So we’ve seen some of the reasons that there is stigma with respect to being transgendered and with respect to being psychopathic.  Many of the reasons are simply irrational – hiring Bob Barker to emcee your Michael Vick ultra-extravaganza dedicated to dogs with cerebral palsy makes more sense than some of these reasons even if you were wasted and coked-out when you did the booking.  However, just because the stigma is, in general, undeserved does not make the transgenderist or psychopath feel any better about the extra obstacles in their life.  So, how does this affect me, your transgender, psychopathic author?  I am privileged enough in life to where most of this does not mean too much, but nonetheless there are points to take home.

First, I believe that the effect of the stigma is not additive but rather a polynomial product (exponent > 1).  I would love to see research confirming or denying this conjecture.  It isn’t like you fucked up on adding salt to your sauce and thus you added sugar, but you fucked up that and had to add more salt, then sugar, then salt, and then, oh god, this is fucking delicious as if it were liquified kettle corn, but now my heart really hurts – what is that feeling, God I’m blacking out.  Given that there is roughly only 7 billion * .01 * .001 of us transgender psychopaths on this earth, assuming independence and accurate estimates of the proportion of each group, there is really no research on what this combined stigma does to us.  However, the purpose of the stigma is easily measured: those stigmatizing want us to feel less than human.  They will piss on you for being transgender and piss (after chugging another seven imported PBRs) on you again for being psychopathic, to the point where you are drowning in their shitty beer urine.  I suspect this often works.  I’ve seen transgenderists, after transition, still be suicidal messes because of the way they are treated by others.  I don’t know of a single psychopath that is ‘out’ to his family or friends, unless the legal system forced him to. Now, imagine Buffalo Bill from SIlence of the Lambs and you really freak out.  Not just because he is non-gender conforming, but because he is also a violent monster. The two combined together paint a much more distressing picture than either alone and is more distressing than the sum of both.  I believe the reason that the effect is not additive is that society wants to use one to confirm the other when both are present.  We’ve talked about how deception is necessary for being either transgender or psychopathic.  For myself personally, being psychopathic makes me a much better transgenderist because I know how to exploit people’s naivety and assumptions.  So if society believes that I’m already dangerous because I’m slipping into gendered spaces I don’t belong in, they would be even more fearful knowing that I am, by genetics and upbringing, even more adept at being in those spaces undetected.  It isn’t like society is going to take two points off my ‘human test’ for being trans and three points off for being psychopathic; they are going to take the test, set it afire, run far away, and join some cult, with fantastic benefits and sugary drinks, where they don’t have to think anymore.

This stigma for both groups also eliminates any possibility of productive discourse.  Society does not want input from those they’ve already deemed as excommunicated.  Without that input, there is no future in which more will not be excommunicated.  Like gender ‘performance’, the actions of one generation have predetermined the actions and beliefs of the next.  Change on any front is slow to be had.  Change coming from a place where those seeking change are abhorred comes even slower.  Unlike with transgenderism, there are very few, not in the sacred circle, that are championing the rights and freedoms for psychopaths.  The fact that so many believe the psychopaths are merely insatiable monsters of destruction means that it is even more likely that we will not gain traction on this front any time soon.  Like having a boss that hates you because you called him out on dry-fucking a cabbage patch doll in the break room eleven years ago (fun fact: cabbage patch doll fuckers are sometimes more in the legal right than the transgenderist), you are doomed to preconceptions (stigma) no matter what productivity or actions you ever do.  This is where I am being transgender and psychopathic.  My voice is not wanted to be heard so I might as well be mute and cycle of stigma will thus continue unbounded.

Along those lines, this combined stigma only fuels the ‘us versus them’ mentality.  Just as many hate all religious groups due to the asshattery of a few, many want to justify their stigma of marginalized groups by the actions of a few.  Say the word psychopath and some will break down into tears documenting how they acquired their deep seated fear of clowns.  Clowns totally get a bad rap; it isn’t like they are really that scary – *does Google image search of clowns, can’t sleep ever again*.  What I’m getting at is that people will go to great links to use the actions of a few to justify their hatred for the group those people belong to.  Whereas one may be sympathetic to the plight of the psychopath if I explained to them the non-violent symptoms, if I added the the fact that I am transgender to it, they may completely fall apart.  And even if there is no one action that stands out for justifying that belief, it is easier for the stigma to continue if it is socially acceptable.  Just look at all the racist cartoons from last century.  The stigma becomes its own grey goo  problem as people subscribe to continuing that stigma just because everyone else does.  If you aren’t actively stigmatizing ‘them’, you might as well be a member of them, and you don’t want that now do you?

So even though the stigma against the ‘typical’ transgenderist and the ‘typical’ psychopath is irrational, it continues because society demands such.  In an ‘us versus them’ world, to break from that belief for a moment will make others think that you might as well be part of that group being marginalized.  The consequences of belonging to multiple marginalized groups is enormous as the effects are not additive.  Our mouths are sewn shut and we are not allowed to talk.  Our supporters’ mouths have steel plates bolted over them.  Ultimately, the cycle will continue as society has no reason to change.  I will always be a violent monster seeking to do evil in gendered spaces I don’t belong in according to society.  That stigma will not abate in my lifetime even as rationality demands that it should.  Those that point fingers toward the psychopath and the transgenderist are no better than the, mostly, fictional pictures they paint of us.  As long as people fuel stigma, there is no understanding and no improvement for any of the involved groups.