From America Blog: http://americablog.com/2014/05/univ-chicago-students-upset-slur-used-discussion-slurs.html
by John Aravosis
5/29/2014
Some transgender students and allies at the University of Chicago are outraged that a word they consider a slur was used in a guest-speaker discussion about the controversy over the word itself.
At the risk of inspiring another petition, the word is “tranny,” which is longtime slang for transgender. It’s been used both positively and negatively in the past (and present).
The guest speaker was gay writer and activist Dan Savage, who is arguably America’s most effective spokesman on gay (and quite possibly trans) civil rights. Savage was one of the masterminds behind the widely-acclaimed “It Gets Better” campaign, and behind last year’s boycott of Russian vodka that put the issue of Russia’s intolerance towards its gay and trans citizens on the map.
Savage was declared public enemy #1 a few years back by a fringe coterie of vocal activists; mostly for things he allegedly said, but that when you go back to the original sources you find he didn’t actually say at all. The same activists have also attacked Savage for being an advocate of marriage equality.
The word “tranny” has been in the news of late, as some trans activists, but certainly not all, find the word offensive. It was a word that has long been used by pro-trans gays and straights alike. (I never used it, though I have younger friends who have and still do, and not with any animus — it’s the simply the word they use for trans people.)
Back to the University of Chicago. The pro-trans activists say the discussion that Savage had with moderator Ana Marie Cox about the controversy over the word “tranny” put them “in a state of distress,” made them “feel unsafe,” and that the discussion “made [a] trans student so distressed that they had to run out of the room in tears.”
The basic argument here is that the word “tranny” is “hate speech,” and that even in a discussion about the controversy surrounding the word “tranny,” the word cannot be used.
The latest and most famous brouhaha over the word revolves around drag superstar RuPaul, who has been attacked by some trans activists for using the word to describe himself, among others. RuPaul says he considers himself “a tranny,” so he has the right to own the word and use it proudly. Some top trans activists have come to RuPaul’s defense, such as Mx Justin Vivian Bond:
Complete article at: http://americablog.com/2014/05/univ-chicago-students-upset-slur-used-discussion-slurs.html
Women Born Transsexual 
June 4, 2014 at 9:24 am
Oh for shits sake! Realthy? This is rapidly becoming Monty Pythonesque theater of the absurd! You’re “allowed” to “identify” as (Insert random string of adjectives) you can dream up. In fact, breaking with any of the common, hense outmoded social denominators is strongly supported! But only if “your identith” agrees with the unending stream of edicts handed down from the central party leadership! That this nebulous central party “leadership” is entirely self selected, not to mention self serving is none of your concern! “Pay no attention to zir behind the curtain! ”
Ehh… then again what do I know? I retired my male privilege special snowflake armband decades back to live and breathe in the straight cis/het world where my concerns are pretty much the same as the other 3.5 billion women who live under the patriarchy. Course, when I did it, there was an outmoded idea that one learned from other women about being a woman rather than telling em what’s what because you are wearing panties now too. But hey! Clearly we dinosaurs were completly wrong because the central party says we were wrong!
Ohhhhhhh well, guess when I and any other sisters of great antiquity get together and use the ~”T”~ word to describe each other as we do, the offender shall be shot immediately! So sayeth the central committee!
MKIA