Transphobes in Scotland

[stickygirl]

I've been trying to disbelieve the trend I'm seeing in the UK to push back at progress for transgender rights, but then the linked article pops up and crushes any sense of optimism.

The Terfs and transphobic minority are using the power of social media to spread hate and lies about trans folk and they're winning. The SNP, the leading party of Scotland is in disarray politically, internally and now this: a local SNP meeting infiltrated by Terfs and haters
Teddy Hope PhD writes
"At one point photocopies of men taken from the internet were passed with the comments that they had all been convicted of predatory and paedophilic behaviour against women and girls while self-identifying as women’.

In shock at their actions, I did not look at them all but one picture stood out to me, of a well-known UK trans public figure. This trans woman had experienced abuse online for her appearance not fitting the patriarchal ideal of what ‘woman’ looks like. Yet they compared her to convicted rapists and paedophiles, just for being who she is."

There are parallels not just in the hysteria and extremism seen in American politics recently, but in other countries too where minorities grab a disproportionate amount of exposure by making shocking claims. They can only stay in the limelight by becoming more and more extreme until their everyday is a make-believe world of conspiracies and lies.

There is an answer of course, but to examine the 'right to free speech' and have it better understood ie that it cannot be hate speech, raises as much outrage as do anti-trans activists who claim they are not allowed to make their case without being labelled transphobes. If claiming lies to be truth, claiming that women are being raped in toilets by transgender people, or that they are all pedophiles, yet still demand their right to free speech, that's like wanting your cake and eat it. It's a dangerous level of hypocrisy that is not intended to make progress, quite the reverse.

 

[KimGordon67]

I'm just endlessly bemused by these ridiculous claims that men 'pose as women' in order to rape women. Centuries upon centuries have demonstrated that women are raped in myriad circumstances, but this ain't one of them ... the notion that a man would go through all that is involved to identify as a woman in order to get access to women's loo's so as to commit sexual violence is just so laughable that I'm constantly amazed it gets given air time. It depresses me that many of these people call themselves 'feminists'.

 

[stickygirl]

I'm just endlessly bemused by these ridiculous claims that men 'pose as women' in order to rape women. Centuries upon centuries have demonstrated that women are raped in myriad circumstances, but this ain't one of them ... the notion that a man would go through all that is involved to identify as a woman in order to get access to women's loo's so as to commit sexual violence is just so laughable that I'm constantly amazed it gets given air time. It depresses me that many of these people call themselves 'feminists'.

I know... It's like monsters under the bed - it's always guaranteed to hit a nerve for people who feel suddenly threatened in a safe space.

But the activists have no agenda except disruption and hate. If they mean to ban trans women from toilets, how will that be policed. In a number of instances cis gender women have been pulled from a restroom by a security man because they didn't look female enough and it was thought they were men dressed as women.

I would have thought those posters being passed round were open to legal action - sue their asses off.

 

[haurni_v2]

It's not like trans people don't commit crimes - some of them do, and some of those happen to be sexual offences. But it's a matter of proportion - despite all the scaremongering by TERFs, there is something like one case a year in the US where someone who actually identifies as a trans woman does something improper in a washroom or change room (as opposed to cis men doing the same).

Given the thousands upon thousands of cases of sexual assault by cis men, focusing on trans women is a serious case of blowing things out of proportion. If you want to address sexual assault in general, teach people to be comfortable about their bodies rather than ashamed, educate them on consent, get rid of toxic masculinity, and listen to survivors of sexual assault when they speak up rather than brushing the issue under the rug or sending it to another diocese. And recognize that trans people are far more likely to be victims of assault than perpetrators.

 

[Escierto]

Everywhere the game plan for the haters whether it’s Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Modi, Putin and their millions of followers is one word, FEAR. They peddle the fear of the other, of anyone who is different in any way, to susceptible people looking for an answer. They have probably never knowingly encountered a transgender person in their lives. Yet the transgender boogeyman is used to justify extreme measures that no sane person would agree with.

