Would You Like to Share a Prison Cell with This Person? **MNHQ edit, this post contains rather graphic material**

[CKDexterHaven]

gendertrender.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/laverne-cox-launches-media-campaign-in-support-of-transwoman-synthia-china-blast-convicted-for-the-rape-murder-and-abuse-of-the-corpse-of-thirteen-year-old-ebony-nicole-williams/#comments

I particularly like the bit about giving birth to little baby serial killers. Is this the kind of campaign feminism should be getting behind?

Oh, and I, too, don't believe for a second that Laverne Cox didn't know what the crimes this murdered and rapist committed were. Three minutes on google would have sorted this out, stat.

Also, what actor or agent would agree to front a campaign for a prisoner without asking what the prisoner was in for?

*murderer, not murdered.

Why do you think she has pulled it now annie?

If she knew what the crimes were and all the other weird shit then she must have known it wasn't going to be met positively!

I don't know, Seven, but people who live in a bubble of friends who all share their opinions sometimes get a shock when the rest of the world sits up and goes "wait a minute...". This may be one of those times, with that bubble of yes-friends amplified since Laverne made the Time cover.

(I'm done with ever thinking Laverne's opinion on anything is worth tuppence. I don't know what's worse - being thought so stupid you wouldn't ask what a prisoner was in for before you championed them, or being so morally empty you thought the real issue here is the rapist/murderer's comfort, not the child who was raped and had her neck broken, before her body was set on fire.)

Dunno.

And that's part of the problem with famous types. Their opinions are sought and listened to. But they are just people the same as everyone else, ones who happen to be successful in something that makes lots of people know who they are. Doesn't automtically make them wise.

Words fail me
Can anyone help me to understand why transexual rights are defended under the 'LGBT' umbrella?
As I understand it, transexuals dismiss any inference that their condition is related to their sexuality. If it is a 'gender identity' issue why do LGBT groups continue to include them?

Morecrack, from reading Twitter, and I'm aware that doesn't constitute proper research, there do seem to be rumblings within the LGB part of LGBT that are saying exactly what you have said. The comments on Kellie Maloney in the gay press have been telling as well.

MoreCrack that is quite a logical point, I never thought of that before.

I would imagine it's a historical thing to do with some gay men and women who prefer to dress as the opposite gender either full or part time and sort of extended from there. But you're right, from a logical perspective.

Chaos that is interesting.

I think a lot of groups are feeling a bit hijacked and pressurised maybe, from an extreme element in the trans community. No-one likes to be called a bigot for refusing to accept and support things that will fuck things up for another "minority" group, often that they are in.

Sorry that last part was rather obvious and understated to people who I'm sure know a lot more about all this than me!

Laverne Cox is up for an Emmy in a couple of days. If Laverne wins Laverne will be the first transgender person to win such a prize, so it's a huge coup. I guess Laverne didn't want this PR clusterfuck ruining everything. Unless Laverne is so girly-brained Laverne can't use a computer I'd guess Laverne knew everything about Synthia.

I work in the media and know how under-represented women are and it's also annoying that a transwoman has taken a nomination away from a woman. I'm not saying Laverne shouldn't be nominated because Laverne is a transwoman (although by all accounts Laverne isn't a great actor and the nomination is ideologically motivated) but I'm saying why does a man have to take the space belonging to someone in an under-represented group? Laverne should have been nominated in the male supporting actor category.

Avoiding pronouns is so exhausting.

The issue being raised by some is that the rapist/murderer shouldn't be punished more than a non-trans person who had committed the same crime by being held in solitary, but

1. they don't seem to be held in solitary now, or be troubled by their current living arrangements, if the previously-mentioned accounts are to be believed,

and 2) if they were in a women's prison, they most likely would be segregated, as women in prison are not, on the whole, known for looking kindly on other prisoners who have killed children.

Tl;dr the SRLP's campaign makes no sense, even if you ignore the whole "prioritising the comfort of someone who raped and murdered a child" thing.

Checkingoftheprivilege is a troll blog, I believe. Still, the stuff posted on there is often indistinguishable from 'proper' blogs.

