lgbtqia – Politically Enraged

Gender Critical Men are f***ing terrifying.

By Daviemoo

As always, when I write about trans equality I need to start off with a solemn declaration that violence against women and girls is a very real, genuine problem, a cancer in society; that women are subjected to horrors beyond the stunted imagining of the men behind that violence is inarguable. I also understand that as a man talking about this debate it’s easy to write me and my words off as more misogynist twaddle that doesn’t bear scrutiny. I can’t change anyone’s mind on that- but I can continue to talk about an issue that gives me grave concern, which is that the gender critical movement came out of a nascent period last year when certain gender critics questioned why far right activists were infiltrating their circles, and the movement as a whole decided it was a necessary cost to join hands with fascists to keep their movement building.
If you don’t take violence against women and girls seriously, shame on you is the weakest sentiment you deserve- but if you don’t take violence, both state level and personal, against trans people as seriously, you must live in a different world than I, and if you condone holding hands with far right activists to bolster your movement, you’re part of that group.

Women deserve to be heard about the violence they endure at the hands of sick men. Today the newspapers are awash with claims that Nick Cohen, long time well known alleged pervert is- shock horror- an alleged woman grabbing pervert. Nick’s defence is that he “doesn’t have the faintest idea” about the accusations, but he did ask:
1- why she didn’t report it sooner
2- he said the misogynistic conversation was “joking among friends”
3- he said the accusations come from critics including “pro Russia advocates” and “trans activists”
4- he said “I assume it was stuff I was doing when drunk”, relying on alcoholism as the fulcrum of his alleged sexual abuses

This case is important, as all cases of this nature are. It’s also common, one case in tens of thousands in the UK alone, likely more- where women are maligned for staying silent, judged for coming forward, slated for speaking up, insulted for not being able to take a joke and blamed for their own bodies. If you want to know why the gender critical movement attracts women it’s because there’s hardly scant evidence as to why women should be afraid of men. That’s something anyone with even a sparking scintilla of intellect can grasp- a movement based around rage towards men, the obvious oppressors of women, is attractive- and if that’s where the attributes of gender critical thinking stopped I’d be supportive. But gender criticals somehow take the existence of a tiny proportion of the population, trans people, and make them the malign target of their hatred towards men.
You don’t have to be a card carrying member of the tofu eating lefty brigade to see that there’s a gulf between trans women and cis men – As a cis man, do I typify the behaviours of a trans woman to you? I don’t do any of the things trans women do in regards to my gender, so it’s ridiculous, laughable even to put parity between someone like me and a trans woman. Even if you don’t believe transgender women are women, someone with any grounding in reality could see that trans women don’t behave like non trans men.

Trans folk are often maligned on the internet, accused of everything from fetishes to the newly in vogue “groomer” charge levelled at LGBT+ people by right wing demagogues. Unfortunately, too many in the LGBT+ are falsely sure that slating their peers in the community with these accusations will save them- make them the exception to the rule with regular pundits from tiktok right wingers like Kelly Cardigan to ostensibly academic folk like Debbie Hayton all too happy to agree with any anti trans sentiment, provided they can assert themselves as the only exception- But Hayton and those like her are a confusing array of figures who regularly talk about how trans women are indeed problems and shouldn’t use women’s spaces, all the while using women’s spaces if accounts are to be believed. It’s the hypocrisy of trans women who declare support for the gender critical movement who believe they, because they back the movement, should be the exception to the rule.

Additionally, one finds it hard to accept the assertion that is often levelled at trans people being erotically obsessed with your own genitals is wrong, bad and disgusting when the same group post things like this:

To ascribe your feelings to everyone is deluded, and yet this holistic monstering of trans people is commonplace- one newspaper article comes out justifying the fear of trans people- a trans rapist in Scotland- and it’s touted as proof, all that’s needed to justify the phobia, the aversion, the hatred, the violence both political and physical… whereas I just look and go ‘if one example is enough you may want to google “female teacher has sex with student” and keep a strong gin handy’.
I’m not trying to make light of these very serious issues, only point out that holistically ascribing bad behaviour or malevolence to an entire group of people based on tangential aspects of their behaviour or existence is not helpful.

And that is where we start to get to the crux of my fear. The gender critical movement is absolutely not empowering women and bolstering their protections- it’s causing wedge issue “debate” which is distracting from the continual weakening of women’s rights and protections, both away from the “trans debate” and partly- because of it. And even the front runners are guilty of an exclusionary attitude too, not just to trans women but fellow cis women too. The excerpt from Kathleen Stock’s recent musings where she declares that gender nonconforming women who are kicked out of womens’ spaces are a necessary casualty, not for a moment seeming to consider that they, as women, also deserve that protection and yet face denial from it, not by the cruel trans activists but by a fellow cisgender woman.

Let’s say we create an island and tomorrow relocate every trans person to a trans only society. Do you genuinely think that would deal with the rampant misogyny in today’s world? Would men stop hitting their wives, would police stop joking about rape victims, calling them ugly or insinuating that they like being domestically abused: see the met police texting “give her a tap, she loves it”. Would the hot-button row about abortion rights magically evanesce into nothing? Would period poverty be solved?
What issue are gender critics fighting for, besides the othering and monstering of trans women? Again, you don’t have to accept that trans women are women if you don’t want to. Nobody can compel that thought in you, but to deny the commonality in experience between trans people who experience an enormous threat of sexual assault, violence in public spaces and whose rights are being debated- not as opposed to women’s rights but in conjunction with them- see the overturning of Roe V Wade at the same time as over 300 anti trans laws emerge: surely it’s a fools errand to deny that there are shared experiences here which are of vital import, and are more useful in drawing people together than driving them apart?

But the most terrifying aspect of gender critical thinking is that, and I mean this with my entire being, it drives women into the arms of their abusers.

Gender critical men are terrifying. Honestly? I’m scared of men anyway- I understand women’s fears towards men, having been put through hell by other men in my life. If identifying out of being a man was something you could choose to do I would, because rejecting the label of a group I’m in that’s routinely oppressed me with violence, sometimes sexual, always degrading, my entire life would be appealing: but I can’t, because I am a man- and so I want to out the men who tarnish us. I want them to face up to, and be deprogrammed from their evils, to make the world actually function and to melt down the misogyny that forms the bulwarks of society. The only way to do that is to listen and understand- and I do. I understand women’s fear of men- I do not understand gender critical women’s embracing of gender critical men.

Gender critical men regularly assert that the key tenets of gender criticality when it comes to men are correct- that men are all thoughtless, violent thugs led by their penises into committing vile acts of transgression against bodily autonomy, every man a sneaky sleeper agent just waiting to pounce once your walls are down.
It is, frankly, bollocks.
We live in a society that coddles men, telling them it’s ok to get angry and shout, smash up your TV, fight in the street, thoughtlessly lay hands on other people as a “joke”. We all imbibe this as we grow, and never, not once, do our forefathers even attempt to highlight it never mind decry it as a horror. It is our job to pick this apart and we must encourage this in younger boys and men.
But it’s also our job to talk about the arrant nonsense in ascribing male violence to some magical rage gene that all men have that is just simmering away, waiting to explode. There’s absolute potential for a biological link towards being male and an increased risk of violence- but as beings who overcame our urge to chase wildebeest with sticks and live in caves, I think we can also overcome some childish urge to act with violence at every turn- to do so, society needs to push for that change, and until it does it won’t happen. Does society push men to eschew violence over thought? No. From the knee boys are told it’s ok to pull girls’ hair if you like them, the old boys will be boys trope, as young men we’re never taught how to respect others bodily autonomy and why we should, mostly because rarely does ours become challenged- and when it does become challenged, when young men prank each other in weird ways, it’s put down to childish humour rather than aggressively dealt with. As men grow we’re enabled at every turn to behave like we’re told we are wired to- to be aggressive, thoughtless, we’re bombarded with imagery of manly men or shown videos of guys on social media acting like utter fools and being celebrated, and nowadays you can’t turn left without another typically masculine looking stranger brandishing a microphone talking about how women these days don’t know how to cook as if they don’t sleep under a pile of their own laundry because they don’t know how to change bedding.

Gender critical men scare me because they embrace the nonsense- they DO think men are violent, they DO think we’re wired for it, they state blithely that men are always thinking about how to get what they want sexually. Gender critical men confess to the crimes we’re all accused of, accepting that yes, they are that way and levelling the accusation at people like me that we’re the same basal creature as they. I am not in any way like the picture gender critical people paint of the typical man, and I am not the exception- gender critical men who openly acknowledge these accusations and agree with them? They are. And yet, rather than looking at gender critical men as the dangerous openly confessed predators they admit to being, gender critical women link arms with them, pointing at them as evidence of their convictions- it’s a very “leopards eating face” moment. Rather than turning away from those who admit to being dangerous to you, you embrace them because they affirm your fears.

But of course, many reading this will assume I’m just a lefty prone to flights of fancy, no real proof.

This is an avowed gender critical man, who, in response to an Australian doctor saying his mother is trans-positive, is threatening to… well, you can read it.
When confronted on the fine point that misogyny is probably more likely to be threatening to chin an old lady than to be friendly to trans people, he claimed it was an “experiment” to “out trans activists as enjoying violence against old ladies”- his point somewhat punctuated with failure as every single pro trans person who interacted did so with rage and disgust. The most terrifying part of this is- it’s happening. It’s less than a week since Pink News reported that an 83 year old woman with dementia was assaulted by a man then thrown in a bin because he suspected she was trans- she wasn’t, not the point.

But this is the world in which we live now, where men think threats of violence against women are OK if it “owns the trans”. Where acts of actual violence are committed against women and that’s seen as collateral damage, acceptable in the battle against trans inclusion.
Because these men, these gender critical men have absolutely no interest in looking at their behaviour. They’re fine with their violence towards women- and the fact that women are turning a blind eye to it in favour of seething rage at trans people is probably worthy of celebration to them, because whilst there is a united hatred of transgender people existing, they go unscrutinised.

I will never convince gender critical women that trans people are worthy of the respect they so often reference in regards to their belief, nor frankly do I care to- it’s not for men like me to convince women not to fear someone, and as a man I understand contextually that bearded me wandering into a conversation to “um, akshually” someone who has fears about their safety is probably not helpful. That’s not my aim. But if I can make anti trans women realise that they allow their own fears to walk blithely among them, I’d hope that would at least see a shifting of the lens of blame onto the people who deserve it- non trans men who embrace this movement so holistically. I see gender critical women cosying up to men who proudly threaten violence as the same kin as women married to preachers talking about what a woman’s place is, smiling blithely that surely they’re the exception though, they’re safe because they are behind the gun- not in front of it.

There’s no point talking about the big examples- Donald ‘just convicted of sexual assault grab them by the pussy’ Trump, Matt ‘I’m literally a theocratic fascist, girls should be getting married at 14 and have babies at 16’ Walsh, Rishi ‘standing up for women but refusing to make misogyny a hate crime or entertain menopause leave’ Sunak: gender critics know, and they’ll probably never meet those men. But what about the men who proudly make their way to your marches, the ones like this:

That is a white nationalist, on your side, at your marches, or as Adrian Comerford has shown in response to Joanne Rowling on twitter, when Posie Parker interviews an avowed Neo nazi and literal confessed wife beater.
And what’s Rowling, who posted a nearly 5000 word diatribe accusing trans people of attracting Neo Nazis to these rallies, done with this info? Ignored it. Ignored the fact that Parker, who says she is not a feminist and that she will “destroy any woman who stands in her way” has open links to the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti womens’ choice group. She has called her “a genius” though.

Some gender critics questioned why so many far right fools kept showing up at their rallies- apparently the simple explanation of “your beliefs mirror theirs” was lost on them. I for example, attended a rally last year- a drag queen was reading a book to some children at Leeds Library. On one side, a huge collection of LGBT+ people and allies- on the other side- the Patriotic Alternative, described as a “neo nazi, far right fascist organisation” on their own wikipedia.

A gender critic wrote an article the next day condemning… Both sides. Oh it was terrible that the nazis were there, yes, nobody likes a nazi. But how dare LGBT+ people get angry at fascists holding up signs saying that we’re perverts and paedophiles, how dare we stand in opposition to people who virulently hate us? I note the article didn’t mention that the other side, the PA, so desperate to protect children- decided to set off the fire alarm, terrifying the kids. So many people, concerned with womens’ rights and protecting children, ignorant of the white nationalists amongst them or… embracing them.

Yes- embracing- what happened to the women who confronted the budding allyship with far right entities? Jane Clare Jones was critical of their attendance, many other women lodged concern that their movement, supposedly built around elevating women, was being swollen by those who think women should adhere to bible scripture. So what happened?
They were holistically told that it didn’t matter by other gender critical people- that the threat is so dire that allyship against trans people supersedes their allies thoughts. But can we be surprised? Let’s not forget when Allison Bailey called for allyship with racists and homophobes:

The madness in this entire thing is that if you strip back any and all nuance, it’s absolutely reasonable for women to have concerns about men and about having spaces which are dedicated to their safety and refuge. But rather than dealing with the societal reasons that we have to have refuges and protect women, anti trans campaigners think erasing trans people will solve these problems. They won’t- and the longer this goes on, the more precarity women’s bodily autonomy heads towards.

If you weaken trans people’s access to gender affirming care, you weaken a group’s access to bodily autonomy- and those same arguments can be recycled against you.
Why should trans women get access to HRT just because of their feelings, right? Well, by that same vein, why should anyone have access to abortion rights just because of their feelings?
You either holistically stand for bodily autonomy for all, or you author your own eventual downfall from your own pulpit, used by the very men who terrify me.

Nothing will change from my writing this piece, but I would hope that the less radicalised amongst gender critical women or those flirting with the movement because they understandably fear men, will hear my entreaties- gender critical demagogues do not care about your access to spaces, only for the denial of others’ access. They do not care about protecting your status as a woman, or halting violence, only to denigrate others’ status and enact violence against them, both personally and on a state level. And you can pull out your well used examples of trans people being terse with you on the internet but if you ally with radical nazis, proud anti feminists, anti abortion activists and more, I still see you are more of a problem for womens’ rights than people being mean on twitter because your views are quite literally eroding their public safety. I don’t want women to feel unsafe, I don’t want trans people to feel unsafe and I don’t want anyone to face death or rape threats- I sure do want the radical men amongst you who regularly threaten violence, both misogynistic, transphobic and just generally violent, to shut the fuck up- and you should too.

There is, and I know it doesn’t seem like it, a way through all of this, and it’s for both sides to ally against the actual problem. And the irony is, I come from that group. I am a non trans man, telling you that I walk in the spaces of cis men, I listen to them, I hear their conversations, I’ve listened to their justifications of their mad misogynist thinking. Men like that are the imminent threat, and will continue to be whilst you flirt with this distraction, and whilst you do they will continue to capitalise on it. How you handle that is your call. I have no right to tell anyone how to handle it- but I do know that continuing to work with the very men who threaten violence against everyone just because everyone happens to include the people you don’t like, does not a successful movement nor a compelling argument make.

Ignorance is not a political standpoint you should be proud to wear

By Daviemoo

Recently the Communist Party of Britain came out with a scribe against trans inclusion, wrapped as all transphobia is in a shroud of moral concerns: Gender, they say, allows for the “super exploitation of women”. But inclusion of trans people isn’t the reason for women’s mistreatment over the course of hundreds, thousands of years- merely brushing past a history book would belie this statement: Trans people are not a recent phenomenon but their constant spotlighting by a hostile media has allowed their uplift into a shibboleth for “bad men who do bad things”, much like the word “woke” has had it’s original meaning replaced with “anything I don’t like” by our illustrious commentators. And as this ridiculous moral panic continues to spread and infiltrate every political faction, it’s time to stop using transphobia or lack thereof as a political standpoint.

Trans people weren’t visible when women were legally barred from voting, when women weren’t allowed to have their own bank accounts, trans people aren’t responsible for the male violence epidemic or spiralling rates of domestic violence. Sundry cisgender people will queue up to declare everything from anti trans screeds to tweets about pronouns as “not transphobic”. Why everyone who isn’t trans feels they can be the moral arbiters of what transphobia is, I don’t know but it smacks of a white person telling a room of people of colour that their racially insensitive jokes aren’t racist.

