Trans Politics, Trans Activism, also 'rolling is this transphobic?' thread

The emotive force of being struck by lightning IS huge, but it basically never happens. It's a good analogy! The BBC (and The Times etc) are basically going around on a cloudy day screaming LIGHTNING

its true that trans womens bodies are more stigmatised and subject to more prurient discussion in our culture but the only victims of that are trans women

i really want to see this movie - Little Girl (2020)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akSaVMmOZgc

it was only playing for like a week at the Institut Francais in West London which is crazy to me

Ahhh Tracer my heart

i know!!

I've also felt a little bad trying to read this thread and learn because I don't think vtc and kk are necessarily trying to troll (malicious intent), is it not more likely they're susceptible to misleading data, faulty reasoning, fallacies etc? That being said I do otherwise appreciate the insightful posts here.

I understand the concern but it's important to remember that, whether held in earnest or with malicious intent, these views are the latest talking point the UK media establishment has glommed on to in order to make trans people as marginalised and vilified as possible.

And when they come so fluently from a new poster who has literally one previous post, that's an awful lot of good faith to ask of people sick of this nonsense

Well, I guess that's the distinction... have they been mislead or are they here to mislead? I'm here to learn and I would hope they would be willing to do so as well.

Massive T/W!

while you were having the conversation above, here's what a woman quoted in the BBC article was posting online

Cade is very explicitly calling for trans women to be murdered pic.twitter.com/wHf5QQhRWi

— SANDWORM (@christapeterso) November 2, 2021

That is vile vile stuff.

I don't understand what most of those accusations are even about, although I suspect a Q-ish propaganda machine has been ginning up lurid accusations that aren't being covered in the US in the same way.

Jesus.

Well, I guess that's the distinction... have they been mislead or are they here to mislead? I'm here to learn and I would hope they would be willing to do so as well.

― Evan, Tuesday, November 2, 2021 11:40 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Everyone at one point has been mislead about trans realities. That’s why we live in a transphobic world, piling on and weaponising someone’s sexuality against itself is not going to help anyone be better people.

Also let’s stop assuming people are perfectly aware of UK transphobic points. Some people are not from the UK, others would rather not deal with that sort of stuff.

i mean i only ever hear of this being brought up when it’s a cudgel to hit trans ppl with, i think it’s easy to be aware of the social dynamics of a talking point even if you’re not from transphobe island

Also let’s stop assuming people are perfectly aware of UK transphobic points. Some people are not from the UK, others would rather not deal with that sort of stuff.

― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, 2 November 2021 18:02 (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes absolutely, although anyone who has read this thread has now been introduced to this particular line in its most conventional iteration by our new genital preferring concern havers

I don't really have much to add to this conversation beyond support to people who are just trying to live their lives.

I don't know if that's the best way to express that but I want to respect how people identify and refer to them in the manner they prefer, mostly because that feels like Being Polite 101 and it's baffling to me that that isn't everyone's baseline

I apologize for not putting my last post in hidden text. I honestly forgot that was an option. I tried to add many line breaks after the content warning, but apparently ILX doesn't allow that.

CW: more discussion related to the BBC article

whining/handwringing/concern-trolling about the punching-up (and any associated collateral damage)

Emphasis mine. I'm not going to respond to this here; just wanted to let it stand on its own.

that is kind of what minority position means?

"Minority position" just means less than half of people hold it. Doesn't mean it's not important. Here are a couple of people who are part of this minority:

Ryan John Butcher, head of news at PinkNews:

my friend, that’s literally the dictionary definition of transphobia

— ryan john butcher (@ryanjohnbutcher) May 22, 2020

Dr. Veronica Ivy, first transgender world track cycling champion, published in NBC News, Vice, and The Economist, featured on CNN:

You: "I like dick"

Girl with dick says 'Hey, wanna date?'
"Oh...no...I only like dick on guys"

Guy responds to date ad: 'Sup girl'
...guy has a vagina
"Oh, sorry, I only like guys with dicks"

Both cases trans people are left in the cold. 'Genital preferences' are transphobic.

— Dr. Veronica Ivy (@SportIsARight) September 30, 2019

And as far as how often these kinds of things are happening, even if something happens very rarely, that doesn't mean it isn't important either. (For what it's worth, re: Tracer's comment above, there are tons of articles about people getting struck by lightning. The Guardian had a long piece about lightning strike survivors earlier this year.)

One good thing that could happen at this point would be for PinkNews and Stonewall to publish guidance saying genital preferences aren't transphobic and no one should say they are, whether in publicly visible discussions or (especially) on a personal level as a means of shaming someone into having sex. PN and Stonewall wouldn't even have to say that this HAS happened; all they would have to say is "DON'T do this," which shouldn't be controversial. And, of course, this guidance should be directed at everyone, not just trans people. If they wanted, they could even frame it as "The BBC article was a bad article. It goes without saying that genital preferences aren't transphobic..." etc. This is a solution that seeks to answer ufo's concerns about this conversation inside and outside of trans communities, as well as minimize "collateral damage."

