Trans remembrance flags and SNP renews support for LGBTYS

RL has taken me away from the site for a few days.

Disappointing to see the same old guff being trotted out for page after page by the pro day of remembrance people.

Reassuring to see so many others explaining in a concise and clear way why it's not appropriate for public buildings to support one demographic over another.

That people object not to the remembrance of the tiny number of trans murders, but that having a special day for this is supporting the false narrative that says trans people are marginalised and deserving of women's rights.

This argument is false and is damaging to women and so is not appropriate for the government of a supposed democracy to support.

Interesting to note that according to some posters, there's apparently nothing wrong with over inflating stats on trans oppression, but the very action of calling attention to and questioning that phenomenon is apparently 'distasteful'.

I would personally say that describing serious discussions about murder, crime, rights and policy as 'hilarious' shows both
a lack of respect for all the groups involved, and a strange sense of humour.

I would argue that official statistics, which are used to inform policy decisions and determine how public money is spent, should be examined and questioned, and decisions of public bodies should be held to account. Because it's really important for the whole country that good, cost effective decisions are made which reflect reality (rather than a false narrative constructed and replicated by activists).

so far no-one has explained the rationale.

The rationale has been mentioned a few times. It is to promote the narrative, contrary to all evidence, that trans people are more vulnerable and at risk than other groups. Therefore they are deserving of special power and privileges, even if those privileges involve destroying the human rights of others (women) or removing safeguarding. For the Scottish Government, this includes GRR Act, Hate Crimes Bill (which also gives protected status to cross dressers), millions given to LBGTYS and promotion of their charter mark in Schools, their unlawful schools guidance, and their ignoring of any critical voices.

In a similar vein, ‘suicide’ is used to justify giving drugs, that cause huge harm, to very young children as ‘better than them committing suicide’. Drugs that even transactivists struggle to justify without raising the threat of death.

After years of Scottish women being told to 'wheesht for Indy', to 'wheesht' for any number of causes and 'we'll sort out women's rights when x, y, z is sorted', they said 'fuck no, we won't wheesht

Which is why that phrase has taken such a hold, in Scotland and other places.

No, we won't wheesht.
No, we won't go to the back of the line.
No, we won't wait until some undefinable time where everything else is sorted.
Just, no.

Absolutely this.

Not only do we never get to the front of the queue for kindness, the group of people we are now being ordered to be kind to at the expense of our own needs include people who are threatening to rape and murder us (and even some who have already been convicted of doing so).

It shows where women sit in the pecking order, doesn't it?

Every one of those 5,000 deaths is a tragedy for the bereaved friends and family; but there has to be a rationale for national commemoration, and so far no-one has explained the rationale.

Yep.

'Are trans people being turned away from A&E? Denied cancer treatment? Unable to register with a GP? Forced to pay for care which everyone gets for free?
No?
Then their access to healthcare is the same as everyone else's.'

And rather better than that afforded to women who request a female medical practitioner and are consequently denied medical help for being' transphonic'.

Returning to the topic of flying a flag for trans remembrance day in Scotland.
There are only two named 'Remembrance Days' in the Scottish government's guidance for the flying of flags on official buildings.

One is the national Remembrance Day when the deaths of millions of people is commemorated. This will take place on 9th November 2025.

Just 11 days later, the flags are to be flown again for 'Trans Remembrance Day', commemorating something which does not - by anybody's calculations, anybody's data, anybody's projections, not even suggestionsplease1's or ElleWoods15's - involve multiple violent and tragic deaths on anything resembling the same scale.

It's not a competition but it is a question of proportionality.

The use of the same wording - 'Remembrance Day/Trans Remembrance Day' - and the proximity of the dates suggests an equivalence which is so wildly wrong that I'm not surprised many people find it unacceptable and even distasteful.

I'm from a culture which attaches particular importance to symbols and ceremonies commemorating the dead, and it seems odd to go to such lengths to mark such a small number of deaths (approx 5,000 over 16 years according to TGEU) with a multiplicity of different causes, in various countries and societies, at different times.

Every one of those 5,000 deaths is a tragedy for the bereaved friends and family; but there has to be a rationale for national commemoration, and so far no-one has explained the rationale.

The rationale for singling out one subset of deaths out of so many happening around the world is something which, as PPs have pointed out, is a question for the Scottish government. The fact that the group singled out for official commemoration like this is the transgender community suggests that far from being marginalised in that country, they are privileged by having their own remembrance day marked by flag-flying, less than two weeks after the national Remembrance Day.

What about trans women being prescribed progesterone to make them feel more like a woman, when menopausal women who need it for HRT struggle to get it due to shortages and women suffering from recurrent pregnancy loss can't get it prescribed on the NHS at all.

Fair?

Seeing that transgender identity has been celebrated, lauded, praised and promoted just about everywhere for the last decade, the answer to that is “probably, no”.