Trans people aren’t responsible for the rise of lunatics like Andrew Tate, a dangerous misogynist who, even if he is innocent of the crimes of which he stands accused (he is not), is still guilty of spewing the most single celled idiocies against womenkind I have ever heard. Women, he says, are men’s property. I don’t feel like women belong to me and if I was straight I wouldn’t spend hours on the net listening to men with shiny heads and shinier six packs telling me how to trick women into letting me fuck them- I’d just ask women. The incel movement has grown microphones and spotlights, desperate to figure out how to manipulate women into sex as if men need to play some sort of crystal maze game to find out what women want when one can assume that what women want is not to be tricked into bed. The men who believe the unassailable nonsense that these podcast microphone devouring fools spout are the biggest of mugs, desperate to throw money at manipulative men, unaware that they are the manipulated, not the illusory women spoken of. These men, and their unwitting idiot followers, are a true danger to women -and yet a recent twitter poll conducted by a prominent transphobe put trans people as a higher danger to women then incels…

Time and time again I’m told that anti trans people have “reasonable talking points” about trans inclusion. I’m yet to hear a coherent one that can’t be rebutted with “that’s literally your problem, not trans people’s”.
“I don’t want penises in my changing room”. Why someone else’s genitalia is your issue if it’s not being waved in your face is a question I never get an answer to. I don’t want to see other people naked in changing rooms, it’s weird. And if a guy started waving his genitals at me in a changing room I’d also feel disgusted- not because he’s a man and has a penis, but because that’s weird behaviour indicative of something potentially malign.

It doesn’t matter where you sit in politics at the moment: everyone from communist to hardcore capitalist seems to have developed a stance on trans people, usually an unflattering one. It is exhausting. It takes knowing precisely one trans person to realise that trans people aren’t some lurking bathroom dwelling crowd, desperate to either witness your nudity or show you theirs: the self indulgence of the women and men who think other peoples’ gender identity revolves around their existence would be comical, were it not such a staggering reality. And the laughability of communists declaring that they want a classless, stateless world but want to reinforce sex based segregation is the worst comedy. Even worse than hardcore capitalists who claim that “the trans agenda” is fuelled by big Pharma… surely you’d be thrilled if big Pharma was making big bucks off of…. oh let’s see, 265,000 British people?

There is no place to stand stolidly in the UK right now without the cancer of ignorance metastasising to someone with your views; no matter how people can deconstruct law, capitalism, immigration, racial bias, sexuality, there is always someone whose views are aggrieved against trans people. How many of these people who gulp down pints of confected media outrage against trans people have ever met a trans person and had a conversation with them about something benign like movies, food, shopping, holiday destinations… I have a solid guess on the answer.

The irony of the sex based rights crowd is simple: If you want to be defined by your genitals then you have that right, you’re perfectly allowed to think you’re only a man because you were born with testicles. As it happens I think manhood runs deeper and is more complex than how my DNA expresses, and it’s why I have no issue with gender as a concept. If I lost my testicles for whatever reason, be it accident, surgery, sickness, I would still be a man. If I wanted gender reassignment because I felt in my being that I was not a man, that is different in a way that is too nuanced to explain to those who do not see it.

People often retort that gender is a harmful construct that damages women, and that isn’t an untrue statement. Gender stereotypes are sometimes harmful to everyone: In fact I blame male gender stereotypes for society continuing to raise men who cannot behave with decency to others; ironic then that when a trans person who doesn’t conform to gender stereotypes emerges, they’re “not trying to even pretend”. Trans people are held up to immeasurable standards where if they conform, they are trying to “deceive” and if they don’t try to conform they aren’t “really trans”. And trans people as a group are demonised right now in ways we’d never do to other groups: one trans person’s crime is (quite literally, I am quoting from a transphobic person’s twitter account here) held to the equivalent of hundreds of others. Even recently you see the hypocrisy of the overrepresentation of trans crime: a trans person walks into a school and commits an act of mass violence and there is outcry: front page news, hour long specials, a forensic dissection of motive… Odd how we need a larger response to this than the usual anaemic thoughts and prayers of all the other mass shootings in America. Odd how one trans person committing a crime is indicative of the end of society and needs swift rebuke to the entire community yet cis straight men have been committing mass shootings for years with warnings of more violence slipping out of the ears of those hearing them.

Lets say that gender is a harmful construct: it’s odd how trans people upholding these constructs for their own comfort and identity are looked upon as committing unspeakable transgressions against women and girls, yet women and girls who uphold them are perfectly allowed to express their gender that way should they so choose. If gender is a harmful construct, then abolition woudld be the answer- but those who preach for gender abolition are usually adherents of gender presentation themselves, people who want to abolish others’ rights to gender presentation, but retain their own “correct” way in which to exist.
I also grant you an explanation of my gender and gender identity. As a gay man I often look in bemusement at my community who hold being “masc” in high regard. I didn’t choose not to be masc. I’m just not. I can pretend, I can pose in photos, shave my head, grow my muscles and talk in a deeper register- but if that’s not how I feel comfortable and who I am, isn’t that deception? I have to wonder how many overly masculine men who refer to themselves as “alpha” and storm around decrying soy boys are secretly holding up a performance 24 hours a day, and that is where their anger comes from- because they know they aren’t what they want to be. And it brings in another question: if they’re only performing their masculine gender role for the sake of others, why is a trans person’s performance of a gender role less valid than theirs?

Trans people can’t help being transgender. They don’t do something to become trans and whilst they could sit on their identity, hide it away it would only serve to make themselves miserable. This, of course, is the desirous outcome of most anti trans individuals. Imagine asking another person to hide their identity for your comfort. “I know you’re gay but can you just be alone forever or get into a sham marriage for my comfort”. I have quite literally been asked to hide my sexuality or to “try” not to be gay. It’s offensive; it’s more arrant nonsense from people incapable of putting themselves into other peoples shoes, or people so addled by years of collusion in this escalating campaign of hatred that they have lost touch with some simple realities: trans people exist, and their existence does not harm you and if you foam yourself into paroxysmal rage about the idea that someone three cubicles away has a penis you can’t see, they are certainly not the creepy one, because as they’re trying to finish using the bathroom you’re getting angry fantasising about their genitalia.

The irony is that these people are the blockers of their own remedy. Letting trans people have quicker, better mediated access to the care they need would allow them to get on in their lives and participate in society in ways they currently cannot. The anti trans crowd are the ones making their own suffering inevitable as trans people can’t access the care they need. Anti trans people are the ones fanning the flames in the media that rail against trans people. They stir it up and continue to drink deep from the poison chalice. This, I could abide, if the inevitable casualties were not the trans people they rail against, people who cannot help their identities and shouldn’t have to.
Who do you truly think benefits from the anti trans screeds writ large across the media? Does it magically stop trans people existing? Does it ratify your beliefs to know it’s shared by Joan whoever at the Daily Mail? The men who sexually assault women in the media during job interviews are probably laughing themselves sick over the world’s ridiculous preoccupation with demonising trans people, because whilst everyone is raging against trans inclusion, they continue to rip their colleague’s blouses with impunity.

Look, scientifically, at humanity. We are a species with huge, vast divergencies in our species. Skin colour, height, bone density, some born with genetic conditions that affect the number of colours they can see, some born with divergencies from “the norm” so coveted by many: If you deny flatly that in the seething ocean of human genetic divergencies, some could be born with a different gender than they were assigned you are denying simple factual reality. Ironic that trans people are often accused of trying to deny reality: their reality IS their gender. Denial of that is denial of fact so laughable it could take away ones breath. And you don’t have to believe trans people are trans. You just don’t have to volunteer that information, not just because it makes you look ignorant but because it doesn’t help anyone… call it colluding, lying, whatever you want. If you knew how many instant judgements about people I’ve held back for their own comfort over the years you’d probably understand that this fits into “just being polite”. It’s not some vast conspiracy to indoctrinate you- be ignorant. Have your bigotries and biases, just don’t make them someone else’s problem.

But this argument has filtered up from the mire in which it was born to the highest levels of government: Rishi Sunak, prime minister claims that he is on the side of women and girls even as his government votes down legislation to illegalise misogyny. Home Secretary Suella Braverman claims trans people shouldn’t be treated like they’re special- ironic from a woman who allegedly changed her own name to avoid association with a Buddhist sex cult. And on the opposing benches, a ringing silence from the mouth of Kier Starmer, leader of Labour as Rosie Duffield slates his party’s stance on women and girls, claiming she doesn’t feel safe on labour benches even as she promises that “many labour MPs feel the same as I”. Starmer wrote recently in an article in the times (a paywalled article designed to tell those still clinging pointlessly to the shreds of Corbynism) that his party was “the party of equality”… in the pages of a newspaper that had misgendered and deadnamed a transgender 16 year old who had been stabbed to death that very weekend.

There is no party or political alignment in the UK free of the scourge of transphobia. That doesn’t mean we must not partake- it means it’s time to adopt our own policy of infiltration like the disgusting bigots have implemented so successfully, to swarm the ranks of the opposition and force out transphobia, to name and shame the people quietly partaking in it from within, to shine a light brightly into every corner- for if transphobes want to have their bigotries, let them have it publicly. We must ensure that those who claim to represent us know where our hearts and minds lie, and without that- if the UK’s political establishment is determined to allow this wound to fester- we must sow chaos and discord, because a country whose political parties allow themselves to be subsumed in bigotry are not worth our support. If transphobia is to be the hill on which British decency and politics dies, then let it die screaming in chaos. Not just the two main parties, but the entirety of British politics. Let it be dragged to ashes from which something better can be born.

Many people will argue that there can be respectful debate: I disagree. Firstly, there is abashing levels of hatred on both sides, transphobic people wishing heinous fates on trans people and trans people doing much the same in return. The difference, the key one so often forgotten by those witnessing from the sidelines is: one side wishes misery on the other because of how they were born, the other wishes misery on those who wish them harm.
I have, yes, seen disgusting sentiment espoused by trans people on the internet towards transphobes. It might not be right to say those things but I also understand where it comes from. I spent my younger years in chatrooms trying to find like minded people to discuss sexuality with and there’s only so many times you can have someone tell you you’re sick and evil before you rebuke them as cruelly as you can. If you don’t want trans people to be cruel towards you, imagine why they are doing so, the level of ridicule and distain with which they’re treated. It might not be perfect behaviour: nor is that which has pushed them to that level. It’s half the reason I used to have sympathy for the women who were on the fringes of the ” debate”. A society headed up by men determined to keep women down is going to raise women who feel aggrieved and angered. But to aim that ire at trans people instead of the men who propagate it is, frankly, a level of foolish I am stupefied by: trans people don’t benefit from this misogynistic society because misogyny isn’t it’s only transgression.

People so often describe this “debate” as toxic. It is. Not because it cannot be fjorded, but because if you simply do not believe a person who tells you their gender identity, you will never be able to discuss any issues at all. Those like Graham Linehan and Posie Parker, who deny trans people’s fundamental identities, are unworthy of acknowledgement much like the anonymous accounts who wish harm on all cis people. There are outliers on both sides because trans people are not a monolith, but most trans people don’t wish harm on all cis people in the way most transphobes wish harm, whether openly or through simple ignorance, on trans folk.
Nuance should be pushed back into this topic- not because there are worthy points on anti trans peoples’ ledgers, but because you cannot rationally debate those who are off the deep end of the discussion in the first place. Parker thinks feminism is poison and has intrinsic links to anti abortion groups. Linehan’s wife took his children from him because of his creeping obsession with trans people. Hardly the poster people for your movement.

Perhaps there are questions that need to be asked, as a cis man who am I to arbitrate- but the best people to answer them are trans people, not interlopers like me and certainly not people like Joanne Rowling who sits in a castle in Scotland telling working class women that trans people are their worst enemy rather than billionaires who sit on the internet complaining about people they don’t know all day, clouded in surety of their opinion because they wrote a well liked series of books about magical children. Rowling even defended her views by saying she thought she might be trans when she was younger- and yet here she is, cisgender: therefore not trans. She’s said she doesn’t wish harm on trans people yet presents absolutely no solution to benefit both sides. She promised to march with trans people if they were in danger and yet hasn’t left her home to do anything but have lunches with her fellow illustrious anti gender warriors or trade lukewarm sentiments with Matt Walsh, a man who has described himself as a literal fascist.
Rowling receives regular abuse online from pro trans people and she wears this as her sainted cross, something she must do for women and girls. Lest we forget that the people now cheering her on as they pass anti trans legislation across America were condemning her as a devil worshipper a decade ago for writing books about magic. Odd how Rowling and her fellows can shed morals like snakeskin, provided their agenda is satisfied.

The anti trans culture war is a broader reflection of how we as a society treat marginalised people and we’re overdue for our crux point. Do we rationally discuss including marginalised people and how, or do we give in to our bestial fears, our lizard brain bigotries that tell us that just because we aren’t trans, just because we don’t experience what trans people do, it is less valid, worthy of suspicion, correct to question? If you look to a tiny community of people whose lives are being consistently made worse by media noise to the benefit of the very men who hurt us all, I can only pity you- and hate you- because it is you who has fallen for the wax figure of the demonic trans menace as the society you claim to wish to topple wraps another sinuous tendril around your neck, and drags you deeper into its mire of cruelty.

LGBT+ Separatism; or “Why I’m Sick of Society”

By Daviemoo

This article is mainly aimed at fellow LGBT+ people- but I’d encourage you to read it if you aren’t part of our group, and rather than get offended, upset or confused about it- write to your MP and question why people in the LGBT+ are increasingly feeling this societal disconnection and how they can remedy it. As hate crime and deadly rhetoric ramps up, if your issue is to blame a symptom like LGBT+ people feeling fed up instead of the disease of virulent hate spreading through society like cancer in lymph nodes… you aren’t the ally you may think.

I came out at 15. Before I came out, I was petrified I’d be outed. I grew up knowing I was gay, or at least that I liked other men. I would have done anything not to be outed- then a friend at school I’d trusted started telling people behind my back and I thought, fuck it, people are going to find out. Why don’t I just rip off the bandaid. So I told everyone.

Turns out that was a good decision. Suddenly people couldn’t bully or offend me any more. “Ha, gayboy” was met with “yeah moron, I told you that…”. Suddenly I realised I’d been desperate for people to accept me for who I wasn’t, but I didn’t care if they didn’t accept me for who I was.
I had a renaissance with myself- finally I liked me for who I genuinely was, and I set about trying to do two things: make amends for my pre-coming out idiocy, and ensure that other people like me felt safe and happy enough to be themselves too.

When I went to college I tried and failed to set up an LGBT+ group. Only one other person came despite a multitude of people coming out to me- as bi, as trans, as curious.
That was fine; it was a strange time where society was largely okay with it- but woe betide you if you went home and told your family.
The reasoning behind working hard to set up groups, open chains of communication and be visible as an out gay teen was to spread awareness- and acceptance of- LGBT+ people as what we are: normal.
Honestly? The least exciting thing about me is that I like men with big chests and arms- the way heterosexual men treat videos of other men in the gym, I’m certainly not the only one. I just like them a bit more than you.
I realised, to my joy, that if you got offended when I mentioned my sexuality, that was very much a you problem- not to mention those who complained sometimes ended up being, to coin a modern phrase, a bit fruity.

On to uni and continually trying to join groups, meet others and spread more awareness that LGBT+ people are just people with an acronym you might not share. Things seemed to be going well. I remember the halcyon days of going quite literal years at a time without so much as a raised eyebrow over my sexuality, I remember the happy societal shift away from the phrases “sexual preference” (I don’t prefer men, I am incapable of being sexually attracted to women) or “tolerance” (I tolerate a sore neck until I can take painkillers, I prefer acceptance thanks). Things seemed to be on the up and up.

Then we come to the modern day.

I remember watching the trans panic start. Now, I already had a good friend who was trans. She came out to me on valentines day in 2013(?) with a huge garbled message, which ended with “and if you can’t accept this then I understand but I wanted you to know”. I laughed- why wouldn’t I accept my friend… I loved her, her gender was irrelevant. She told me about her feelings, her life, what was going on with her and it brought us closer together. I was just happy she was happy.
Watching people on the internet occasionally write salacious and stupid rumours around trans people was weird- picking out the story of the one transgender sex offender in a 900 mile radius was a weird argument to me considering if you took a long walk you’d walk past about 50 cisgender offenders- so I raised an eyebrow, but I figured someone had kicked a hornets nest of ignorance and they’d be distracted by sexy M&Ms or gas stoves before long (had to wait til 2023 for that).

But it didn’t die off. Instead what started as an online movement of people who say things like “biology not bigotry” yet making fun of the way people look whilst sharing photos of people with mastectomy scars, writing utter fiction to get angry about or blaming the crimes of non trans men on trans women continued to grow exponentially.
Then, inevitably, because trans people are accepted largely in the entire community- suddenly the accusations spread. Even yesterday, Bev Jackson who started the LGB alliance was begging slavishly on twitter for someone who tweeted that “the trans stuff” has made him go against gay marriage to realise that the movement she pushes every day is only meant to ruin some people’s lives, not hers.
“Groomer” is normalised parlance about anyone who is LGBT+ or supports us. In America states are legislating against trans healthcare, the parents of transgender people, drag performances and drag queens even being visible- as if men haven’t been in drag since quite literally Shakespeare’s day, as if I couldn’t go into my local city on a Friday night and find 30 cishet men in dresses as “banter” or “jokes”, as if men haven’t been pantomime dames, as if drag hasn’t been a subversive form of expression in our community for decades- And as if trans people haven’t existed in society for hundreds of years too. Suddenly this panic over our long existence has been fanned from embers to a towering inferno of societal ignorance, leaving people like me blinking in the light and heat.

