#and it forces them to confront the fact that their argument against trans women can be applied to people they think are in fact real women

[ileftherbackhome]

it does NOT surprise me that there are SO MANY tabloid movies coming out being labelled as "documentaries" filled with "friend of a friend of a friend" claims or like heavily, heavily, heavily biased with a clear narrative the filmmaker wanted to push from the beginning that tells only one possible explanation of the truth.

usually if a documentary is trying really, really, really, really hard to make you think a certain way, it's a propaganda piece. you shouldn't have to force feed your audience the "right" opinion to take away from the film evidence. you should present the full story as accurately as possible with real historical evidence to back up the storyline and the audience will walk away with the right idea.

documentaries should not have an overly persuasive tone to them because you should be able to follow the facts to get to the right answer yourself. if you find yourself walking away from a documentary feeling nothing but "wow this proves exactly what i suspected to be true why arent more people angry about niche radicalizing viewpoint that most people find to be inaccurate" you should recognize that as the first step to being indoctrinated into extremist behaviors and thoughts.

[wirewitchviolet]

A Little Horrifying Primer on Transphobes

Some time ago, I put together a Little Fact Checking Primer on Trans People, as a basic resource for disabusing people of some of the many completely ridiculous yet absurdly widespread beliefs about trans people that simply have no basis whatsoever in reality. And wouldn’t you know it, every single lie exposed in that primer is not only still widely believed, but is presently being used as a basis to sign some absolutely horrific human rights abuses into law. So it’s high time I follow that up, in this case focused more on who keeps actively spreading these lies and why. I’m going to try and keep things as light as I can here, but we’re going to be looking at the most monstrous side of human nature, so apologies in advance if this is a dark read.

First, let me just note that there are two things I don’t plan to do in this piece. I’m not going to waste time debunking the arguments of the people I’m highlighting (much of this is already covered in my earlier primer, others have done the work in cases where I haven’t, and frankly these people’s claims should be self-evidently utter nonsense to begin with). I am also going to be very selective in what I link to, or even share related images of, as I would frankly not like to fill a post on a blog I generally try to keep safe for all audiences with media directly dealing with, for instance, child sexual assault, and much of the relevant information also involves stochastic terrorism against innocent people, and I would prefer not to throw more fuel onto such fires.

Transphobes lie constantly, about everything.

To some degree this is obvious. We’re talking about people who scaremonger about the possibilities of trans women dominating competitive sports and assaulting people in restrooms, despite the status quo already reflecting the conditions they insist would make these inevitibilities for decades and centuries respectively, and their grim visions never once having come to pass, and also constantly insisting that the woman in the photo below is actually a man, going further to say this is evident to anyone giving her the merest glance.

It goes beyond that though. There’s at least a little plausible deniablity in claims like this, or that “science is on their side” if they were simply uninformed about the world they live in, never actually looking into what laws exist, what science actually says, and never actually meeting a trans person or even seeing a picture of one of us. I’m talking really bold lies here. Like wholecloth fabricating a story that a convicted murder was trans, including anecdotes about wigs dresses and a planned name change, in a major newspaper. Or to cite an old favorite of mine, the time a pack of bigots walked up to a crowd of people peacefully picketing a transphobic legal proposal, started roughing them up and taking closeup photos of members of the crowd to stalk online when they got home, got sufficiently riled up for one to straight up assault an innocent person half her size, filmed the whole thing, uploaded it to youtube, and used stills of that assault as acomanying photos when they went home to write articles about the assailant being a “grandmother” attacked by rowdy trans women. And yes, they did monkey’s paw my wish to see that specific image on newspapers. Interesting side note, when it came to real public light that J.K. Rowling endorsed this sort of hatred, it was because she accidentally pasted some profanity laden rambling about how the imagined moral character of the other party in that incident, years after the fact, into a post praising a child’s fan art of her work.

To be a little less niche, transphobes can’t get enough of spreading the lie that the young fellow in this photo is a girl. Specifically a trans girl, providing proof that all their scaremongering about the dastardly threat of trans girls in competitive sports has finally come to pass.

To be fully clear, that’s a man (or a boy if you want to split hairs about him being 17 in that photo). Mack Beggs. A rather insidious choice for this sort of story, considering the actual context for that photo. See, Beggs attended high school in Texas, during a (still ongoing as I write this) period wherein that particular state had caved to this exact sort of propaganda, and in order to head off a wholly imagined wave of trans girls competing on girls’ sports teams, and enacted a law mandating that in all such competitions must compete under whatever gender is stated on their birth certificates. And as it happens, the first, and to my knowledge ONLY time this has come up was with Beggs here, who again, is a man, as no one with a grip on reality could argue against, has “female” on his birth certificate. Which is another way of saying he is a trans man. The guys in the same boat as trans women who we talk about a whole hell of a lot less because their existence is extremely inconvenient to the majority of transphobic propaganda. Case in point. And this is all information it is really impossible to come across if you’re coming across this photo in any sort of respectable source. Take this story, which is as unambiguous about this as you can get. And yet, in the very comments section of that story, there they are. Carrying on like this story about a trans guy, forced by a transphobic law to compete as a girl, which he absolutely did not want, and received horrific threats over, using phrases like “female to male” and bringing up that he was assigned female at birth and is on testosterone-based HRT, is about a trans woman cheating the system. Or to quote word for word, “Now also transgender female want to be male also compete in female sport. biological born“ That’s not “being confused,” that’s standing next to you in a white desert and complaining about being adrift in a black ocean, bald-faced, not even trying to be convincing just make a power play, lying through one’s teeth.

I could spend this whole article on just this point. Lying about who they are, various people’s falsified credentials, whole websites full of “anonymous parents of children who think they’re trans” turning out to be one single woman documenting the abuse of her very much trans son, or of course the people behind the whole “bathroom bill” panic candidly admitting it was all based on utter fiction. I do have other points to cover though.

Transphobes are firmly entrenched in the media.

It is extremely difficult to find oneself in a position of having to explain to people that a particular group of people is effectively in control of press outlets, as that is rather classically a claim conspiracy theorists absolutely love to toss around at various marginalized groups (including trans people hilariously enough, but of course the most common and lingering version of this is the antisemitic variant). I really can’t get around it here though. Specifically in the U.K., you honestly can say that transphobes control the media. I already touched on this with the assault case I mentioned above and the fabricated story about the murderer, but this is a pretty well-documented situation. I mean, even The Guardian calls out The Guardian on this, and that’s the outlet that gets the most attention because it’s the one with the most otherwise respected name, but every paper in the country has been running transphobic propaganda pieces on a weekly if not daily basis for years now, and while they do get reprimanded by watchdog groups and have mass walk-outs over the worst of it, it’s not like there’s some governing body with the authority to step in about it. Meanwhile the BBC is constantly inviting diehard zealots like Graham Linehan to news programs where he compares being trans to being a nazi, and hosting debates where someone just sits down and repeatedly chants the word “penis” at a trans woman.

Things are better in the rest of the world, but we still have right-wing creeps like Jesse Singal both writing horrific propaganda pieces (we’ll get back to that one) and blackballing trans writers out of covering trans issues ourselves (and personally stalking the hell out of those of us who try). We’ve got our Joe Rogans and Tucker Carlsons out there (no way in hell I’m linking videos here, have a real information link and a still).

The line between diehard transphobes and straight-up nazis basically does not exist.

What even is there to say here? You can easily poke around havens for nazi activity for yourself and compare the particular unique vocabulary used there to the primary bastion of anti-trans hate speech on the internet (the “feminism” section of what was originally a site for parenting tips before violent fascists took the forums over) or just peruse the follows of the thousands of people I’ve blocked on social media and see if you can sort out a clear division in the networks of channers with frog avatars and the accounts with names like GoodieXXrealwoman, or you can read up on Gab and Spinster, the two twitter alternatives that are just different portals to the same server, set up by the same guy. Maybe do some research into “the LGB Alliance,” or WoLF but any way you slice it the only real difference to be found is the general purpose nazis take a little time off now and then to watch borderline pedophilic anime and the really dedicated transphobes think to use language that sounds vaguely well-educated and left-leaning. I mean, this came from the “feminist” side of the fence:

And not to belabor the point here, but the ones claiming to be a bunch of “feminist mums” sure do let the mask slip any time they’re confronted with the fact that “women” includes black women, and oh just have a whole thread about all the weird conspiratory theories these people have about how trans people’s whole existence is some sort of Jewish plot for world domination. I swear a few months ago they were all passing around a story about some bank having an above average number of trans employees and they were all just “and we all know who controls the banks, right?” about it.

Transphobes endorse an awful lot of people who are openly pro-pedophila.

