Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Transgendered hate on talk radio

Chris Baker, a conservative talk radio host on KTLK 100.3 out of Minneapolis, has repeatedly said hateful things including, but not limited to:
Regarding the recent murder of Latiesha Green, a trans woman, on his November 18 show, Baker said:

Second of all, I believe that the fault, and I know, 'cause already I'm seeing quotes and comments and, "Oh, it's hate. It's a hate crime. It's a horrible hate crime." Doesn't some of the blame lie with the American media who enables this fraud? Doesn't some of the blame -- I would say a majority of the blame does not lie with the nitwit that shot him, other than the fact that he's a nitwit and a guy who should have been in prison in my opinion, who shot him. But to me, this is the -- this is an example of how, by enabling people and trying to push this false reality, leads to horrible crimes like this, by -- by telling people, "Oh, well, you know, he -- did he [Thomas Beattie] get pregnant?"

...

So annoying for me, but there's a story today, it's a very -- it's a horrible story from Syracuse, New York. A guy's been charged with murder after he shot two people last week. One of them was a transgender person. So, now, they're talking about hate crime charges, things like that. Look, this guy is a murderer and should go to jail. This guy should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

But I personally believe that by the media and all these other people out there enabling these people that they put people like this at risk, because they give them the boldness, the confidence, the -- to decide, "Well, you know what? I'm a girl. Even though I'm not a girl, I'm a girl. And the media will call me a girl, so, therefore, I can walk into any party I want. I can go anywhere I want. I can demand whatever I want and no one can stop me because the media is going to call me a girl."

Well, guess what? In my opinion, other than the fact that the guy that allegedly murdered this guy -- and this guy I'm talking about would be the transgender guy. I promise I'm just getting this off my chest. This is just driving me nuts.

I believe the media and the rest of the enablers out there, they have this guy's blood on their hands because they create this false sense of reality and they enable people who need serious psychological counseling. I mean, what guy in his right mind would have his stuff cut off? Now, there's a lot of women in their right mind that would like to do that to a guy, but what guy in his right mind wants to have his stuff cut off? What woman in her right mind wants to have her breasts removed? I mean, do they notice the millions of dollars women spend every year in this country to get bigger ones?

This whole thing is -- it's just infuriating to me. You know why? Because I gotta explain this to my kids.

You know what's infuriating to me? I'm going to have to explain people like you to my kids one day. I'm going to have to explain why some people are so hateful to people they don't even know just because of who they are.

Because people like Thomas Beattie and Lateisha Green were trying to find some happiness in their lives.

Because Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi had the audacity to be women in political office.

Because WNBA players want the same respect as male professional baseketball players.

Because citizens of this country wanted to show their dissent for an ideology of fear and restricting rights.

I'm going to have to tell my kids that it doesn't matter what they do in life, people are going to judge them simply on who they love or if they play basketball or if they have the ambition to serve our country in political office or if they just show up to voice their dissent.

And that's infuriating to me.



If you'd like to share some of your thoughts with Chris Baker or any of the other people at 100.3 KTLK, feel free here or at chrisbaker@ktlkfm.com.

h/t to Minnesota Independent and Media Matters for links

7 comments:

Amelia said...

Thank you, Lindsay, for being so adamant about pointing out ignorant, hateful, intolerance like this. It scared me the one time (since I don't listen to regular radio at all, really) that I heard blatant sexism on the airwaves and was the only person to respond to it. A lot of people seem to listen passively while stupid things like this are broadcast over the air.

Chris Baker disgusts me. Absolutely disgusts me. I don't know what else to say about this (although I'll think of something, because the radio station and Chris will be hearing from me sometime soon).

The "transpeople need counseling" argument is one I am so familiar with that I want to be sick. This year at my college, the campus feminist group decided to forceably gender neutralize two bathrooms on campus. We did this by tabling for two days in order to inform people that the bathrooms were going to be gender neutralized (mostly because we said so) and then we just encouraged people to use whichever bathrooms they wanted to for the rest of the year (more about this as it develops).

One reason we stated for doing this was for the comfort of people who live outside of the gender binary, such as transpeople.

Well, one guy, and at least he was interested in a calm discussion, said that he didn't think it was fair for the people who did fit into that binary to have to be made uncomfortable. Instead those who were uncomfortable (aka transpeople) should just get counseling (he seemed to forget that we were only affecting two bathrooms, and if he walked a little farther he could find a set of gender-separated bathrooms to use). And he said he had done research on this? I was so mad, especially because I was sitting with three transpeople at the time, who were all very wonderful people...and this guy insulted them without knowing it.

Ugh. People like this make me so mad because they completely lack in compassion, or the ability to see that what they are doing/saying is wrong.

Sorry for this rant...but seriously...

Good post.

Jason said...

US needs social liberitarian turn, but I don't know how it's going to be come about.

People are so obsessed with identifying themselves as an entity of a group or a movement rather than an individual.

habladora said...

Wow, good post Lindsay - this guy is teaching people to hate. Making excuses for violent crimes against certain people because of who they are actually endangers those people.

Unknown said...

Well hey, here's another tangentially related link to discuss.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-transgender20-2008nov20,0,6169794.story

Even in small towns, ignorance and hate aren't absolute. Hooray!

Unknown said...

I just sent him an email.

Mike said...

I might actually be mad about this, but the fact that you cite 'Media Matters' as a source for the quotes really makes me question the validity of the context of which we are reading these guotes...

Unknown said...

With respect to the comments made by Chris Baker about transgendered individuals, a link was included to the Minnesota Independent. Is that a reliable enough link for you, or do you demand an AP Wire report for everything?

And here's the link, just in case you can't be arsed to find it yourself.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/17947/media-to-blame-in-transgender-murder