(unless the trans people are DFAB)

Well, shit, if that wasn't any clearer. Born female, and you are stuffed whichever way you identify.

Ha, Disgruntled, it's true it's very difficult to distinguish troll from perfectly sincere!

Also read in the comments section that we now have to call vaginas 'front holes'. Please tell me that is a parody as well. I'm not referring to anyone's vagina as a 'front hole' to make men feel included as women.

The way trans allies are reblogging that post saying that Blast never raped Ebony makes me feel physically sick. You know what it looks like to me? Erasure of the female victim. Current transactivism is like a fucking steam roller. They will smash, crush, destroy ANYTHING that they see as a challenge to getting what they want. Nobody else matters - not even a raped, murdered child. Nothing is as important as them getting what they want.

Fucking hell. How much rope do these extreme trans activists have now? When will it be 'enough'?

SevenZarkSeven - It reminds me of all that stuff about the National Council for Civil Liberties in the 70s where people were so busy trying to be liberal they forgot that paedophilia was a bad thing - you know that stuff with PIE in the news.

This ^^

Is that the blog where they state that Sinthia was wearing a skirt cleaning the flat when she was arrested? That was an interesting read! So, far from repeatedly raping a young runaway PoC while slashing her body with a knife, s/he merely turned up later with a pair of marigolds and a bottle of jif. It wasn't her/him who killed the child, it was his lovely friend, who, it seems, accidentally broke her neck.

Sinthia took his/her cleaning duties a little far though when s/he went back to the body s/he had dumped from the freeway in a Pampers box and tried to set fire to it.

The erasure of Ebony Nicole Williams a 13 year old PoC by certain members of the Trans* community is disgusting.

Is that the blog where they state that Sinthia was wearing a skirt cleaning the flat when she was arrested?

I read an interview with Blast in which Blast says that Blast was wearing a skirt at the time and it was therefore ridiculous to suggest that Blast could have raped anyone

I'm not sure women's prisons are in any way geared up to take violent male offenders. Paris Green had to transferred to stop Paris having sex with female inmates. In the case of transgirl Jane Doe in America Jane had to be sent back to an all-male facility due to repeated, severe violence towards staff and inmates -
gendertrender.wordpress.com/?s=jane+doe

And for anyone who thinks trans violence never happens and we are all TERFy bigots - (trigger warning) -

outofmypantiesnow.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/when-is-90-not-substantially-all/

That second link has some stats in it which seem pretty unlikely to me, CKD, and I am really uncomfortable with the direction it is pushing which seems to demonise all MTF trans people.

Surely the extreme trans activists like the organisation in the OP are giving enough rope without needing to resort to this?

The fact that a group of people born and raised male can display violence associated with men is no surprise clearly but this blanket association with trans = sex crimes

I feel like I'm coming across as some kind of apologist on this thread and I really don't want a row, it's weird as I am extremely vocal in my loathing for gender / gender roles / societal pressure to conform to fitting into one of these small boxes + unimaginably massive problems with what the more extreme transactivists want in terms of eliminating the concept of sex + massive outrage with women's (FAAB) funding and space being reduced / stamped out / picketed away etc. But that link is just trying to stir up hatred for a whole group the way I read it.

Surely the analysis is that men as a class are inured to VAW and that people born and raised men will not magically escape from that by transitioning, rather than a suggestion that MTF trans is synonymous with violent sexual offender / paedophile which is really what that link is strongly implying.

I know I am going to get shouted at now but I felt I couldn't read that and let it slide really.

Someone has posted a picture of the girl who died now.

If Laverne Cox was a black woman and had always been a black woman Laverne's empathy would be for the 13 year old black girl who was murdered and not the violent man who killed her so horribly. Laverne has only changed tack on this because the Emmys are coming up and hasn't rescinded support for violent sex offending men being placed in women's prisons.

Does anyone else hate the way men writing about this have glossed over the crime? I've never heard about the rape and murder of a child being described as 'gangland killing' before. Anyone would think that Ebony was a gun-toting gangster killed in self-defence. Anyone would think that Synthia was imprisoned for wearing dresses and for being transgender, rather than for being a rapist and murderer.