This is the part where I am really loath to link the many many specific examples I have on hand. Or to talk about this at all for reasons of good taste. Or, for that matter, to talk about this in a tumblr post when there’s an ongoing problem of people with backgrounds strongly tied to this site making baseless accusations of pedophilia against every queer person they can find, so let me be very clear just what I’m talking about while avoiding anything too graphic.

That’s James Cantor. Transphobes love him for being one of the closest things they have to a scientist on their side. And I am featuring him in a screenshot here showing that he is followed by current queen of the transphobes J.K. Rowling, while speaking to both another big name in transphobic circles, Debra Soh, and based on their names, what I’m guessing is at least one straight-up nazi. And in case you think “the P” he’s talking about adding to LGBT (or “GLBT” as weird anti-queer bigots who also have issues with women often write it) might stand for “poly” or “pan” he’s all too happy to clarify that.

This is the entire thrust of Cantor’s work and life. He is the world’s biggest pedophile rights advocate. He wants it declassified as a mental disorder, all stigma on it removed, and tirelessly pushes forward the idea that the majority of.. people who feel compelled to sexually assault children are good people who present no potential harm to anyone and should in fact be lauded.

I am not generally one to claim that someone with a PhD is spewing out questionable garbage with regard to their field, but the reason I am aware of Cantor at all is that other transphobes keep trying to hold up a particular post on his blog as "a study” (which it is not) that offers “proof” (in the form of a blurry jpeg of basically some random numbers) of some ridiculous quackery about how trans kids will “grow out of it” if exposed to conversion therapy (another way of saying torture), which Cantor himself seems to be pushing, so I am somewhat skeptical of his academic chops. And I am, of course, REALLY suspicious that all these other bigots gravitate to him purely because they’re that desperate to find anyone with a PhD in anything that backs them up against literally every scientist in a relative field, to the point that they merely forgive his particular advocacy they are plainly all aware of, particularly when such a common fig leaf used by transphobes is “keeping children safe from sexual deviants.”

And of course, Cantor is most often invoked when coming to the defense of Kenneth Zucker. This Kenneth Zucker.

Those are separate papers. Zucker isn’t controversial though for organizing panels to discuss how attractive people agree small children are (at least not exclusively). Mostly, he’s known for running a conversion therapy center which subjected gay and trans children to various sorts of torture in an effort to “fix” them, which at least for those trans "patients” I have spoken with involved a fair amount of having them strip completely naked and talking a lot about their genitals.

Zucker is something of a controversial figure with the transphobic scene, as they are extremely on board with his sexual torture of queer children, but he does actual work (for some value of the term) involving trans people and thus is not able to commit as fully as they would prefer to making life horrible for trans people, due to a professional obligation to acknowledge reality now and then. As an aside, the similarly positioned Ray Blanchard, while not to my knowledge particularly interested in the attractiveness of children, lives in a similar purgatory of trying to reconcile his career, bigotry, and sexual hangups, yielding compromises like this:

Of course, that’s just looking at the straws transphobes grasp at when looking for scientific credibility. Real leaders of the movement include Germaine Greer, author of The Beautiful Boy, which is about what you are afraid it might be, and features a very young child in a cover feature he did not consent to posing for. Or Julie Bindel, who among other things is rather infamous for writing whole articles on subjects like whether a teenage girl she came across maybe has a huge penis you can totally see if you really squint at her skirt. Again, I will not share a link to go along with that one.

Transphobes terrorize and attempt to defund charities and other unambiguously good organizations.

Graham Linehan, previously best known for cowriting some sitcoms and possibly spending a year angling to get into my pants so awkwardly I didn’t pick up on it is now best known for trying to pull the plug on a children’s charity, in a story that somehow also involves Donkey Kong. Well, and the interview about nazis. And possibly the other interview about “defending me from nazis” until it got into his head that I might not be as young and hot as he imagined. Rather not link to a far right extremist youtube channel though.

There’s also a current effort to replace Stonewall (an organization named after the location where a pair of trans women kicked off a riot which is generally agreed to be the start of the LGBT+ rights movement) as the UK’s primary LGBT+ rights organization with the “LGB Alliance.” The hate group mentioned above, with the skull face and the rifle. Closest I can find to an article on that effort on short notice that isn’t propaganda.

Transphobes paper areas in truly disgusting propaganda.

I don’t want to directly link to grown adults skulking around children’s playgrounds and bathrooms plastering surfaces with mass printed stickers of crudely drawn penises, but would encourage you to read this very long post, being sure to load all the images, to really understand how deeply strange this behavior gets.

Finally, I cannot stress this enough, this really extreme behavior I’m citing, and the specific people involved in the examples I’m giving, these aren’t random cranks on the fringe of things. The people going on televised panel discussions, writing up news stories, and testifying before lawmakers in efforts to pass horrifically discriminatory if not literally life-endangering laws (there is a major ongoing effort to legally end all medical care for trans people, and I don’t just mean care directly relating to being trans) are literally the same people involved in the sexualization of children, nazi collaborations, and roving gangs assaulting people in the street. At a bare minimum I urge people, when booking guests and handing out writing contracts, to do background checks and see if they’re platforming actual terrorists. If we could actually bring legal consequences to bear against the worst of this, that would be great too. As things stand though, the whole world is just consistently citing a bunch of racist, woman-hating, serial liars with no real credentials, and questionable attitudes towards the sexual abuse of children, as “trusted experts” and refusing to seat actual trans people or people who have legitimately committed lifetimes to academic and practical work with trans people any seats at the table.

[searchingforproofsthatimwrong]

THE JAMMIEDODGER VIDEO ABOUT JK ROWLING (as recommended by a very polite anon)

so I go point by point after the cut but in short: they should read more feminist theory, they are lying, they are not as coherent as they think they are but they make some points, notably about the rapid onset gender disphoria that’ll need to check in more depth later on.Most of their sources were unfortunatly either on points I already knew or already agreed with.  Also that woman ( the “cis” one not Jammy), should really stop thinking being born a woman is somehow a privilege.

So the video starts by saying three things I agree with :

1)      Biological sex is definitely real

2)      Women’s right and girls’ right need to be protected

3)      JK Rowling is entitled to like support and write whatever she wants

 So far so good. Except it then goes on to say that TRA agree with that. Now maybe most do but at least some don’t. Don’t lie to me, Jammie Dodger.  

They then go on to misrepresent what our problem with “cis” is. Are they going to spend that entire video about trans people at destination of the non educated on that subject without ONCE defining what a trans person is? They are aren’t they ?

“TRANSPEOPLE AGREE THAT BIOLOGICAL SEX EXISTS!!” 

see earlier but given the number of people who are saying “sex is a social construct” and “sex is a spectrum” and “a neovagina is just like a vagina”, you may at least put a “most” in your statement here. Anyway this is not the problem we have, we wouldn’t even discuss this if it weren’t for the brain dead morons who argue with us about it.

“my biological sex -the one I was assigned at birth- was female” 

is Jammie here telling me he knows biology exists but his sex WAS female ? It still IS female. You’re a female. Moreover you cannot say I know biology exists and I was assigned a sex. The entire “assigned sex” is a refutal of biology by implying doctors choose a sex for you. This is stupid.

Strawman. They are saying radfems have no argument against “gender identity is a real thing”. The lies. Gender identity is not a real thing it’s just gender stereotypes and gender is a tool of oppression for women, it’s sexist garbage. I also notice they don’t define gender identity, this is starting to be a pattern, this video is aimed to normies but the only thing they defined so far is terf.

They did 5 fucking minutes on “transpeople know that biological sex exists” I am already exhausted.

Oh my bad they defined “gender identity” as “the gender you know you are”. THANKS A BUNCH THIS IS SO HELPFUL . Define gender please I beg of you.  

“They know they are a man but their bodies don’t match” 

okay so you agree that man and woman are words that depends on your body right? Since it can “match”, they are not gender then ? Nevermind he then says that man is their gender identity. This is not making sense.

Ooooooh the floating head analogy never heard that one before, this is a stupid one because gendies also argue that their gender is innate (unless Jammie here specifically says he doesn’t think that I’ll act as if he agrees with that statement) so the good question would be if you were born as a floating head and never even had a body would you still be a woman? And my answer here as well as plenty of people I suspect is “men and women don’t make sense if we’re born as floating heads what are you on about?”

“transwomen needs women’s right too” 

I know you think that is self evident but I’ll ask what exactly are the women’s right transwomen need. Abortion? Affordable periods product ? The right to have places free of male? oh wait. They are male so they can never have that can they ?

“so feminism also needs to believe in gender identity”

 because if we don’t our feminism is only for females and we exclude males. Notice how they didn’t continue their logic by saying how THIS feminism excludes transmen and nonbinary? Because it does, but guess who actually need the women’s right of abortion for exemple?

