Tag: terf

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?

Ew
EW
Child BEAUTY pageants?!
O.O
You are truly lost

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.

The War of Friendly Fire – or ‘why would I blame a trans woman for the crimes of cis men’?

By Daviemoo

As I grew up, I assumed that the world would only continue its steady plod onwards re: progress, inclusion and justice. But it hasn’t: it’s been stalled- why? by an ageing generation who want permission to be awful under the guise of free speech, who want to blame the next generation for ruining the world they fostered and worse still- we’re letting them. Powerful men sit in mountain-high towers waving gold wrapped fingers to strike down rights they enjoy themselves- and all the time, as these men continue their oligarchical stranglehold on society, we’re all too busy biting each other’s backs to fight the real enemies.

It’s such a strange time to be alive. A virus that, in 2020, terrorised the globe now isn’t even a consideration: people cough and splutter openly in public (a woman just coughed near me in the cafe I’m in and my immediate thought was “great”) without masks or without even a hint of contrition. Minorities like disabled people, people of colour or LGBT+ people and all those who exist in-between those minorities are still fighting the same harmful battles we’ve been struggling against for generations, as ministers like Kemi Badenoch swell the ranks of a government whose race report was absolutely condemned by experts on racial disparity; and we’re called misogynists because we think trans people deserve to live in peace, because apparently misogyny is when you don’t hate trans people. Poor people line the streets to vote rich people into power, who spend their terms consolidating their wealth to unfathomable heights whilst telling poor people they just need to work harder. And all the time, everyone’s ire is aimed at each other, at cross purpose, never at those in charge.

At times it’s hard to picture better, but my good friend Dr Maria Norris said just that to me recently: it starts with the imagining of better. The world seems to be, less slipping and more lurching to the right politically, and the essence of right wing politics is the self. People are only invested in themselves and their own happiness- but this isn’t the fault of the individual. It’s right, fair even that people who are disadvantaged are only interested in themselves- their very survival. This is the essence of the trouble we’re in. So many people are economically deprived, two paycheques away from poverty in most cases, that we don’t have the mental space to imagine better for ourselves. How can we care that other people suffer more, when we suffer so ourselves? But care we must, or this cycle spins again.
The question I ask myself many times a day is- is this an accident? Are those in charge just so serially inept that they cannot come up with broad solutions to this? Of course not. There are ways, means to go about fixing these problems. But nobody with a scintilla of power will lever attempt it for reasons I understand but revile- but that is an article for another day: let’s stick with the material: the fact that society is fractured in a million ways.

The irony is how easy it is to point out the hypocrisy.
Lets take someone that I was always warm towards until recently as a perfect example of societal hypocrisy, an unexpected source no doubt: Bette Midler.

Recently in the US, the Supreme Court overturned Roe Vs. Wade which has upended the bodily autonomy and therefore safety and equality of roughly 50% of US citizens. The outcry was heard around the world and this terrible travesty has shaken any decent person’s faith in the idea that choice is sacrosanct when it comes to forcing a person to carry an unwanted child to term, and has even legitimised death from disturbingly common conditions like ectopic pregnancy as “god’s will”.
Midler was on fire, sharing stories about how Donald Trump’s wife allegedly sought an abortion previously, pointing out the logical fallacies around preserving life at the expense of those whose lives are fed to the baby making business, making memes that both twisted your guts and resonated in their truth.

Then Midler tweeted this:

Bette Midler on twitter

There was immediate shock: anybody who knows the battle for trans equality knows those talking points. Trans people are often accused of erasing women, erasing the word woman, taking women’s rights away, appropriating women’s battles… so, was Bette Midler revealing transphobia writ large to the world?

As it turns out, no. Midler has since clarified that she was clumsily talking about the intersectional battle all women face. Let’s just break the talking points down and debunk them. The word woman is not being erased at all, there are simply alternatives on offer for medical journals to allow more inclusivity to trans people- women can still call themselves women, trans women call themselves trans women, and chest feeding and breast feeding are interchangeable as you see fit- nobody is forcing anyone to use gender inclusive language for themselves but when referencing society- if you want to fight a battle for people, consider that not acknowledging a significant part of those affected doesn’t exactly engender the fight in it’s totality. Trans men are capable of having children and will of course fight for abortion rights, but not acknowledging that they face that oppression is unfair on them and in tandem, lessens the true horror of just how many people this affects.

