Via gudbuytjane.livejournal.com
Call for action: www.tranny-alert.com
From www.tranny-alert.com . This is not just appropriative or transphobic, it directly threatens the safety and privacy of trans women:
Spot a tranny or suspected tranny around town? See a hot tranny mess? Observe a guidette in New Jersey with tranny style? Notice trannies on TV/Radio/Billboards? Find yourself at a Lady Gaga concert? WE WANT TO KNOW!
Remember, if you spot a tranny: snap your fingers, snap a pic, and e-mail those photos to: mayday@tranny-alert.com !
In light of the murders of trans women such as Gwen Araujo, Angie Zapata and others, it is indefensible to run a website that requests readers submit photos of trans women (or people they've read as trans women) without their consent and publicly out them. This site threatens the safety of every person they post a photo of. Please spread the word and take action.
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Please contact www.tranny-alert.com and let them know this is NOT okay.
The site appears to be hosted via Blogger, so please enter a complaint against their hate speech and endangerment of the lives of trans women.
Please Twitter about it with the #trannyalertfail hash tag.
Please send complaints about their Facebook page .
ETA: To enter a complaint at Blogger, follow this link: http://help.blogger.com/bin/request.py?contact_type=hate_speech&blog_URL=http://trannyalert.blogspot.com/ (Thanks queersubversion!)
ETA2: TrannyAlert's response on Twitter : "Wow people really need to get a fucking sense of humor."
ETA3: If you have access please post about this on LJ trans communities, as this account isn't a member of any of them (and will have to wait for approval to post, etc.).
- gudbuytjane
You can go here, http://tinyurl.com/n34flk
to file a direct complaint to Blogger against this blog, you can also do it as many times as you like so please try to do it as much as you can so as to draw attention! Thanks!
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Yikes, there is a hyphen missing in the link in the title of the post, it's supposed to be tranny-alert.com, trannyalert.com is a porn site!
We've since exposed the creator (or one of the creators) of www.tranny-alert.com.
In a move of jaw-dropping hypocrisy, another person associated with the site started using Twitter to slander me, suggesting I am endangering the lives of youths (still not sure where the youth part came from) and threatened me.
That, apparently, is their "love" for the trans community. I am so sick of cis privilege and appropriation of trans lives.
Hey! Thank you so much for reposting this here. I'm really amazed at how quickly the backlash is building and spreading.
How is their website supposed to instill a sense of humor in other people? I don't find it funny. People need to get lives.
'Wow people really need to get a fucking sense of humor.'
Just because people don't laugh at everything that is supposed to be funny doesn't mean they don't have a sense of humour.
I'd say finding an unfunny and blatantly offensive website unfunny is a pretty good sign that someone has a good sense of humour, actually.
Fucking hell, that's horrible. I blogged this over on my own blog and linked to it on #trannyalertfail. Thanks for spreading the word - this is the first I'd heard about it.
Thanks for putting this up and drawing our attention to it. That website is ridiculous and even goes as far as making insensitive comments about Michael Jackson.
Excuse my naivete, but what does submitting a complaint to Blogger do?
I'm okay with raising awareness about this, complaining to the site owners, etc., but I don't want Blogger to pull the blog . . . I'm not into censorship, even of something as stupid/vile as this.
I would agree if it was just a transphobic blog, but this website uses pictures of transwomen against their will, along with their general locations. It is plain dangerous, as gudbuytjane explains in her post.
Aren't there laws in general that prohibit you from publically posting images of other people? I mean photos for a private scrapbook are one thing, but doesn't the law say no to photos posted somewhere of someone else without that person's permission?
@basketcasey and @MASHBengal:
Good points. I hadn't thought about that, particularly the unfairness of posting pictures of other people.
It's actually legal to take pictures of anyone you want without their permission if they are in a public place. I'm not so sure about posting them online. Does anyone know the legalities of this? I'm curious too.
I think that in certain cases, you can balance these issues-freedom of speech only applies when the _Government_ acts, not private persons or companies-and if speech on a blog could actually endanger people? Take it the hell down.