“transmen don’t need women’s rights” 

I FUCKING CANNOT YOU STILL NEED IT WTF ARE YOU ON ABOUT. OK I need them to define women’s right asap

“well JK Rowling said she supports trans rights”

 funny how you can understand how those words are not a proof that she in fact does but you still started your video by “we support women’s rights !!!”

“adding [to Harry Potter] content that was LGBT+ friendly” 

she added things that were gay friendly. I don’t remember her adding trans characters.

“transphobic” = saying men can’t become women. Whoah. The hatred.

“the lack of belief [in gender identity] is what she wants protected”

 yes and ? Atheism, the lack of belief in a god, is protected. Gender identity existence only proof is some people saying it does exists, it is not a scientific reality in any way shape or form.

“His biological sex was previously female” 

BUT WE KNOW WHAT BIOLOGICAL SEX IS WE SWEAR; Damn they spend 7 minutes on “transpeople know biological sex exists” and then keep acting like they fucking don’t.

After that they point blank say that gender identity is more important than sex, having someone who passes as an exemple. What about transpeople who don’t pass? How much you bet this will never be discussed in this video.

Anyway they follow that with that : 

Which is true but defining what a woman is does affect women actually (I know weird right)  so it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion here.

“When a large group of transpeople are telling you something is wrong please listen to them”

 please afford women the same courtesy. We are a large group of women saying males are not the fucking authority on what womanhood is but we are told to shut up. Listen.

“we cannot take the behavior of the minority [online abuse] and group it onto the majority” 

I agree with that statement but the majority still didn’t condemn the abuse. Honestly the people in this video did -just before saying HOWEVER but hey – but it is pretty rare to see TRA actually confronting the people who abused JK Rowling online, they cheered them on more than anything.

It is very telling how they spend more time in this video saying people collecting screenshots of the abuse JK Rowling suffered were “not cool” than the TRA giving them a bad name by actually abusing JK Rowling. They even say Jammy was also insulted online so TERF and TRA are as bad as each other right ?? Being called delusional or idiot is not the same as death threats sorry Jammy. (I doubt the “freak” one was from a terf tbh but even then, this is not even comparable) I mean didn’t you get at least one person saying they were going to kill you ? Because I did, and I have ,like, 200 followers. I find very weird that the woman here said “I received sexual assaults threats and this is as a cis woman!” as if women weren’t the primary target of sexual assaults threats. Yeah it’s the misogyny. What’s new.  You really should stop thinking you are somehow priviledged even when you are being sexually threatened ffs. What gender ideology does to a mf.

 “neither of these sides are innocent” 

oh come on, you cannot possibly means that the men who gave you sexual threats were terfs, this is ridiculous, you are just trying to excuse and diminish what people did to JK as per fucking usual.

 “persistent low level harassment” 

it hasn’t stayed low level tho. Stop trying to say you and JK are receiving the same abuse it’s embarrassing.

JK Rowling’s essay having real life effects on policies for exemple has an element of thruth ,even tho we disagree on wether or not this can be a good thing but your are deluding yourself if you think people assaulting transpeople are the sort of people whose views are in any way influenced by feminists. This is laughable. Also please stop with the guilt tripping, we are not responsible of the mental health of transpeople, we are not their therapists, sorry.

I love how they implied that the guy who forced GNC kids to behave as their assigned gender would somehow give a letter of thanks to a feminist. This is implying “terfs” want the same things as this maniac which is just a straight up lie, terfs absolutely adore GNC people and are mostly GNC themselves.

“What rights of women are actually being eroded by the inclusion of transwomen ?” I am glad you asked !! Well apart from the freedom of speech since “terfs” are losing their jobs and being deplatformed because of this, we have the inherent dangers of replacing sex by gender in what the law protects : https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/firing-mom-because-shes-breastfeeding-sex-discrimination this is a link to a story about a woman who was said being fired for breastfeeding was not sex discrimination because men can lactate. Do you see the problem ? Moreover there is quotas for women in politics etc….Women fought for their quotas and now males can have them, who do you think an employer would prefer someone who probably will be pregnant at one point or someone who never will ? and let’s not forget the right for women to have women only places :Women in prison are raped by the trans identified males in it .

“I cannot think of a single right that is removed from me”

 good for you maybe you should have actually researched radfems talking point before doing this video ? Your ignorance is not a good argument.  

“transwomen can use the women changing room because they are women” 

you keep saying that but apart from “they feel like women” you didn’t explain how they are women. This is the basis of this entire video and you never explained.  Also allowing any person who say they are women into the women’s changing room does not only allow transwomen does it ? It also allows lying freaks.

“You can protect cis women’s rights and transrights simulteanously” HOWWWWWWWWWWW, please tell me how to keep female only spaces (women’s right) while saying TWAW (transrights apparently according to them).

“transwomen can be the victims and cis women can do the voyeurism” 

true but did you forget we actually live in the real world and in that one males are much more likely to be sexually harassing people than women ? It is a brazen form of lying to tell women that since theoretically other women can also be creeps they don’t have to worry about males. Get a grip. Live in the real world for a change.

“It doesn’t reference transwomen but men pretending to be women” 

apart from “they feel it” you still haven’t told us what the difference is. You are aware nothing from an outside perspective distinguishes the two right ??

“there is no evidence of men pretending to be trans to enter female only spaces” and how would you know they are pretending ? This is the same problem again and again, if you define transwomen as men who feel like women then there is absolutely no way of verifying someone really is trans. And that’s a lie anyway since we do actually have proof of that happening?? There was that video making the room on radblr a while ago of a clear male pissing in the women’s bathroom saying (lying) that he was trans.

Yeah actually radical feminists would accept transmen in their bathrooms, but it’s not an easy question with an easy answer to know how to check they really are transmen. Although notice how they are again only talking about transpeople that passes ? I would feel safer with Jammy in my toilets than Hannah Mouncey for exemple :

  That is so obvioulsy a man in a dress.

“ If a transman with a beard and penis and balls can go into a women’s toilet and that is deemed okay because of his biological sex what is to stop a cis man from doing the same”

 I am sorry but are you saying a transwoman cannot have a beard and penis and balls ?????????? This is incredibly transphobic of you, you said that gender identity Is just feeling like a gender, how exactly does that mean transwomen cannot have beard ? If you want to know, radfem are arguing for a third toilet for transpeople, that’s our solution. What is yours ?

 Ok the next part is racist I’ll skip that thanks

On accusation of TERFery intimidating people and organizations “we haven’t seen these” again, your ignorance is not an argument, I am posting these on Tumblr where cryptoterfs arer numerous. Why do you think that is ?

Are they seriously saying Nike and addidas “accepted” transpeople because they “realized it was the right thing to do” ?????? Those companies employs slaves IN WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN??

“trying to make transpeople look crazy” 

the clownfish things were said online by real transpeople. We don’t need to invent thing to make transpeople look crazy, if there is  large enough group some people belonging in that group will say stupid shit .

“We support these rights”

 when speaking about women victims of abuse. This is a lie, the Vancouver rape shelter relief is often targeted by transactivists, recently a gofundme for it was cancelled because of transactivists, they are quite litteraly stealing money from raped women. This is not a small, inconsequential part of transactivism. 

“The trans-inclusionist views expand the meaning of women to include transwomen”

 It doesn’t expend shit actually since it excludes transmen and non-binary. If anything it reduces it.

They go on to say that transwomen deserves protection as women because of their murder rate. It doesn’t explain how being seen as women will help them here and anyway it’s a bold lie considering their murder rate is actually quite low. They also fail to consider how depriving transmen and nonbinaries of those same women’s right might be a problem.

Again they make the distinction between transwomen and men pretending to be transwomen without a way to identify which is which. This is starting to get repetitive and tedious. The problem is not that all transwomen are predators is that there is no way to see a difference until the predators acts, until a woman gets hurt, so accepting transwomen is accepting predators and saying transwomen feelings are more important that the women being hurt because of this. I disagree. The tiny tiny percentage of transpeople doing bad things is actually the same percentage as men doing bad things. If your argument could be used to say women only spaces shouldn’t exist at all because not all men are dangerous maybe you should reconsider your argument because I will not reconsider women’s right to have female only spaces.

“If you push transwomen out of female only spaces you push transmen in”

 Yes. I don’t even see where the problem is here.  Now why don’t we analyse the fact that if you push transwomen into female only spaces you push transmen out of them ? I don’t think transmen belongs in men’s prisons, do you ?

“Transpeople don’t dispute biology and don’t impact how female only diseases are treated” 

eat shit. They do impact this, every woman trying to say “female biology” get shit thrown at her faster than you can blink, stop lying to me Jammy. Do you think I would get called a bleeder, a fetus carrier, a motherfucking birthing body if transactivism wasn’t trying to erase sex ? Don’t you think the sentence “men can have periods” is not eroding biology ? Fuck off

Back to JK, Jammy is saying her disabling comment on her blog was not conductive to a conversation, I have to salute the straight face he says it with because do you really think a nice educated conversation would have taken place on JK Rowling’s essay ? They flooded her children’s book tag with porn for fuck sake.