As for “people with vaginas”- are women not people who have vaginas or did I miss something? That tweet seemed to blame gender inclusive language for the removal of womens rights. but is it gender inclusive language that stripped back access to abortion or was it a bunch of rich right wing people?
The answer is obvious- and as I cover further down, blaming people whose very happiness and existence relies on bodily autonomy being a basic right for the rolling back of bodily autonomy is utterly wrong.

But Midler also tweeted this:

Another minority who shouldn’t be there in Midler’s very famous crosshairs.

Muslim people had nothing to do with this decision: not a single person who made the decision is muslim. But Midler tweeted this image, swivelling the cannon to face muslim people again, America’s favourite scapegoat. Amazing how many devisions in America made by Christians end up being blamed on muslims.

Please bear in mind as I write this some very simple facts: I do not hate religious people- if religion brings you comfort, happiness, security, answers then I wish you that joy in totality. But I hate religion. All religion. I don’t need a god, a book, a set of yellowed scriptures to tell me murder is wrong, women should be equal to men and that I’m not a disgusting degenerate because I think other men are attractive. If the only thing stopping you from shooting someone is fear of punishment then you’re scum. What’s stopping me from doing it? It’s wrong.
I’d love the same sort of respect and response from religious people. Your religion says I’m disgusting and immoral for being gay? Well I’m sure it also says only god can judge me so button your mouth and let god tell me when I die, but until then I pay the same tax you do, I have the same bad hair days you do and I struggle to get out of bed some days just like you do. Let god tell me why I’m wrong for existing in this skin and just let me be.

Back to the problem at hand.
Transgender people are a tiny part of the population. They had no say about the overturning of Roe V Wade, though trans people who do support the overturn are, frankly- stupid.
The very essence of trans existence revolves around bodily autonomy being a base sacrosanct right. If cis women can’t decide they are not ready physically, emotionally, monetarily for a child, why would trans people be able to decide to undergo hormone therapy or surgery? The battles are linked: anyone who separates the two lacks the zoom-out vision required to understand intersectional existential battles.
Muslim people are also not to blame: Midler tweeted a jibe at six very much christian people who, in their christian conviction, made the christian decision to christianly remove the right to abortion for the US. What do muslim people have to do with it: under the Taliban women are allowed to seek abortion so let’s congratulate the US Supreme Court for giving women less reproductive choice than the literal Taliban.

Aiming our ire at the wrong place is a life time mistake: those foreigners who come here and steal our jobs and endanger our families are fleeing the wars our governments paid into for oil or to reap economic benefit. They, like us, are just people seeking the best for their families and themselves, and the best doesn’t exist in a country ravaged by inequality.
Gay people aren’t forcing our agenda down your throat, you’re just bothered you have to acknowledge we exist: the problem is yours. If you get angry because a woman kisses another woman in a children’s movie then you’re insane: Throwing accusations of sexualisation at two women kissing belies the fact that YOU think it’s sexual. Children see two adults kiss. If it confuses them, it’s as simple as “sometimes ladies like other ladies”. Did society end or are you just being histrionic over nothing…?

When it comes to coronavirus, people will still flatly deny the virus was ever a problem, never mind that it is now. They’ll accuse scientists and doctors of being on the payroll of a government who openly scorned and reviled them through the whole pandemic, then turn around and critique the government too, heedless of the fact that we should all be united together in protection and against a government who used our ever higher corpse piles as tinder to alight the economy- and not even well!
If we had let coronavirus persist unabated the death toll would easily have exceeded a million in the UK alone, not just from coronavirus itself but from hospitals crawling with patients, unable to provide care for anything.
Zoom out, people.
Were you unhappy you had to sit indoors for a year? If we’d all done what we needed to, if we’d sacrificed for each other and listened to people who made their entire raison d’être fighting back against these once in a lifetime events we wouldn’t have had to play the Hokey Cokey with lockdowns. But did we? Or were we too busy concocting conspiracy theories about Wuhan labs, about spike proteins and 5G chips and the like? And why? Occams razor says the simplest answer is most often right. So was Bill Gates putting gay semen into vaccines to control your brain into accepting a new world order helmed by Jewish trans women- or did a virus start infecting humans and make a lot of people very sick, a lot of people die and did we need to try our best to prevent that from spreading?