Though as others have pointed out, they’ve now dropped it

They've only dropped it because those same men now identify as "trans women" or "gender fluid" so it's largely obsolete.

And yet was it not Stonewall itself that included cross dressers under the “trans umbrella” effectively creating the equivalence?
Though as others have pointed out, they’ve now dropped it, but not before putting the idea into many people’s heads. Tsk tsk.

The most interesting thing here is that the rate of attempted suicide in transgender individuals is 40%. This tells us that mental health problems in this community are high. It doesn’t tell us that these problems are caused by being “trans”. If anything, it’s likely that the causal effect is in the other direction.
The full article isn’t free, so I haven’t read it. But it appears to be on media reports on suicides. As far as I know, all suicides are reported to the coroner, who provides the official verdict which informs the statistics.

I'm angry at systemic sexism and patriarchy in medicine, health care and research funding.

And for me, gender identity ideology and being told the rights of men with special identities are more important than my rights as a woman is part of the same sexism and patriarchy.

What do you mean by their access to healthcare being removed?

Are trans people being turned away from A&E? Denied cancer treatment? Unable to register with a GP? Forced to pay for care which everyone gets for free?

No?

Then their access to healthcare is the same as everyone else's.

No one else is being prescribed dangerous experimental drugs which actually harm their physical health and shorten their lifespan and for which there is no good evidence base, just because they want them.

As for gender reassignment laws being up for debate, well, of course they should be up for debate. No one else has a right to falsify their legal documents. No one else is allowed to use single sex spaces for the opposite sex. No one else is allowed to impinge on the rights of other groups in this way. Of course that should be up for debate. Debating whether trans people actually, maybe, shouldn't have extra rights that no one else has and which have a negative effect on other groups, whether perhaps they should just have exactly the same rights as everyone else and no more, is not evidence that trans people are marginalised. It's a sign that actually they have special privileges that the rest us don't have, and we're allowed to debate whether that should be the case. Trying to tell us it's not up for debate is evidence of the power this group has.

This.

I was going to respond to this by pointing out that, if you read the OP, this thread is not about stopping the trans community from commemorating anything they like.
But the questions in your last paragraph got me thinking.
Several years ago a friend sent me a series of phone messages relating to a memorial service he was participating in on Hallowe'en. There were neopagan elements to the ceremony, which is I think why he thought I'd be interested.

The ceremony was a commemoration of the death of a trans woman who had been killed in horrific circumstances. When I first looked at the photos and ceremony extracts he had sent me I thought, gosh the Brisbane Queer community must be reeling! It was a truly horrific murder, and the ceremony struck me as a healing event. But something about the story of this trans woman's death twigged a memory. And when I looked her up online she had been killed about a decade earlier, in (I think) New Orleans - definitely in the U.S.A. The ceremony wasn't being organised by people who had known this trans woman or anyone immediately connected to the story.
I didn't know what to do with this information. I didn't say anything to my friend other than, that looks like it was very meaningful for you.

I have to say, if it had been a female person whose violent death was being commemorated in a religious type ceremony by a group of male people unconnected with her I'd be interested to know if there was lascivious motivation (it was a pretty intense sounding ceremony and there was plenty of dwelling on graphic detail). But it's not my circus, not my monkey. It's not my business what Queer people in Brisbane do with their time. But I do wonder about what my friend is getting himself into.

And to point out, this is a branch of a larger, nationwide organisation, which is signposted to by various organisations. Not one individual.

This is the kind of stuff being demanded in the name of 'gender affirming care'.

Buckle up, it's a wild ride -

www.tumblr.com/edinburghath/163521055802/trans-health-manifesto

FFS. I am not "angry" at trans people (i am a 2nd wave feminist, i deny the existence of "gender" but i am aware that people may differ on this)

I am frustrated at women's issues, hopes, fears and wishes being stamped on by everyone all the time. We never ever ever get to the front of the queue for anything without being told to let someone else in front in the name of "kindness". And currently one of those groups pushing us further from the front of the queue are so-called trans people. We are 51% of the population - it is time for all the nonsense to stop.

Where there are competing requirements (single sex spaces, women's sports) we have suggested reasonable accommodations - 3rd spaces, an open category etc etc. But it is clear that TRAs and everyone "kindly" advocating for the trans lobby are not interested in that. They just want to trample. And that is it.