I'll stop posting on this thread now.

Ugh, can't believe I screwed up the hidden text formatting there. Really sorry.

ryan john butcher was responding to someone who was talking about people being called "transphobic for not accepting lesbians with penises or men with vaginas." which is a gigantic stretch to conflate with the "trans people want cis people to be obliged to have sex with them" position, especially since "trans women cannot call themselves lesbians", "lesbians cannot have penises" etc. are quite common transphobe positions.

veronica ivy is indeed the single trans person of some prominence from the bbc article who directly said "genital preferences are transphobic" and i don't really agree with her overall position, the broader point about how preferences are shaped by society is fine but it seems pretty clear that not everyone's sexuality works that way. but her being wrong about that is just her being wrong about that & not evidence of anyone trying to coerce cis people into having sex with them.

"Minority position" just means less than half of people hold it. Doesn't mean it's not important.

it's not even close to half. you haven't at all demonstrated it is important, even with your caveat about rare things being able to be important. you can dig up goofy fringe positions from all sorts of minorities if you really want to cause a moral panic, the media's been doing it forever. looking forward to the moral panics about people saying "everyone is a little bisexual" next.

One good thing that could happen at this point would be for PinkNews and Stonewall to publish guidance saying genital preferences aren't transphobic and no one should say they are, whether in publicly visible discussions or (especially) on a personal level as a means of shaming someone into having sex

trans people are capable of having those conversations on our own and top-down interventions into this very dumb discourse like that would do nothing helpful & only probably attract more attention from transphobes "oh so you admit there is a problem with TRANS WOMEN FORCING PEOPLE TO HAVE SEX WITH THEM" etc. stonewall and pinknews are hardly the heads of the trans community.

come on lol

And as far as how often these kinds of things are happening, even if something happens very rarely, that doesn't mean it isn't important either.

Just want clarify that I was responding to imago’s “basically never happens” post here, where, based on his follow-up post, “basically never happens” should be taken to mean “happens very rarely.” I suggest people read his post with that in mind.

Absolutely bizarre understanding of Stonewall and pink news in that post. Why on earth would trans people take their definition of what is and isn't transphobic from an organisation that, despite taking it's name from a political event that trans people were crucial to, refused to campaign on their behalf for most of the period of its existence. The answer is they don't, these things are supposed to work the other way around as UFO points out, the organisation learns from the communities it represents, even in the case of mainstream, liberal organisations like Stonewall.

But yes there will always be some element of truth to moral panics and some fringe extreme and or attention seeking positions - a situation further heightened by the algorithm's appetite for delicious controversy to generate engagement. what a moral panic does is to connect those dots, exaggerate them, persevere with every fatuous debunked story without missing a beat, elevate the testimonies of bad actors, invite a conspiracy of dupes and grifters to superheat to boiling point a few weird isolated incidents (some YouTuber said 'genital preferences' are transphobic (actually more nuanced than that but ok) and a workshop for trans people about difficulties dating and being trans happened ten years ago and we can wildly speculate about its content) are represented in a hysterical and distorted way with the result of calling for action from the group who are targeted by it and ultimately putting the burden of proof on them to find ways to show that they are not in fact degenerates and predators. Anyone who has been targeted by this bullshit also knows that it is never-ending, those that come for you like this will only be further emboldened and will call for more and repeated action of this kind where you are forced again and again to repudiate any political assertions in the name of distancing yourself from zealous smear campaigns and complying. This "I'm not trying to force cis lesbians to have sex with me" t shirt has people asking a lot of questions, essentially. That's the goal of these talking points, to provoke and mischaracterise and ultimately insinuate nastier stuff with ever diminishing burdens of proof for the wild claims but more increasingly stringent ones on the embattled targets. You can quite clearly see all these principles at work in the BBC article that began this discussion.

Really striking to me how explicit most of the sources in the BBC article are about thinking trans women are men and considering "transgenderism" a menace in and of itself. Not just Lily Cade either. Impossible to view it as anything as in anything but bad faith no matter where you fall down on this genital discussion.

CW


Feel like I should address ufo’s comment on the Ryan John Butcher tweet, because I was definitely willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that, but this exchange, further down in the thread, made me feel that my interpretation is correct:

you seem to have a really strange obsession with other people’s genitals

— ryan john butcher (@ryanjohnbutcher) May 22, 2020

why are we supposed to care about these tweets

i don’t read any kind of malice or sexual pressure in them, just maybe an unwillingness to deal with a fuckin weirdo who brings up trans boogeypeople in the replies to a fuckin unrelated tweet. that’s the full context. i would be as annoyed

oh i guess he was trolling the lgb alliance

whose bio is transphobic

We promote the rights of lesbians, bisexuals & gay men, as recognised by biological sex. #SexNotGender.

it's just so weird that literally everybody i see on that side of the argument is a transphobe

"we have finally created a LGB organization that does not include trans people at all, why would you accuse us of being bigots"

yes exactly, this to me seems like a confused and not especially fluent attempt(by a cis gay man?) to articulate why the language and ploys used by an anti trans organisation are transphobic. Quite clearly the final diagnosis is correct here as the lgb alliance is a hate group which claims to campaign 'on behalf of LGB people' but does nothing of the sort even as a fig leaf and is instead concerned with trying to position trans people as fundamentally antagonistic to other queer people and, as their quotes in the above BBC article make clear, worse.