Still, I hoped that there was a way to have rational discussion with people who had increasing fervour against our community.
That hope quickly died out.

I used to both want and need acceptance from the odd, flawed cishet patriarchal society in which I’ve been raised- a society I never used to question. I used to want to be able to walk down the street holding hands with another man and have nobody raise an eyebrow, talk behind their hands or call me a slur. I was praying (very atheistically) for the day that nobody gave a shit.
That hope is gone. I think people will always be bothered by my sexuality, by people’s gender expression or lack thereof. And what a sad realisation that was- that ignorance will continue and be permitted in a society too lazy to confront its shittiest members. I’ve watched- in the last month alone- people stand at microphones and state calmly that people like me should be executed, seen footage of bloody handprints left by bleeding humans mowed down by extremists walking into our spaces and snuffing us out, and I’ve heard lawmakers who don’t even understand the complications of chromosomes, gender, hormones, sex characteristics and intersex health conditions pass legislation that strips us of basic access to our rights or prevents us from pursuing our livelihoods as performers. And it’s clearly not enough for us to have the meagre spaces afforded to us by those who purchase bars and deck them out for us- we aren’t even safe in there between those who stand outside with weapons and those who walk in with them.

The difference is, I’m no longer viscerally upset by this. I don’t care any more because I don’t seek, or want, acceptance. I just need it to live in peace- and wanting and needing something is very distinct.

As these ridiculous scenarios have continued to spiral I’ve found myself more and more tired of being asked to be tolerant of narrow minded views of my community, been told we should sit and have constructive conversations with people who hold banners accusing us of paedophilia or grooming, and coming from the side who forces religion, dress code, mannerisms and more on their offspring it’s more than just a hair ironic. And I’m tired of watching a world where these ignorant, shouty fucks seem to be gaining ground- but the cherry on top is also being consistently surprised when people I think I can trust, from politicians to celebrities who take the crown of “ally” for themselves, to friends, suddenly break cover and reveal their own participation in this forest fire of ignorance.
This is why I’ve coined the phrase that inspired this article.

LGBT+ separatism

The entire idea behind LGBT+ separatism is to teach young LGBT+ people that societal acceptance is, for many of us, a need so we can live in peace- but it is not something to want beyond that. We should not want to participate in a society rooted in misogyny, built and paid for with white supremacy and which actively treats us with varying degrees of scorn, sympathy or vitriolic hatred.

LGBT+ people don’t choose our identities. When I was a child if you’d given me the ability to change my sexuality I’d have done it in a heartbeat. Now, I’ve been gay for so long and it’s so deeply wrapped around my perception of the world and how I’m treated I don’t think I’d ever change it even if it meant the difficulties that come with it being removed. But so often the argument of choice is levelled at us. People are genuinely foolish enough to believe someone wakes up one day and rashly decides they’re a different gender or that they like their same-gender friend as more than a friend. It doesn’t happen that way for the vast majority of us, and if you’re in executive control of your sexuality or gender then you’re different than I- but choice or not, it’s worthy of respect, rights and equality.

I’m aware of the dangers of this movement- becoming lax about the necessity of acceptance is a byproduct of this type of disillusionment and we can never lose sight of the idea that society does have to offer us some acceptance, simply to ensure our existences are not threatened and legislated against. The goal is not to move away from striving for that, demanding and making the case for progress in our safety- it is simply to offer an alternative to being exposed to the daily humdrum of this flawed society.

The ideal scenario would be an island populated only by LGBT+ people, where we only interact with each other. A pipe dream of course, but one I sometimes find myself imagining.

People will, of course, assume I think our community is perfect and we’d create some utopic existence. I do not. I am aware of the problems in our community, mostly perpetuated by white cis gay men like myself. It’s my sincere belief that we’d be able to confront and deal with these issues if we created this separatist society- but lets be honest, it’s a pipe dream anyway, and I as a cis het man benefit from natural high status in our community- and I fucking hate that that is the case. Our community is a microcosm of wider societal ignorance and gender, skin colour, ability etc shouldn’t (and I would hope wouldn’t) dictate societal superiority in that world.

My intermediary wish is for us to create pathways to withdraw from participation in this society as much as possible, to form our own subculture, our own ways of navigating outside the mainstream- like rocks at the bottom of a rushing river and the network between them, I want to move through life surrounded by those who also seek refuge from this ridiculous society.
Some would call this an echo chamber- name it how you will, disparage it if you must. Your participation in a society that necessitates this type of action is the reason for its existence.

How we achieve this, I wish I knew. There would be, must be, should be ways for us to create this network, methods to create rules that apply, resources we can rely on that can create a buffer between us, if we number enough, and wider society- the generation of a sub culture specifically designed, catered for and administrated by the wider LGBT+ community.
But I don’t know for sure. I just know that as society continues to demonstrate its malignant denigration of us, I continue to become more enthusiastic over finding a workable alternative for a community who has suffered endlessly under religion, under heterosexual cisgender politicians and entitled, deluded public figures who aren’t even in our community but seek to command control over what it is, who is in it and how we live.

This is a cisgender, heterosexual person commenting on an article saying specifically that more people are identifying in England and Wales as LGB+.

When it comes to the LGB alliance, the only answer those in our community stupid enough to try and seek acceptance from those who continue to hate us ever give me when I ask exactly what they have done for our community is – “They support the rights of people to be same-sex attracted”. So not stopping the government deporting LGB people (which, by the way, trans people can also be), to countries that will cut their heads off? Not lobbying the government for strengthening of equality laws to ensure that we don’t suffer discrimination like I did in the workplace? Just a movie nobody saw and making you feel like you’re justified in your bigotry? That’s not helpful. They did however publish a tweet suggesting gay marriage was pointless because “not enough” of us use it. I was unaware there was a quota for when gay marriage is a good idea, or that it was a finite resource we all needed to get for ourselves.

When it comes to the enablers of bigotry above, or the people who embody that bigotry with their stance against us, if they don’t want us in their society- fine. I get it. I don’t wan’t them in society either. Small difference being I’d like them to educate themselves into not being arseholes and some of them want me to be imprisoned just for being alive.

You see the difference? I want ignoramii to fill their empty brain cells with knowledge of why bigotry isn’t cool- bigots want us to be imprisoned or killed. There’s a difference.
I wish we were like oil and water, that I would sink past the phobic in the world and be able to move on with my day without even realising they were there.
So my question to the community is: is it possible? Is it workable? Can we do it?

There will, inevitably, be backlash to me even writing these words- people accusing me of heterophobia or cisphobia. To that I’d like you to accept one very large, long eye-rolling movement from me.
If you dislike me for my sexuality, please dont be surprised that I dislike you for your opinions. And if you are a homophobe, why the hell do you want my approval any more than I’d want yours?
Overall, the accusations of cisphobia are dumb (im cis…) and heterophobia are laughable- much like a white Brit claiming to be experiencing racism because a black person calls them cracker- feel offended by this article all you want- then turn around and walk out your front door into a society and a country that accepts you entirely, that doesn’t cause you issues based on your identity and understand that the reason your shoulders don’t sag when you leave your home is because you emerge into a society that is made for you- a luxury many of us don’t experience.

I am tired of being part of a group that is demonised for its worst members or its imagined crimes by a group who refuses to get its own house in order. I am sick to my back teeth of institutions like the Church, thick with well defended paedophiles and based on a book that condones slavery, rape and forced marriage or misogynistic nonsense being held up as a moral authority, over a community who are forced to gather in the dark spaces we’re reluctantly given. And most of all I’m tired of trying to cater to a society who believes people like us are wrong because it is too narrow to realise that an identity that isn’t a carbon copy of their own is not wrong.

Overall my aim in writing this piece is to start the process of making links with others who feel the same and beginning the process of forming the links to build a separatist network. Your gender, skin colour, age, disability does not matter in this group- it is simply about founding a community in a new sub culture that exists within the bowels of this corrupt system in which we’re trapped and offering solace in a world we are forced to participate in- but no longer wish to.

Eyeshadow and gunpowder: the imaginary war on cishet society

By Daviemoo

LGBTQ+ existence has long been pitted as a culture war where the bejewelled combatants assail everyday ways of life, hurling gay grenades down the halls of institutions like American congress or men in leather pants and harnesses are kicking in the doors of middle England to convert your children.
There is no war, and it’s time to quite literally put down your guns.

I had an argument today which I’ve screencapped for your perusal.
As an Englishman I find American obsession around guns and gun laws to be absolutely gauche. But most of all, when men crow about their love of carrying guns I look at people like that with a mix of utter suspicion and- frankly- derision.

I find this type of delusional thinking objectively fascinating. The lack of nuance never fails to amaze me: if I walked into a kitchen and saw a man brandishing a knife I wouldn’t bat an eye- contextually it’s normal even if a knife is a deadly weapon- but if I saw a man brandishing a knife walking down the street I’d be pretty within my rights to think “well… that’s not good”.
Same with a gun. In the right context, guns don’t scare me: I’ve been on shooting ranges and guns in that context are normal- I’ve also walked past the mint in Leeds where money is created, and had police with P90s stand looking at me warily. It’s intimidating, and it’s done for one of two reasons: to avert danger, or to threaten it.

Men with guns aren’t out stretching their firearm’s legs, there is a reason behind why they carry weaponry and walking out of my favourite gay bar after a show to find a line of men dressed up like marines rejects fingering the trigger of an AK47 is, understandably, nerve wracking- and yet honestly mystifying.

To act like fear is not the motivator for carrying guns- why else has anyone ever carried a weapon in history- either to do harm, or protect themselves from it- so which scenario do these anti drag folks envision- protecting themselves from drag queens or wreak harm on them. Ironic too, for people used to carry sidearms back in Shakespeare’s day… when this newfangled “men in dresses” thing started, because there were no women in Shakespeare’s plays, only men in drag.

Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps it’s rage. Either way it’s misplaced. If it’s rage, be reminded that drag queens aren’t trying to convert your children: it’s impossible to do that and a huge swath of the LGBT+ will tell you so. If it was possible to convert, how many of us would have chosen the path of least resistance in our youth to avoid this ridiculous argument we’re forced into. If conversion was possible, conversion therapy would work: it doesn’t, it leaves most of its victims psychologically scarred enough that they don’t act on their urges, but it doesn’t remove them. I’d also hasten to point out that the existence of conversion therapy speaks to who is trying to “groom” whom into being like the other.

If it’s fear that necessitates dragging firearms around, which I suspect, I fail to see what’s so scary about a man in a dress and fake nails, other than the possibility of a catty comment or being accidentally blinded by flying sequins. But can we be surprised that so many are radicalised into thinking LGBT+ people are creating a WAR on normativity? Look at the messages pumped out by conservative media outlets.

Each of these things has been described by Fox News as having a “WAR” against it

If there was a war; we wouldn’t stand a chance.
3.5% of Americans identify as gay or lesbian. 0.3% identify as transgender. If 3.8% of the population waged war it’s not exactly going to go well- is it.
But conservative types are desperate to push this narrative that anyone outside of their normative model is assailing it, coming for your way of life, trying to FORCE you to be like them.

Making small concessions towards a tiny fragment of the population isn’t war. Not asking people personal questions that you don’t want the answer to any more than we want to give it is not war. If you ask if I have a wife and I say no, and you tell me I should be married at my age and I just smile and say nothing you’re being intrusive- why not leave it instead of prying further then being offended when I tell you I’m gay? It’s like purchasing a rod, waiting for it to arrive, taking it out of the box then handing it to someone and asking them to hit you with it.

It may come as a shock: I don’t want there to be more gay people in the world: I want the people who are to be able to come out and be happy if they so wish, I want the people who are trans to get their healthcare and get on with their lives, and especially, I want people so brainwashed by the endless shouts of WAR, WAR, WAR against them to let go of the rhetoric and realise they’re not being threatened by gay people- but by their perception of us: you’re fighting ghosts.
Yes, you might get fired if you call me a slur. I might get fired if I call someone a slur… it’s not a right I have that you don’t, simply that there are no slurs to describe you and even if there were I wouldn’t use them- but of course, normative culture has a morose obsession with trying to make normal words slurs.
TikTokers like Nicholasvanj call heterosexual people “upsetterosexuals” or “straggots” and then face deluges of “HETEROPHOBIA” in their comments. People constantly decry the use of the word cis when it’s literally a descriptor like “tall”, “athletic” or “interesting”. If you don’t want to be called cis I won’t call you cis- but I’m sure going to be confused about how you’ll wring insult out of a factual descriptive word with no negative connotations, and I’ll make extra sure that you don’t use any offensive lingo either- you’d be fascinated by how many people offended by a biological descriptor like cis throw around anti trans or homophobic words with what they believe is impunity.

The saddest part is that most virulently anti LGBT+ people seem miserable, obsessed with something that isn’t their concern. I cannot imagine spending my life wrapped so intimately around something I find disgusting. But they cannot simply disengage because there almost seems to be a need to create a dark shibboleth of the community, to make us the enemy that worsens their lives, poisons their water and steals their precious children into depravity. I don’t just want them to stop because they endanger my life with their increasingly provocative rhetoric: I want them to stop because I don’t like seeing miserable people yelling about my private life 24/7 and I think they must have better things to do with their time: Imagine how much happier you’d be if you stopped worrying about imaginary genitals or whether I’m a top or a bottom. So much free time to knit, to go to the gym, read, drink beer, I don’t care- just stop obsessing over people who, frankly, want nothing to do with you.

Heteronormative men in particular are desperate for there to be some sort of attack against them- constantly pushing the rhetoric that they are having their way of life dismantled, their freedoms taken away, their free speech censored. Unfortunately this is what parity looks like: when you finally get held to the same standards as others it’s not because we’re taking your rights away, it’s that we’re applying societal norms to you that your predecessors did not face.
Let’s imagine there is this fabled war though, and when they win, when they finally take over… then what?
I don’t understand the world that the men who espouse such toxic nonsense actually want, and frankly I don’t think they do either. If you rid the world of the LGBT+ and the feminists and the feminine men, how long do you think it would be until the less masculine men were up next, charged with feminising the real alphas… and which group would you be in? If every man suddenly became a super masculine paragon of manliness it would be a flash before they turned against themselves- they have to have an enemy to survive, because the whole ethos of the “alpha” male is victimhood garbed as strength, and if nobody is there to pick on them.. what then? It’s an ideology that folds in on itself like poorly done origami the moment it’s subjected to critical scrutiny, and one too many men fall into to expunge blame for their own failings when they are often the arbiters of their own misery against each other.

The fallacious thinking of the meninist crowd is made complex by people debating the grossly vapid talking points of empty fools like Andrew Tate, who likes to spend his time failing to antagonise 19 year old women on the internet or by lionising the actions of those cosplaying Navy SEALs outside drag bars when it’s really very simple: Men have spent years being lied to by media, shown movies where masculinity is control, manliness is anger, where if you just keep pestering, eventually she’ll say yes- from James Bond movies to every other action movie dross, negative masculinity is at the forefront of most of our historical media. Men grow up being told if you’re rude and dismissive to women they’ll do what you want because all women secretly want bad men- but wait, no, feminism is ruining it, making women think they have equal status? You have to put effort into dating? To men who think like this, I have to ask: do you even like women? I saw an interview with a meninist recently who argued his girlfriend should not be allowed to go on holiday without him because other men looking at her is disrespectful to him.
Security with a partner comes from trust, and if you cannot trust you are deeply damaged. Forcing someone into fidelity by simply refusing to allow them to go anywhere and do anything is not a paragon of masculinity, it exemplifies true fragility- and if you disagree, reverse the roles and ask yourself how you would feel about a woman averse to allowing her partner to go on holiday without her…? Control freak? Crazy?… Insecure.
It’s no different in the inverse.
A partner is just that: someone on equal standing who supports you as you support them, and if you’re too weak and fragile to be in a relationship with an equal I want to heartily assure you- it’s not women who have the problem in that scenario. Strength seeks strength, so if you hope to find a weak willed woman who will do what you say it’s because of your own inherent weakness, not because of your strength.

Further, LGBT+ people aren’t coming for your way of life. Many LGBT+ people call for integration into cishet society and whilst I understand it, the older I get the more I want some form of base separatism. I want to be left alone to live my gay life in a gay subculture that barely bumps against straight culture. I don’t want to have to mask my irritation at insensitive questions about my sex life, or feign patience when I listen to someone say “I’m fine with it, I just wish they’d leave kids out of it” when I have always known I was gay and was suicidal as a child and into my mid teens because nobody could or would help me understand it, and despite this endless patient explanation still being told “but some people might take advantage”- again, creating imaginary “what if” scenarios proves to me only that you’re more interested in living in an imaginary world than the physical one.
If you want to have a realistic conversation about indoctrination lets talk about forcing children to say the pledge of alliegance, or splashing water on their forehead so they don’t go to purgatory forever or relentlessly pestering your young children about if they have a girlfriend or a boyfriend… or is is that there’s good and bad types of grooming and indoctrination?