Humanity is so angry at itself- why? Don’t we all have to exist together? Why would I be angry at someone who wears a face veil or a face mask – it doesn’t affect me? I don’t care what someone else does with their body as long as it doesn’t endanger me!
Coronavirus was and is such a problem because in this economy even a couple of weeks off work would decimate my finances- I could lose my home. But I’m a snowflake for popping on a thin bit of cotton occasionally, not taking my sickness like a MAN.
I once had garden variety flu and I wet myself in bed because I was too physically weak to get to the bathroom so even if coronavirus was “just the flu” it’s a flu I could certainly do without thanks.

And as for the other existential battles, isn’t it weird that transphobic people will scream at these “male impostors” IE trans people whilst almost completely ignoring the very real actual 100% garden variety cis men who are actively working against women’s rights?
If you’re more bothered about being able to call yourself a mother, or a trans person having a quick pee next to you in a cubicle in a gym toilet than you are about rich groups of men chortling into expensive whisky as they sign paper that means your healthcare options are limited, may I glibly suggest that your privilege overextends your awareness.

I don’t think we can win battles against these groups who work so hard against us until we stop aiming our ire at each other.

I’m not a misogynist because I want trans people to be able to live how they want to- and if you think I am then that’s your very different definition of misogyny that you’re free to apply to my very unconcerned self. I’m not a woke snowflake because I choose to listen to people of colour who tell me their experiences of both casual and out and out galling racism, of how tiring it is to still be having the same discussions about racial disparity, or because I plop a face mask on both because coronavirus floored me and because if I have it I’d hate to accidentally kill someone I share a crowded coffee shop with- or even mildly inconvenience them by making them unwell if I could avoid that…

If your ethos is “if it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care” then how very sad for you. You can’t expect the world to do better by you if you won’t do better by other people. And if you don’t expect the world to do better by you and you’re comfortable both being miserable and pushing that misery just know that you and those like you are the axis of the problem, the enablers of those faceless rich men who laugh at their continued control of the miserable status quo, the men who get away time and again, generation on generation with betrayal of the masses because the masses have decided it’s each other’s fault and not the very purveyors of our misery.

Elliot Page, in his coming out speech a few years ago, said something I say to myself at least once a day: “The world would be a much better place if we could all stop being so horrible to each other for five minutes”. So start your five minutes now, lets all start our five minutes collectively and stop blaming the minorities and the other, and start blaming the same people who have been in charge for hundreds, almost thousands of years. Lets blame the decision makers who have pushed us, always pushed us, down the path of division. If we have to hate- lets hate the right people. And if we have to fight- let’s stop fighting each other and start fighting the people handing out the weapons.

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.

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

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.

Lets be real- debating with bigotry is pointless

By Daviemoo

It’s probably highly ironic for me to write this article- half my life is spent posting hot takes and arguing with people. But this needs to be said and set down somewhere, and I’d hope it detoxifies some of the online arena: Debating bigots is not a useful way to invest your time. Speak your truth to the internet at large, reply to those pushing bigotry- but don’t think sitting down for a chat will help, or change the minds of those drunk on moral panic.

If someone proved me wrong on a point I was fearsomely defensive about, I worry that I’d be an asshole, but I try (as I think we all should) to be contrite- in fact, this very weekend a black gay man called me out on my ignorance around the POC gay dating culture and I agreed and asked for help from people for resources which I really need to follow up on. I don’t want to ever be ignorant of POC issues because I really want to be an ally, but we all need to remember that we’re insulated from these issues as people who aren’t POC and need to think about them. I failed here but I have to work to rectify it.

I’m not perfect and I know that my ignorance can walk close to bigotry, because ignorance is bigotry acknowledged and embraced. So I try really hard to fight against that. Sinking into the warm, comforting pool of being sure you’re right without questioning that is too easy- it’s too simple to imagine that because you feel a certain way on a topic, you’re right. And there will always- no matter how hideous your take- be a wealth of people on the internet or even in real life- be people willing to take your side. Your take being popular does NOT mean it’s correct.

When it comes to debate, it’s a useful tool when used correctly. Both sides follow the rules and present their arguments and counter arguments- no interrupting, shouting, sniping etc.

That’s not what online debate does.

There’s a clutch of smart, enterprising left wing people on apps like tiktok who make a wonderful show of debating – if it can be called that -with right wing commentarians who think their FeElInGs on a matter will concrete the issue. And don’t get me wrong, as always I’m trying to look at it uncritically but am biased as a honking great lefty.

And to those people, I’d like you to know I admire you for trying and I’m certainly not saying stop. I can’t stay civil with people I know are talking in ignorance and doing so willingly.