“Thre is no explosion in young women who wishes to transition” sources ? Because it does seem to be true :https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsm.12817

“the detransitionners rate is actually really low” hard to know but most people who transitioned did it not so long ago since transgender is a recent trend, we will have to wait and see to have a more robust number. But maybe they are right on that one, this is not going to be the one argument that changes my views unfortunately. 

“Does that mean we should stop people from getting plastic surgery then ?” 

lol you don’t know the radfem stance on plastic surgery do you ?

“There is more significant transphobia than homophobia” 

sources ? Because transition is used as converstion therapy in Iran so it is at least untrue in one country. 

“If transmen transition to escape womanhood why is there transwomen ?” 

You really didn’t research this did you ? the radfem answer is that transwomen are either gay men who have gender disphoria OR AGP (autogynephiles) read this if you want to learn more about it: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-elephant-in-the-room

“why would people who have male privileges choose to give that up” 

you are assuming they lose their male privileges but I will need sources on that because most transwomen do not pass and are treated more as special men than as women.

“We have already shown you that transphobia is far more rife and damaging than homophobia” 

did I miss that part ? When ? You just said that ? Without backing it up ?

“anti trans narratives constantly contradict itself” 

No we do not, we are feminist so we OF COURSE we analyse men and women differently, this is an issue of gender which radical feminism posit as an hierarchy, trying to explain transwomen and transmen with the same arguments is doomed to fail because they were not equal in their relation to gender to begin with. Do you think black people trying to pass as white do it for the same reasons white people try to have more black features ? Of course not.

“What am I a lesbian or a homophobe ?”

 You are both, you are a lesbian in denial with a deep case of internalized misogyny and homophobia. You know yo can be both sexist and a woman right ? Well it’s the same here.

I heard “Simone de Beauvoir” and I knew they were going to be really fucking stupid with that “One is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman” quote and THERE IT IS! Please read the book. She is not saying male can become women if they try hard enough, she is saying basically the same thing JK Rowling’s quote said which is that “womanhood” as it is forced on women is alien and not natural and the point is that we should not accept it, it’s a feminist quote on femininity and I am so sick of men using it to say that they are women.

Transactivists acting as if sex recognition patterns don’t exists is exhausting so I won’t comment on “nobody checks if you have XX chromosomes before passing you over for a promotion” other than to say : passing over for promotions happens a lot when women are pregnant and after giving birth stop acting as if misogyny is unrelated to our reproduction capacities it is fucking insulting.

“transwomen will support [fights against tampon tax and FGM] too” 

FGM was a bad choice here considering transactivists tried to stop a bill against FGM .  I will need sources here actually since I never seen a transwoman fighting for women’s right in my life.

Ok I let a lot passes here because I’m tired but we are 48:40 in the video and fuck you “intersectional feminism” is not about males. It was for black women. It is not reductionist to say women are people with a vagina, this is just a definition, and one that applies to 50% of the population at that, there is litteraly no definition of woman that includes more people than that.

Imagine thinking “women are people with vagina” is reductionist but not calling women “vulva owners”. Please , I am begging for coherence.

“transwomen who experience greater abuse than cisgender women will ever experience” . 

This is revolting. I don’t have any other words. I am glad this is the end of the video because I would have stopped immediately if this was at the start. What abuse transwomen can experience than ciswomen cannot ? Because I would have thought forced pregnancy was horrific but maybe this doesn’t compare to being misgendered?

“most people are comfortable with transwomen going into women’s bathrooms” https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39147/bsa34_moral_issues_final.pdf

It says 13% of women are at least uncomfortable with sharing bathroom with transwomen, why are we ignoring their wishes? Because 0.1% of the population wants to ?  Whatever, the really interesting thing in this study is that for this question they defined “transwomen” as someone who has gone through all the steps to become a woman aka someone with surgery. I find extremely misleading that this is used for bathroom bills which defines transwomen as male identifying as women. Do you think the numbers would be the same if they specified the transwoman in question still has a penis ? Which is the case for most transwomen btw?

[disconnecteddots]

Notes on Nathan Robinson's Response to J.K. Rowling  - The Bathroom Debate

Because of my great respect for his other writing, I have taken particular interest in the response of Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs to the recent J.K. Rowling controversy, entitled "J.K. Rowling and the Limits of Imagination". The essay is a polemical attack on her views and character, calling her a transphobic bigot.

I will mostly be using the traditional definitions of "woman" and "man" in this response ("adult human female" etc.), except when denoting otherwise using the adjective "trans".

Here are some of my thoughts, mostly on bathrooms and changing rooms.

The subtitle reads:

The creator of Harry Potter could imagine the most marvelous fictional universe in children’s literature—yet she can’t imagine the inner lives of transgender people or the radical expansion of political possibilities.

This is a very helpful sentence contradicting the idea that Rowling is of poor character. Yes, the ideas trans rights activists (henceforth TRAs) peddle are indeed "radical". It should come as no surprise that people have trouble imagining radical ideas. This is a common feature of radical ideas, regardless of whether they are true! Whether someone can imagine radical ideas is not very indicative of their character.

She tells the usual fear-mongering tales that conservative Republicans tell about the perils of having trans women in the bathroom:

“When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman—and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones—then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”

As my colleague Brianna Rennix has written, this is ridiculous: people who wish to commit sex crimes in bathrooms do not have their gender checked at the door. A person does not have to “pass” as a woman to commit a crime in the ladies’ room, they just have to walk into the ladies’ room.

First off, note the switch from Rowling's "bathrooms and changing rooms" to just "bathrooms... the ladies' room". Changing rooms have mysteriously disappeared in Nathan's response. I have seen this dodge before. Perhaps because it's easier to defend bathrooms, where private stalls prevent voyeurism, than changing rooms, where people may change and shower in the open.

But more importantly, Nathan's retort is easy to dispute. It is very easy to think of impediments that keep men from entering women's spaces. They may be observed, noted as suspicious, and/or confronted inside the space. They may be observed, noted as suspicious, and/or confronted by observers outside the space, such as a waiter in a restaurant seeing a man enter the women's restroom. They may be asked to leave businesses or other establishments. They may suffer social consequences if word is spread of their behavior. They may be ejected by staff or police. With social and physical consequences for trespassing, it would be difficult for a man to use strategies such as repeated entry or lingering in women's spaces, useful for finding opportunities for misconduct. Seriously, what would happen if a man entered a women's changing room with twenty women in it? They'd confront him and chase him out! And all of these possible consequences also creates internal discouragement in the offender: fear. Fear can be overcome by repeated confrontation of the fear - in this case, that would be repeated intrusion into women's spaces. But that's difficult if the intrusions result in consequences.

But with explicit sanctioning of self ID as the only criterion for entry into women's spaces, none of these defensive strategies can work properly. Intruders can overcome their fears through practice. They can enter and linger as often as they like, so long as their behavior wouldn't provoke suspicion if done by a woman. They can't be ejected by staff or police until after they commit an offense, and much voyeurism won't be punishable at all - no one gets kicked out of a changing room for scanning the room. No one gets kicked out of communal showers for showering in them.

There is one remaining defense with self ID: prejudice. If trans women are still observed and noted as suspicious, that decreases the ability for men to intrude and offend. If social consequences are still imposed on trans women for using the women's bathroom, that also serves as a deterrent. But if this prejudice is eliminated in this context as TRAs desire, these defenses will be lost as well.

Does Nathan really think it's a knockdown argument that unless there's a guard at the door, or the door is locked, that that means there is no impediment to going somewhere? Sometimes I leave my front door unlocked at home. But if an intruder were to enter my home, they'd risk running into me, the police being called, etc. That's just a basic fact about life. The threat of social or physical consequences discourages people from certain behaviors even when there's no immediate obstruction to those behaviors.

On to the next quote from Nathan.

More importantly, she does not consider that her own framework for bathrooms, by wanting trans women to use the men’s room, will create the exact abuse situations that she says she is worried about—and every day instead of rarely. We have some data suggesting that forcing trans people to use the wrong bathroom increases their risk of being assaulted, which is what you’d expect. Why is the fear experienced by trans women forced to use a bathroom for the opposite gender not present in her framework? Because J.K. Rowling is transphobic, and trans women’s experiences are seen as less legitimate.

First, TRAs have a really hard time understanding that their Gender Critical opponents don't have a problem with trans people, they have a problem with men - people who fit the traditional anatomic definition of "male" or "man", regardless of how they identify. My guess is that this is because feminists of all stripes have normalized anti-male rhetoric, so to admit that GC feminists are anti-male and not transphobic would be rhetorical surrender. Rowling addresses this specifically in her essay: "Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women," but Nathan ignores what she says. Excluding trans women but accepting trans men in the women's bathroom is best characterized as anti-male, not transphobic. And demanding that trans women not be called "men" or "male" in any context is using definitions as a manipulative tool by making it rhetorically impossible to refer to human sexual dimorphism.

