RUSH: Tina, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Hi. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Thanks for having me on, Rush. I really appreciate it.

RUSH: You’re more than welcome. It’s great to have you here.

CALLER: When I heard you this morning, you know, one thing that jumped right out at me was when you used the Scalia quote about gay marriage, to say that this is gonna lead to all kinds of other implied bad things, and then you linked transgenderism in, you know, getting our rights in with that. You know, that really alerted me that I wanted to talk to you.

RUSH: Now, wait. No, no, wait, I was reading from TIME Magazine.

CALLER: Oh.

RUSH: “Nearly a year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, another social movement is poised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs.” It’s a whole story in TIME Magazine called “The Transgender Tipping Point,” and it is they who discuss the Scalia Supreme Court ruling and what he meant, and they say he was right. Now doors are wide open.

CALLER: Well, I’m really glad to hear that you are not, you know, saying that transgender rights is a bad thing that conservatives should oppose.

RUSH: Oh, no, I’ve been for trannies for a long time. I don’t know if you’ve heard otherwise.

CALLER: Yeah. Well, actually I did hear you using that term, and a lot of us do find that to be rather offensive, because of the way it’s been historically used.

RUSH: Oh, I didn’t know that. Tranny is offensive?

CALLER: Yeah. It’s kind of an argument, and RuPaul has taken a position.

RUSH: I heard Alec Baldwin use the term, you know, when he was in trouble because he has made a lot of homophobic comments.

CALLER: Right. Yeah.

RUSH: He wrote this big apologia that ran in one of the New York area publications. He used the term “tranny” as though it were hip and an inside baseball term that made him cool with the transgender community.

CALLER: Yeah. You know that is kind of the minority viewpoint on it, is that we’re reclaiming that word like black people use the N-word.

RUSH: Okay, so you —

CALLER: But a lot of us are genuinely fighting for our rights. We hear “tranny” as a joke on Two and a Half Men, and we hear “tranny” as a joke, as a derisive term all over the place.

RUSH: Oh.

CALLER: And so we don’t really appreciate it. We would rather be called trans or transpeople or transmen or transwomen for sure.

RUSH: All right. I didn’t know. I thought it was cool and hip. You’re telling me it’s like the N-word, except do you all use it amongst yourselves?

CALLER: In certain context. Like I will use it when I’m talking about the way somebody else sees me.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I’ll say something like, “They don’t want a tranny working there.”

RUSH: Well, how do people know you’re a tranny?

CALLER: Well, a lot of them don’t, and that certainly leads to part of the problem. You know, people have this fear that they’re gonna get attracted to somebody who turns out to be a tranny. And one of the things about being transgender is that whatever somebody’s sexual preference is, you’re not it. You know, gay men don’t want anything to do with effeminate types. And straight men don’t want to have anything to do with people that have got, you know, the wrong plumbing or wrong history. And, you know, lesbian women are interested in certain things that are just never gonna be the same no matter how much surgery you have.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: So that definitely is a problem. People often think that I’m going around trying to trick people, and so I will often, if I’m going to a bar —

RUSH: Well, okay, so you’re a transgender. How would you trick somebody? What are they afraid of?

CALLER: They’re afraid — well, you know, again, from their perspective they’re afraid that I’m gonna present as a real woman and trick them into having sex. I mean, that’s what you see on Jerry Springer three times a week.

RUSH: Okay, but at some point, even if you do trick ’em, they’re gonna find out that they’ve been tricked and it’s not gonna work, right? I mean, if they think you’re a guy, but you’re not, at some point they’re gonna find out if they try to have sex?

CALLER: Well, a lot of times people have oral sex or anal sex in the dark, and that’s the kind of thing that you —

RUSH: Oh, that’s right, I didn’t even think of that!

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: I didn’t even think of that. You’re right, because everybody has a… yeah. Oh, gee.

CALLER: You know, there is a scene, there’s this cartoon show about a family that has a dog that plays a person. And the dog who plays a person accidentally had sex with somebody that he didn’t know was a postoperative transsexual, and when the dog finds out, the dog barfs for an entire 30 seconds of the cartoon.

RUSH: Is that Family Guy?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Yeah. Well, I can see where that would be insulting.

CALLER: (sigh)

RUSH: I can see where that would really, really upset you.

CALLER: And so we’re operating in that kind of environment. Right now I’m living in a weekly rate motel because nobody will rent me an apartment. Nobody will have me in a roommate situation.

RUSH: Well, wait a minute. They have to know, then.

CALLER: Well, don’t you know from my voice?

RUSH: Well, no. You’re not gonna trick me on that. No.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: What a gorgeous mosaic our audience is. What a gorgeous mosaic, cross section of America the audience of this program is. It is a beautiful thing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, I forgot to ask. I made a note to ask. We had a transgender caller on the program, the last caller in the previous half hour, named Tina, and Tina had misunderstood something I said. She thought I was speaking, when I was reading something from TIME Magazine. So Tina was a little irritated and wanted to explain things to me. And I ended up saying, “No, no, no, no. I have great respect, appreciation for trannies.” She told me that that’s not cool, that that word is kind of like the N-word, that only transgenders can use it, and they don’t do it very much.

I made a note to ask her a question ’cause she was still talking and I covered the note up with a piece of paper. It’s a salient question. “How do you react when you hear people talk about trans fats?” But I never got a chance to ask. So hopefully I will have an opportunity to ask that and clarify whether or not that’s offensive. ‘Cause we don’t want to use it if it is.