A couple of months ago, as of this writing, a viral video surfaced online of an early-in-transition trans woman trashing an Albuquerque, NM GameStop and cursing out the on-duty employee there for accidentally misgendering her. While the sense of pain and struggle that can be brought up by being misgendered is very real, and the dysphoria that can be experienced when said pain happens out in the open of course warrants having compassion, the behavior displayed in this video is on its on very unbecoming and arguably unnecessary. The cis employee apologizes and corrects himself, while the trans customer continues to raise her voice, mistreat merchandise in the store, and even threaten the contrite employee to a fight.

But while the video certainly does not catch this woman at her best, we must also try to keep in mind that living in her skin in a daily basis, in a society that still refuses to fully understand or embrace trans people for who they are, is almost certainly one met with constant antagonism and outward bigotry. Yes, the GameStop employee likely truly made an honest mistake, but who knows how many times prior this woman had been misgendered deliberately and maliciously. Everyone has their breaking points, and everyone falls into moments they may regret upon further reflection. Again, not an excuse, but taking into account the trans experience, especially for trans people early in their journeys and without passing privilege, the behavior seen in the video begins to make more sense.

Unfortunately, the Internet is often not interested in understanding the nuance and complexities of the human condition and instead opts for public shaming and proliferation of dank memes instead. Promulgating cheap laughs that speak to an underlying set of preconceptions and biases for cultural camaraderie is not even close to the sort of practice one would expect from a person who calls himself a ‘skeptic,’ and yet many people online who don the label invest quite a bit of time and effort into taking part in meme culture. It is almost as if these skeptics are nothing more than group-thinkers. Nevertheless, the practice prevails in these circles, and as you might have guessed, the meme lords of faux-skepticism could not resist turning the angry woman from the GameStop video into a meme, as well. Within just a few days, “it’s ma’am!” had become a very common quote within online spaces that claimed to care about truth and empiricism. And the shaming had begun–not just of this one woman, however, but of trans people as a whole.

This demographic of ‘skeptic’ I am referring to tends to buy into a semi-religious reverence to an abstracted misunderstanding of science known as scientism. Real science is merely the ironed-out process by which we build models and present theories that can explain observed phenomena. As more data about a given phenomenon becomes available, these theories become more refined, and sometimes change altogether. The point is that with science, there is always the possibility that new information will alter our understanding of how something works. And any scientist worth his salt will always remain open to that likelihood. Scientism, by contrast, claims that ‘science’ is this be-all, end-all button we can press that declares the unshakeable truth of something without any possibility of it being disputed. This is a distortion of what science actually is and does, but it nevertheless prevails in right-leaning circles that want to shame and disparage trans people with their “facts don’t care about your feelings” mantra and their baseless claims that 1) gender and sex are the same thing and 2) sex and gender are exclusively binary. Since these beliefs, however unscientific they actually are, prevail in these circles, the sharing of transphobic memes is simply an exercise in reinforcement of an already-existing prejudice. There is no reaching for true scientific understanding of sex and gender, nor is there a process of discovering a greater truth. There is simply hate and ignorance.

But how does this faux-skeptic crowd get away with posting such nonsense without much pushback? Because unfortunately, many other people outside of these circles (i.e. everyday folks) also seem to believe in their common sense ideas about gender rather than trust in the actual empirical research on the subject. While trans rights are thankfully becoming more and more popular and embraced as a mainstream and worthy cause, the reality is that far too many average people in our society are still under all the wrong impressions regarding the trans experience and what it is all about. This is because transphobic tropes have been normalized in society for decades through popular culture and media depictions of trans people as nothing more than punchlines rather than the thinking, feeling human beings they are. And my submission is that even though mainstream media has begun to finally excise its transphobic tropes, social media has allowed said tropes to live on in the world of memes.

To better understand this, however, perhaps a parallel with something much more ubiquitously understood as bigoted propaganda should be drawn.