Oops, sorry, meant to say more. This could be an invasion of privacy tort issue, especially if someone shows that they were actually injured by this. There is a legal cause of action that would allow them to bring a civil claim-criminal, I'm not so sure. It could also be defamation, even if someone is actually transsexual, because of the inflammatory way it's posted, the acts they're calling for, etc.
Not at all. In fact, in most states, a video of a rape is totally legal. The action isn't, of course, but the video itself is fine.
It's truly vomit-inducing.
This is so typical from commenters here.
It's not censorship. It's accountability.
I'm not into trans women getting murdered.
This is an ignorant and privileged comment.
My apologies; I have since thought it through and realized how dangerous it truly can be.
Although . . . was anybody else surprised by the site itself? I was imagining something completely different, and found it very humor-oriented.
Not to excuse its transphobic basis at all, but the disclaimer at the bottom, the posts mourning the loss of famous transpeople, well, it all seems less of a dramatic threat than I first expected, and more of a well-meaning individual with a juvenile sense of humor.
Or am I alone?
If they were well-meaning, then they would have taken it down as soon as trans people expressed their concerns about the blog, but instead they accused them of having no sense of humour.
The shallow gestures of supposed respect towards trans people merely make it a more insidious form of hate, and gave them something to hide behind when the transphobia at the core of their site was pointed out. Outing suspected trans people is a dramatic threat whether it's dressed up as 'appreciation' or not.
Not to excuse its transphobic basis at all, but the disclaimer at the bottom, the posts mourning the loss of famous transpeople, well, it all seems less of a dramatic threat than I first expected, and more of a well-meaning individual with a juvenile sense of humor.
Check your privilege. This is a ridiculous, privileged assessment of the site. Stop talking and start listening, your cis privilege and opinions are irrelevant here.
Check your privilege. This is a ridiculous, privileged assessment of the site. Stop talking and start listening, your cis privilege and opinions are irrelevant here.
Sorry, I really am trying to work on understanding my cis privilege, and figuring out how to respectfully ask questions. I really apologize for anything I've said that offends.
And while I don't regret sending in my apology to their Twitter (the entirety which said that, on looking at the site, I found it respectful but still problematic), I do wish that there had been more than 140 characters to say the entirety of my feelings. But it was sent to them mainly to counter my first reply @ "Asshole Alert", because, afterwards, I did feel that was a bit too much. I don't see them as assholes with malevolent intent, but rather misguided people who, like so many others, didn't give a single thought to real transpeople when they went ahead with their "joke".
Like, really... when will cis people realize it is not up for them to tell trans people what is or isn't transphobia? Or that processing their (often problematic) thoughts about it is something they should do publicly? That is privilege.
It is that same kind of self-important privilege that leads white people to think it is at all their place to tell people of colour what is or isn't racism. Or men to tell women what is or isn't sexism.
Both the main and the Facebook links turn up duds for me. Does this mean they've been taken down?
Trannyalert still has a Twitter, and they've announced the site is down for "maintenance." I suspect it was hosted at Blogger and they were suspended for TOS violations.
The twittered a number of queer media types last night, trying to portray themselves as victims, but unsurprisingly there were no replies. It's astounding just how much entitlement these people have: they really believe they have the right to do with trans women's lives as they want. Oh, and they also retweeted a comment from a cis woman on this very thread ^^^ who told them she rethought it and the site wasn't offensive. That's the kind of denial they're in, that they'd pick one non-representative individual's comment to justify themselves, when half of Twitter was saying it was fucked up and to take it down.
There are actually a few apologizers and defenders out there still. One intense twitterer kept arguing I didn't read the site and that it was actually promoting shows. Then she asked if some celebrity having a "tranny lookalike contest" would piss me off too.
At that point I just kind of gave up, hit my head against the desk a few times, and went for a bike ride... :)
I agree. The response of "People need to get a sense of humor." really does reflect poorly on them.
That said, the site does seem to be down now. I want to know if it was voluntarily taken down or if Blogger pulled it after the complaints.
Unbe-fucking-lievable.
No, actually, it's totally believable.
What's especially interesting is that it's just trans women featured on the site. Of course.
I think it's been taken down (thank goodness). I clicked the link and got a 404 page.
404 here, too. Hope the 404 is permanent.
A victory for respect and tolerance! Yahooo!