Let me tell you about my takeaway from this thread, @Ijustreallywantacat. What I’m seeing is that there is a cohort of posters - including but not limited to: you, @fallenwood, @toconclude, @DellaPorter, @VladmirsPoutine, @Viviennemary, @Miliao, @ABCeasyasdohrayme and @Lokdok - who are choosing to deny/dismiss/minimise this particular form of sexual abuse of some of one group of female people by some of one group of male people - and it seems to me that you thereby implicitly condone and enable it.
Just as many people denied/dismissed/minimised the sexual abuses carried out by Savile, by some Roman Catholic priests, by some Muslim men who were part of grooming gangs in various English towns; and thereby implicitly condoned, and enabled those abuses to be much more widespread and continue for far longer, and affect more victims than would otherwise have been the case.
The victims of Savile, of RC priests, of the grooming gangs were all disbelieved, blamed, and vilified for “smearing” their abusers by those around them, including staff at children’s homes, members of the RC church, the police. Some grooming gang victims were themselves charged with “prostitution” offences and I believe one girl was even prosecuted for “harassment” of one of her abusers, seen as “racially aggravated”, before her situation was recognised as abuse.
What you are doing when you disbelieve, deny and dismiss is nothing new. Victim blaming has always been a thing. It is an easier course of action to take than recognising there is a genuine problem in a community you feel part of, or feel loyalty to, or feel protective of. It happens all the time in families where abuse of any kind happens too.
This is one of the ways abusers manage to keep on abusing, how they get away with it. The people around them don’t want to know, have a vested interest in not knowing. It’s not a problem if we don’t recognise it as a problem. It’s not a problem for us.
But it is a very real problem for a lot of lesbians currently. I have personally spoken to a young woman it happened to: a lesbian student who formerly went along with genderist “TWAW” ideology 100%, till she and several of her friends were all sexually assaulted by the same biologically male trans person in their LGBT group. The other testimonies I’ve come across have all been online or from friends of friends, because the lesbians I know are older and/or in long term relationships and so not likely to be targets of this themselves. But they know it’s happening too.
(And in fact I’ve never even spoken to one person who was a victim of Savile or one of the grooming gangs - but I don’t need to, to know those abuses happened. The evidence is there for those who are not deliberately looking away from it.)
It’s not even being denied by those who are fostering this culture. Twitter is awash with “trans rights activists” literally proclaiming it is transphobic for lesbians to be exclusively same-sex attracted. Nancy Kelley herself has equated same-sex sexual orientation with a “societal prejudice”!
The coercion is blatant and highly, highly visible and I’m struggling to find a parallel - all the other agencies that have told homosexual people they need to “rethink” their “prejudice” over the years have been coming from a deeply conservative/religious perspective. The truly shocking thing about this is that it’s coming from those who are supposedly “progressive” and on the side of gay people and gay rights. Supposedly.
If anyone else was telling lesbians their sexual orientation wasn’t completely valid and shouldn’t be respected just as it is, would you accept it? Would you accept it from a church, from a right wing government? If not, why do you accept it from Stonewall and other trans rights bodies/activists? Why is it “conversion therapy” if it comes from a fundamentalist church, but “trans inclusion” if it comes from Stonewall?
Even if it were only a “tiny minority” of biologically male trans people doing this, it would still need to be recognised and addressed. No number of victims of rape and abuse is an acceptable amount of collateral damage. But the fact is, we don’t have any reassurance at all that it’s only a tiny, tiny minority of biologically male trans people doing this, especially when Stonewall itself is supporting the mindset that justifies it.
Just as it’s a fallacy to say that it’s only a tiny minority of biologically male people in general who do or would sexually offend, given the chance. When men speak honestly, without fear of consequences, it turns out quite a few of them are happy to be predators after all. This thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a4387825-Research-reveals-rapes-and-assaults-admitted-to-by-male-UK-students?msgid=112051215#112051215 makes sobering reading: the article linked to has a survey of male students in the UK, 11.4% of whom admitted to sexual offending. 11.4% is a significant minority, and obviously those numbers of offending males can catastrophically impact a much, much higher percentage of female victims, given they will usually offend as often as they can get away with.
There is no reason to think there would be any lower incidence of predators within the biologically male trans population than within the biologically male population in general. The MoJ found that of the 125 biologically male trans prisoners known to be in prison in England and Wales, 60 had been convicted of sex offences. Sixty. Close to half. Which is actually a much higher percentage than within the general male prison population (around 18-20%, I believe). fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-prisoners/
So the statistics that we have (and that women have had to fight very hard to have access to) show that being trans does not in any way lessen the likelihood of a biologically male person being a sex offender. And we know that male people in general are far more disposed to violent and sexual crime than female people. So it is not “transphobic” to extrapolate that there will be a significant minority of biologically male trans people who are sexual predators. Just as in the wider male population.
I am sure, Ijustreallywantacat that you think of yourself as a nice, decent, liberal-minded person who has a keen interest in social justice and protecting the most vulnerable in society. Just like me. The difference between us, I suppose, is who we perceive to be most vulnerable and at risk.
I doubt very much your trans friends are representative of the wider trans population that exists nowadays. I’m guessing they’re “old school”, dysphoric, trying to pass, sexually attracted to males, and possibly yes, quite vulnerable. But the “trans umbrella” has widened considerably in recent years, and includes many males who don’t have dysphoria at all, who were once called cross dressers or fetishists, who are very proud of their “female penis” and very much enjoy using it for sex with women. And some of whom use the protection that being a member of a “marginalised, vulnerable” subset of (male) people affords them to behave coercively and abusively towards some of those women (and girls) they want to have sex with. Or, more properly, the women and girls they want to abuse.
In that scenario, it’s the latter who are vulnerable and at risk, not the former. It’s the latter I care about. And I find it appalling that you don’t.
This is a particular form of abuse being carried out by some members of one cohort against some members of another cohort, and all of you saying it’s transphobic to bring it up, recognise or discuss it are enabling that abuse. That’s how it works. Abuse that isn’t named and can’t even be mentioned flourishes. Abusers thrive on denial.
This (enabling) presumably isn’t what you’re consciously intending to do, but it is nonetheless the result of what you’re doing. Abusive cultures need to be named in order to be tackled. You don’t want people to even name this. It’s shameful.
(If anyone feels I have misrepresented what you’re saying, please do come back and say that you unequivocally condemn all forms of abuse and you welcome any light being shone on abuses that have hitherto been covered up and not spoken of publicly, that you agree that patterns of abuse must be named and recognised in order to be effectively tackled and prevented in the future, no matter who the abusers. I would welcome that most heartily, and so would the women affected by this, I’m sure.)