Society is crowded with bigots riled up by media pundits whose mission is to make you think everyone who isn’t a carbon copy of you- skin colour, political affiliation, sexual proclivities- is coming to destroy your life. Ironic, then, that they so readily destroy lives that they see as apart from their own.
If your existence is maintained via the dismantlement of other peoples’ normal, perhaps your normal is the aberration.

When it comes to masculinity, the very idea of feeling so threatened by a drag artist that you hover outside their work with a loaded gun is not masculine: The essence of masculinity is security, displayed by being so unbothered by gun toting yahoos that you cooly stroll into work unbothered by the threat of their presence.
If you want to shame people for dressing up to be that which they are not, might I suggest you take off your store bought army garb, holster your unused firearm and realise you’re just as much- if not more than- a cosplayer as those you hope vainly to threaten.

The Great Normalisation of Stupidity

By Daviemoo

You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, we’ve all heard it: I’m not even just talking about Kanye West’s latest deluge of verbal offal to human heart gristle Alex Jones. Stupidity is everywhere, and it’s getting worse. As humanity continues to wend its way through the universe on the only planet we have, I shouldn’t be shocked that the lowest, dumbest conspiracy theory nonsense is being banded about by idiots- and yet I am considering the only planet we have will be a flaming ball of iron and there’ll still be some crispy climate change denier gasping out “M-my…op…opinion” before bursting into flame. So my question is, and I’m not even being rhetorical- why are people so okay with mainstreaming stupidity under the guise of “opinions”?

I’ve seen so many people trot out the usual, tired lines about the Kanye West debacle this week. “It’s freedom of speech, everyone is allowed an opinion”. And for the longest time I was stymied about how to put my feelings into words against this sentiment. Our language is limited in this area: because, yes, if you want to go with the most base, un-nuanced version, the things Kanye West has said are opinions. But please tell me how we’re so low as a society that “I think pineapple is the best fruit” can be categorised in the same hall of descriptor as antisemitic conspiracy theories and full throated support for one of the most despicable figures in all of human history. And what’s happening to internet searches of his name in the wake of Kanye West’s latest episode of “when dickheads have money” you ask?

Internet search aggregators showing that West's idiocy increased name searches for Hitler by 6 times the amount.

Tell me this, defenders of FrEe SpEeCh: why is it that so many of you will throw yourselves out of your chairs to defend Kanye West’s rotted opinions like he’s paid you to, but you’re suddenly of the opinion that free speech ends there: that nobody has the right to reply, debunk, discuss or point out that if someone’s opinion comes with a body count perhaps it’s more important to protect human life and liberty than someone’s right to talk shit? If you care so much about free speech you’d listen to peoples responses, but it seems people just want to shut down any replies under the guise of protecting the original speech… I don’t understand how the free speech protection coalition never seems to understand that this leads to circular discussion: one side yelling at another, the other responding, the original one yelling again… we need to come to resolution, and resolution happens when we debunk falsitudes- and we only debunk falsitudes if we’re allowed to cut the original lie off from being repeated or it spreads.

Hate speech is like a virus: it has a patient zero, and it spreads virulently- the vaccine is widely available: education. people seem to misconstrue being corrected on a stupid opinion as some sort of invasion of bodily autonomy, but being corrected on wrong information isn’t a “winners and losers” game, it’s collectively good for society if you stop espousing nonsense… and if nothing else it stops you looking like an absolute arse.
As we’ve seen, there has been a precipitous rise in violence worldwide, but in the UK in particular the continuously contentious anti trans row has meant a 56% increase on the already not insignificant hate crimes faced by trans people and even the home office, run by cartoon transphobic villain Suella Braverman has admitted that “transgender issues have been heavily discussed on social media over the last year, which may have led to an increase in related hate crimes”.
Meanwhile in America, the vile meninists who blame women for issues caused by their own reluctance to accept their distinct mediocrity, and therefore unattractiveness as a partner, have been working in lockstep with regressive right wing policy makers which has culminated in attempts to entirely strip abortion rights from the US- and if you think this row is staying abroad, the one thing Jacob Rees-Mogg has learnt to do between sucking cold teabags, is import culture wars: regardless of Brexit. He was heard describing the right to abortion in the case of rape as a “cult of death” recently- Rees-Mogg by the way, earns some of his inconceivably vast fortune via a company which… manufactures abortion pills. Nothing like clinging to those morals unless there’s some paper with the royals on it, is there?

We’ve had this nonsense running faster and faster for years, and I want people to remember- anti vaccine demonstrators were SURE 10 years ago that vaccines cause autism and now billions of covid vaccines have been given out and autism cases are…’nt, suddenly it’s something else: heart problems or dizziness or a sudden dislike of cheese… Sudden Adult Death Syndrome has existed for years, and is now converted into a shibboleth for the anti vaccine mess to explain that uncle Brian died and we don’t know why. Now anti vax groups are blaming SAD cases on vaccines without evidence. And we let them! Media outlets who could disseminate easy, factual truth like “every vaccine has adverse side effects but that is hugely smaller than the millions of covid deaths”- but do they? Unfortunately, factual truth doesn’t really seem to move the news cycle, but giving an incel 10 minutes to rail against women sure brings in the viewers, doesn’t it: heedless of the damage it does. You don’t NEED to present a man who hates women to argue against his viewpoints because all he cares about is saying his nonsense.

Reason doesn’t work on unreasonable people, so don’t GIVE the unreasonable people the airwaves!

We have to refine the discourse around what constitutes opinions, because the phraseology is hopelessly limited- but further to this, we have to discuss why, WHY as a supposedly intelligent species, we’re happy to push stupid, incorrect information, dressed up in a cheap wig and fake moustache with “my opinion” scrawled on it.
If my opinion was that people called Ben were all evil, I’m fairly certain there’d be dissent, that I’d be told I was wrong, weird, stupid, making it up, purposely being dense- is that not totally normal, expected even? Or should I be allowed to walk around spouting anti Ben rhetoric…?
When an opinion causes harm to the innocent, when an opinion is patently false-when an opinion comes with a body count, maybe your right to hold it isn’t as inalienable as others’ right to safety.

Because here is the other problem, the awkward point that nobody discusses in these swirling debates of never-ending ignorance: opinions don’t just float in a void. Starting with an inert opinion, if it’s my opinion that tacos are the best food on earth you can bet I’m going to eat tacos at some point… make sense?
Opinions lead to action, especially when those opinions are contentious. When you constantly demonise and fear monger over a minority, you have no right to cling to the defence of its inertia as an opinion when others who share that opinion take it as permission to use that “opinion” as justification for murder. It does happen: the US right wing media and right wing nee’rdowells like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert who is in charge of the district in which a mass shooting of the gay people she’s condemned and called “supremacists”- and even disgraced and disgraceful ex president Donald Trump continue to fearmonger that the LGBT+ community are somehow “grooming” children by existing.
Pushing the idea that a whole community are paedophiles looking to hurt children will inevitably lead to radicalised people with these apparently oh so protected opinions swirling in their heads, walking blithely into an LGBT+ space- one of those places we make so we’re not ‘shoving it down your throat’- and mowing us down with guns. You can’t spread rhetoric like that, knowing you’re stoking this type of hatred, then shirk any and all responsibility for it.

This is the other contentious point: people want their access to what they think is “free speech” (it is here that I tiredly remind you that free speech is your protection from speaking out against THE GOVERNMENT without repercussions), and yet they want absolutely none of the responsibility that comes with it.
When you say things, people listen. When people listen, they decide how they will act based on that information. When they act on that information, their actions are of course their own, but if your wilful spread of harmful rhetoric led them to that action- the inescapable false conclusion that jewish people are bad, that black women should accept racist lines of questioning, that LGBT+ people are dangerous, that abortions which save lives all over the world are not healthcare- then you should, you must accept your role in spreading it.

I always, at this point in this discussion I’ve had hundreds of times, have people approach me to say- usually in some lofty tone as if they’re about to teach me something I haven’t thought about before, “erm, you are aware that discussing this stuff is how we know that it’s bad and that discussing it is important”. To you I say simply- why do I need to enter into a long “both sides” discussion about war crimes to know war crimes are bad? Why do I need to listen to straight men talk about how people like me make them uncomfortable and thats why I don’t deserve to live, and have to defend my right to walk the earth or not be imprisoned for the crime of “you can’t stop yourself thinking about me having sex”- this has happened twice this week…
Is there proof you can give me now that my mere existence as a gay man, that my community existing, makes the world worse? Because if there isn’t, please let me know why you think I should debate this pretty obvious thing with you. And why do you also discount my expert opinion as someone who is literally IN THIS COMMUNITY, LIVING THIS LIFE?

RichardLongur6 on twitter explaining that because gay and trans people make him feel personally uncomfortable we should all be imprisoned.

Not everything needs to be discourse needs to be blown up to size 100,000 and written in the sky by planes to remind people that just because YOU want to discuss gay people as if we’re a theoretic that doesn’t exist to do anything but annoy you by showing diversity on TV, doesn’t mean I do.

It’s not just that we’re collectively accepting that stupidity is the price of “opinions” and “free speech” when we don’t have to- it’s not, because the least we can do is call it out and ostracise those who promote and cling to disgusting ideologies; it’s that we’re also allowing people to do this, then act confused when the trail- from corpse to gun, gun to wielder, wielder to manifesto, and manifesto to interview after interview about the dangers that random minorities pose, leads right back to them.
You do not have the right to wield a hateful opinion without also wielding the responsibility of it: if what you say leads to harm and death, perhaps you shouldn’t have said it in the first place, perhaps it IS our place, societally, to delineate that its actually NOT OK to praise one of the most notorious warmongering evil humans in history, mayhaps decisions about healthcare should be decided on by the people who need to access that healthcare with minimal interference from outsiders, however well intentioned?

Let’s be frank. Society is failing at the moment. We’re letting people like Elon Musk, billionaire right wing jerk merchant, pretend twitter is a “marketplace of ideas”. I’ve said it before but a microblogging site is not the place for intelligent conversation. The reason that anti trans and pro trans people clash is that clear ideas like “women regardless of gender should feel safe” are being pared down to the bone and tiny flecks of rhetoric are spit back at “opposing sides” when both sides are pushing the same fucking obvious idea- that women should feel safe. But trying to inject nuance into a platform that runs off controversy and is character limited and run by a ham sandwich with a face is never going to work. And there are some ideas that we don’t need to discuss. What is there about Hitler, drug fuelled hate wielding maniac, mass killer, pure evil, that committed horrifying crimes we should all hope never to see again, that you could possibly ever love if you’re a decent person?

People also fall to “mental health” to defend indefensible remarks, and it’s possible to accept that someone is mentally unwell and still not let those remarks fly. Britney Spears shaved her head and ended up in such a restrictive conservatorship that she’s spoken about being mentally broken by it- odd how she wasn’t touted as a champion of free speech then, isn’t it. Mental health contributes to- and yet does not excuse- antisemitism or hideous rhetoric like that of people like Lily Cade who called for “parents of trans children to be lynched”. Mental health is vital and those who suffer should be treated for it- but it doesn’t give you carte blanche to do everything but grow a curly villain moustache and start saying evil things casually.

The time is passed now where we can simply sit back and allow the “marketplace of ideas” that is society to be polluted by such “if you don’t agree with this you need to wonder why you don’t fit into society” issues- but at the very least, if we must continue to sink into the dystopic horror of discussing these topics, it’s at the very least fair that the people pushing these ideas start accepting the responsibility, start acknowledging the blood that stains their hands and start to grasp the concept that “free speech” covers our right to call them evil just as thoroughly as it covers their right to be evil.
Overall, the question we need to ask is as simple as this: why are people so desperate cling on to, to defend, to discuss “opinions” that are so clearly wrong and why can’t they approach unpicking these “opinions” and asking themselves if they’re wrong with the same zeal they have for clinging, white knuckled, to rhetoric that gets people killed.

Talking about LGBT+ people isn’t ruining your children- you are

By Daviemoo

Day after day, I see more brain dead ramblings from people who think that there is no way to explain gay people existing to children without bringing out a blow up phallus. Lets go through the arguments and make, and I use this word loosely, “sense” of them because – as a gay man- I have had enough.

It will traumatise them

It absolutely flabbergasts me that people think they can bring children up in religious doctrine and that’s normal, but telling them about LGBT+ people is the final straw.
So your kid can believe an all powerful being is looking after uncle Jerry after he plowed his car into a tree on his way home from a bar, that god sits there peering off a cloud watching people exist and that if that child does something wrong god will let them be tortured for all of eternity in fire- but telling them two men who were holding hands in the street are gay is what’s going to mess them up? The cognitive dissonance astounds me daily. LGBT+ people do exist, and acknowledging this simple fact prepares your child for a life of very occasionally encountering LGBT+ people in their daily/weekly life: we’ll be their doctors, hairdressers, accountants, baristas… You don’t have to teach them to like it, but “I can’t teach my child facts because it’s counter to my beliefs” is really fucking funny to hear people say unironically.

They’re too young to understand

If they’re old enough to see two teenagers necking on in a bus stop, they’re old enough to understand that sometimes that might be a boy and a girl, a girl and a girl, a boy and a boy, two non binary people or any combination of these things. You don’t have to break out the action man and barbie figures and start smashing them together like you’re trying to reconstruct the large hadron collider experiments for children to grasp that sometimes people of different genders like each other.

“It’s grooming”

The amount of people who don’t think adult men tickling little girls or asking children if they’ve got partners jokingly or encouraging boys to bully girls to express their feelings are all normal behaviours, and yet think acknowledging LGBT+ people’s existences is grooming is increasing, and increasingly confusing. Grooming is normalising sexual behaviour with people who aren’t legally, mentally and physically prepared for it and should be protected from it at all costs. It’s a pretty fucking dark accusation. It’s also bullshit. If you’re ok with showing them sleeping beauty where a guy KISSES AN UNCONSCIOUS WOMAN, maybe ask yourself about your priorities VERY closely because “gay people sometimes exist” and “look, maybe some day a man will kiss YOU when you’re asleep” are actually not the same message. If you don’t get upset with half naked people writhing provocatively on a Jean Paul-Gaultier perfume advert, you can also not get upset about gay existence, because one is sexual and I would posit close to grooming and one isn’t- and it’s not the ones you think.

It might make them think they are

So? So what? Are you that afraid your child might not be the carbon copy of you that you were desperate to create when you mounted your wife like a drunk raccoon, and you think that means your existence was meaningless? If your child briefly wonders if they might be gay or trans just because they see a gay or trans person so what! If they’re not- they won’t pursue it, and if they are maybe immediately rejecting them based on that isn’t because you “failed”, but because you’re a bad parent…

It makes me uncomfortable

“I can’t cope with the literal fact that other types of humans exist” is not a compelling argument for not educating your children. It makes me uncomfortable to hear people talk about my sex life on tv, it makes me uncomfortable that people wear crocs in public and yknow what I do? Move on.

I think it’s an adult topic

Exactly how do you see this conversation going? “sometimes men like women, sometimes men like men” is quite a simple sentence. If you’re the ones who have to go into excruciating detail about where genitals go, what genitals are and who does what with them, its because you suffer from a terminal lack of nuance- that’s not LGBT+ peoples’ fault. If you don’t want to talk to your kids about it, don’t. But they will learn elsewhere, sooner or later, and leaving that to the world then getting mad about it is a pretty stupid look. And again, you can acknowledge LGBT+ people without having an adult conversation with your kids- it’s like, super simple.

I think it’s wrong

Ok? All the more reason for you to educate your children I guess but sure, hide us from them, lets see how that goes when little Timmy discovers he likes little Ben as more than a friend and has nobody he can confide in because his parents suck.

I have to wonder what people who endlessly moan about the LGBT+ and our existence think we feel when we look at them. Listening to people who waste their lives complaining about us gives me frustration but mostly makes me nonplussed. If you want to spend your entire life angry that other people exist, I can’t stop you. But I do wonder how much happier these people would be if they’d stop imagining my sex life.
We’re constantly told we “force it on people” because we wear flags to denote our existence- the same way you guys wear union jacks… its our identity and we like to share that… I’ll stop wearing mine if you drop yours?
We’re always accused of being everywhere- that is LITERALLY life now. Your hairdresser? Lesbian. The guy at the bank who approved your loan? Trans. The person who checked you in at the airport three weeks ago? Bisexual. Your admission that you can’t cope with the fact that other people exist is not a good look, and yet people continue to open throatedly confess that they dislike literal fact.

I wouldn’t even mind people constantly being arseholes about me and mine if we didn’t literally pay for society to cater to these losers. Ah you feel free speech is threatened because I exist? What do you propose you do about it? You want me to be prevented from talking about myself and my life? Uh, so you’re not really a free speech advocate then I guess. Cut my taxes to the bone, because if I’m not treated as a full member of society I shouldn’t be paying for it.

