Well, the topic du jour of the social justice warriors is the suicide of Essay Anne Vanderbilt.
http://www.vice.com/read/the-mysterious-case-of-curious-caleb-hannan-and-elusive-dr-v
My opinion: I think trans people should be able to live their lives without fear of being outed. I think this suicide was a tragedy. Thankfully, the author of the article linked is fairly even-handed on the subject. Vanderbilt may have commited suicide for a multitude of reasons, not simply being outed.
But the internet is not so level headed. Accusations of murder abound on social media. (Just read the comments on the article linked)
Mob mentality scares the fuck out of me. It's tragic that this person commited suicide, but it's not murder. And being trans is not a blank check for victim status. People are people. They have flaws, they make mistakes, they do stupid shit.
So again, trans people should be able to live their lives without fear of being outed. But things aren't always going to work out that way. And no amount of social justice warrior-ing is going to prevent it, short of putting microchips in everyone's brains and programming them like robots. Things happen. Formenting a lynch mob mentality isn't going to provide any kind of productive response.
One question that does linger, and I'm going to have to think on it for a bit. Can a parallel between a trans person's new identity be drawn to a person who creates a new identiy for non-trans reasons? Is this comparable to a person in witness protection being outed? Or a con artist with serial identities?
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