It’s a difficult thing for me when I hear an on-air personality use hateful language against a class of people to make a point. When hate speech is directed at me alone, well then it’s just me — I’ve got a pretty thick skin. When it’s directed to all trans people over the pulic airwaves, and the hate-filled words reinforce others’ hate against a trans people — just because they’re transgender — then it’s hard for me not to see a connection between hate words and hate crimes.

Certainly I don’t want anyone’s freedom of speech rights censored by government forces. And yet, at the same time I’d like to see hate speech by broadcast personalities responded to by businesses refusing to advertize on their shows, people not buying products from businesses maintain advertizing on these broadcast personalities’ shows, and would like to see broadcast outlets that air these personalities pull the shows off of the air. I don’t see that as censorship; I see that as market forces in action — a recognition that many people want to see and hear language that embraces the human diversity about us.

What has me thinking about this today are recent comments from Michael Savage: he slammed transgender people (yet again) on the January 7th broadcast of The Savage Nation:

Radio host Michael Savage continued his attacks on the transgender community during the January 7 broadcast of The Savage Nation, declaring that a sensitivity training program for San Francisco police detectives on transgender issues is “sort of like toilet training for adults” and describing the program as a “class … to teach normal men how to have sensitivity to a psychopathic sex-change operative who should be in a mental hospital.” Savage also published a “memorandum” about the sensitivity training program — which he claimed was “sent to me anonymously by … someone in the [San Francisco] police department” — on his website under the headline: “Exclusive: SFPD forcing detectives to undergo brainwashing by transgendered dick.”

On The Savage Nation, Savage added:

[More below the fold.]

The San Francisco Police Department is forcing detectives to undergo brainwashing by a transgendered detective.

[...]

Now, we have a homicide epidemic in San Francisco; we have a gang problem in San Francisco; we have a bum problem in San Francisco; we have a mayor problem in San Francisco; we have a supervisor problem in San Francisco. It’s a city out of control. We have government anarchy, and these psychotic SOBs are wasting detectives’ time in sensitivity training for a transgendered lieutenant.

Later, regarding his own experience with diversity training, Savage also stated:

If I were the inspectors being forced to do this, I would, as a group — I would, as a group, refuse to go. I would not let myself be brainwashed by this freak. Now, I did this. When I worked at a local radio station, they forced the entire staff to take diversity training. I was the only one who challenged the freaks giving the diversity training. I fought them every step of the way. All the other big mouths, including ex-Marines and ex-this and ex-that, sat there quietly and said nothing. And I challenged them every step of the way and they never had diversity training again in that radio station. Never. And the police should do the same thing. The military should do this. It’s enough with the freaks ruling these places.

As Media Matters for America has documented, Savage previously described a transgender murder victim as a “psychopath” and a “freak” who “should have been in a back ward in a straitjacket for years, howling on major medication.” Savage also blamed sexual reassignment surgery for the Columbine massacre, stating that “the capital of [sexual reassignment surgery] is somewhere in Colorado, near Columbine. …You wonder why the kids shoot each other there with black raincoats.”

Monica Roberts, over in her blog Transgriot, asked a question in her blog on the day before Savage broadcast his latest attack on trans people. Her post was entitled Are Black Transwomen’s Lives Less Valuable Than Others? — in her piece, she wrote:

Let’s start this off with a hypothetical question.

If 70% of the Remembering Our Dead List was made up of people sharing your ethnic heritage, out of the 31 killed in the previous year 3/4 shared your ethnic heritage, your transwomen were called ‘ugly’, automatically associated with prostitution and criminal behavior despite positive accomplishments to the contrary, and your attempts to call attention to this ongoing genocide were questioned, dismissed, or called ‘alarmist’, you were greeted with silence by the organizations inside and outside your community that are supposed to help and represent you, and you just watched two more of your sisters get shot (one fatally) to close out the holidays, how would you feel?

She went on to say, a little further in her piece…

…One of the reasons I went nuclear over transpeople being cut out of ENDA in September 2007 was because I feared that it would result in what we’re seeing now, a spike in hate violence and killings of transgender people. I also feared that many of those transwomen who died would share my ethnic heritage.

Fourteen months later my fears have come agonizingly true. We have seen a major spike in hate crimes directed at transpeople, and unfortunately Black transwomen are taking the brunt of those fatal hits.

As we reported earlier at The Blend, the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition asked in a press release from this past December:

The indifferent attitude of law enforcement towards the February 16, 2006, murder of Tiffany Berry, and the February 12, 2008, beating of Duanna Johnson by Memphis Police Department officers, has sent a message that the lives of transgender people are not important. This has fed the culture of violence that has permeated the second half of 2008, and is exemplified by the July 1 murder of Ebony Whitaker, the July 28 murder of Dre-Ona Blake, a two year old girl who was killed by the man who had previously been charged with the murder of Tiffany Berry, but was allowed to walk free for two and a half years, the November 9 murder of Duanna Johnson, and now the shooting of Leeneshia Edwards.

This open season on transgender people in Memphis and elsewhere…

To answer Micheal Savage’s screed on how “we have a homicide epidemic in San Francisco; we have a gang problem in San Francisco; we have a bum problem in San Francisco…,” we have an epidemic of violence against trans people in our country as well. I would the more appropriate question ask police departments that don’t have transgender sensitivity training — Why the hell don’t you have transgender sensitivity training?

I can’t help but see a connection between what Micheal Savage says on-air and [t]his open season on transgender people in Memphis and elsewhere. There may not be a direct linkage between Savage’s words and the violence, but we’ve seen hate violence increase against LGBT people in general last year — at the same time we’ve been hearing more rhetoric this year against LGBT people (due to the prominence of same-gender marriage discussion “everywhere”).

And yeah, I know correlation isn’t causation. Still — I know I for one would like to see Micheal Savage off the air: I’m tired of his hate speech, and I’m tired of hate violence against trans people. We don’t need purveyors of hate like Savage choking up the public airwaves when there were more trans people — more trans people of color — on last year’s Transgender Day Of Remembrance list of the dead.

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Related:
* What is it with Michael Savage and transpeople?