Honestly, society continues to confound me: people think that now is the peak of human civilisation and we can’t even go two weeks without threatening to drop bombs on each other. We have much growing to do, and we aren’t going to be able to do that until we stop causing division over nonsense. People continue to conflate my community with paedophilia to the detriment of actual victims of paedophilia, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender of the criminal involved. If you think our existence is the end of society, you may want to reflect on the simple fact that we’ve existed as long as you have and society still keeps on going, and perhaps it’s your wilful entitlement as “the right type of person” that’s causing division and societal friction and not the people who exist amongst you and just want to be able to kiss their partner without a bunch of yeehaws crying about it.

If you’re incapable of having a talk with your child about sexuality or gender without making it weird, if you can’t even bring yourself to acknowledge us to your child, it’s not because we’re awful evil people- it’s because you’re a bad parent, failing to prepare their child for a world in which we exist just as surely as they do and a world in which, regardless of your sentiments towards our community we deserve to exist unmolested.

Living as a minority is fucking exhausting these days.

By Daviemoo

The never ending discourse that minorities are subjected to about their identity is absolutely exhausting.
When I was in my mid teens, the amount of discourse around gayness was tailing off after many, many years of our time in the societal panic spotlight. I’ve mentioned before that we almost seemed to experience something of a renaissance in white gay culture, a time where nobody cared or thought about us and it felt very liberating to just be able to get on with life without any of the inane rambling.
Now, we seem to be back in the spotlight along with other minorities and the endless pathologisation is exhausting, and I would love for those outside of our experience to imagine how mind numbing it is to be subjected to this over and over.

There’s this thing that happens when you exist as a minority where you feel the need to speak out about something, and are instantly shushed. We all know what I’m about to say- from “why does everything need to be about race” to “you don’t have to talk about being gay constantly” or the monosyllabic ranting around gender, for every time you open your mouth to speak somewhere an ignorant person is desperate to tell you to close it. This is, though, especially ironic when the person or people telling you to quieten down have profiles or existences dedicated to the ongoing denigration of people just like you- from racists who would be out of work without the existence of people of colour to people like Maya Forstater who seems to do nothing but go from anti LGBT+ event to anti LGBT+ event. We can’t turn off whatever it is that makes you dislike us, and bigots can- could- should deal with their bigotry, but I have so often seen people of that creed reject founded evidence of their wrongness in favour of believing incorrect beliefs. In fact, if we’re mentioning Forstater let’s talk about the idea that Gender Critical beliefs are a protected characteristic because even if you present gender critical people with empirical evidence they are incorrect they will still hold the belief in the face of it being wrong. There is an ever growing tranche of evidence linking far right activism including anti vaccination and white supremacist rallies to gender critical activism and we can see why: Look at how the anti vaccine movement has stopped talking about autism in the face of billions and billions of COVID Vaccinations yielding not one additional case of autism- it’s the same conspiracy-esque nonsense as trans people secretly being funded by George Soros to “trans” peoples kids.
How is one meant to argue the case with people to whom fact means nothing. Judith Butler has often spoken out about those who will try to “silence” dissenting minorities, as if stopping adults from talking about their gender or sexuality would stop children from experiencing their own awakenings; trans people existed before 1990, as did gay people and quietening those voices does nothing to stop that. Let us not forget Butler’s Guardian article in early 2022, which featured a prediction of far right allyship with Gender Critical movements. Though this section of the article was removed, the truth of its words rang out and were ratified only last month when Butler’s prediction came true.

For most of us, identity is incidental. If we lived in a normal world, my being gay wouldn’t have been a big deal so I probably wouldn’t think about it much. But we don’t live in a normal world. We live in a world where stranger A’s being transgender offends stranger B so much that stranger B literally lobbies against stranger A being able to exist in society: we live in a world where a gay person existing on TV is so offensive to some non gay people that they will boycott shows just to avoid looking at someone who isn’t even doing anything adult- just existing as a gay person.

Now, the irony here is that it’s quite often the people complaining about these things who talk about how people like me are soft, sensitive snowflakes because we don’t like having our identity questioned and pathologised- but I hardly think it’s the people who don’t like spurious accusations of mental illness and perversion levelled act them that are the weak ones, over people who physically cannot tolerate seeing affection expressed between two consenting adults. But it’s an irony that is so often passed over, because acknowledgement of this presents a threat to the heteronormative status quo: if you question why straight men are so sensitive they can’t even see two men kiss, they will likely lose their temper, or immediately spit out nonsense in retaliation.

My personal favourite overused archetype at the moment is the “I’m not *insert flavour of bigotry here* BUT”.
“I’m not homophobic BUT I don’t support gay people’s right to get married”.
So you don’t think it’s homophobic to allow me to have equal rights to you? “You do, you could marry a woman”. Yes I could- do you condone me marrying a woman knowing I have no intention to follow what the normative model of that is…? Also under equal marriage, you have the right to marry another man- ah, you don’t want to because that doesn’t interest you. Interesting…
The most fascinating part of the “I’m not X bigotry BUT” types is almost a tacit acknowledgement that it’s wrong to be bigoted so they try to distance themselves from it whilst also rationalising a viewpoint that proves they are.
I’d posit that it’s possible to hold one, maybe even two ‘mildly’ bigoted opinions about a minority without being wholly a bigot, but it’s best to just unpick those opinions because having bigoted opinions does not help you in any way.
But the way in which bigoted people will try to remove themselves from the idea of being a bigot whilst perpetuating its existence is almost comical.

This seems to happen a lot with anti trans people. “I’m not transphobic” is said so often to me that I could genuinely use it as white noise, second only to “but what did she SAY that’s transphobic”. It’s a bad faith argument. When you’re told by multiple members of a minority that something is bigoted, why fight that? It isn’t affecting your free speech, you can still say it, but you will also be judged for it. If you’re being told that what you say is offensive you have options:
-Accept that what you have said is bigoted, apologise, acknowledging this is wrong and try to do your own work to unpick the thought patterns that led to this thought’s formation
-Accept that what you have said is bigoted but refuse to do the work, believing that it is your right to hold this view even if it is considered “wrong” societally
-Deny that what you have said is bigoted and explain it further, possibly alleviating the problem or making it worse dependant on your defence
-Deny that what you have said is bigoted and refuse to engage on the topic further

It is this key confusion I wish I could unpick. People seem to want to live in a world where they can both say the bigoted opinion AND escape culpability for having it.

A narrow minded opinion is not just a handcuff, it’s a ball and chain: if you want to have the opinion, you must be shackled to it’s consequences: any attempt to hold a bigoted opinion without ownership of it’s negative connotations is proof you are aware that the opinion is incorrect and is not defensible.

The relentless discourse around identity is part, I am almost sure, of human nature. It is human to examine, deconstruct and question identity- from the first moment one human saw another human. walking around in clothes, or choose to farm instead of hunt all the way to now, variation has been part of human existence and many of us spend immense amounts of time unpicking the human experience through the lenses of others: the idea that identity is a binary is laughably reductive in the face of all of human history. From body types, skin colour, gender to the more ephemeral concept of music taste, artistic level, hobbies and interests and so on, humanity is vast and varied: to deny this and to shrink identity to “right” or “wrong” based on its marriage to your own identity is bizarre. The problem is, culture is linked to the popular. White, blonde, fairly affluent right wing people seem to be the largest demographic (this is false, there are more varied and liberal people in western societies) based on social media and media presented to us by states and national interests. The reason that the more varied side fails often to stake its’ representation properly is that, within that vast and varied group there is still a reductive argument about identity that persists, alongside the idea that there is or are a way or ways in which to exist which is “correct”: this is false.

Every person has a mode of existence that suits them. Unfortunately, some people’s mode of existence intersects negatively with others. People who kill, people who hurt others, bigots etc- these people negatively impact on other people’s mode of existence. This is not acceptable, and whilst neither a wholly “live and let live” mindset is fully helpful, it is more conducive to a prosperous society than enforced rules of living that do not fit a certain proportion of people.

There is no “correct way” to exist, because each person is so fundamentally different from the last, though often having overlaps that to apply a unifying theory to existence is wholly pointless.

Looking at gender: many societies have followed similar but not wholly same methods of gender expression for many years. That doesn’t mean those methods are correct as much as that, at the time, they were considered appropriate: from Geishas in Japan as an expression of femininity to Boudica, stripped bare for statues- these are expressions of gender just as surely as petticoats, little black dresses and more. Society changes in huge, varied ways which lead to a retrospective interest in their originations: Think of it in terms of medicine. The reason that so many anti vaxxers exist is that many see medicine as it exists now as the “peak” of modernity: medicine can’t get any better, so any “new” medicine, like vaccines etc are not acceptable or safe: this is based on the idea that medicine doesn’t grow and change. Vaccines have been performed en masse since the late 1800s and whilst they, like every single medical procedure from dentistry to appendectomies have resulted in deaths, the numbers are small. Every time you have a medical procedure you should be aware of the potential for harm: vaccines are no exception.
I have no doubt that in 200 years, if humans don’t wipe themselves out, the way in which we treat cancers etc now will be viewed as just as brutal and unsafe as we view war wound amputations from the 1800s. This is the same for understandings of and ways to go about expressing gender, including the medical side- but one can also look at anything and see societal understanding adapt and grow through time. It genuinely functions the same: Archaic expressions of gender are seen as quaint, and our reductive understanding of gender and its expression now will, again, be seen as primitive if humanity continues to flourish.

But in examining these modes of existence we zoom so far out as to miss the micro-strands of daily existence and humanity woven between these existences, so to zoom back in and to get back to the original point, being under that constant level of scrutiny is wholly exhausting.

One reason I feel this could be the case is that those who live under “social norms” or who feel the need (like transphobic trans people) to reaffirm social norms even in the face of their own existence, feel their existence is threatened when someone exists outside of their reconciliation of their own identity.
In particular, gay men who rail against any man who does not conform to their idea of masculine seem often to be filled with a certain type of discomfort that, because a feminine man exists he will also be tarred with femininity. This leads into a broader discussion of what exactly is wrong with femininity or conversely why a “masculine” woman is problematic, but it’s original concept is that to be a man who does not conform to what another man’s expectation is cannot be a man. Norms are simply the base understanding we originate from, but do not have to be the finality of our understanding of how people can be, exist and function. I have been told innumerable times in my life that I’m not a “real man” because of my sexuality, but if homosexual acts remove me from my sex then sex is surely not innate and immutable- and yet many homophobic gender critical people can hold these two opposing beliefs in their heads at the same time.
I do have to wonder on a personal level if there is a connection between why a lot of gay men are more effeminate- is it biological, societal: who knows. But the question is, why does it matter. Behaviour is just behaviour, and why do normative people feel threatened by those who do not conform? Perhaps there’s a biological imperative on why certain sexes act certain ways, and a further conflation of why homosexual people act differently than this- but in a society that isn’t based on survival due to very base acts, actions and modes of existence it doesn’t matter.

I used to believe that humans would naturally become more understanding, kinder, better as we grew. But I grew up in the early 90s and we didn’t have the internet or smart phones. Now we do, we can reach out and speak to people of every walk of life- and that seems to have come with endless discourse from normative people on why anything outside of their experience makes them uncomfortable. One has to wonder whether this massive amount of discussion is simply a Richter shake of society as we strain to accommodate those who were quiet before: but the main issue we face is that society will not continue to improve until we stop recycling the same faces, the same voices: White cis women endlessly recycling the same 5000 words about their discomfort with trans women, middle aged men speaking out about foreign people in their countries, old people talking about the problems with the young… Until we change the well worn narrative it is only these recidivist attitudes that will continue to seem “normal” and whilst I personally do not want to appeal to “normal” because I am not by my nature, I would very much like for “normal” people to stop discussing people who are not they as a pastime.

Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.

Twitter: enabling bigotry and attacking minorities in the palm of your hand

By Daviemoo

I’ve just been permanently banned from twitter for quote tweeting a Christian using a disgusting meme and suggesting ironically that perhaps a religion of love and peace wouldn’t actually celebrate the eternal torment of atheists; this is a couple of weeks after being suspended for the temerity of sarcastically asking sky news whether I should just die because of the cost of living crisis. Twitter’s moderators casually allow racism, transphobia, homophobia on the daily, but come down hard on minorities speaking their mind: because it’s outrage that drives their algorithm, and there’s nowhere to hide in safety on a website who feeds hate for money.

Would you like to see my recent transgressions that saw me face a one week ban, and now a permanent one?
Here you are:

My first apparent transgression, where sky news were stating that people under £45,000 would struggle throughout the energy crisis and I replied thusly

I used the word die. I didn’t say “you should die”, I didn’t say “I hope someone dies”, in fact I was saying “shall I just die” but because of these pesky things- “” and this one – ? – Twitter decided I was threatening Sky News.
I sent it for review because of course they’d understand it was a mistake. They can read nuance right?
Nope! Twitter’s crack team of moderators decided me insinuating I’d die because of the cost of living crisis was egregious enough to send me to the naughty step for a week! Bad moo! How dare you hint that the cost of living was so severe you might die!

So off I went. Then I took more time away because I’m 34 and twitter is a seething shithole of angry idiots some days. But, like a nicotine addiction with characters I went back and- before I had time to readjust my fringe- boom. I’m permabanned. Why, you ask?

A christian insinuating that atheists will burn forever in hell and me sarcastically pointing out how loving their religion is

So there’s my crimes people- I used the word die sarcastically and I made fun of a christian who was taking pleasure in the idea of atheists suffering for eternity.

Twitter is a shithole of an app. Every day I go on there and see endless examples of small minded bigots from JK Rowling to Helen Joyce, from small minded peons like Lord Moylan to unrepentant idiots like Nadine Dorries tweeting bollocks with impunity: Dorries even tweeted a doctored image of Rishi Sunak attempting to murder Boris Johnson. I watch US congressmen and women write about how the trans menace is going to destroy Bible Belt America, all the while practically deepthroating their AK47s on main.

Does Rowling and her neverending tirade of bollocks ever meet punishment by twitter? Does Joyce sharing the juvenile conspiracy theories she scribed in her book “trans”, in which she met, talked to, interviewed, no trans people? Do our MPs or leaders face repercussions despite the fact that they’re meant to be the best of us? No. But heaven forfend a left winger speak out of turn to people insinuating they’ll be charcoal briquettes in hell forever because we don’t share their cartoon colouring book beliefs.

So much for this lovely free speech I’ve heard so much about eh. Fuck twitter and the little minions so desperate to control the speech of those they spend half their time shouting about free speech at.

The LGBT+ are not groomers: the people calling us that, though…

By Daviemoo

If you think seeing gay people being gay in public or on TV shows is going to “indoctrinate your children” I cannot take you seriously. And if you think being part of the LGBT+ in one or more ways automatically makes you a groomer that’s quite literally the essence of bigotry.

“Backs against the wall, lads”. I heard that a few times at school after I came out at 15. I always found it funny to be honest with you, not the least because most of the guys I went to school with were ugly as fuck.

Homophobic people always seem to think you’re just barely restraining yourself from trying to sleep with them which is an odd reaction to proximity to someone with a different sexuality than you: but I think it’s broader than that. As you look at the rise and rise of political toss pieces like Donald “he says what he means but let me explain it” Trump or vexatious idiots like Liz Truss as she scrambles for the leadership, or- related to right wing politics even if not necessarily directly, the same pastiched internet losers like Andrew Tate, a man who looks like a 4 year old who has been told to eat his vegetables or he doesn’t get to watch tv, you begin to realise that people who are homophobic genuinely see themselves as so desirable that anyone- men, women, everyone around them, is just barely holding themselves back from sleeping with them. It’s why they’re so dangerous: they actually believe the same disgusting shite that the old James Bond movies pushed.
“If I just harangue, pester, annoy, rile up this woman enough, eventually she’ll stop pretending she doesn’t want to fuck me”. It’s deranged, and being pushed by the mainstream as idiots like “grab them by the pussy” or tit-head Tate speak out on their platforms to angry young men who suddenly find themselves denied the “do what you want and we’ll say it’s just ‘boys will be boys'” nonsense that defended our predecessors. And if you don’t think there’s a causal link between internet nut holders and right wing politics… well:

I can smell the testosterone and brut from here

This rhetoric of “I know what people REALLY think, im just brave enough to say it” also pervades other movements: the anti trans movement in the UK has been lovingly embraced by all tentacles of the insidious Murdoch media empire, who push out transphobic articles- some of which are quite literally false information (Allison Bailey LOST against Stonewall!) – purely to detract from and distract from governmental malfeasance and all the while pushing the idea that ALL women hate trans people, ALL women secretly hate men because ALL men are bad and evil. The irony is, a lot of us pro trans feminist types agree that men are the causal issue- we just dont think trans women are men and understand that you’ll never make societal change to better the behaviour of cis men if you don’t start, y’know… fighting cis men…

One of my favourite moments the other day was when Rosie Duffield, the most tory Labour MP in existence, tweeted the sentence “nobody believes trans people don’t exist” and I called her a liar. A TERF quote tweeted me to say “no matter what she does you’ll call her a liar”… all of 7 tweets later she told me “I don’t believe trans exists”.
Shocker- TERFS not only lie, but cannot follow logic past seven tweets: a TERF came to the anti Nazi rally to “report” on it, and of course her blockbuster article condemned us all for being there- begging the question “do you think we should just let fascists protest unopposed”.