Second, segregating bathrooms and changing rooms are a probabilistic measure towards reducing sexual misconduct and violence. Not all misconduct will be prevented - the goal is just to prevent some of it. Some women commit sexual or violent crimes against other women - we let them in the women's bathroom anyway. Many men don't commit sexual or violent crimes against women - they're excluded regardless, even if they're in a low risk category (e.g., gay). Men are left to fend for themselves against other men in men's bathrooms and changing rooms - even if they're weak, disabled, poor, or of a marginalized racial group. Many trans women could easily pass as men and go unnoticed in the men's room - self ID means we're not just talking about trans women who have undergone sex change operations that intrinsically draw attention. Should our efforts be devoted to reducing intramale violence and harassment in the men's room, or effectively abandoning the segregation system altogether by adopting self ID? How will the effects of self ID change over time as trans acceptance increases, reducing the social barriers to a non-trans male predator pretending to be trans as an abuse tactic? These are completely debatable questions. It is not bigoted to consider excluding some or all trans women, just as it is not bigoted to exclude gay males. Segregation systems by definition separate humans from each other based on some arbitrary criteria, and I have heard no call for generally integrating bathrooms and changing rooms into unisex spaces.

Next quote.

...in her essay she talks about the problems she sees with letting “any man who believes or feels he’s a woman” be considered a woman, which is very straightforward: she thinks many who claim to be women are not in fact women.

More subtle dishonesty from Nathan. Here's the quote he's referencing from Rowling:

When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.

That doesn't actually imply Nathan's "very straightforward" interpretation that "she thinks many who claim to be women are not in fact women". It just means what she says, and it is indeed a simple truth. Perhaps there are not many men dishonestly claiming to be trans women now - Rowling actually doesn't comment on that at all in that quote. Nathan just made an opinion up for her so he could trash her. But if transphobia is eliminated from society as both TRAs and Gender Critical people desire, and there is no medical or other gatekeeping preventing males from claiming to be women, then yes, any man may claim to be a woman with zero impediment. We have ample evidence from history that men will go to great lengths to commit crimes against women. So yes, we would expect voyeurism and other abuse rates in women's spaces from opportunistic male intruders to go up. Obviously. If we didn't, why would we bother having separate facilities in the first place?

Nathan’s argument also reeks of what I previously noted: that the TRAs demand that “men” and even “male” be used to refer to gender identity, and not anatomy, is a manipulative tactic to make it impossible to discuss human sexual dimorphism. Nathan writes, “She thinks many who claim to be women are not in fact women.” Trans women are often anatomically male (I’m not going to debate whether medicine can change sex or intersex people here). Being born anatomically male is why they’re trans women and not non-trans women!

I'll take a moment to note that the TRAs no longer consider gender dysphoria a condition for being trans. That is, even persons that are psychologically accepting of their conventional gender, or who could become accepting through non-transition treatments or growth, can be considered trans. So what's stopping an abusive male from saying, "hey, I would just prefer to shower with women - that sounds more pleasant than showering with men?" Nothing!

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Secret-Diary Attempts to Arbitrate Between Trans-Activism and Gender-Critical Radical Feminism. Yeah. This’ll End Well.

One of the most infuriating things about being a Person On The Internet is being forced by circumstance to form opinions on things you really, really don’t care about. It works like this: you see a lot of other people having opinions about something, and you try really, really hard not to form opinions of your own, because the issue they’re arguing over has nothing to do with you and is probably a storm in a teacup anyway. Unfortunately, you can’t help but mentally respond to the opinions everyone else is having, because they’re having them very loudly and in public spaces that you use to write and communicate. Before you know it, you’ve formed a carefully-considered view on something that you just wanted to ignore, and the only way to lance the boil is to write a blog entry about it. A blog entry that will probably invite five thousand tons of hatemail from both sides of the debate because it makes an effort to be moderate and to recognise the valid points of both sides, which people fucking hate for some reason. And so, with all that in mind, I’m about to try and put down my thoughts on Transactivism and Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism- two things that don’t involve me but which I’ve heard so much about that an opinion has glommed itself together in my mind-tank.

First of all, I’m socially liberal, in the classic sense of that term. Meaning that I think people should more or less be allowed to do and think what they like, so long as it doesn’t hurt other people. As such, I don’t generally have a problem with trans people. I don’t really care how any given person identifies provided they don’t expect me to use the word ‘genderfluid’ with a straight face (y’know, because ‘Gender Fluid’ sounds like a hastily-conceived euphemism for vaginal discharge).

Unfortunately, my general air of acceptance and live-and-let-live laissez-faire doesn’t extend to the nuttier fringes of trans-actvisism, because those nutty fringes really seem to hate radical feminists and- frankly, they just don’t deserve it. Not too long ago, in the yester-times, my sister wrote a short blog about how some parents and schools are encouraging young children to identify as trans, even though it’s a terrible idea because young children are prone to magical and transformative thinking and don’t have brains that are fully developed enough to think about the nuances of gender identity. My sister thought she wanted to be a boy until she grew up and realised she wasn’t trrans, she was just a butch lesbian. I didn’t even want to be human, and spent quite a lot of my childhood ‘identifying’ as an alien from a distant planet. Simply put, you risk doing more harm than good by assuming that any act of transformative thinking by a child is a sign of latent transgenderism, when its much more likely to be a child’s naturally experimentation with the concept of identity. Regardless of whether you agree with that chain of reasoning or not, you can presumably concur that it’s cogent, reasonable and comes from a place of wanting the best for the next generation, not from a place of hate. For daring to make this argument in a public forum, however, my sister received reams of hatemail from self-styled trans-activists using ‘TERF’ as an insult... included one guy who said that he hoped she got stabbed in the vagina. This seems to be part of a wider pattern of violent reactions of so-called TERFs. Did you know you can get T-shirts with fake ‘TERF blood’ on them, for example? To put it another way, the trans-activist community tends to overreact to mild criticism quite a lot. I’m naturally suspicious of this large, powerful group that explodes violently when confronted with even the lightest criticism.

Which brings me to TERFs. Are there horrible, transphobic TERFs who only want to use their feminism as an excuse to attack trans peeps? Yes. Do they represent the main bulk of gender-critical radical feminism? No. As far as I can tell, most TERFs are fairly normal people have no interest in invalidating or erasing trans identities. They just want ideological and liminal spaces for women who were born women and for some recognition of the continued existence of sex-based oppression (as separate from gender identification-based oppression). I’m not an expert or even any type of feminist, but that doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Being a trans woman is a perfectly valid identity but it presumably entails a different set of experiences and identity issues to those confronted by women who were born as biological women. As such, its appropriate to have spaces that recognise that difference. Not everyone needs to be allowed access to every single cultural space. It’s okay to have different sections within the general discourse for different people with different issues.

None of this is to say that “TERFS = Good, Trans = bad”.That’s obviously not the case. Both groups have a mix of good people and irredeemable cunts. The problem is that the current, dominant cultural narrative ignores the sinister, mean spirited bastards in the trans-activist movement (and, in fact, gives them a free pas), while focusing exclusively on the worst excesses of gender-critical radical feminism. Instead of saying “here are two groups of people with good and bad points whose ideologies need to be discussed fairly and openly to find common ground”, the narrative says “all Trans people are good and noble and decent and all TERFs are saturday-morning cartoon villains with twirly mustaches”. And that’s an idiotic oversimplification. I don’t know whose side I’m on, in the final analysis, but I do know that no good can come out of a one-sided narrative that gives the worst people in one group a free pass while ignoring the more reasoned and thoughtful people in the other. I’m not completely for or against either group, but I am in favour of reasoned-discussion-without-contrived-argument and I am against excessively simplified cultural narratives.

ADDENDUM: Please don’t try to message me about this, or start a discussion in the reblogs. I’m annoyed that I even had to think about it this much. Also, don’t get your knickers in a twist over the ‘Gender Fluid’ joke- I’m not trying to invalidate your identity, it’s just a funny word.

[queertheology]

Faith Based Activism Starter Kit

When I was 21, a conversation with my parents about health insurance devolved into an argument about my queerness.

I had come out as gay three years earlier and they had a mixed response. They checked a few of the right boxes: they were quick to assure me that I was still their son, they made it clear they would still help me with college, they loved me and wanted me to be happy. But they also had their stumbles: they asked that I go see a Christian counselor, they never asked about my dating life, they were uncomfortable  talking about anything LGBT.

So I waited.

I did what I thought was the “good Christian thing” to do: I was patient and gracious. I tried to not ruffle any feathers (though I did have a few outbursts of frustration). I was “giving them time and space” for their “process.”

