Oh myyyyy, but this is silly.
Gay actor George Takei, known to most as the original Star Trek’s Helmsman Sulu has long been outspoken about his support of LGBT rights.
Takei interviewed two transgender people on Facebook Tuesday about what growing up as a trans person is like.
The interview was a response to North Carolina’s “horrible transphobic bill, HB2,” said Takei.
“The issue was manufactured by, uh, right-wing politicians, and so we need to fight that,” the actor remarked. Straight nonsense (or, gay nonsense, if you will), of course. The transgender bathroom problem is the sort of thing most people never even dreamed of having to care about until some site like Salon declared it a pressing civil rights issue.
Takei showed off a shirt bearing the words, “You Can Pee Next To Me,” which he encouraged viewers to buy to fundraise for Equality North Carolina, devoted to promoting LGBT rights in the state.
Takei interviewed Dana, a transgender born male, who said his upbringing contributed to his gender dysphoria.
“In my early years it was sort of a world devoid of gender in a lot of ways,” Dana told Takei. “I didn’t really understand the difference between boys and girls so I just assumed that I was a girl ‘cause that’s what I felt like.”
“I knew that the only choice was transition or kill myself,” he admitted, and exhorted parents to “trust your children’s instincts.”
Lane, a transgender born female, told Takei that growing up she wanted to be a “fireman with a brown mustache” and now wants to be a “professional queer” working for non-profits pushing for the acceptance of LGBT people.
“I was always very masculine, but tomboys are generally accepted in society,” continued Lane. As she began to act more like a boy, however, “I was a spectacle,”
A telling part of Lane’s testimony is that, “I knew I was trans because I knew it was a thing already.” In other words, Lane’s transition came in part from her knowledge that being transgender “was a thing.”
Takei rightly condemned the bullying of transgenders, but argued that the solution is to encourage them to transition.
“You’re contributing to making this a better society, a healthier society, and a much more diverse society,” Takei told his guests. “Society as a whole don’t [sic] have an understanding” of transgender issues, he said.
“The problems that both Dana and Lane have shared is [sic] being inflicted on not only the young people but adults as well in that state,” he lamented. “They’re paying a high price for it.”
