Letter: Cartoon depicting transgender woman was malicious

The cartoon appearing in the opinion section of the Tri-City Herald on April 24 was malicious, factually inaccurate, and in extremely poor taste. Depicting a transgender woman as a large, hairy man in an ugly dress only adds to the ignorance rampant in society concerning transgender people.

Transgender people are not outlandish caricatures. Opposing arguments in the great bathroom debate are all straw men, born out of ignorance and prejudice. Sexual predators are most often heterosexual male relatives and religious leaders. They have no interest in abusing their victims in public restrooms, let alone getting gussied up in drag in order to do it.

The Herald staff should be ashamed of encouraging anti-trans hysteria. Transgender people are abused, beaten and/or murdered daily in America. The last thing they need is newspapers printing trans-blackface cartoons.

Stop defending bigotry and ignorance as Judeo-Islamo-Christian values. Stop referring to crassness as “speaking my mind” or “telling it like it is.” Let’s just have sensible discussions in which unfounded biases, outdated stereotypes and disproved beliefs are not validated, but are discarded as the dangerous and undesirable opinions they are.

This story was originally published May 5, 2016 at 6:58 AM with the headline "Letter: Cartoon depicting transgender woman was malicious."