Sara Ahmed talks about how:

"the “gender critical” feminist landscape is littered with phrases like sex is real, sex not gender, we need to ask what they are doing. Let’s call them catch phrases, words or expressions that are used repeatedly and conveniently to represent or characterize a person, group, idea, or point of view. These phrases are a way of signalling an allegiance to a political movement that has its primarily velocity, it seems, in a virtual space. They are relatively new ways of using old terms. Nevertheless, despite being relatively new, to encounter these phrases is to be given a snap shot of a history. To start to try and make sense of them by starting with them, would be like turning up in the middle of a conversation, hearing a reaction, and not knowing what came before that provoked a reaction."

The full article is worth reading ( https://feministkilljoys.com/2021/10/31/gender-critical-gender-conservative/ ) but its worth elaborating that one of the key ways these talking points work is to provoke particular kinds of responses that are easily misconstrued through a kind of bait and switch tactic. The LGB alliance here is engaging a certain kind of provocation by using strong dogwhistle language around 'genital preference' to invite refutations to the entanglements of suggestion and elision that are embedded in those talking points, the next move its to innocently point to the overly emphatic response to an 'innocent' and 'reasonable' suggestion of 'common sense.' These kind of simplistic but vexed statements are very popular in culture wars in general and specifically with transphobes for the useful way that they can erase antagonistic context to this end.

these posts by CAPTCHA remind me of someone I knew who would always say things like "I'm sure everybody will call me a TERF...." and then proceeded to recite TERF-talking points while insinuating they were not one.

I'll stop posting on this thread now.

― Vaguely Threatening CAPTCHAs, Thursday, 4 November 2021 00:38 (fourteen hours ago) link

Feel free to stop any time now.

admonishing someone who is directly supporting a transphobic hate group & elsewhere in the replies defines homosexuality as only being about same-"biological sex" attraction for being weird & obsessed with genitals is not at all objectionable

like this is very clear that captcha is determined to read everything in the worst faith possible

BBC removed the Lily Cade quotes and added:

We have updated this article, published last week, to remove a contribution from one individual in light of comments she has published on blog posts in recent days, which we have been able to verify.

We acknowledge that an admission of inappropriate behaviour by the same contributor should have been included in the original article.

"Inappropriate behaviour" is one way of describing rape accusations, I guess.

How strange to find that these totally legitimate concerns are being propagated in this reasonable form by individuals who are quite demonstrably motivated by wild hatred

"Inappropriate behaviour" is one way of describing rape accusations, I guess.

Not even just accusations, she has admitted to sexual harassment and assault. Honestly, despite the very low expectations I had, I'm still shocked that this wasn't enough for them to take the whole article down.

i think the article reporting statistical findings from a small internet survey by a hate group is well in breach of their accuracy guidelines too and bizarre they have found fit to defend it given in the past they have declined to report on a high profile BMJ article due to questions about its validity.

i've read a lot of deluded transphobic rants in my time but very few that have built up to "yes i am a rapist," pretty impressive

plax i hope you resubmit your complaint as what i’ve seen of it is very well worded.

“I know someone that walked out the other day over the article. I know someone else that left a couple of months ago. I know about eight trans people that left the organisation in the past 12 months because they don’t believe that the BBC is impartial anymore,” said one current BBC employee on the call.

some pretty shocking accounts there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4buJMMiwcg

That's about the size of it.

uk people, this is an incredible doc:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000xh73/storyville-petite-fille

texas activism. they are taking donations.

https://www.transtexas.org

^ only in the US tho, so get on it American ilxors

aww one of my former students works for TENT. they’re a great org.

The author is having quite a weekend (I won’t link to her tl but here’s some of who she’s been talking with & apparently following now I guess?)

JK Rowling sending love to the UK Campaign director for one of the world's largest anti LGBT anti women's rights religious pressure groups.

Heartwarming. https://t.co/fPRvvT3xtn

— Mallory Moore🏴 (@Chican3ry) March 12, 2022

Anti-trans troll Matt Walsh is after the transgender health clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center — specifically its healthcare for trans adolescents. And all it's taken is a few tweets by him to get our governor and state attorney general to launch "an investigation" into what everyone knows is by far the best hospital in the state. Ugly shit.

https://www.wsmv.com/2022/09/21/gov-lee-claims-against-vanderbilt-transgender-health-clinic-warrants-thorough-investigation/