During the days of slavery in America, political cartoons were devised that depicted black people as subhuman, innately less intelligent than whites, and filthy. Tropes such as a mindless love of specific foods (much like how certain animals only gravitate toward specific diets), an exaggerated physical appearance that made natural black hair appear dirty and natural black lips appear greasy, and a smiling willingness to be servile to white masters, among others, permeated throughout the pages of major publications (a cartoon from Life Magazine depicting a black servant called Sambo asking his master to cut off an even larger piece of watermelon is just one such example). And after the abolition of slavery, this continued, and bled into other mediums, as well. In film, the minstrel practice of blackface was immortalized by the likes of famous actors and singers, including Al Jolson, Judy Garland, and Bing Crosby, across the 1920s-1940s. In animation, as well, these cartoonish and racist depictions thrived. The beloved Looney Tunes and their Merry Melodies cartoons that used to premier before feature-length movies at the cinema, for instance, took many opportunities to bring the trope of the dirty-haired, simple-minded negro to glorious technicolor life. Many instances can be found in these cartoons and their peers where, for example, a stick of dynamite may go off next to a character, altering said character’s appearance. Covered with gunpowder and dirt, the character’s face is now completely black. But his lips are left untouched, presenting a stark contrast against the blackness. The lips are, however, swollen–presumably due to being wounded by the shrapnel of the explosion. The hair, as well, is blown back and charred, attempting to mimic the ‘dirty’ look of natural black hair. This image would only last a few short seconds, but the purpose was clear: to be a comedic moment. The assumption being made by the filmmaker in this instance is that he and the audience share an unspoken belief that black people’s natural features are worthy of mocking. That dark skin and thick hair appears unclean, and that the only way a ‘normal’ person could be brought to look like a black person is if said person were met with some unfortunate maiming or accident. The natural appearance of a black person is presented on its own without any other context–and on its own, it is a punchline. This was only a few decades ago, and at the time it was seen as perfectly normal. General moviegoing audiences and magazine readers were being subjected to a semi-daily stream of propaganda designed to perpetuate unscientific concepts about black people. For these reasons, racism remained normalized and accepted far longer than it perhaps otherwise would have been.

In fact, it can be argued that these subhuman depictions of black people only increased after slavery was abolished and suffrage was granted. Jim Crow and other systemic means of undermining black freedom in America were in full swing, and the media played a big role in normalizing the idea that black people were somehow less human, less intelligent, and less deserving than white Americans. A particular racist depiction that it seems only cropped up after the end of slavery was the caricature of The Brute. Depicted as hulkish, violent, and mindless, The Brute was used as a scare tactic to make white people fear black men as violent monsters and potential rapists (they were depicted especially as targeting white women) during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. And indeed, in many popular culture avenues afterward, the term “you brute” would be uttered by many a helpless female character in comedic situations where men are shown as getting too aggressive in their advances. And the subconscious normalization continued.

Eventually, these tropes would fail to hold the same bite as they once did as examples of positive blackness became more common. And while there are still racist pockets of politicized and so-called ‘skeptical’ discussion that attempt to promulgate ideas such as race and I.Q. linkage and white genocide conspiracy theories, most everyday white Americans no longer fall for the propaganda. Because positive depictions of black Americans are now so ubiquitous and so many interracial relationships are in the public eye that the misrepresentations of what it means to be black can no longer rely on ignorance of the truth for their sustenance.

A similar path must now be taken in regards to pop culture depictions of trans people. When I initially brought up the parallels between transphobic memes and racist cartoons and films, I was met with accusations of being frivolous in regards to the seriousness of black suffering in America. I wish to be clear here and state that I am fully aware that the trans experience and the black American experience are not the same thing. I never said they were, and the nuance identifying each is worth seeing. However, my only point is to show that, different in their own unique ways or not, the general cultural effect on outsiders’ perspectives is eerily similar. Therefore, people who today might take for cheap laughs the memes that shame the GameStop trans woman, Caitlyn Jenner, etc. should consider that they are in effect the same breed of passive group-thinker that once allowed anti-black propaganda to slip by in popular media for too long. And those who choose to pass on these memes are keeping alive, unwittingly or otherwise, the still-present sentiment among many cis people that trans people are somehow innately less worthwhile as human beings–nothing more than punchlines, much like black people were seen in the days of blackface and animated caricatures.

And the history of transphobic tropes goes back farther than one might think, as well. In the 1959 comedy film Some Like It Hot, biological males presenting as women are depicted as delusional, deceptive, and untrustworthy. The Jack Lemon character of Jerry decides that he and his friend Joe should escape their mobster-infested lives in Chicago by taking a train out of town and disguising themselves as women. Soon, however, Jerry becomes comfortable with his new identity as a woman, and even becomes engaged to a wealthy older man who he gets to fall in love with him. Of course, this is all depicted as very silly and immoral, with Joe at one point pleading with Jerry to snap out of his delusion and pointing out that it is impossible for he and his newfound love to work out because it just “doesn’t work,” posing the question “what are you going to do about the honeymoon?” This of course perpetuates several wrong-headed concepts, including the ideas that biological sex is the only thing that factors into gender, that attraction through gender expression alone somehow sets cis men up to be fooled and deceived, and that biological males can only identify as women if they are scheming gold diggers.

