from across the ocean and pack them like sardines into a standing-room only ship before being sold to some mutton chop-clad guy named Frederic whose sister is also his mom. But hell, at least the Confederates didn’t each individually change their first names and ask people to refer to them as such.
Unfortunately, transphobia will exist for years, if not decades longer — just like racism or people who make loving bacon their thing to the point that they own bacon decor and hygiene products. As consolation, unlike the South, the transgender community won’t have to rise again, as they will tear a bitch down before they descend in the first place.
Mackenzie is the first ever editor of The Beet and actually made of over 62% beet.