What’s next? Gender police examining the genitalia of anyone who looks suspect before entering a public restroom or changing room? The vast majority of people who get examined would undoubtedly be cisgender! Let the stupidity begin!

 

[haurni_v2]

Fear of the other/unknown is always used as the primary motivator to promote any sort of 'law and order' agenda.

 

[njlauren]

It's not like trans people don't commit crimes - some of them do, and some of those happen to be sexual offences. But it's a matter of proportion - despite all the scaremongering by TERFs, there is something like one case a year in the US where someone who actually identifies as a trans woman does something improper in a washroom or change room (as opposed to cis men doing the same).

Given the thousands upon thousands of cases of sexual assault by cis men, focusing on trans women is a serious case of blowing things out of proportion. If you want to address sexual assault in general, teach people to be comfortable about their bodies rather than ashamed, educate them on consent, get rid of toxic masculinity, and listen to survivors of sexual assault when they speak up rather than brushing the issue under the rug or sending it to another diocese. And recognize that trans people are far more likely to be victims of assault than perpetrators.

I actually have not seen anyone give one example that pans out of a transgender women molesting another woman in the restroom or anyone else, or any case of a man putting on a wig, Makeup and dress, going into a woman's room and raping someone *sigh*

Put it this way,Cities that have relatively large trans populations have had rules on the books for years that transgender people can use the restrooms of the gender they are living id/identifying in, I am talking NYC with a total population of 8m, SF, LA, number of other places, and there hasn't been one case I have seen of this (and if it had of happened, would have been big news).


Meanwhile millions of women each year are sexually assaulted, 99.5% of it is men.

So what is the point of these laws? It isn't to protect women, it is basically giving legal sanction to the notion that trans women are a 'man in a dress' and they are sexual predators like all men are (what is really funny is the men who push for these bills don't realize that they are throwing their own gender under the bus, it basically says that men can't control themselves around women, pretty patheti).

Sadly a lot of the women who push this nonsense have been sexually abused and I sympathize with them, JK Rowlings is one of them, but passing laws to ban transgender women from restrooms and 'women's spaces' to make her feel comfortable is sad. My therapist told me a story like this, she told the story that she and a bunch of friends (gay women, she was lesbian) were hanging out with some gay motorcycle guys, and the guys suggested they all go on a pub crawl on the bikes. One woman in the group objected, saying "but those are men, I was raped once, how can you ride with THEM", and my therapist told her that these men didn't rape you, and if you don't feel comfortable that is fine but don't project your fears on everyone else or expect us to cater to your fears".

 

[haurni_v2]

So what is the point of these laws? It isn't to protect women, it is basically giving legal sanction to the notion that trans women are a 'man in a dress' and they are sexual predators

It's very much about preserving a misogynist status quo in which women are frail flowers who need to be protected (at the same time as they're ignored, dismissed, devalued and/or oppressed).

 

[Kumquatqueen]

If we get more of a situation where anyone looking anything than stereotypically female while in the Ladies' gets reported to Security, then the people who will suffer are going to be mainly lesbians and queer women and neurodiverse women and any woman who doesn't give the immediate reassuring impression of 'normal'.

Almost none of those women affected will be trans simply because of numbers. But it's all part of keeping deviant minorities in their place.

Men with bad intentions will just continue walking into deserted toilets and if caught going 'oops, I made a mistake' and no jury would convict.

Any rules that claim to 'protect' women are always at the price of not protecting marginalised women, if not in intent, they are in practice. For example when Canada restricted imports of 'pornography' to protect women, almost all of what was seized was info and entertainment for queer women.

The terfs in the UK now know full well that hatred of trans people will cause hassle and assault for queer women, and they don't care. If anything some think it's a bonus.

 

[Sign54]

To their credit, young people in the United Kingdom are generally more trans friendly. Like Lauren Mayberry, the Dr Who Cast, the HP actors who were kids, etc …
One thing that prevents TERFs from getting as powerful in the United States is the presence of religious conservatives who can’t pretend to be feminists and make transphobia a right wing issue.