This did not change even thirty years later, with transphobic depictions in popular comedies still a fairly normal occurrence. In the 1994 Jim Carrey comedy Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, the titular character realizes that female police detective Lois Einhorn, who kissed Ace earlier in the film, is “a man” who presents as a female to cover up for crimes she commits while presenting as male (namely kidnapping the Miami Dolphins mascot, a main focus for Ace). Upon realizing he kissed a “man,” Ace Ventura vomits, strips off his clothes, burns said clothes, and takes a long shower to wash off the trauma. Not only is this disgusting in its depiction of sexual attraction of cis men to trans women as something to be ashamed of, but it is also very frivolous and disrespectful to very real trauma victims of sexual abuse, which is what the shower scene is clearly attempting to lampoon. The film’s plot culminates with Ventura outing Einhorn in front of everyone by forcibly exposing the fact that she has chosen to not have bottom surgery. This scene is also played for laughs, with a ‘real’ woman, Melissa, looking on with shock and disgust alongside the rest of the local police department. The scene counts on ick-factor–the idea that body humor alone will lend itself to the concept that a woman can have what is conventionally seen as biologically male genitalia is ‘gross’ and therefore funny. The humiliation of Einhorn is itself the joke–no clever dialogue, no attempt to make a cutting commentary; just lazy writing that counts on an unspoken sentiment shared between filmmaker and audience that trans women are really just men in disguise. Much like with Some Like It Hot, Ace Ventura assumes that biological males presenting as women must be doing so for deceptive, immoral reasons and that the cis men who fall in love with them are stupid dupes who should feel shame. The ‘comedy’ only works as long as the general movie-going public remains ignorant of what it really means to be trans–much like how the ‘comedy’ of racist tropes only remained funny as long as whites at large remained ignorant of black people’s humanity.

These parallels are again not meant to be seen as exact copies of one-another. The experiences and degree of mistreatment between trans and black people are uniquely different (though there are obvious overlaps for trans people of color). Yet, the cultural effects are quite similar. In both cases, simply existing as the person one was born as is deemed worthy of ridicule and laughter. In both cases, real discrimination has occurred against the group in question while these caricatures remained prominent in the public eye. In both cases, said depictions have arguably made it harder for the general public to accept the reality of these groups’ validity and the seriousness of their plights. And just as with racist tropes such as The Brute, we are now seeing uniquely awful depictions of trans people as delusional, violent actors escalate in the public conversation after some significant headway has been made for trans visibility and trans rights. The bathroom bill non-issue that then became an issue, for instance, led to televised campaigns against allowing trans people to use the correctly aligned bathrooms by depicting hulking, brutish men following little helpless girls into ladies rooms. This does not happen in reality, yet it is what is being depicted on-screen. And many people today actually believed it. The memes that snapshot trans people at their worst and then misrepresenting those moments as the norm (i.e. the GameStop “it’s ma’am!” meme) not only harm general public perception of trans people in everyday interaction; they also paint a false narrative that trans people never pass in public, never outwardly look like the gender they identify as, and therefore never find themselves successfully able to assimilate in a cis-dominated society. This narrative is, of course, incorrect and merely the product of precise attempts by transphobic people to cherry-pick the more atypical examples of the trans experience. Why? To keep trans people preserved as ‘gross,’ ‘weird’ and other forms of the Other in the public mindset. If trans people can continue to be depicted as undesirable and deceptive, then the general acceptance of trans people, think the ‘skeptics,’ can be diverted.

Unfortunately, this narrative does still work right now, despite the headway made on the trans visibility front in recent years. And this means that, despite being completely untrue, the narrative that trans people in general cannot pass, assimilate, or find acceptance and love within cis spaces is one that can be very frightening and saddening to trans people who continue to struggle with feelings of dysphoria and realities of workplace and/or family discrimination. While untrue, the narrative can validate the paranoia and fear felt by said trans people currently suffering under these aforementioned conditions. And while popular media is slowly beginning to let go of its transphobic comedy tropes, meme culture has taken over. The transphobic meme is the new racist cartoon–it perpetuates misconceptions rather than corrects them. It relies on cheap laughs that thrive on ignorance rather than cutting commentaries that utilize knowledge. It is the anti-intellectual comedy tool; a prop of an unfunny clown. And yet, it also has the same cultural effect as its racist precursor in that it keeps alive the hate and prejudice already present in the minds of ignorant masses. And while said masses are becoming increasingly less ignorant, the daily lives of everyday trans people remain hell in the meantime. No true skeptic or critical thinker would ever wish upon any demographic of people the kind of emotional and mental pain that objectively untrue depictions of the trans experience are currently causing. Reinforcement of ignorance is not skepticism. And cold indifference toward people different from oneself is not wisdom. As allies, we should remain keenly aware of when and where these false narratives are allowed to thrive in the shadows, and we should shine the light on them the moment they are spotted–accusations of frivolousness be damned. Trans lives matter, too. And it is about time the real skeptics made that abundantly clear.