The fash were protesting against “drag queen story hour” because apparently its perverted and sexual that a man in a dress reads a book to kids. We’ve never before in society allowed men in dresses to be near children…

The right- and all TERFS, despite their other wider political views, are right wing- are desperate to level accusations at others that they themselves partake in. The latest insult we in the LGBT+ have to endure and hear constantly is “groomer”. Apparently we’re grooming children because we want schools to teach acceptance. For us, it’s usually because we recall our own school days when people would say stuff like “backs to the wall” or ask me if I liked d*ck up my a**e- at fifteen… and we don’t want other kids to go through that. Not only does it mean that children don’t grow up as I did, fully aware that I liked other boys/men and with absolutely no one to talk to about it and with only negative things ever said about it, but it also means that younger people who don’t know about it and would choose the path of ignorance have that interrupted, and at least understand it before they grow into the monsters who will end up making our lives hell.

But how come the right are happy to push the idea that forcing your “ideology” on people is grooming, and still do it?

Handy proof that its only indoctrination if it’s not what YOU believe

Somehow it’s deemed as ok to take your child and get a total stranger to pour water on their head or dunk them in a font because you believe that a magical all seeing power wants you to do that so they prove their devotion, or to slap on a kid size MAGA hat and drag them to a rally where they’ll be told that everyone else is out to take their rights and guns and money. Somehow it’s not a problem when it’s YOUR beliefs, but someone else’s point of view- someone else’s literal existence- comes into the equation and suddenly that’s perverse, there must be some sexual element to it.

Tell me how many open cases of child abuse and sexual assault the catholic church has out against it at the moment, will you…?

I went to an anti nazi rally in my home town this weekend: there were well over a hundred of us, trans, gay, bi, lesbians all united in our white hot hatred of the Patriotic Alternative, or as I like to call them, Gammon MAGA. They dangled banners that called us groomers, paedophiles, said things like “Learn ABCD not LGBT”. I have news for the desperately uneducated incels on the other side of those barriers: Kids will still grow up gay, bi, trans without your little banners. They just won’t figure it out til later, and will leave wreckage in their wake when they do.

When I was younger I knew I was something… gay, bi? I wasn’t sure. And in the process of figuring that out, because nobody could help me thanks to section 28, I hurt people who didn’t deserve it.
If it’s about protecting the kids, how about protecting not only the ones who need help to figure themselves out, but the ones who get caught in the crossfire of people’s self discovery?

It’s never been about protecting children for the right, it’s never been about a balanced view, a “let them learn at age appropriate times” because if it was, we’d be listened to. I don’t want kids learning about sex too soon any more than the idiots on the other side of those barriers do: and I know this is hard to grasp but whilst SEXuality has the word sex in it, sexuality can have very little to do with sex.

Let’s say I decided that I was never going to date another man ever again: Does that mean I’m not gay? Did those warm feelings in my toes go away whenever I see a guy with a nice chest? Do I not blush when a good looking guy winks at me?
Hell no. Sexuality isn’t about where you finish, even if that’s a part of it: it’s about feelings. I knew I was gay at 4! Didn’t know what the hell sex was, just knew that a guy I went to school with was pretty to me the way the other boys said girls were to them. Teaching children that thats a possibility isn’t grooming: it’s fact. And I mean, facts over feelings, right…?

The fact is that LGBT+ people are called groomers just for existing and talking about our life and experience, and I regularly list the ways heteronormative people behave around others that would be absolutely torn to SHREDS if an LGBT+ person did it. It’s why I laugh when I see people say we have equal rights… try being terrified to show affection to your partner in public cos you might get murdered and then shout EQUALITY at me again.

But this brings me on the long cycling road back to the nature of this supposed grooming we’re doing. If we’re FORCING our IDEOLOGY on KIDS with our FLAGS and our PRONOUNS and you want all of that erased, it may be worthwhile examining your own societal behaviours…

Hope you’re not forcing kids to wear your flag whether they want to or not…

And it would of course be terribly hypocritical to force children to be around your political heroes, indoctrinating them into your beliefs…

And it always bears repeating that indoctrinating children into your religion, even when that religion is rife with covered up child abuse claims would definitely, surely, go under the definition of grooming…

The root of the issue is as simple as, none of this is considered grooming because it’s considered “normal”: but seen through a critical lens it takes on an uneasy tilt. Divergence from sexuality that is purely straight is also normal but it seems that cis het people grow up in a bubble, constructed purely of the idea that not being “like you” means you’re wrong and therefore bad.
Wouldn’t it also be ironic if, for example, virulently right wing anti LGBT+ figures were found to be quite literally grooming? Hope you keep this anti groomer energy for them…

Let’s be specific on sexuality: LGBT+ people are often uneasy around children specifically because we’ve had disgusting accusations levelled at us purely on account of our gender or sexuality. And it’s really, really heinous to sexualise children or push your sexuality on children… surely cis het people don’t ever do that… right?

LGBT+ people’s existence isn’t grooming, and if pushing the idea of accepting us instead of being a hateful piece of shit is controversial then we have bigger problems than we’re willing to discuss.

The right are hypocrites.
The left, and especially those of us on the left in the LGBT+ community who talk about steering children’s thought patterns and education towards not just grudging tolerance but acceptance, are open about our reasoning: because we don’t want to repeat the mistakes and the bigotry of the past. Children must be shaped early on to ensure their acceptance of others, especially in a world that shoves bigotry and flawed behaviour into us from every aspect- and untangling that is not easy. I’d rather save “normative” children the stress of untangling learned bigotry when they grow old enough to understand its wrong, along with the non “normative” children not having to suffer at their hand.
Call it grooming if you want- I call it learned decency.

The LGBT+ progress pride flag represents nothing of sex to me: it’s a symbol of a community who cares about those both within and without it. I feel sorry for people twisted by hatred for us, because what a sad little life it must be to be so deeply concerned with whether someone was born in their gender or falls in love with someone of the same gender… if that’s your biggest problem, you are truly blessed.
Now look at the flags of hate preachers like the PA and tell me you see tolerance and love in their ranks, or do you see people too stupid or narrow minded to accept that sometimes people are born different, and that’s ok.

As to wrapping your children in your paraphernalia, escorting them to Trump rallies or telling them how you weren’t a sissy growing up to stop the damn crying and to turn into another maladjusted adult who can’t manage their emotions so they take it out on everyone else, you might not call that grooming but I sure do: I won’t apologise for hoping and trying to help your children turn out less shitty than you.

Bigots are the real perverts

By Daviemoo

I am so tired.
I’m 34, and when I was 15 that seemed like a huge age- more than double what I was then. Light years away…
I picked 15 because that was the age I came out. To my family and friends, at school. I was so lucky; the bullying that had plagued me because I was effeminate and shy stopped. I found confidence, I could stop lying about things and hiding. But so began a journey that is wearing me down- like the head of a hip bone in the joint I was strong in my youth but there are some arguments I’m honestly so tired of, and I want to set those out here, on pride month, so people who aren’t part of this community or who are and feel differently can see my perspective.

“Why do you need to make it your whole personality” is one of the most headache inducing sentences I can hear.
Do you think I do it on purpose? It’s on my mind a lot. And I urge you to think consciously about how often you reference the people you like, the people you love, sex, sexuality…
But let’s look at some honest to god things that I’ve seen in the last month.

In a queue in Tescos a guy squeezed his girlfriends arse, right in front of me, brazenly. Do I need to be party to that? Is that not over-sexual and a bit grim when there could be impressionable kids around? Or is is ok because it’s ‘natural’ because boys will be boys or because straight is the ‘right’ way to be…
Less than 2 weeks later I went for a walk down by Leeds river and saw a guy literally rubbing his girlfriend’s buttHOLE through her lycra running pants. Sat by the river. In front of anyone who walked past. THAT is gross- and yet so normalised that apparently my response of looking like someone had shot me with a crossbow was inappropriate, not the whole guy rubbing his girlfriend’s bum-hole publicly thing…?!
I’ve seen so many straight couples holding hands, kissing, cuddling, I saw a guy pick his girlfriend up and carry her down the street- at the gym a girl sat behind her boyfriend and cuddled him as he did weighted rows. All normal, right? All acceptable and totally cool…

I was in Starbucks the other week and heard a lengthy conversation from an extremely loud guy talking about how he plans to ask his girlfriend to move in in September. It was cute- but Imagine for a moment if that was a nasty gay or lesbian or bi doing it. Filthily shoving their sexuality down my throat. It’s totally different in no way whatsoever and I for one am sick of it.

The inclusion trope is so funny as well. “You cant turn a TV show on now without a trans or bi character”. Oh no! One to two characters who aren’t a carbon copy of little you?! Is this erasure? We can watch 3 hour long movies about blue aliens that use their tail fibres to communicate with their planet, but god forbid one of those blue aliens goes home to a woman instead, that’s degenerate, unrealistic!

The double standard isn’t even the most exhausting part, it’s bigoted people’s absolute transparent desperation to remove the nuance of anyone and reduce them down to sex sex sex… trans people only transition for sexual reasons, gay men are filthy disease ridden sluts and on and on and on go the stupid tropes – if anything’s being forced down anyone’s throats it’s your unbidden opinions of us! I don’t care if my sexuality disturbs or bothers you, it’s possible anything from your chunky jewellery and unflattering shoes to your miserable hatchet face disturbs me and yet I can and do keep it to myself.
I’m tired of us being called the thought police. I don’t care if you’re a bigoty piece of shit- just keep it to yourself. If me being gay, being gay publicly, kissing a man, being effeminate bothers you- grow up. Your discomfort isn’t my problem any more than mine is yours, but I can’t help being gay and you sure as shit can help being a bigoted piece of shit. Look away! Go on your phone, imagine something, get a hobby- just leave us alone! The reason I’m worried about you saying shit to me is because violence is usually sure to follow.
And let’s be honest, it’s not just about SAYING it, is it? I was once teaching two girls the dance to Bad Romance in the bar I frequented when a guy came storming up to me, stuck his chest on mine, stared me right in the eyes and said “ERE…are you a fucking FAGGOT”.
I panicked, but I figured I’d rather get punched out for being honest than lying so I said yes.
He shook his head confusedly and walked away- I dont get it either. But the point is, I wasn’t doing a gay act, I wasn’t pleasuring a man, I was doing a fucking dance and that’s STILL too much for you people, still too provocative. How dare I… know a dance to a very popular song? People like you won’t be happy til every man has a “mum” tattoo on his bicep, anger issues and a pending restraining order from an ex girlfriend.

We are MORE than our sex, sexuality, gender – but we’re never allowed to be by you people. Even if I never told people I’m gay they’d know, and even if I was achingly private about it people would still ask. It’s never a case of “you wear it on your sleeve”, it’s a case of your coat is torn off by nosy strangers who expose you regardless of whether you want to be open or not.

Rebel Wilson was recently outed by a newspaper- staffed by gay people who made the decision to completely shatter someone else’s privacy! Wilson hadn’t spoken out about it but suddenly it was in the public’s interest to know that she is dating a woman… why? If homosexuality is so sinful and wrong and we should stop shoving it down your throats, why is it that we can’t just live in peace without neon headlines buzzing our names and announcing “she likes WOMEN!”

It’s because, to you, we’re the car crash you can’t turn away from. Straight bigots love to point and whisper behind their hands about us, gossip about us, ask each other who does the fucking and who does the sucking but the second we step forward to say “yes, it’s true. I like men” suddenly we’re the perverts.

If you can’t look at a progress or a pride flag without thinking about sex and orgasms, about sweaty bodies it’s not because that’s what that flag, or this community, or we as individuals represent- it’s because you are literally a pervert. You sexualise a community who comes together because of our feelings, because of who we are. And of course sex comes into sexuality. But it’s so funny to hear people whinge endlessly about pride. Overly sexual pride. Gee guys and gals, it seems like having a big party in the street is the least we can do after our predecessors being sawn in half from the genitals to the neck because we’re gay, or being burnt at the stake, or gassed, shot, hate crimed, forced to bury who we are because you people are so reductive you can’t for one second accept that we are not human cookies, churned out in a factory somewhere all from the same mould, same taste, same look and any divergence is a weakness.

I would be a gay man even if I never touched another man in my entire life- it’s about my core identity- it’s about the fact that when I look at a handsome man I can feel my pupils dilate a bit. It’s about imagining having a conversation with him and seeing if his teeth are nice, about finding out we both like to write, about that electric moment his hand brushes mine and we look into each other’s eyes. Its about when we’ve been dating for 8 months and he casually asks if he can keep some things in my drawer. About the morning after a huge fight when I wake up to 6 texts and we cry then laugh together. To take from real life, it’s about loving a man who passed away and being devastated that I’ll never get the chance to put my arms around him again and tell him I forgive him for the way he left me, about how frustrated I am that his ashes are sat in his homophobic father’s house and how every so often I get the crazy urge to go to his old haunt and steal them back and spread them where I know he was happy.

These are the real lives, the genuine things you overlook every time you roll your eyes and sigh about the nasty inclusive flag.
Every time you look at that flag you should see the bodies of people who died rather than face the endless suspicion, persecution, violence you put them through- because when you reduce us to nothing but fuck puppies you take away our humanity. I’ve seen more humanity in one random member of my community, one transgender person who spends their time counselling younger fellows or one lesbian spending her weekends working for a charity than I ever have in a thousand red faced, yelling homophobes whose lives are empty because they cut out a huge group of people just for standing under a rainbow.

Lawrence Fox and the outrage farm

By Daviemoo

Social media is meant to invoke outrage. It feeds on it. Remember when social media first started- sure there would be the odd spat. Now, it caters to it.
Sites like twitter, apps like TikTok, they fuel themselves on controversy- because where there is outrage, there is money… and that’s something that people like Lawrence Fox, osmium dense though he may be, have realised.

Lets get this out of the way first: Fox and all his hangers on like Corcoran, like Grimes and Hartley-Brewer, are all stupid.
All of them are nonsense slinging rage monkeys, screeching out into a world to provoke a reaction, hoping to piss off the world 1/100th as much as they are permanently.
I imagine Fox went to bed last night laughing at the fact he annoyed so many people on a social media app.
“Good”, I bet he thought to himself as he curled up alone in his bed, staring at the dent no sane woman has filled in years. This type of bottom level clickbait farming is literally all he has to his name. If we didn’t know the man was a seething cunt, we wouldn’t know who he is- and he prefers the eye rolling frustration to complete indifference. To quote an excellent TV show- what a sad little life, Jane.

Who is Lawrence Fox without this? What does he stand for? “Free speech”- ok, but what does that even mean? I could also sit there calling people I don’t like paedophiles all day and being taken to court over it, where some shadowy overlord of incel behaviour will be my patron. I don’t, because I’m capable of rational discourse- so the question for Fox and… “friends” is, is he incapable of rational discourse, or is he just that much of a wet lettuce in semi-human form that if someone says “oh don’t say the word moist, I hate it” his veins begin popping up in some primal self defence as he screams the words “MOIST” and “SNOWFLAKE” alternately with more and more tears building in the corners of his rheumy little eyes.

But when it comes to his actions and the actions of his fellow verified incels, they behave this way because they have tapped into the pulse of social media in a way the rest of us may know about, but don’t touch on- not because we can’t, not because we’re unaware of it. Because we’re capable of a deeper nuance in conversation than slinging around hate slurs- because we understand that just because you can be a repugnant prick doesn’t mean you should.
Fox et al are all “free speech” enthusiasts, arguing vociferously for the right to say and do ANYTHING! Anything is off the table, nobody should be able to censor you or your speech, you should be free to say whatever you want.
Dedicated scholars (aka actually intelligent people) would calmly point out that some types of speech are heavily monitored as they are a precursor to actual violence: in the last two weeks in America, two separate anti gay preachers have stood proud at televised podiums and called for the mass shooting of gay people. This weekend, just as Roe V Wade was repealed – a maniac entered a gay bar in Oslo and shot several people to death.
Cause, meet effect- I believe you two are heavily acquainted.

But we know that people like these anger pushing rage monkeys don’t care about that. They just want to feed social media.

It’s not even the point that certain types of speech should be criminalised -we’ve all heard the hot takes of people being arrested or given punitive sentences for posting lyrics to songs people find offensive and I’m not here arguing about that. Those stories, those articles- all feed into the clickbait outrage machine these one trick ponies have mastered. No, it’s not about whether these types of speech should be criminalised or even punished- it’s about the fact that as human beings, capable of rational speech, it’s unbecoming to use them…

I could grunt like primal man. I could scream slurs at a nursing home, and I could yell all the epithets I want to in the street until I was led away for fear of being unbalanced. I don’t do those things- not because I cant, I very much can. It’s because I’m not a fucking loser…

If you can’t have rational discourse without using slurs, if you can’t talk to someone and not immediately sink to saying things you know will provoke and piss them off you aren’t a big brave freedom fighter in the guerrilla war against speech. You’re one of two things, or possibly both:
The first option is that you’re too dense to realise that what you’re saying is rude. This is the type of person like the taxi driver who will jeer at an effeminate man then be surprised when you tell him to shut the fuck up, acting like you did the wrong.
The second option is that you are desperately unhappy, as the collection of geese this article is prompted by are, and simply have to propagate that misery in others.

