Transgender woman debunks transphobic myths in video on Twitter

‘Anatomy doesn’t dictate gender’

Yesterday marked the International Transgender Day of Visibility, a day on which people raise awareness for and celebrate the transgender community all over the world.

While many are accepting of people of all genders, others can have a close-minded view of what it means to be transgender.

A transgender woman has shared an illuminating video on Twitter debunking common transphobic myths that some people still propagate to this day.

Serena Daniari is a transgender woman from New York who works as a producer and writer.

A past video project that she worked on called Walking While Trans that investigated how trans people navigate the world was lambasted by American conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro.

Some people “like to rely on this dusty, crusty, tired argument that men are men and women are women and there’s absolutely no room for nuance and fluidity,” she said in the video posted on Twitter yesterday.

“But if we actually look at the research and findings of biologists and geneticists, it’s very clear that biological sex and gender are two distinctive things.”

“Biological sex has to do with our chromosomal makeup. And when we are born, we are assigned a sex at birth by doctors who give us a five-second glance at our genitalia.

“Gender is what’s in our soul, it’s what’s in our spirit, it’s how we move through the world and identify and present ourselves to other people and in society.”

When Shapiro attacked Daniari for her video project, he described her as “suffering from a delusion” and stated that “this person is not a biological woman.”

“Initially, I think I was taken aback by the personal insults, but after that sort of settled with me, I was more shocked by how ignorant and uninformed a lot of his comments seem to be,” Daniari explained.

“If we actually look at the findings of medical organisations like the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, they have very, very explicitly stated that to be trans is not a mental illness.”

The term “gender identity disorder” has been changed to “gender identity dysphoria” to reflect this statement.

“Anatomy doesn’t dictate gender,” Daniari said. “For the majority of us, we just want to live our lives and mind our business and sort of navigate through public spaces without the fear of harassment and violence and ridicule."