Paris transgender woman 'humiliated' at protest.

Sorry but it was my experience that the street harassment came from Arab / North African guys, usually hanging out in groups, when I lived in Brussels and visited Paris. Might not be true of everywhere but it was for me. I got fed up at the time of women being silenced about it to appease certain communities. I’m not going to lie or be quiet about what my experiences were.

Culture can play a big part in this kind of behaviour - that kind of treatment is common to women in certain areas/nationalities. I’ve experienced it myself- so it shouldn’t necessarily just be ignored for not being PC. I wonder if the hair tussle was the start- it really seemed to come from that one guy (going by the clip) and escalated when the TW went after him - not blaming the TW but probably unwise.

I heard Julia the woman who was attacked talk on French TV. She also said that she didn't want for people to blame race and religion for this. So please don't blame race and religion. She gets some sort of insults everyday from all sorts.

The NY Times has a big dramatic piece about it

www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/world/europe/transgender-woman-attacked-paris.html

" Video footage showing men assaulting a transgender woman during a demonstration in central Paris last weekend has prompted outrage and debate about transphobic attitudes in the country, in what some activists called a shift in France’s attitude toward transgender people."

It's not clear firstly why a specifically French-Algerian event should tell you much about wider French attitudes towards transgender people.

And I do wonder if the person had not been transgender whether this would have even made the news.

When 1200 women were sexually assaulted in Cologne

www.thesun.co.uk/news/2407734/cologne-new-years-eve-sex-attacks/

the focus seemed to be on avoiding blaming the perpetrators to avoid Islamophobia or whatever.

The nature of the present attackers, also presumably Muslim men, is being neatly ignored in favour of trying to construct a wider narrative about French society.

It would be a bit odd to assume that every community shares the same attitude towards transpeople, but somehow that has been completely ignored?

TowelNumber42 I also grew up in a very sexist environment, if I (as I did in my bulletproof younger years) called out the catcall/grope I would get more verbal abuse, but not a punch in the face. Regardless of what happened in private in public men rarely hit women. That’s why I was wondering if the escalation would have been different. Admittedly a very different culture so difficult to compare.

I think, and I’m grasping here, male on male violence is different from male on female violence. More physical rather than sexual violence.

Absolutely agree that this would not have been news if it had been a short skirted woman. That’s not a story, that’s business as usual, regardless of the humiliation and fear inflicted.

I had abuse and groping almost every day when I lived in Paris. It’s a real problem. I’m keeping my phone line clear in case the BBC want to write about my experience.

These street gangs of young guys (mostly Arab / North African in my experience) do not give a shit.

I very much agree with this. There are some groups in the North African communities that have a real problem with being hideously sexist, and abusive with it.
I've found it far more common amongst the Arab groups than the Kabyle.
Oh, and that was a huge, huge manif, loads of gendarmes and CRS. It was absolutely not somewhere to go if you weren't there to protest Bouteflika.

I saw that article. Awful male violence. Just made me wonder again why the BBC didn’t cover properly the four trans women who launched a violent attack on a man in the London Underground. All on video and documented ans in this country and yet not worth the coverage of this story. I wonder why.

i also wonder what the end result would have been for a woman who chased someone down for an insult and a hair ruffle. I suspect the men would not have responded as violently to someone they perceived as female.

Cologne?

Catalogue I grew up in a deeply sexist environment. It would have gone badly for a woman too, worse I expect, and she would have been blamed. There wouldn't have been a video going viral about it either.

Gangs of young men like that are more than happy to hit and shove women too, Catalogue. I had an experience in Brussels where I was sitting on a bus with a friend and a guy came up to the window and started making lewd gestures at us. I gave him the middle finger salute and mouthed ‘fuck off’ instead of ignoring him as my friend was doing. He got on the bus (which was stationary at a stop) and spat in my face. These street gangs of young guys (mostly Arab / North African in my experience) do not give a shit. They would fuck anyone up, male or female. Doesn’t surprise me at all that they sexually assaulted the trans woman in this case either.

Women in Paris and Brussels and other Francophone cities deal with street harassment like this every day and cope by just ignoring it. It infuriated me when I lived there. I would get angry and react to it, which never helped. They would just laugh as if to say ‘oh a woman getting angry, how funny. What can you do to us anyway?’

Of course whenever women complained about it we were told to be careful going places alone, avoid the Arab parts of the city and always be on alert. No attempts to tackle the toxic culture of masculinity in these communities that drives the behaviour.

Men get in fight. Not shocked.

Nevertheless, the hair ruffle was not OK. That transwoman should have been able to go about the protest without being harassed. As should any women in the crowd. As should any person in the crowd.

If the TW were actually regarded as a woman then commentators would be on about how she had it coming by wearing a mini skirt. Maybe taking her to task for being culturally inappropriate. Maybe going on about how young women are becoming more violent and what should be done about it. There would be speculation about drink and drugs.

Sorry, 'the transwoman'

I don't quite understand the context here. Do the transwomen and the men share the same political sympathies?

i also wonder what the end result would have been for a woman who chased someone down for an insult and a hair ruffle. I suspect the men would not have responded as violently to someone they perceived as female.

I’m not minimising the harassment, violence and sexual assault it shouldn’t happen to anyone. It was escalated by the chasing down and as ILoveMaxiBondi says walking away is protecting yourself.

Extrapolating (wildly) from that, is the response to an initial unwelcome approach/physical contact the reason why non-domestic violent attacks are higher in men? As in it is instigated by men, most women placate and avoid, men who counter attack end up in a someone wins someone loses physical altercation.

Frenchjunebug The BBC article states the transport police called this person monsieur and said ‘ you shouldn’t dress like that’ .
The Algerian girl is a teenager, seems odd for a teenager to refer to another as monsieur? Where did you hear the interview?

actually I listened to an interview with the woman who was attacked, and the woman who seems to help her actually called her 'Monsieur' and told her 'she shouldn't dress like that'.

She was not only punched but also sexually assaulted as one of the man put his hand between her crotch.

Sigh another woman subjected to male violence

Yes, I saw this and found it interesting that the woman tried to help her and was an ally for her, showing her the safer thing to do was to walk away. But the male-socialised trans woman goes in fists flying, chasing the fight down rather than walking away as most of us women do when confronted with the threat of male violence.

I don’t blame her in a way. Street harassment in Paris is part of every day life for women there and is part of the culture among some groups. It was sickening to me when I experienced it and if I had had Julia’s height and strength (she’s head and shoulders above the weedy little harassers which is quite funny) I would have been tempted to land a few punches myself. Still, not a safe response for a woman though. And again proves the point that the real transphobes who hurt trans women are male, not feminists.

Interesting vid.

So Julia got their hair ruffled and then proceeded to get something out of their waistband (can't work out what, weapon of some sort?) and then charges at the harrasers and throws the first push/punch.

Fight ensues.

Socialization in action.

One man ruffled her hair, while a girl draped in an Algerian flag came to try to help Julia. As Julia moved on, a man repeatedly punched her while another could be seen kicking at her

First sentance is correct...the rest is written like Julia ignored them and went to carry on to where they were going (which is what women generally do).

I mean, I don't blame her, she was protecting herself,

No. Disagree. Walking away is protecting yourself. The woman beside the TW was trying to protect them by pulling them away. What this person did was escalate the situation and invite more risk of assault. Which is what then happened. They went looking for a row and got one.