And then three years later we were sitting in the kitchen arguing about whether it was OK for gay people to be camp counselors and youth leaders, whether gay relationships were valid, whether anyone even expected gay people to get married in the first place. And I realized, in that moment, that they hadn’t changed. My parents were, for the most part, in the exact same spot they were three years ago when I came out.

All of my grace and patience and gentle reading suggestions and subtle attempts to talk about LGBTQ topics had done nothing. My parents hadn’t changed because, frankly, I hadn’t asked them to. I thought I was being kind, gracious, patient; I thought I was giving them time and space. But what I was really doing was being silent, tacitly approving the status quo.

The night of that argument, when I realized that my parents hadn’t changed because I hadn’t asked them to, I also realized that if the Church and America are to change, someone is going to have to ask them to change also. And not just ask once, meekly. We are going to have to force the issue. In his Letter From A Birmingham Jail, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explains,

“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”

That day, I decided I would be an “angelic troublemaker,” as Bayard Rustin said. I applied for (and was later accepted to) Soulforce’s Equality Ride and spent 2 months studying nonviolence and theology, including in-person training with civil rights leader John Lewis, and then 2 months traveling the country engaged in activism and speaking at schools, churches, and communities around the intersections faith, justice, gender, and sexuality. In the decade since, I’ve dedicated much of my time, passion, and energy to social justice causes. I do this because of my Christian faith, not in spite of it.

I’m sure you’ve had some similar experiences. Parents who need a little more time, a church that’s still discerning their stance, pastors who have a good heart but don’t quite get it. Whether it’s around LGBTQ issues or something else like race, sexism, police brutality, Islamophobia… I bet there’s been someone in your life who is “not quite there yet” (maybe you have been that person).

And perhaps you’ve even wanted to be more active in creating change in your life, family, and community. If you have a similar stirring in your soul to do something, I see you. Here’s a bit of what I’ve learned from my past decade of faith-based LGBTQ activism.

In Romans 12, Paul says,

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God–this is your true and proper worship.”

Putting your body on the line — literally — is a spiritual act of worship.

A faith-based pursuit of justice is found throughout the Bible.

Micah tell us that what God requires is “to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Amos tells us that God “hates” and “despises” religious festivals, but instead desires that “justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.”

On Palm Sunday, Jesus stages a massive nonviolent direct action by riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, and later that week even goes so far as to destroy property by turning over tables in the temple.

Imagine what our community, our churches, our world would look like if Christians rolled up our sleeves a little more and worked a little more fervently for the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven?

How to get started with faith-based activism

Read

Activism doesn’t happen in a vacuum and simply being LGBTQ (or loving someone who is) doesn’t automagically make you an expert (if only!). Take some time to learn about the issues you find yourself in the midst of, issues that you are connected to, issues that you can work in solidarity with. And learn from those who have gone before about the tactics that worked — and those that didn’t. Innovation is important, of course, but so is learning from those who have already been doing the work, when possible.

Here are some book recommendations to get you started:

Jesus & Nonviolence: A Third Way by Walter Wink

Jesus Acted Up by Robert Goss

Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King Jr. (the published version of Letter From A Birmingham Jail)

How Nonviolence Protects The State and The Failure of Nonviolence by Peter Gelderloos

Color of Violence by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence

The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy

When We Rise by Cleve Jones

I got my start as an activist with Soulforce, which is committed nonviolent direct action as a means of sabotaging Christian supremacy. Why nonviolence? Here’s how they put it,

It is effective for the kind of work that we do

It is open and accessible in the sense that it provides tools to everyday activists and “pre-activists”

It contains a call to action

And finally, it offers a path of personal transformation. Our goal is always first and foremost the internal healing, reconciliation, strengthening, and transformation of the individual and community.

This is the nonviolent process that I learned:

Experience the nature of the problem and be with the people most affected

Research the problem and the adversary; understand the facts and the cultural texture of where we are located

Negotiate with the adversary directly on what justice can look like

Use direct action to elicit a re-dedication to moving toward justice when negotiation fails

Use tools of communication and media to bring more people into the conversation to lean into the strength of social accountability to work towards cultural change

Return to negotiation when the adversary is willing; the question is not whether we shall move toward justice but how and how soon

Soulforce has a detailed and accessible guide to nonviolence which I highly recommend.

Stay Current

In order to be effective activists, we have to know what’s going on! Some of these groups and resources are not specifically Christian but are doing work around issues that we think are important for Christians. It can be powerful for Christians to work alongside non-Christians on issues that matter to us.

Black & Pink – supporting LGBTQ prisoners

@prisonculture on Twitter

POWER an interfaith activist organization based in Philadelphia (but who is engaged with issues of national and international significance)

National Immigrant Justice Center

@BreeNewsome is a fierce Black, Christian activist. Follow her on Twitter to stay connected to current events + be blessed by her keen insight

Queer Theology – on our Facebook and Twitter, we regularly share information about issues that are important to LGBTQ Christians and supporters as well as actions you can take to make a difference

Connect Locally

Groups meeting at your local LGBT Center are a great place to start. Look up who is there and get involved in one that resonates with you

Everytown for Gun Safety has actions you can take — digitally and in-person — to make a difference in your community

Soulforce has opportunities to educate yourself and take action digitally and locally.

Trans Day of Action is an annual event organized by Audre Lorde Project in NYC and has local actions in some cities. It’s a great way to offer your body as a living sacrifice by showing up for trans justice

Black Lives Matter has chapters across the country. If there’s one in your town, you can link up!

Practice Activism in Your Daily Life

Activism isn’t only being part of an official organization, it also happens in your personal life.

Speak up when a family member says something homophobic, racist, or otherwise prejudiced

Ask your pastor to use examples of LGBTQ people in their sermons

Start a group at your church — maybe it’s something simple like an LGBTQ fellowship, or more active like an activist group

Ask your church leaders to read our article on how to tell if your church is welcoming for transgender people and go through our Inclusive Church Checklist

You don’t have to be outspoken and in your face to practice activism. Fr. Shay wrote an article on how introverts can get involved with activism in a way that feels safe and sustainable.

Take Care of Yourself

If you want to be an effective activist, helping make the world a better place… then you need to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself too.

We have a bunch of resources on self-care including An LGBTQ Christian Guide to Self-Care

There may be a peer support group you can join at a local nonprofit that centers around your experience (in major cities, healthcare nonprofits often have these, as well as community- and issue-specific groups such as LGBTQ, veterans, immigrants, etc).

You may find therapy to be helpful in taking care of yourself (I know that I do!). If you have insurance, you may be able to see a therapist for relatively cheap. If you don’t, there might be a nonprofit that offers those services to you at no or lost cost. You can also look into virtual counseling with a company such as BetterHelp. We can’t recommend enough that you work with a licensed therapist who does not have a religious agenda. This type of therapist will be much more helpful than a “Christian counselor” through your church or a religious organization.

Get Started

I know there’s a lot here and the last thing I want you to do is get stuck in analysis paralysis. I know that a fear of doing or saying the wrong thing can take keep many of us from ever taking action.

What sort of world would we live in if we were always ruled by fear of failure? You may mess up along the way and that’s human. The key is to graciously admit your mistakes, learn from the experience, and commit to making things right. We’re in this together.

So today, pick one book to read or one organization to connect with. Take one step today, and another tomorrow, and a third next week. Keep on with the work until that day when justice rolls down like a river. Because together, we’re gonna change the world.

We’ve got more resources for Christian activism coming, if you want to make sure you get ‘em all, you can signup here and we’ll send ‘em your way

[azurowle]

Before I begin my response I just want to point out the part of my response that states that GC and TERF circles are not doing enough to ferret out and exorcise the conservatives and fascists co-opting gender critical “theory” and language went…completely ignored.

And then what immediately gets brought up is a completely foreign country, with an entirely different context and framework for the LGBTQ+ community.

Transgenderism is used by lots of conservative countries to enforce sexism and homophobia. In Iran, for example, gay people are forced to transition, to appear straight.

I actually looked into this and on the Wikipedia page for the situation for trans people in Iran (which, shock and amazement, isn’t the fucking Mecca for us trans people that TERFs make it out to be) there are two studies. One characterizes the generalization of “gay people forced to transition” as being an oversimplification of the issue, and the other, “Transgenderism in Iran,” outright says on page 161 that there are no incidents of people being forced to undergo SRS. (The latter I actually think is incorrect,

Ultimately my take on the whole situation comes from a Medium post made by Emma Stone, and one that’s echoed through most of the trans community:

…to be legally and socially accepted as a woman you must have genital reassignment surgery, which is completely anti-bodily autonomy. You don’t have a choice and the biggest thing I’ve learnt from the trans community is that you should have so much choice about everything all the time.

