For those who are unfamiliar with it, Grooby Productions runs multiple Web sites which produce and exhibit pornography featuring Trans women. While that might be a problem for some organizations, it wasn’t for us. At Trans Lifeline, we have always taken the position that respectability politics are bullshit, especially given the importance of the work that we do, which is serving Trans people during the darkest moments of their lives and doing all we can to help them decide
not to harm or kill themselves. Besides, the members of our leadership team take pride in being sex-positive in our personal lives and support those members of our Trans community who choose to work in the Adult industry.
What
was a problem was Grooby’s liberal use of a word that’s deemed by everyone from
GLAAD to us to be a slur — and which is being written out here only in the interest of clarity — “shemale”. Words like this matter to our community, not least because defamatory terms like it are often the last thing our people hear before the bullet slams into their head or the knife into their back. Even when the word is not immediately accompanied by violence, in our view it contributes to the dehumanization and objectification of Trans women and helps increase the overall slaughter of Trans women, particularly Trans Women of Color (“TWOCs”) on our streets.