The issue comes here: if I’m proved to be wrong, I’m more than happy to admit it, to do the work behind the scenes to become better. Society seems to think that shifting positions on issues is flip flopping, or weak- but if you’re wrong about them and admit that, and explain why you’re wrong- can people really hold that against you? I see growth in contrition. If you see weakness in backing a well debunked point- be it the existence of a secret cabal of spies like Q-anon or more- then you’re backing being a loudmouth… Which is enough for some but not for me.

When it comes down to debate, both sides have to take it in good faith- and a lot of the right wing debaters don’t do this- from making points up on the spot, making up figures, wilfully misinterpreting the data to prove a flawed point, and more- again, I’m looking at this from a flawed and biased perspective but I see this REGULARLY online. These debaters don’t WANT to debate- they want to rant, to stir up other people in the tornado of their feelings and suck up the oxygen. Debating with them is pointless. They know they’re lying, or spinning falsehoods, they know they’re doing what they shouldn’t. You can’t, and you won’t improve the situation by sharing your platform with them, even if you do feel that you “won” the debate. They still got to whip up the people who agree with them.

Lets take one of my favourite examples of this: transphobia.

This weekend I was piled on on twitter, because an abuse prevention charity listed a partner not respecting your pronouns and personal identity as abuse- and I saw a tweet vehemently disagreeing, and claiming that they had experienced REAL abuse.

Bearing in mind I’m a cis man but a gay man I’ve been misgendered a fair amount in my life. “Girly boy, girl, girly, little bitch, wo-man, woman” over and over and over- do you realise how demeaning it is? I’ve never once struggled with my gender identity, but being constantly referred to as a girl, a woman, a female when I’m not was bullying and it got me very upset more than once. Is that not real abuse? Was it not real abuse when, when I was nine, two boys cornered me in a garden near my grandma’s house and pushed me on the floor and made me feel them against my will while telling me I was a girl, a gay, puff, faggot, queer, bum boy. That was the tip of the iceberg and the physical things they did then and after were awful. But all of it sticks with me, not just the physical abuse but the excitement in their voices as they called me a little girl and used their fully grown, adult, cis, male bodies to hold me down. The way they enjoyed hearing me panic and deny their insults. You don’t get to decide what is and isn’t abuse because you aren’t affected by it or haven’t gone through it. These experiences are the reason it took me a long time to become OK with the casual lingo that come from shows like RuPaul’s drag race- my friend once said “hey girl” when he walked into my living room and I actually snapped at him because it reminded me of that.

On to the main reason for this article – I’ve used an app a while ago called TERFblocker, which automatically blocked thousands of anti trans accounts. I’m glad of it- the dogpile that was just a flirting annoyance this weekend threatened to be a hundred times worse. The instigator kept copying my tweets to his followers- hundreds of them openly complained that I’d blocked them when we’d never interacted, calling me a snowflake and a weirdo whilst knowing nothing about me except that they were blocked- blocked because they were on the terfblocker list. The idea that I owed these people my attention, that I should leave my profile open for them to attack me because someone they like doesn’t like me, that I should allow them the space to comment bile at me, is ridiculous… If you don’t like me, block me. I can assure you I won’t lose one second of sleep. The reason I use that app cheerfully was a huge dog pile I was in last year. I even argued with the heinous anti trans speaker that is Maya Forstater who was, as always, waxing philosophical about bathrooms. Hundreds- HUNDREDS of people talking about how supporting trans people is condoning rape- which, in case it’s not clear, I’ve been through more than once – I’m “supporting people in their delusions” and on and on and on… it was exhausting and I used the terfblocker to drown them out because I had nothing but the accusations the terfs throw at we “TRAs” thrown at me- suicide jokes, insults, rape condoning, questions about my gender, sex, penis size, sexual proclivities… One woman told me I was bisexual because I’d date a trans man- I don’t know about you but I don’t spend my life imagining someone’s penis in their trousers when I flirt with them. If you do then so be it- I just see life in a fundamentally different way than transphobes. We’re all billions of neurones, electricity flying from connection to connection. What the body became because of phenotypes and all of that is superfluous to who you are in your head- your body is just there, an extension of who you are, and of course nature doesn’t reconcile birth sex with your gender sometimes- it’s horrendously complex, as is whatever makes us have our sexuality, as is whatever makes us have brown or blue eyes, as is whatever makes our height what it is. Genitals aren’t completely unimportant to me, but if the man I love has a vagina am I going to let that stop me from being with him, any more than I would if he had a small, or huge penis, or erection problems, or one testicle…? Fuck no. And if being a woman is an experience it’s clearly not linked to your sex or to your gender- and therefore anyone can experience it and therefore become a woman if they experience it- and if it is purely biological then has every single person who calls themselves a woman been through this laundry list of obstacles to claim the title?