…So the idea of using the horrific human rights abuses of gay people in Iran as a gotcha! against trans people is never going to work. We don’t support that. It doesn’t support us. Its just complete nonsense to act like this is at all some how the smoking gun ready to blow the whole trans human rights argument apart. But it just simply isn’t. It’s nothing more than bigots latching onto something important and trying to weaponise it for their political gain, as we’ve seen them do with everything ever.

Also I continue to be baffled that there can be ABSOLUTELY NO SOLIDARITY since trans people’s rights are limited at best in Iran.

About all I can do as a white person, is acknowledge that the situation with third genders is complicated and not as simplistic as other white people on Tumblr make it out to be, and that it’s a conversation that needs to be led BY people of color who are part of those third genders.

Another thing that amused me going into the spiel about my dysphoria: The following quotes are from someone who is likely NOT a psychiatrist or psychologist, does NOT know me, and is proceeding to project and draw conclusions about me from a single sentence. None of which are true.

This just proves my point. Trans men do not matter to gender critics or TERFs in any real meaningful way.

This is also why I didn’t bring any of my past or personal life/interpersonal relationships into this, because fuck you, I’m not a text you can dissect and analyze, I am a whole fucking person. Just like you.

Your dysphoria exists because you have a fear of pregnancy (tokophobia). That’s really a distinctly female thing to fear, since men can’t get pregnant.

My dysphoria is a combination of things, one of which is the fact that my body should not be able to get impregnated. That is not something it should be able to DO.

This is either a deliberate misreading of what I was saying in an attempt to talk down to and condescend my experiences, because, again, infantilizing trans men is your second favorite past time, or genuinely not understanding that my there is a difference between being afraid of pregnancy and being forced to confront the fact that my mind constantly has to come to terms with the fact that my body can do something it shouldn’t be able to.

I’m going with the former.

“I never want to experience pregnancy, so therefore I am not a woman” what do you think that says about women?

I think you’re trying to twist my words and make a deeply personal and individual statement about my own situation into something political about women as a whole.

Not happening. It’s not that deep.

There are lots of women who are childfree.

Talking to me as if I wasn’t one of those women before I realized I was trans. As if I didn’t belong to those communities. Hell, I belonged to the really nasty childfree communities before I grew up.

If you choose to remove your organs, you will be left with life long medical complications, because the uterus does more for us than just get us pregnant. It is an integral part of our musculature, it doesn’t just float in there all alone and isolated, it is connected to our entire system. It is not an appendix. It regulates our hormones and does more for us than we are taught in school.

And yet there are trans men and women who have had hysterectomies and have been fine.

I don’t plan on removing my ovaries. But my uterus will continue to atrophy as long as I am on testosterone. And HRT is the one thing that has literally made me go from being a suicidal mess to actually being a functional, stable, and happy human being.

Being a woman does not mean accepting pregnancy or childbirth as inevitable, and it is sexist to think that womanhood means you need to want or accept those things.

Never said it did. More projection. More putting words in my mouth. You don’t fucking listen.

Gender is gender roles, that is literally all there is to gender.

Prove it.

By which I mean, actually prove that gender and gender roles are the same thing. None of this “masculine/feminine essence” nonsense you’re trying to propose.

There is no such thing as a “cis” woman, because the entire concept of “cis” is just that there is some imaginary woman who loves and enjoys being oppressed and that misogyny is “correct” for her and part of her identity. The entire concept of “cis” is just misogynistic drivel.

“Cis” is a Latin prefix that means “on the same side of.” It is opposite of “trans”, which means “on the opposite side of.”

“Cis” simply means you are not transgender. That’s it.

Do you think “cis” women don’t think of babies as chest-bursters? There’s an entire community of childfree women who use that exact language.

Oh well golly gee gosh, I had no idea! Thanks, condescending jackassery from Tumlr Dot Hell, time to detransition and -

Again, see above.

You are not different from other women, we are just as human as you are, we are not mindless stereotypes who accept patriarchy and pregnancy.

Implying I think that about women. Which…I don’t, because I lived most of my life thinking I was one.

But I guess, because I’m trans, it’s okay to draw conclusions about a trans man talking about his experience with dysphoria based on a single sentence, then project your insecurities about what everyone else must think of women aside from you and your in-crowd onto me.

I’ve done my work and at the end of the day, I’m proud of who I am - even with my uncertainties and struggles.

You’re not my problem to solve.

Call out and get rid of the fucking fascists and conservatives trying to use YOUR FUCKING LANGUAGE to push their own agenda. Because once they’re done with us? They’ll come after you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my testosterone is not going to inject itself.

Judith Butler: ‘We need to rethink the category of woman’ | Life and style | The Guardian

Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to “assign” gender to us. The powers that do that are part of an apparatus of gender that assigns and reassigns norms to bodies, organises them socially, but also animates them in directions contrary to those norms.

[januaraufstand-blog]

