*After comedian Lil Duval invited a whirlwind of criticism into his world for his transphobic remarks on Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club, trans activist and best-selling author Janet Mock wrote an essay for Allure responding to his hate and misogyny.
In case you missed the drama unfold last week, Duval’s offending statement came after “The Breakfast Club” host Charlamagne Tha God asked him how he felt about Trump’s proposal to ban transgender soldiers from serving in the military.
“I’m just doing my thing,” Duval responded. “Shout out to all the trannies out there.”
Duval was later asked how he would react if, after dating a woman for four months, she revealed she was transgender.
“This might sound messed up and I don’t care, but, she dying,” he said. “I can’t deal with that. I can’t do that. You manipulated me to believe in this thing…In my mind, I’m gay now!”
When Charlamagne reminded him that such action constitute a hate crime, Duval continued to state his case.
“There should be some kind of repercussions if you do that to somebody,” he said. “If one did that to me and they didn’t tell me, I’m going to be so mad I’m probably going to want to kill them. I can say what I want and do what I want, and people understand where I’m coming from. They know I’m not coming from a place of malice.”
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Just a few weeks prior to this incident, Mock was a guest on the radio show to speak about her new book, “Surpassing Certainty.” During the interview, co-hosts DJ Envy and Charlamagne Tha God found humor in disrespecting Mock over her genitalia.
Mock wanted to “use the show’s vast platform to speak directly to their predominantly black and Latin listeners, who are often excluded from the conversations held in mainstream LGBT spaces (which are largely white, moneyed, and concerned with the centering of cis folk),” she wrote.
Instead, she felt ridiculed and discriminated against by Envy, Charlamagne, and Duval.
“The hosts laugh after using my image as a literal prop — just days after I was a guest on the same show — for laughs, vitriol, and a deeper call and justification for violence,” she stated. “Just so we are all clear: On a black program that often advocates for the safety and lives of black people, its hosts laughed as their guest advocated for the murder of black trans women who are black people, too!”
Mock also explained how toxic masculinity only contributes to the hatred, and oftentimes murder, of transgender women.
“Until cis people — especially heteronormative men — are able to interrogate their own toxic masculinity and realize their own gender performance is literally killing trans women, cis men will continue to persecute trans women and blame them for their own deaths,” she explained. “If you think trans women should disclose and ‘be honest,’ then why don’t you work on making the damn world safe for us to exist in the first place? The ‘I’d kill a woman if I found out’ rhetoric is precisely why so many women hold themselves so tight — the stigma and shame attached to our desires need to be abolished.”
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