Ultimately, it was that rude awakening of thousands of people calling me a beard, making fun of my appearance, telling me I was a rape enabler and a misogynist, that made me realise these people don’t WANT to debate. They don’t WANT their minds changed, or to be given new information that might make them think differently, that might make them believe that perhaps what they’re so invested in pushing is a false flag event. It’s about rage, about moral panics, about pushing the agenda that the people you don’t like are perverts, and monsters and paedophiles who will snatch and corrupt your children, will stop you living your life with liberty, take away your rights and freedoms… sound familiar? See the blowback from the civil rights movement, see trying to end apartheid, the anti jewish sentiment during world war two- this moral panic against a group is not new, but it is frightening every single time.

If transphobia evaporated overnight- not transphobes, I hasten to say, but the ideology (I don’t wish harm to transphobes, I just want them to wake up), trans folk and cis folk could unite against harmful ideologies still perpetuated by a patriarchal society that fails ALL women, regardless of cis identity or not.
The idea that women are still chattel, property, need to be controlled, disciplined, mocked, sexualised- exists ALL AROUND our society. How do I know? The same way I know trans people are just normal humans. I exist around it all.

I wish transphobes could hear the shit men come out with when they aren’t around. The disgusting shit I’ve heard in changing rooms (yes sometimes I’ve called it out even in my fear, no not always, I am not that brave and I’m curious as to who would condone it if I didn’t speak out). Trans women- or trans men- are not threats to cis women. Cis men though… that is a different thing.

I’m certainly not saying it’s all cis men of course, and I’m sure i’ll need to put this disclaimer- ironically to placate the very men it IS about, but no it isn’t all cis men. But it’s far too many.

I veer wildly away sometimes from saying what I want to say. That women should be celebrated for how amazing they are, venerated for fighting their place in a world that proclaims their value whilst debating their reproductive rights, right to show emotion, right to wear what they want, wear makeup, have the audacity to have periods, or to not have periods, or shave, or not shave, be loud, be silent, marry, not marry, have kids, not have kids, adopt, not adopt- and this is irrespective of intersectionality with things like skin colour or sexuality – black trans women (I met a lovely black trans woman at trans day of remembrance recently- her speech was badass!) have the rawest deal of all, and that’s without including the ostracization by white trans folk AND cis women. The reason I veer from it is not because I don’t feel it’s the case that women should be uplifted and celebrated for who they are but because I feel like it’s patronising for me to suggest it- I’m a cis man and it seems performative. But women are amazing, regardless of gender identity- purely for keeping up the fight in the face of a world that barely hides the face of grudging tolerance to the “quiet ones”.

Equally, applying a label to all trans people is also foolish. Many gender critical people claim that “all/ most trans people are predators and perverts just wanting access to women’s spaces”. How farcical is this statement when you swap the minority- which has been done before! “All gay men want access to men’s bathrooms for nefarious sexual purposes”. No. We don’t. Some? Sure. Should we all be denigrated for the perversions of a minority in a minority?

I don’t know what makes a woman, or a man, or a genderless person. Do you? Because if you fall to any biological processes there will ALWAYS be outliers. People born without ovaries, wombs, women born with testicles, women born without breasts, men born with ovaries, men (like me!) who grow temporary breasts at puberty, women who grow beards… biology is far too complex to rely on as a hard and fast rule of “a man or a woman is x” because there will always be a man or a woman who is y.

Lets also look at the gender binary again – the idea that people can deny that gender is a spectrum is laughable when explained thus.

If a binary is either 0 or 1, yes or no, x or y that is an absolute- and again, if you vary even slightly then there is NOT a 0 or 1 option. If a man is tall, dark and handsome and I’m short, blonde and ugly then man isn’t binary.

Please don’t think that I’m claiming to be an expert on sex and gender- I don’t want to be tarred with the same brush as those who revel in their ignorance like Stock et al., but I fail to see how these points can be in dispute.

As an ally, I’m tired of the endless rowing. And that’s what I’ve realised- it is ENDLESS. You can have the “trans women shouldn’t be allowed to go into women’s toilets” row every single day for a month on twitter, and debunk every bogus claim, and fight back on every talking point, and discuss every statistic- and it never changes because these people flatly DO NOT WANT to debate. It’s not about debate. They have assigned their woes to trans people as the arbiters of their misery- it’s trans women who cause their tribulations in life and nothing else can change that mindset, even proof to the contrary.

