Deepening understanding about transmisogyny
👋 Welcome back to the Medium Newsletter
Issue #211: your thoughts on raw milk + how to persevere
Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a time to mourn and pay tribute to those murdered for just living as who they are. 350 trans people have been murdered globally in 2024, 29 more than in 2023. Here are just a few of them.
Often, their deaths go underreported and underinvestigated, and their murderers are unpunished. Most of them are Black and migrant trans women.
On Medium, social psychologist Devon Price unpacks a study that tries to figure out why this is happening. What’s the root of this bigotry? NYU psychology professor Jaime Napier analyzed the results of a 23-country, 16,000-person survey. She found that people tend to be more vocally prejudiced against trans women than trans men.
Why?
Prejudice is layered. Author and trans activist Julia Serano coined the term “transmisogyny” in 2007 to name the intersection between transphobia and misogyny. She’s since written on Medium about how the term has been used in ways she didn’t anticipate — and why we need better, more specific language for how humans express gender and sexuality.
But what’s happening here, according to Napier, goes deeper than the fact that trans women are marginalized in two ways at once. Napier finds that people may be more biased against trans women than trans men because they view trans women as gay men, and most cultures punish men more aggressively than women for going against gender norms. Women are punished for transgressing, too, but in more insidious ways — usually by people who doubt their sexuality or gender in the first place, think it’s a phase, or a cover.
That’s why, Price writes, Napier’s study is so important: “It’s a piece of carefully collected evidence that trans women and their allies can point to as proof that bias against trans femmes really is a societal problem,” and it doesn’t stop asking “why?”
A few more survey results deepened and complicated my understanding — like the fact that “when controlling for anti-gay bias, highly religious people were actually less biased against trans folks than the non-religious were.” You can read Price’s full summary here.
Your thoughts on raw milk
On Monday, we sent out a newsletter about raw milk. Many of you have vehement feelings on this topic! If you told us why you disagree with us (and cited your sources), thank you. We love smart disagreement. Here are a few of your responses:
I just read the Medium Newsletter on raw milk. While I do not disagree with anything in it, I do feel it omitted a legitimate use case: cheese making. The commercial pasteurization processes diminish the quality of the curd to varying degrees. One may pasteurize their milk at home using a low-heat method that doesn’t cause the same problems. It takes much longer, which is why it’s not done commercially.
So, while having raw milk on the shelves in the “health food” section may not be a great idea, making it legal and marketing it as “cheese milk 3.5%” or something that isn’t attractive to people who wouldn’t know how to handle it is something that amateur cheese makers would appreciate. — Trevor Fink, via email to tips@medium.com
Modern research, specifically the 2022 Frontiers in Microbiology study “Screening and evaluation of lactic acid bacteria with probiotic potential from local Holstein raw milk” (Zhang et al), shows that raw milk’s microbiological properties are far more complex than previously understood. The need to rely on older studies suggests either incomplete research on your part or a deliberate choice to ignore newer findings that might complicate your narrative. Either way, it undermines your credibility when discussing this topic. — Andy Acel
When I did my Master’s, I focused on a specific infection from raw milk: brucellosis. Brucellosis is the most common zoonotic disease worldwide but few know about it because there is a long delay from exposure to symptoms.The case fatality rate from brucellosis is meager. 1 to 2%. The primary symptoms of brucellosis get dismissed as “the flu” — recurring fever. — Nanette Lai, MA
And here’s my favorite response (thank you Aardvark Infinity, whoever you are):
A top highlight on Medium this week
“I shall not quit something with great long-term potential just because I can’t deal with the stress of the moment.” —Diana C.
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com
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