Perhaps if Fox knew how to behave around people he would still be married. Perhaps if he was more interested in raising his children than provoking anger online he wouldn’t be so hated. But he doesn’t care. This will suit him. And social media allows it.

Oh yes, he shared the imagery of a progress pride swastika yesterday and now his account, as twitter openly professes, is “temporarily locked”. He’s already posted his distain, crying about how “you can call the Union Jack a symbol of fascism but you can’t criticise the holy flags”. Ah yes, free speech until it’s speech you don’t like then, as always.

And in the background of this little sonata of stupidity, social media feeds. More clicks, more shares, more discussion of the man who will sink to the most flagrantly slackjawed commentary just to get acknowledged- and why? Because more clicks are more engagement. More engagement is more money. More money is good, always good right? Does twitter take this outrage money and donate it to LGBT+ charities who are sorely in need of funding and suffer at the hands of the unmitigated bollocks that people like Fox wank onto the internet? Do they even invest it into making their platform better, using algorithms to detect and censor swastika or tweets that could provoke violence against marginalised communities? Well, no but you can be damn sure that any of the upper management have nice cars and big houses.

Social media has fastened its lips around the collective flaccid peni of wasters like Fox etc and is happily slurping up the givings as they sit back in immunity knowing that they’re almost impossible to dislodge because sites like twitter or Tiktok or Facebook or whatever other tepid social media we use are absolutely delighted when a new cunt-in-chief pops up to start tweeting the usual transparent bollocks like “LGBT+ people are bad and this is my freedom of speech”.
LGBT+ people don’t care about your personal opinion- we care that this is step one on the very short ladder to “LGBT+ people should be exterminated with prejudice” and people like you are happy to bend down on all fours to let more extreme people capitalise on your incel upsets to gain ground.
As for freedom of speech- you’re free to walk around calling people like me fags and shirt-lifters, back scratchers and queers. But two things to always bear in mind. If you use language that identifies you as a threat you’ll be treated as one and you shouldn’t be surprised if you call the wrong guy the F slur one day and end up wearing your teeth in a purse around your neck.
But the most important point of all is- you can say those things. But if, in a world as big, broad and varied as this, you sink to the most gormless commentary you can muster just because you should be able to you’re lacking in the very most basic parts of human development when it comes to interaction. And that is why people like Lawrence Fox sleep in a large bed, alone, tweeting at strangers all night.

Knives at Dawn: The Attack on the ECHR

By Daviemoo

Following the public emasculation of the much reviled “Rwanda plan”, a very neutral name for a plan to ship refugees thousands of miles away, the right wing and its dogs of war have immediately mounted an attack on the ECHR, the European Convention on Human Rights. The very fact that its name contains EUROPE seems to intrinsically link this organisation with the EU and has therefore drawn the well worn ire of brexiteers who cannot hear the word Europe without brimming with detestation. But what IS the ECHR, why was it formed and what is its purpose… and why is this attack from the right deeply troubling?

Origin

At the end of World War Two the world was reeling from endless atrocities, both well publicised and kept away from the mainstream for various reasons and Winston Churchill, along with several other states, realised that there must be an overarching accountability for human rights protections that extends beyond states. Though Churchill is rightly a controversial figure now, this need to create a council to protect human rights at a Europe-wide level was a master stroke in accountability for the protection of individual rights and, indeed, group rights. Thus was born the ‘Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’.

Since 1949, a scant few years after the end of the war, the ECHR has overseen judicial decisions to ensure that human beings in countries under its membership- not citizens, simply persons within these countries- are treated with dignity, humanity and that their individual rights are respected.

The ECHR has overseen many different fundamental rights, listed on its’ own site, but shortlisted here:

the right to life (Article 2)
freedom from torture (Article 3)
freedom from slavery (Article 4)
the right to liberty (Article 5)
the right to a fair trial (Article 6)
the right not to be punished for something that wasn’t against the law at the time (Article 7)
the right to respect for family and private life (Article 8)
freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 9)
freedom of expression (Article 10)
freedom of assembly (Article 11)
the right to marry and start a family (Article 12)
the right not to be discriminated against in respect of these rights (Article 14)
the right to protection of property (Protocol 1, Article 1)
the right to education (Protocol 1, Article 2)
the right to participate in free elections (Protocol 1, Article 3)
the abolition of the death penalty (Protocol 13)

As you can see from the list, the ECHR is not simply extant to meddle in country affairs; it exists to add a veil of accountability overarching that of government: something which, in normal times, the law does too- but we are not in normal times.

The prime minister himself has broken the law and, but for a £50 fine, escaped punishment. The government as an entity seeks to undermine the NI Protocol which could destabilise the uneasy peace in Ireland and has already led to huge issues across the length and breadth of the UK.
The reason this is so concerning? The law of the land won’t hold the conservatives back from their degradation- but the ECHR just has…

The “Rwanda Plan“

The plan to ship refugees off to Rwanda is sick, jingoistic and appeals only to those people who think that genuflecting the Union Jack is the essence of patriotic behaviour, rather than trying to improve the land on which it’s flying. Claims from the likes of Priti Patel that it will deal with traffickers are laughable: those desperate to flee to the UK are not going to be put off by threats of further deportation at tax payers expense- they are regularly fleeing war zones, atrocities, mass murder, truly authoritarian governments, rape, war…

Patel has shown herself to be reductive and appeal to the likes of the above before (we’ve all seen that interview where she defends the death penalty even for innocent people)- but I refuse to believe she does not understand how ridiculous a policy like this is. If you want to stop people crossing the channel unsafely: make safe passage.
Were it possible for refugees to apply for asylum from outside the UK, were it possible for them to travel here safely and be met safely to be processed, were the processing times quicker, the process more humane- this would completely depower traffickers at source. They rely on fear and lack of option. Offer options. Unfortunately, “make it easier” doesn’t read well with those who would read the Daily Mail or the Express with beady eye. They fear a tsunami of people suddenly deciding they don’t like where they are who would flood to the UK’s “easy” immigration system. It wouldn’t happen. Those desperate to flee would continue to flee, they just wouldn’t die on dinghies at sea any more.
But this is the essence of why Patel and her slowly marching army of gormless nationalists are so heinous- and why the “Rwanda plan” is so ineffectual. She knows this. And she does it anyway.

Additionally, as we spiral further into runaway cost of living the indescribable cost of the Rwanda plan boggles the mind. The UK taxpayer is footing the bill for an ineffective, inhumane and racist policy – and a worrying portion of the UK taxpayer wants it.
To those who believe this policy is in any way useful may I remind you that immigration is a complex topic that takes years to understand and glancing through the pages of 3 newspapers that are written simply enough for fourteen year olds to be adept in their verbiage may not actually give you the nuance and expertise you think.

Colin Yeo speaks eloquently on immigration regularly and has pointed out the ugliness of the UK’s immigration system including the fact that it is, in essence, designed to off-put people from staying in the UK, even with legitimate interests like work or family- so if the system works against the so called “legal” migrants, the people we want to attract to the UK like doctors and nurses, like those who will do the menial jobs so many here believe they’re above, imagine how poorly it treats those who we supposedly don’t want to come here.

The reason the Rwanda plan is so heinous is that at its core it carries the strong reminiscence of cattle trucks; packing up the meat to send it to the factory, knowing the whole time what its’ fate is and doing it anyway. Rwanda has faced criticism for its poor human rights record: Patel didn’t even bother to rebuke this but other tory ministers described Rwanda as a country that respects human rights.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people living in Rwanda face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents…No special legislative protections are afforded to LGBT citizens, and same-sex marriages are not recognized by the state, as the Constitution of Rwanda provides that “only civil monogamous marriage between a man and a woman is recognized”. LGBT Rwandans have reported being harassed, blackmailed, and even arrested by the police under various laws dealing with public order and morality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Rwanda

Brave Rwandans are working to overturn the attitude towards LGBT+ people in Rwanda but this, as we know, takes time and can turn on a dime- since author JK Rowling began her descent into anti trans rhetoric we have seen a huge and disturbing increase in anti LGBT+ hate crime in the UK, not wholly the fault of Rowling but, many consider, as a byproduct of her huge platform normalising hatred against those from the group.

The real plan?

One suspects that the government always knew that the ECHR would intervene in the deportation of these poor souls to Rwanda, and that they hoped for these events so they could mount an effective case for pulling the UK out of the ECHR. They haven’t been deterred from their assault on our human liberties so far, or that of those who come from abroad- but this government are determined to lessen the scrutiny they face and leaving the ECHR would do just this. In conjunction with Dominic Raab’s quest to water down the Human Rights Act to his own liking, it takes a few steps back to see an overarching picture of a government, fervent in its desire to leave the EU to avoid the scrutiny of Brussels, who has placed a blanket of silence on its own citizens ignoring poll after woeful poll about the prime minister’s standing, who have effectively strangled the right to protest and now who wish to leap straight for the throat of our own home grown human rights (protest, voting and voter ID), and those protected by the ECHR. That in conjunction with privatising channel 4 for the crime of speaking critically of them shows a worrying pattern of desperation to avoid oversight in any form.

I frequently find myself rolling my eyes at the endless comparisons to Nazi rhetoric bandied about by others who are deeply entrenched in political discourse, but once you do move back from the rapid heartbeat pulse of daily drudgery pushed by the conservatives through the media- but one cannot underestimate the simple fact that regular citizens under regimes past must have been raising increasing alarms as the swirling and nebulous tendrils of authoritarianism descended through the streets, taking their voices and binding their hands. It is far too easy to wonder as we look around right now, what the endgame for the conservatives is- whether they simply wish to rule on high, pockets fat with tax money from a pliant farmyard of poor folk beneath who cannot speak for fear of reprisals.

Remember this: you are not the government fat cats shirking laws with no recompense. You are not the prime minister dodging from crisis to crisis and refusing to step down out of vapidity or stupidity or some confection of both. Those refugees, strapped to boards and placed, terrified, on an airplane to be sent thousands of miles are you, and there, but for the grace of God and the ever evanescing morality of the tory party, goes you.

Why I don’t believe in heterosexual marriage- but bravely back it anyway

By Daviemoo

I get that people are comfortable with their sexuality and feel the need to express it. I just feel like it’s being forced on me these days. Every time I put on the TV, every time I read a magazine or a book, there it is- the straight agenda. Men kissing women openly? I worry for our kids as we see the rise of this supposedly “woke” acceptance of straight people everywhere.

Let me preface this by saying, I’m not heterophobic- I believe straight people should be allowed to live in peace and with dignity. I’m just not comfortable with how open a lot of them are about their lifestyle.
Whether you chose to be straight, or you were born that way- it doesn’t really matter, you’re allowed to be and the world is more accepting of you now than it’s ever been – people almost never get killed just for being straight any more. But every day when I see perfume adverts of barely clothed straight couples gyrating on each other, or I’m forced to see another obviously straight-appeasing character indulge in a romance storyline on a tv show I’m trying to enjoy, I just have to ask myself how far this is going to go? Are we going to keep exposing our children to the sexual iniquities of the straight people out there in the name of supposed “inclusivity”?

I know this makes me sound bigoted but really hear me out. What if some poor, innocent gay child is minding their own business and one of their classmates decides to come out as straight and start talking about their lifestyle choice, and that poor impressionable homosexual is convinced that they might be too? When does it end? There should be limits on acceptable talk in front of children when it comes to heterosexuality- for their safety. I don’t want some poor confused kid going through hell trying to work out who they are, or pretending to be straight just to fit in when it seems these days it’s fashionable to call yourself a hetero and start parading around touching your girlfriend or boyfriend up in public. It’s deeply concerning to me.

Again I just want to say, I have no problem with heterosexuals! Some of my best friends are straight and I’m happy for them- but they also know how to act appropriately in public- they don’t go parading around kissing members of the opposite sex for fun, they don’t talk about their dates or their “marriages” that they’re suddenly allowed to have. I’m glad they want to say their relationships are as important as my own, I think they are well within their rights to do it. All I ask, and I’m sure this isn’t unreasonable, is that straight people just learn a little decorum. I do not need to hear your disgusting insinuations about your heterosexual bedroom activities, or worse as if it’s nice and normal to talk about it with silly phrases like “we’re trying for a baby!” because what I hear when you say that is that you’re having unprotected sex with each other- is that something you really want to broadcast, that you’re having unprotected sex?
Some heterosexuals just have no idea how to behave too. I was buying some things to cook the other day and a straight man squeezed a woman’s bottom in front of me! In public! In a store! It seemed performative, I don’t know how they had the nerve to do something so disgusting right in front of my face.

Ultimately, the Queen RuPaul’s bible does condemn heterosexuality in all it’s forms and I do believe it’s only fair to hate the sin but love the sinner- when people die, god will sort them all out and heterosexuals who choose to engage their lifestyle choices will pay recompense for it- that’s just what the bible says and I don’t feel I should have to apologise for that- it’s worthy of respect in a democratic society, obviously- and clearly my religion, my personal beliefs should impact on other peoples ability to live their lives because their activities make me personally uncomfortable, and we all know that this is the yardstick which all society should be formed upon.

Some people will call me woke but I do believe in straight marriage even if I dont agree with it per-se- I think hetero weddings are a beautiful idea (even if so many of them end in divorce because I think we know straight people, deep down, aren’t really “marriage material”) but if they want to do it, they should absolutely be allowed to- just as long as they keep it to themselves.

I really hope my straight friends understand what I mean when I say this- I don’t think your lives are worth less than mine, it’s just that being able to procreate is definitely something we should factor into someones’ worth as a human, because arbitrary processes like ovulation, sperm creation and being able to do missionary are really vital aspects of humanity and not silly irrelevancies like kindness, the willing to help others and any of that other nonsense. Remember, no matter who you choose to sleep with I will always think you’re alright: ultimately this is an issue of cultural appropriateness and I think once this fervour for “straightness” has died down and people realise they don’t need to play act we might see a calming down of the heterosexual agenda. Until then, be you- just please keep it appropriate in front of the children. I believe you’re more than your sexuality- I just believe it’s not really age acceptable to be cavorting around in front of the impressionable with something that’s a little too “adult” in nature.

I hope people read this and understand this is the sort of unmitigated hogwash LGBTQIA people have had to read about ourselves for literally our entire lives and I hope this is funny- but re-read it and imagine that it’s sincerely written about you by someone who actually believes it. Hard as it may be to believe this is the sort of unfiltered shitpipery that we deal with on the daily. Only you guys can sort this out- maybe it’s time to try doing that.

Our lives are not ideologies: your violent hatred is.

By Daviemoo

The UK faces multiple crises: people are calling radio stations explaining that they cannot afford food nor the energy to heat it. Coronavirus has hospitalised more people today than in January 2021. Our government had multiple illegal gatherings and our leader lied bold faced to the gathered parliament about it. And yet the press seethes with questions about women and penises. In America, the “don’t say gay” bill has passed, a ludicrous legislation that helps nobody but immiserates some, and recently a right wing pundit suggested that doctors who provide gender affirming healthcare should be killed. These are dark times indeed to be LGBT+

Nothing stokes my rancour so quickly as to see who I am described as an ideology. There is no such thing as the “gay lifestyle”, nor “trans trend”: we have existed since the human race began in our varied forms and every culture. Sometimes we were accepted, sometimes we were not but the fact of our existence has never changed.

An ideology is a set of beliefs or ideals brought together by a collective: capitalism is an ideology. Communism is an ideology. Religion is arguably an ideology.

The lives of your fellow rainbow humans are not an ideology. Our long and tiring discourse over acceptance is no attempt to recruit unwitting heterosexual or cisgender people to our ranks. We exist: we are, at our core, a collective who banded together because we faced discrimination historically and still do now.

Many people defend the seclusion of our community from society at large without once realising that the sexualisation, the insinuation of perversion always comes from without, not within: the “don’t say gay” bill had an amendment removed which would have explicitly forbidden discussion of sex or sexual matters: this amendment was voted down. Which means that HETEROSEXUAL acts can be discussed with children. In my eyes this is deeply disturbing. No child should be exposed to discussions of sex until ready: and it is here that the majority of the world itself still has learning to do.

Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com

Sexuality and gender identity are not sex. They are not sexual. They are objective terms. If you can tell a child you have a wife, you can tell them you have a husband. If you can tell a child you think a woman is pretty you, you can tell them you think a man is handsome. Gender identity is deeply personal, to the point that my own gender identity as a cis man is different of that of another cis man: every single person has their own individual construction of their gender or lack thereof, and it is theirs to own and claim.