Back to the main topic- debate.

If it were pointful to debate right wing folk I’d be interested in partaking in it, but I’ve seen too many examples of the right wing folk being proven wrong or their arguments being picked apart and the instant reversion to insults. Every time I’ve tried to unpick an anti gay/anti trans argument recently, the IMMEDIATE reaction from the injured party has been to make a “hard drives need checked” comment.
The irony of this isn’t lost on me- most anti gay and anti trans arguments are recycled from the panic of the 70s and 80s where it was insinuated that we were all perverted. But considering the side making these accusations also regularly listens to folk like Allison Bailey who talks about young healthy breasts never knowing a lover’s caress, I cant help but feel aggrieved that this is overlooked and my simple observation that gay men are allowed to be gay means I’m sent homophobic memes.

When it comes to debating people who sink instantly to these tactics, it’s pointless. There is no interest in learning or hearing the other side, and you can’t argue against people’s conviction that they’re right in the fact of scant evidence: much like arguing against flat lies, arguing against right wing opinions is pointlessly like screaming into a pillow.

The truth is a stubborn little rock that is only what it is. But a lie, or an opinion, can be elastic, and fit whatever you want it to. You don’t need to read the facts that there haven’t been trans attackers bombarding women’s bathrooms, and any problems have been caused by cisgendered men when you’re absolutely convinced that all trans women are lurking quietly, waiting for their chance and you’re just so lucky to have avoided it.

I wish I knew how to make positive steps forward and to stop this endless deluge of trans exclusion, hatred and misinformation that is being thrown around the internet, but I’m not that smart, or patient. But something has to change. Trans people cant wait.

As I always say, I have empirical experience of being around all sorts of trans people- asexual trans women, bisexual trans men, gay trans men, lesbian trans women… every one of them is, frankly, a hair’s breadth from being almost boringly normal. Their medical file is – there’s no other way to say this- fuck all to do with me. I don’t often stare at the genitals of my friends or strangers (not unless I want to and we all consent), so perhaps we can extend this bare minimum standardised treatment of cis people to trans folk too- and maybe we can stop believing people who talk endlessly about debate.

There is no “Trans Debate”- Just people trying to live versus a hate movement

By Daviemoo

Mandel, a vocal Rowling supporter who also thinks that friendship with Neo Nazis is a good idea

I feel like a traitor writing this piece. The last thing that’s needed is yet another cis person wading in to explain to other cis people the feelings of people who never ever get platformed and listened to. But it’s hard to stay silent when you see the damage of a ramped up hate movement being done to your friends, and so many other cis people determined to swing another axe at the base of trans rights. Over 50% of women in the UK accept that trans women are women; but the very vocal minority who do not are becoming ever more radicalised in their efforts to tar all trans folk as deviant. Anti trans folk like Rosie Duffield or Rowling will speak from double spread newspapers and in front of sympathetic journalists about how they’re being silenced, missing the irony, and platform seekers like Maya Forstater will throw away any decency to cling onto misinformed bigotry in the face of evidence to the contrary, shifting what was insisted as “biological reality” to philosophy just to propagate the hatred. What will it take for anti-trans people to accept that demonising an entire minority because of their perceived slights is causing damage to everyone- not just those they hate and fear?


Gender critical beliefs are a strange set of tenets which confuse anyone who doesn’t ardently subscribe to them- and still manages to flummox those who do.


“Women are being erased!” are you a woman? Are you being erased? Or is the definition of woman being widened for inclusivity? Does inclusion dilute or just offer more perspective? I’m sure you can guess my answer.


“People are being brainwashed into being trans” Fear not! There’s a 7 year waiting list, endless demeaning meetings and discussions, I’m sure anyone “brainwashed” will wake up from that.


“Trans women are men seeking to access women’s spaces for devious reasons” perhaps as a society we should address the problematic behaviour of so many men if this outlook on male behaviour is so widely shared – but trans women aren’t men, so blaming them for cis men’s actions is foolish and wrong.


“The world is going woke!” Enjoy your Forstater victory if you will – you’re perfectly entitled to think bigoted thoughts but, much like if I threw racial epithets around at work, if you are transphobic you will be fired. Think what you want, no one is the thought police, it’s just expected that if you’re transphobic you’ll either educate yourself out of bigotry or stay in that mind-set and keep it to yourself.