OMISSIONS AND CORRECTIONS TO THE STONEWALL MILITANT FRONT ANNOUNCEMENT . . These texts and announcements will be available online elsewhere once we have our updated website for SMF. For now, the original statement text can be found here: . . http://www.redspark.nu/en/proletarian-feminism/stonewall-militant-front-2018-a-new-year-a-new-us/ . . On New Year’s Day, the Revolutionary Alliance of Trans People Against Capitalism (RATPAC) announced that, after two and half years, it would be moving forward as the Stonewall Militant Front (SMF). This announcement gave a brief theoretical outline as to why, rather than limit its membership and focus along the lines of trans identity alone, SMF would instead organize based on the shared social consciousness formed by a particular aspect of patriarchy under capitalism. SMF developed an understanding of what particular force of patriarchy most broadly unites trans people in their social experience (across our various lines of identity and expression). In view of this understanding, which is that this particular force of patriarchy is in no way doled out strictly along those identity lines, it became clear that it was insufficient to continue organizing strictly along lines of trans identity. SMF stated its intention to unite all who can be united and drew a line in the sand against political postmodernism. . . The announcement gave a very condensed overview of SMF’s basic understanding of various aspects of patriarchy under capitalism, in anticipation of a forthcoming full-length and fully-developed theoretical document on the matter. There were various errors and omissions in the text of the announcement, which we seek to clarify and rectify here. We will address them one by one. *** Perhaps our most glaring error in our statement was omitting any discussion of the *secondary aspect of the principal aspect of patriarchy* (SPP for short). This aspect is crucial to understand on its own terms, because although the SPP on its own does not cause a uniform social experience among all those who face some degree of it, it is nevertheless a major force in shaping the relations of production. . . To better explain the SPP, first a few clarifying words about the *principal aspect of the principal aspect of patriarchy* (PPP for short) will be helpful: . . In our condensed overview of the principal aspect of patriarchy, we maintained that the general social perception of being assigned female at birth (AFAB) entails being pushed to “carry forward reproductive tasks and certain ‘acceptable’ labor positions generally, to hold a **particular position** within a nuclear family, and to assume **certain social (and sexual) roles**.” . . When we speak of being pushed into this particular position within the nuclear family and the assumption of certain roles, this should be distinguished from a more generalized push toward engaging in reproductive and other denigrated forms of labor, which is the main substance of the SPP. . . The most fundamental function of the PPP—of forcing people toward and to remain in this particular position and its accompanying roles in the family—is not reproducing the working class nor is it securing generalized reproductive labor in the family or in other contexts (although in capitalism the principal aspect of patriarchy as a whole does also accomplish those tasks). At its heart, the function of forcing someone to occupy this particular position in the family is to allow strict control of the production of heirs to familial property whose paternity is unquestionable. When it comes to the oppression that seeks to make certain of paternity, it is not simply that someone in this position experiences coercion to undertake certain forms of labor; rather, they are delivered over as whole individuals, in an all-around way, into the power of the man who is the head of the family. The specific forces that create this particular position, drive people directly into it, and keep them there are the most fundamental, essential, and enduring aspect of patriarchy. It should be added that although inheritable property is a question of significance only for bourgeois families, in capitalism this same oppression is very much inflicted on working-class people. . . Meanwhile, the SPP faces all people exhibiting or engaging in feminine-coded behavior, or being read as having feminine-coded traits. People being viewed this way are regarded with a certain degree of contempt, denigration, and/or paternalism, because they are perceived to be unfit to engage in more complex productive labor and especially mental labor and are instead viewed as being more suited for labor that is denigrated, devalued, and/or menial, both productive and especially reproductive. . . This chauvinist attitude is part of an overall male chauvinist idea that women (and, by extension, all people exhibiting feminine-coded traits and behavior) are in some way deficient, and that they need the guardianship of men and depend on men’s alleged unique skills, disposition, and attributes to successfully organize production and all of society. . . Those who face the SPP are (a) pushed into undertaking unpaid reproductive labor in the home and in more “domestic” aspects of other spheres (for instance, the kitchen area in the break-room of a workplace) and (b) pushed toward more precarious and worse-paying waged labor in “feminized” areas of the economy, in reproductive labor as well as many forms of productive labor. It also entails an increased likelihood of being targeted for objectifying sexual consumption. Being subject to this aspect of patriarchy is one reason why even people who do not face the PPP face many types of oppression that also confront people perceived to be AFAB, most of whom also experience the SPP to a great degree. . . The SPP is understood as a sub-aspect of the principal aspect of patriarchy—as opposed to its own separate and relatively independent aspect—because its deepest function is directly facilitating the operation of the PPP: throughout their lives, people who are perceived to be AFAB are coerced into adopting feminine behaviors and traits (this coercion is the secondary aspect of patriarchy). The feminine behaviors and traits that have been oppressed into people perceived to be AFAB then function through the SPP to further constrain their ability to move through society, facilitating the particular domination that is the substance of the PPP. *** We would like to discuss our use of the phrase “perceived to be AFAB” in relation to our discussion of who faces the PPP. . . We would like to acknowledge and express our gratitude to those who pointed out that this expression is inadequate in certain ways to fully describe the material realities we are talking about. . . Above all, we affirm that the spirit of our original argument is correct: it is how a person is perceived that determines what oppression they face, rather than how they identify or even what perceivable steps of self-transformation someone has undertaken. No doubt, a person voicing their identity (and all perceivable facts about how a person moves, speaks, dresses, behaves, and generally expresses themselves) can *influence* how that person is understood. But again, the factor that determines how a person is treated is the *result* once all the facts, both rational and directly perceivable, have come together in the mind of the “beholder.” . . With that said, there is a notable exception to our claim that only people who are believed to be AFAB face any component of the PPP: In many times and places, it happens that even if a beholder knows and perceives that a certain person undertaking many feminine-coded acts of presentation is not AFAB, that beholder may still treat that person “like a woman” for the sake of consuming them and dominating them in the context of treating them as a sex object. This specific, sexual role should indeed be understood as a component of the PPP—that is, this particular type of oppression is one that otherwise only people believed to be AFAB experience. . . Having said that, we must say a few other things as clearly as possible: . . First, this oppression of “being consumed as someone who ‘counts as a woman’ for the sake of objectifying sex” does not in any way constitute the entirety of the PPP. Many people who would be seen by certain beholders as suitable for this specific, sexual role would not be seen by those same beholders as suitable for the other roles that make up the remainder of the PPP—for instance, occupying the “woman role” in forming a private family. Thus, they would not face the particular aspects of oppression that push people into and keep them in those roles. Whether a person is considered suitable for these other roles is much more dependent on whether they are perceived to be AFAB. . . This means that for people who experience the oppression of being pushed into this specific sexual role, there is a basis for a social consciousness, in some social contexts and regarding some social questions, that is basically identical to that of people regularly perceived to be AFAB. However, in other social contexts and regarding other social questions, those who have not regularly experienced those other aspects of the PPP will not have the same tendency toward a common social consciousness with people regularly perceived to be AFAB. . . Second, it should be emphasized that perceived “suitability” for this specific sexual role is not necessarily something that occurs for any given person universally nor something that happens “once and for all.” That is to say, someone whom some beholders find suitable for this sexual role will not necessarily be seen as suitable for it by other beholders. Similarly, some beholders who once saw a certain person as suitable for it may cease to view them as suitable for it at a later point. . . What this entails can vary: When we speak of “an oppression,” we are referring to a discrete, coherent force that pervades society that arises from the needs of the prevailing mode of production, a force that can (though does not necessarily or always) lead to a qualitatively similar consciousness among those who face it. However, such a consciousness cannot result from single, relatively limited, isolated, or irregularly occurring instances of facing treatment or experiences stemming from such a force. Rather, it is facing this force *regularly*, *in a substantial, patterned way*, that creates the possibility of arriving at such a consciousness. *** In our statement, we wrote about “the purpose of patriarchy.” . . We would reword this to describe the *function* of patriarchy. . . We would make this change because talking about a “purpose” for patriarchy could insinuate that the primary reason this oppression exists is because some set of oppressors somewhere is consciously creating it and shaping it. Although the ruling class does consciously work to adjust the functioning of patriarchy in many ways, fundamentally the specific way that patriarchy manifests is determined by the specific mode of production that a society is operating in. . . To be very precise, the specific way that patriarchy manifests is determined by the specific forms of ownership of the means of production that prevail and the specific relations of production that arise from those particular forms of ownership. In truth, rather than patriarchy existing according to anyone’s “purposes,” the reverse is more deeply true: these deeper political-economic forces shape the consciousness of the ruling class themselves and thereby constrain and condition what they seek to impose on society. *** In an early, unedited version of the statement, we wrote, “Postmodernism is at the heart of liberalism.” This phrase was removed quickly after publication because of how glaring the error was. . . In reality, liberalism predates postmodernism, and the two have different philosophical origins. However, political postmodernism (along with all of the identity opportunism and rejection of materialism that come with it) is put into action (or, often, lack of action) in counterrevolutionary, liberal ways no matter how much radical garb it tries to dress itself up in. This is why sometimes postmodernist politics manifest in an outlook that is sometimes called “radical liberalism.” *** We wrote, “Political postmodernism is the ideological output of the petit-bourgeoisie who have no concrete relationship to the production of the world around them, and so their politics follow suit.” . . We would reword this to say, “ . . . the petite bourgeoisie, whose concrete relationship to the society they find themselves in leaves them with a dim, loose, and idealistic understanding of the production of the world around them, and so their politics follow suit.” . . We would make this change because the petite bourgeoisie DO have a concrete relationship to production. Their specific relation to production leaves them a vacillating class, discontent with their powerlessness before the monopoly capitalist class and yet invested in the preservation of capitalism and, crucially, unable to lead the charge in revolution to address the root of the oppression faced by the broad masses of people—a task that the working class alone is suited to. It is this specific relationship to production that leads many among the petite bourgeoisie to embrace and uphold postmodernism. *** We wrote, “Postmodernism lacks the ability to understand that there is a contradiction to the function of our society between the working class and the ruling class, that everything we do as people living in this society will be in favor of one class or the other, and that this conflict is the main driving force of capitalism.” . . We would reword this to say, “ . . . is the main driving force in the United States.” . . We would make this change for two reasons. The first is to specify that the objective “thing” that contains this contradiction (and which has its evolution driven by it) is not simply a mode of production, capitalism, but a specific society—the United States. . . The second is that while the struggle between the monopoly capitalist class and the working class is the principal contradiction within the United States, this same contradiction is not principal in every country, or on a global scale. In the world at large, the principal contradiction is between the oppressed nations (including sections of their capitalist classes) and the imperialist powers. *** We wrote, “These politics seek to center ‘voices’ on the basis of identity rather than centering a political line capable of taking on the objective conditions we are facing, subsisting individual identities and experiences for politics.” . . We would reword this to say, “ . . . substituting individual identities and experiences for a scientific and objective understanding of how society works.” . . We would make this change because it is incorrect to suggest that substituting identity for materialism is not “politics”—“identity politics” *is* still a form of political analysis, but an incorrect and harmful one. *** We wrote, “We understand that while our identities can inform our worldview, our ‘lived experiences’ are subordinate to class oppression and this must be taken into account in our organizing.” . . We would reword this to say, “ . . . our ‘lived experiences’ are always a manifestation of larger systemic forces that ultimately result from class contradiction . . .” . . We would make this change because saying that “lived experiences are subordinate to oppression” leaves the material relationship being discussed unclear, and also suggests that lived experiences of resistance and rebellion against class oppression never occur. *** The change from RATPAC to SMF was something that had been developing for a long time through our years of political practice, organizing trans people, studying, and improving ourselves as a fighting force seeking to genuinely transform the world we see around us by revolutionary means. Through this practice, we have without a doubt gained a great deal of perspective and understanding. It is through this—rather than by online and/or campus-based “political discourse,” or solely by reading books philosophizing about the world with no intent or plan for collective political action—that we have developed our theoretical understanding of what we are fighting and how to fight it, and thus became the Stonewall Militant Front. . . Needless to say, for everyone involved this was an immensely exciting change. In the excitement, we incorrectly prioritized expediency to ensure the announcement was published on New Year’s Day. While there is no doubt that making the announcement on the occasion of the new year was symbolically ideal, ultimately making that the highest priority led to crucial omissions and poor wording choices that could have been avoided. We will seek diligently to rectify the tendency in the organization that allowed form and superficialities to be prioritized over upholding, defending, and, principally, applying the correct line. Hopefully this follow-up will provide some more specificity and comprehensiveness for those who have chosen to study the announcement in anticipation of our upcoming full theoretical document.