Terms like autogynephile were coined to insinuate that trans people are trans for sexual reasons and not simply that they were born into trans bodies and must reconcile that however they see fit.

We talk about spaces and inclusion, and there is a particular lack of nuance in the gender critical discussion around spaces that is endlessly frustrating: you are not “keeping” spaces single sex: spaces have been trans inclusive for well over 30 years, so to now MAKE a space single sex this necessitates trans exclusion, and exclusion is wrong.

Today I had a lengthy discussion with a gender critical account on twitter- they claimed to be a woman but I do not know as their account was anonymous, and I tried to reconcile gender critical ideology even against itself and came up lacking.

According to this account they “have trans friends” they’re fine with but are not fine with “males in their spaces” and “can tell when someone is male even if they don’t say it”.

Sometimes I admit I’ve found myself leaping to trans people’s defence so quickly, I haven’t weighed my words appropriately so I decided to do so this time. Let’s take this argument at face value despite the facile nature. What if we did ban all trans people from the spaces they currently use? How many murdered, beaten, assaulted transgender bodies would it take before gender critical people understood that trans people are at threat as well. And in fact, would they? Though many deny it there is a core knot of gender critical thinkers who would like nothing more than to simply see transgender eradication: and for those less hardcore thinkers in the gender critical circles if you do not wish to confront your feelings towards trans people, you may wish to confront those within your circles who condone a trans mass eradication.

Endlessly talking in circles around sexual assault and genitals and fetishes online is a dark, depressing and tiring struggle and lately I’ve found myself debating simply tuning it out and focusing on political activism- and yet time after time I find myself appalled at the language and falsehoods spread by anti trans activists.

How anyone who claims to be feminist can hold such damaging, narrow and regressive views is beyond me. Having an erection is not a sign of sexual enjoyment: as a man who has been sexually assaulted I can assure you of that. Almost 1 in 2 trans people have experienced sexual assault. There is a commonality here with cis women that should bring the communities together and in many cases does, and yet gender critical thinking uses this as a wedge.

But this goes beyond worst case scenarios. We come across a lot of very structured repeated language when we talk about trans people: “keep access to single sex spaces” (trans people have used those spaces for over 30 years so you’re ‘keeping’ nothing, any change to make spaces single sex would bar trans people, thereby removing their rights. “Protect dignity” what dignity is lost from a trans woman being present that is kept in the face of a non trans woman? The constant refrain of “safety” which is always paramount but also figmentary: safety isn’t guaranteed because of a sign on the door, or trans exclusive recommendations by the EHRC, or by legal declarations by an inept PM appealing to anger. A predatory person will do what a predatory person will do regardless of these things.

Trans exclusion is constantly being framed as womens’ safety- and yet we see very little to no actual founded evidence that trans inclusion is a threat to women in the first place. Uncomfortable for some, perhaps though it’s arguably more due to the bias of the woman than the existence of the trans person. Fear mongering around trans existence has no end result. Trans people regardless of hormones and affirming care or wigs or hair growth or blockers or dresses or packers or binders- will always be trans.

Again, I feel there needs to be a pointing out of the urgent need to reframe arguments to be seen as they are from the LGBT+ perspective.

When people argue that gay & lesbian people cannot be discussed, it is not we who are innately sexual: you are sexualising us, ignorantly placing our sexuality in this illusory realm of immoral behaviour. A gay man in a grey suit walking to work is not innately sexual- but he is gay. So why is referencing his sexuality so sexually explicit it cannot be mentioned?

If you want to protect children from sexual referencing may I suggest a law banning children from watching TV until they are 13. Adverts sexualising people are on TV all day- from perfume adverts with nude bodies as the containers to literal adverts for prophylactics: sexuality is everywhere- just, the sexuality you WANT for children. You don’t care if a little boy sees an advert of a half naked woman smelling another half naked woman’s neck, and you don’t mind asking a 5 year old if his female friend is his GIRLFRIEND at the school gates. I remember those expectations early on and they damaged not just me, wondering why I didn’t feel what everyone told me I should but they also hurt my family when I did come out, because this imaginary future they built for me all but vanished: was that my fault? Should I have lived a lie to make them happy?

The worst of the liars are those who claim to “accept us” but think we shouldn’t be referenced in front of children. If those children are straight all they will do is nod and move on. If they’re like us, the likelihood is they might just feel a little bit less alone: and treating us like we are watershed humans is a dehumanising experience.

Our community exists. It’s not an ideology: we have cultures we can, if we choose, loosely abide by or take elements from. Culture is pre-existing facets, behaviours or tropes which we can reference, imbibe or exhibit. That isn’t an ideology, and there wouldn’t even be a NEED for gay, lesbian, trans culture if we hadn’t been ostracised- by exculpatory ignoramus’ passed- from culture at large.
You notice also that those of us who are gender critical or even work against our own rights (see the regular gay republicans trotted out to say they AGREE with anti LGBT+ sentiment) are usually desperate to conform to what they see as hetero or cisnormative.

Anti trans, anti gay people and all of those in-between- at the very least stop referencing our very lives as "ideologies"- it demonstrates a poor grasp of the English language and an ignorance you're fighting hard to deny. — Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com

When it comes to ideologies and damaging ones at that, I would point the accusatory finger damningly in the direction of movements aimed at removing rights from transgender people as a whole because of the imagined crimes of a few, of demonising gay and lesbian people so badly that we cannot even be mentioned in front of children. Looking at ideologies that monetise their hate- a new conversion therapy camp opened recently in the UK- or who make merchandise specifically geared to intimidate us (adult human female T shirts, umbrellas, key chains), who show up to our days of remembrance to harass us or stand on the sidelines of our marches to tell us we’ll face eternal agony for who we are- how can it be denied that these movements are inappropriate.

Nobody would deny women with legitimate concerns from speaking but I’d hasten the gender critical women who truly believe in their cause to step forward and kick out the monsters from your group – after all, one bad trans person means they’re all bad, right? So what does one person, five people, ten anti trans activists belittling rape victims stories say about your movement.

Conversion therapy is torture

By Daviemoo

Conversion therapy is a clumsy and useless umbrella term for everything that falls under it- from simple talking therapies to violence, rape and castration, it is a term that does not encompass the horror which it can, does, and has entailed for those who have suffered at it’s hands and – thanks to the conservative government, will continue to. This violence against the trans community must be stopped at all costs.

Firstly a disclaimer to the “gender critical” LGB and perhaps even T people who enjoy consuming my content to harass me: they were going to ignore any suggestions of a ban: you’re on the side of people who would happily see you tortured because of your identity too. Be careful throwing around the term ‘handmaidens’ in future because we may not be able to hear you over the flapping of your collars.

Anti trans activists have fastened their hands around some key phrases I want to debunk: “we are just women with concerns”. Many (not all, perhaps) of the concerns that anti trans activists have revolve around the bodies of trans people, information they are not entitled to: they revolve around baseless claims of transgender people as predatory, or about the damage that transition does to trans people rather than the successes of those who have been helped immensely by it- focusing on the small percentile who desist in their transition rather than those who happily, safely transition and live in their gender or those who choose to re-transition down the line. For women with concerns there is also a surprising amount of virulently anti woman commentary- Steve Brookstein, an X factor competitor tried to have a tweet saying “can we all agree the main purpose of a woman is to procreate” go viral.

We also see a surprising paucity of coverage of other concerns for women: a cursory search of some of the more prominent anti trans figureheads like Maya Forstater, JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock, Graham Linehan, Helen Staniland- reveal little to no discourse around topics like the horrific murder of Sarah Everard at the hands of a policeman, or Blessing Olusegun’s mysterious death, Sabina Nessa’s murder in a London park. They, of course, will argue that they see trans people as the biggest threat to women, that women are being erased in favour of a hopelessly small minority. Not to insult your intelligence dear reader, but can you spot the flaw in claiming that trans WOMEN are erasing the word women, or erasing women in general when trans women ARE women?

The other phrase often repeated is “standing up for women and girls” which I find a truly bizarre sentiment when those who spend hours online describing the rising transgender menace rarely speak out on topics like medical misogyny, period poverty, the disproportionate ageism women face, rape culture, body shaming- yet today the daily mail, with a photoshoot, lauds Forstater with a campaign she deems “the most significant women’s rights movement since the suffragettes”.

Suffragettes committed acts of what would today be called terrorism in desperation to be legitimised as human beings, as people with feelings, thoughts, brains, pride, and a fierce determination to be treated with respect: one could easily argue that Forstater’s virulent anti trans rhetoric could be pushing trans people so far to the wall that they are the oppressed facing a violent struggle for legitimacy. There is also the often spotted repetition of anti trans activists stating glibly that they can ALWAYS TELL someone is trans then blithely calling non trans allies trans: and it brings up a philosophical point: if you can “always tell” why is there also a huge push for trans women to disclose their medical history to you? Perhaps transphobes like being told things they apparently already knew: it does explain why the discourse is so hopelessly circular.

I doubt that there are many readers who believe that women have equality or equity in society: for those that disagree, you are wrong. Women have been maligned by men for all of history and are now, and unfortunately will continue to be because whether you believe in patriarchy or not, some form of male supremacy does exist, persist and propagates in society. One must ask though whether the anti trans movement is a cause that champions women’s equality or whether it opens the door for further oppression of women and girls.

Looking at LGBT+ oppression specifically which obviously encompasses that of women and girls- cis and trans- let us view the statements the UK government itself has made;

there is no robust evidence that conversion therapy can achieve its stated therapeutic aim of changing sexual orientation or gender identity
the types of practices tend to be similar for conversion therapy for sexual orientation and for gender identity – for example, talking therapies delivered by faith groups or mental health professionals
conversion therapies were associated with self-reported harms among research participants who had experienced conversion therapy for sexual orientation and for gender identity – for example, negative mental health effects like depression and feeling suicidal
there is indicative evidence from surveys that transgender respondents were as likely or more likely to be offered and receive conversion therapy than non-transgender lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) respondents
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-assessment-of-the-evidence-on-conversion-therapy-for-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity/an-assessment-of-the-evidence-on-conversion-therapy-for-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity

If you create a ruling against transgender people being able to access certain healthcare, that ruling likely speaks on the individual’s bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is already (for ridiculous reasons) still questionable when it comes to women: from seeking abortion rights to whether or when they may access birth control and which method- to the simple right to say no to men in some cultures. Propagating an argument about bodily autonomy against trans people can- and will – be weaponised against these supposed moral crusaders for women’s rights because it’s plain to see that the anti trans panic is being championed by those who also work against womens’ rights: fundamentalist christians and hard right figures who believe that their entitlement to control women’s bodies is paramount to women’s own rights to choose.

Don’t believe it? Vladimir Putin has, before defending JK Rowling, called trans acceptance a “crime against humanity”. Donald Trump almost immediately enacted a ban on trans people serving in the army (it is more nuanced than written here for the sake of expedience but is no less true). Trump’s son lauded Rowling’s scorn filled tweets about “penised people”. Let us also highlight the irony of Putin’s rhetoric- he claimed JK Rowling was “cancelled” and that the west is trying to “cancel” Russia: bold words from a man so afraid of political rivals he has them murdered, imprisoned or injured. Rowling enjoys wealth, influence and adoration untainted by her increasingly outspoken verbiage against a community she’s previously expected praise from for the crumbs of a non sexual gay character who went full wizard Nazi because his boyfriend wanted him to.

This does, however, run deeper than left or right wing politics though the case is easily made that this is right wing propaganda, especially as we see that the only thing the tories are levelling up on is the rhetoric that labour are woke lefties as we prepare for the announcement of an early election. MPs who would normally take pragmatic views step back on making clear statements of support for those they normally would for fear they would upset bigots. I myself have written to my local MP in disgust of both sides of the political aisle, from Rosie Duffield’s endless platforming to speak out against trans people to Wes Streeting’s repeated and ignored transgressions against trans people, and conversely to the openly empty sentiments of permanently angry sentient felt tip Sophie Corcoran tweeting “don’t call me cis!”.

Prominent news outlets like (and I won’t say respectable because) talk radio, sky news, LBC, The BBC, all dedicating portions of their air time to questions like “can a woman have a penis” or “should we ask men if they’re pregnant in hospital”.

Insanity incarnate rules the media: because who cares? Shall we entertain discourse about how big a penis has to be before a man is a man? Does a micropenis mean a man is not a man? Genitals do not define you wholly.

Non parody-parody commentator Darren Grimes leapt to an impassioned defence of conversion therapy on twitter- it’s strange that Darren is so passionate in the availability of conversion therapy and yet hasn’t gone through it. Mayhaps he hasn’t run out of hope that he’ll find someone who can overlook his personality, lack of intelligence and disturbingly toothy face in favour of his good qualities, like his mam’s cooking. Mayhaps Darren hasn’t partaken in conversion therapy because:

These troubling ethical practices have raised alarm in major mental health professions, particularly because of the harm to patients. Further, all of these factors raise another ethical issue: Even if the questionable claims of conversion therapy’s effectiveness are valid, should the conversion of some “homosexuals” to heterosexuality condone the iatrogenic harm done to other patients who later come out as gay or lesbian?
In other words, should it not matter how many gay or lesbian people are hurt in the process of creating a few heterosexuals?
https://meridian.allenpress.com/jmr/article/102/2/7/80848/The-Growing-Regulation-of-Conversion-Therapy

The argument has always been that you are what you are born, that biology and nature matter. This of course discounts the gene therapy people can have to prevent inherited conditions, the plastic surgery people can have on lunch to hide signs of ageing, the cancer destroyed by gamma knives, the towering blocks of concrete and glass we erect. Denying trans healthcare is to deny the progression of a species scientifically out of fear and bigotry: we live in a world where these things are possible- what does preventing it do?

There is no weight to arguing that women are women because of breasts which some women do or don’t have for one reason or another, or uteri, or hormones or this or that: combined, these things may- MAY – make up a huge proportion of woman, but cis or trans some women do not fit all or even any of these stereotypes. It is ultimately YOU who decides what makes your womanhood and though that can have commonality with other women’s ideas it absolutely does not make you more correct than the woman whose breasts never developed, who never had a period, and so on and so on. Nobody though is denying the biological reality of sex: but gametes do not dictate our societal treatment of each other (I would hope).

There is SOME weight to arguing that women are women because from the moment they grow they are treated as women are, for better or worse. But pause and ask the commonalities between trans and cis women’s growing experience and see whether you believe those common threads are enough that the experience is not wholly unique.

Now let’s move to a question on the topic at hand: do you believe conversion therapy works?

The government’s own compiled dossier on conversion therapy states as above that “there is no evidence that conversion therapy can or does achieve the aims it seeks to”. Those wishing to keep it legal will ask why it would then harm to keep it legal. This dry sentence does not encompass the horror that lurks beneath.
Documentaries covering the repeated brutal rape, beating, ECT, medication, physical and mental abuse that can- and does- encompass conversion therapy are widely available online. So is research into what these tactics achieve: high morbidity rates and for those who are “successfully converted” a lifetime of PTSD and dissatisfaction that may or may not prevent you from continuing to be exactly what you always were.

There is an irony I enjoy pointing out in fundamentalist anti LGBT+ thinking: you are the ones who sexualise us. The mere mention of gay men has people covering their children’s ears and hissing about inappropriate topics! But my penchant for finding men attractive is quite a distinguished topic from anal sex, poppers, doucheing. Did you know that the recently signed “don’t say gay” bill in the US had two proposed amendments offered? One suggested that it would be appropriate to provide assistive materials to those who a teacher reasonably assumed to be LGBT+ so they would be able to access materials to help them understand their identities? It was voted down. Another amendment suggested that it be made completely blanket illegal to talk about sex (of any kind): it was voted down. So you can talk to a 6, 7 or 8 year old child about heterosexual sex but not homosexual sex: because, it seems, it’s wrong to talk about gay sex but not straight sex? But this act is oft touted as “not homophobic, it’s about stopping children hearing about inappropriate topics”. No. It’s erasure.

There’s a saying which has deep roots in mythology: “we are legion”. And this applies to the LGBT+. You can legislate against us. You can demonise us, imprison and kill us; no doubt people will continue to do so. But we are born, not (to my knowledge) made- evidence backed up by the solid failure of conversion therapy to do it’s stated aim- convert.

We will continue to persist no matter what you do to us. Those of us with decency stand together. And again a reminder that you can only push a community so far before they need to resort to desperate efforts to defend themselves.

Please consider writing to your MP today regarding this fallacious state of affairs: the government must stop the rhetoric of transgender people being less deserving of dignity and safety and must start looking after the citizens of the UK. Legal torture protects nobody.

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LGBT+ separatism

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It will traumatise them

They’re too young to understand

“It’s grooming”

It might make them think they are

It makes me uncomfortable

I think it’s an adult topic

I think it’s wrong

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Share the rage!

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Share the rage!

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Share the rage!

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Share the rage!

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Share the rage!

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Origin

The “Rwanda Plan“

The real plan?

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Share the rage!

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Share the rage!

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Share the rage!

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