I’m loathe to mention the cis women at the Olympics who have been stopped from competing, or been asked to present her genitals to prove she is a woman because her performance was so good; but sometimes the only way to capture those who are indifferent to the plight of trans folk is to mention these women: because when it can be applied to you as a person, suddenly it becomes more of a threat.
Caster Semenya has been told she must “lower her testosterone levels” so she can compete in women’s events. But as a cis woman, who is the arbiter of what is a “womanly” testosterone level? And do those who decided this think that once you are over a certain level of testosterone you are not a woman?

There are so many arms to the nuance of the debate: the erasure of non binary or intersex folk in the debate, the harm done to cis women (Like Caster Semenya, disqualified for her body’s hormone production or Tabitha Chawinga, who was forced to strip naked in public to prove she is a woman) that it seems gender critical people overlook, and trans people will bring up these examples to show the harm being done- only to be met with accusations of agenda pushing. There’s also the case of anti trans folk who will blithely confirm that “only women can have periods, only women can get pregnant, only women can give birth”- excluding as always any trans woman OR cis woman who doesn’t fit that paradigm which frankly borders on elitist- I know several women who can’t conceive and menopause ensures any woman who lives to experience it does not have periods. We’re to the point of gender criticality where you will read anti trans people speaking about hip structure and bone length or number of ribs as if that in any way affects how people live on the daily- I think if you lie awake at night counting your womanly ribs you’re entitled to do so, but whether that’s a disturbing view to take on your body is not for me to answer for fear of upsetting people.

Anecdotally, I suffered from gynaecomastia for months as a teen boy and essentially grew TINY breasts which subsequently went away. This, according to gender critical thinkers, is something only women can do naturally: so what am I?
Usually you’ll be met with “people like this are outliers” which is correct but also discounts the valid experience of people who do not fit the stereotypical growth patterns experienced by many. Incidentally around 1.7% of the world is intersex, which is close to the number of people that would have died in the initial wave of COVID had there been no vaccine. That number, this number of outliers? 132600000. Seems like not an insignificant number of people.


Rather than meeting people outside of the gender norms with scorn and repulsion, perhaps there should be some give on the gender critical side, a consensus that their understanding of their own experiences, bolstered by endless rhetoric from their own circle, does not explain why people transition, or continue to transition even in the face of relentless abuse, even when facing 7 year waiting lists, under accusations of perversion or mental illness, with the threat of hate crimes from insults to rape and murder looming heavy over their heads.


Personally I’ve tried to have productive discussions with gender critical folk before, to try and understand the depths of their mistrust and hatred of trans people, especially trans women, and I’ll be honest: it frightens me. Not every time, but often enough, folk who ascribe to gender critical beliefs are frighteningly radicalised into believing that all trans women- in fact, not just trans women but anyone they see as a man- are dangerous opportunistic predators.
I’ve tried to argue for trans women repeatedly in this discussion and am always met with unproductive replies about me being a “prostate haver”, a “beard”, a “misogynist”. In my eyes it’s reductive to ignore the point that gender critical feminism at its heart sees anyone that gender critical people see as a man, as a threat.

Cis Men are the Problem


Is the view that men are a threat incorrect? Probably not, unfortunately. Seeing the statistics following the murder of Sarah Everard where 97% of surveyed women had said they have experienced sexually inappropriate behaviour, it’s absolutely understandable that women would be cautious, nervous and mistrusting of men. But conflating trans women, a different demographic to cis men is a mistake: as does bringing up articles about trans prisoners sexually assaulting women. Sexual assault is a horrific crime that anyone can experience and too many people do- one person experiencing sexual assault is too many. But tarring all trans women with the brush of a sexual offender is disingenuous – should we tar all lesbians with the brush of sexual predator because some lesbians commit sexual assault? Or do the same with gay men?
Should we ban gay and lesbian people from their gender’s bathrooms because they might be uncontrollably aroused by their fellow users?
The idea of this is ludicrous and rooted, as is the anti trans rhetoric, in the idea that any deviation from gender or sexuality deemed “the norm” is automatically a disorder, perversion etc.


Anti trans rhetoric comes from a place so close to homophobia that it clearly shares a postcode and seeing the arguments recycled for the 21st century is disconcerting: living in a time of the trans panic, I sense I understand how LGBT allies felt during the gay panic of the 70s and 80s. Having to defend trans people from the automatic association with pervert is demoralising at best, and seeing a group of people determined to ascribe gender presentation with perversion is a frustrating experience at best, when you see the damage done to people simply trying to live out their lives in peace.