I have zero issue with people living their lives, right up to the point that it negatively affects women. And then i push back

"we're being denied access to healthcare"? SERIOUSLY? ask women who have to schlepp round countless doctors for a decade to even get a diagnosis of endometriosis? Denied pain relief during labour? Not taken seriously when reporting levels of pain to a GP? Whose bodies aren't even considered in drug trials because it makes it more complicated for the pharma industry? Who watch while trials of a male pill are halted because [the same side effects that woman are told are ok to put up with] are too much for men to handle? That healthcare?"

honestly - im completely with you on this, as someone who has had 3 years of fighting for diagnosis and medical care because i'm a woman in my 40s so every doctor just says "oh its prob just menopause"! I don't think my anger has to be directed at trans people though, or that my struggle negates theirs. I'm angry at systemic sexism and patriarchy in medicine, health care and research funding.

i am baffled by the "we are marginalised" mantra, too.
Parkrun receives money from the government for promoting women to take part in sport: but refuses to define a clear category for actual women, and anyone who turns up with a Save Women's Sports t-shirt is given short shrift if not actively excluded.
A hospital lied through their teeth when a woman was raped saying there were no men there - in fact the woman was raped by a man claiming to be a woman
We do not need to go into the countless women who have been harassed and/or disciplined at work for questioning DEI policies/pronouns in sigs etc
Pride flags everywhere, but wom en being prosecuted for tying ribbons in a specific set of colours to a park bench

etc etc etc

"we're being denied access to healthcare"? SERIOUSLY? ask women who have to schlepp round countless doctors for a decade to even get a diagnosis of endometriosis? Denied pain relief during labour? Not taken seriously when reporting levels of pain to a GP? Whose bodies aren't even considered in drug trials because it makes it more complicated for the pharma industry? Who watch while trials of a male pill are halted because [the same side effects that woman are told are ok to put up with] are too much for men to handle? That healthcare?

GNRHa drugs for cancer are used in late stage prostate cancer, generally as part of end of life care.

Old men at deaths door are not a good comparator when it comes to these drugs being used for healthy children.

Yes, the restrictions on the drugs commonly known as "puberty blockers" only concern their off label use for young children who do not have any physical health problems, that's correct.

They can still be prescribed for their correct use to treat actual physical health conditions such as precious puberty, prostate cancer and endometriosis. In these cases they are prescribed sparingly, because the side effects are known to be severe.

It's not discrimination to say we are going to clamp down on the improper use of these drugs which has caused harm to physically healthy but vulnerable children.

Regarding the "trans rights" point more generally, we'll have to agree to disagree. I think most people would agree that this group has an extraordinary amount of power though, and question why this is the case.

i did say "one election away", so i wasn't talking about labour. i was talking about the very real possibility of a reform or further right conservative govt in 4 years.

also "No one else is being prescribed dangerous experimental drugs which actually harm their physical health and shorten their lifespan and for which there is no good evidence base, just because they want them."
the new restrictions on puberty blockers are only for trans youth, they will continue to be used for children with precocious puberty and other cancer patients, as they have been for over 40 years.

i also encourage you to read what i actually wrote - i'm not arguing for trans rights to access single sex spaces, or even for any aspect of trans rights at all! I was just saying i think you are overstating the "power" exerted by this group

Here are the guidelines and, as you’ll see if you read them, you are being extremely irresponsible in posting in this very oversimplified way about causation in young people. https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/media-guidelines/media-guidelines-reporting-suicide/

causes of suicide are complex and it is rare to find a single cause. For what it’s worth, my previous job involved working through all inquests for two major English regions and in the five years I worked on this, there were no cases of the kind you speculate about.

A lot of us on this board are parents and grandparents and young people’s lives are precious to us. Please give that some thought before you make any future posts.

What do you mean by their access to healthcare being removed?

Are trans people being turned away from A&E? Denied cancer treatment? Unable to register with a GP? Forced to pay for care which everyone gets for free?

No?

Then their access to healthcare is the same as everyone else's.

No one else is being prescribed dangerous experimental drugs which actually harm their physical health and shorten their lifespan and for which there is no good evidence base, just because they want them.

As for gender reassignment laws being up for debate, well, of course they should be up for debate. No one else has a right to falsify their legal documents. No one else is allowed to use single sex spaces for the opposite sex. No one else is allowed to impinge on the rights of other groups in this way. Of course that should be up for debate. Debating whether trans people actually, maybe, shouldn't have extra rights that no one else has and which have a negative effect on other groups, whether perhaps they should just have exactly the same rights as everyone else and no more, is not evidence that trans people are marginalised. It's a sign that actually they have special privileges that the rest us don't have, and we're allowed to debate whether that should be the case. Trying to tell us it's not up for debate is evidence of the power this group has.

Gay rights is not the same debate. Gay people's rights don't take away from any other group.

There is, in any case, no evidence that the new Labour government intends to restrict gay people's rights in any way, so your friends' fears appear to be unfounded. Donald Trump does not make laws in the UK.

If your gay friends are concerned about attitudes in the UK hardening against "the LGBTQ+ community", maybe that's a sign that they need to consciously uncouple from the TQ+, whose behaviour may be actively detrimental to their interests.