Watching gender critical people be further pushed to think that the truth of trans is tied to sexual arousal is confusing. Being trans isn’t linked to sexuality- it’s why there are gay, lesbian, bi, asexual trans people. And every trans person has had to explain, repeatedly, at length, that transitioning is not linked to sexual arousal or fetish- it’s a deep seated need to be on the outside as you are within and that is something I don’t believe anyone who is not trans could understand, or experience- but can most assuredly empathise with.


The reason it’s so frustrating to see the trans panic be framed as “philosophical” or “a debate” is that there is no debate here: one side want to maintain their rights, improve their healthcare and societal standing so it’s adequate and doesn’t come with years of waiting and demeaning processes, create a supportive atmosphere for youths who feel the same. The other side will throw accusations of paedophilia or grooming, they will shout over rights that trans people have had for longer than I’ve been alive, warning of dire consequences that just never seem to happen, and wrongly ascribe blame to trans women when it should be aimed at cis men.


Even the desperation of trans people to distance themselves from problematic trans women – because every demographic has problematic people within it- does nothing to assuage the fears of the gender critical crowd. Folks like Yaniv or White (if you know them, you’ll understand) are widely disparaged amongst trans activists and yet the gender critical folk will still continue to apply the miscreancy of these outliers to all trans folk as a rule- it is an established practice of gender criticality to ignore the facts for the sensation.


No decent trans person would support a man who donned a wig and a dress to access a private space for nefarious reasons – I’ve seen as much said by at least 3 of the most prominent trans activists. And when it comes to spaces like prisons, forget gender presentation –why are sexual predators being housed with people in general- having someone invade your body is a base betrayal, and those guilty of it should be housed away from anyone and everyone else.


Gender criticality boils down to the idea that men are dangers, and perceiving men that way is a huge, systemic societal problem that needs to be addressed (because it is not an idea without merit) and, it is my firm belief, would salve the fear anti trans people hold because it is ultimately cis men, sexuality irrespective (as a gay man who has experienced multiple instances of gay men not understanding the simple concept of consent) who are the instigators of the issues women (and other men!) face.


Additionally, one of the faces of gender critical beliefs is Graham Linehan who now publishes a blog to espouse gender critical beliefs after being kicked off twitter for his relentlessly hateful conduct- he has made a new career out of being the face of a hate movement, and I’ve no doubt that history won’t look kindly on him. But one has to wonder what on earth is in Linehan’s mind when it comes to supporting a movement that looks so unfavourably on men- and in fact, why a movement based around the idea that men are dangerous seem so willing to accept him as one of it’s ringleaders. In my personal view, Linehan appears to be a pet of the gender critical crowd, useful because he is a man telling the gender critical supporters that they are correct, that men are something to be feared, insidious, and that trans women are the highest example of this. One wonders how Linehan is so intimately familiar with how these imaginary devious trans women who are, despite years of having the rights he contests, think… or in fact what he himself thinks, if he’s so convinced that supporting the ideology that all men are opportunistic predators thinks.


It’s an unfortunate reality that many men must be taught how to comport themselves when it comes to consent and decency, and this stance is often met with flat denial- usually from the men most in desperate need of hearing it. But again- trans women are not men, and shouldn’t be held to the same values as a cis man- whether you think they are women or not is irrespective of this point- trans women have a vastly different perspective and lifestyle than cis men do- or they would not be trans women.

Looking at the LGB alliance I can only feel scorn for a group of people whose ostensible mission is “Stop being bigoted to us- but keep being bigoted to THESE people”. Their mission is so debased as to only need to be looked upon with disgust. Splintering the community that has supported each other from it’s necessary inception is a fools errand, and to condone certain forms of bigotry as long as it doesn’t affect you is horrifying.


Supporting trans people is to support a tiny faction in society who desperately needs to be protected from the increasing radicalisation of people who deny science which backs trans lives, who insist without evidence that trans people are dangers or in any way “wrong”. I can’t help but feel after such a long time in this debate, if you haven’t come to the conclusion that supporting trans people is right and fair, perhaps you’re lacking in some of the empathy you’re desperate for people to apply to you in your “struggle to be heard”.

If wearing makeup, womens clothing, hormones, your literal brain telling you, and shared experience don’t make a woman- what does. Because it certainly isn’t the continuation of bigotry.