Munroe Bergdorf

[ripples101]

I am trans.

I was a follower of Munroe Bergdorf’s Instagram.

Munroe wrote a post about JK Rowling, calling her a dangerous woman to the trans community. Munroe stayed something along the lines of

“JKR is a dangerous cisgendered, white woman who is causing harm”

I replied to this post, asking why Munroe felt it necessary to mention JK Rowing’s racial identity.

I wasn’t Abusive. I just felt that it wasn’t necessary, in regards to what Munroe was being critical of, to mention JK Rowling’s ethnicity.

Within minutes my post was deleted and I was blocked.

I am trans, and Munroe has silenced me.

So it seems nothing can be questioned. Any intent to ask a question, or to strike up debate, will be met with being silenced.

This is fast turning into propaganda. This is fast turning into thought crime. This is fast turning into silencing. This is fast turning into something it should never have been.

When a trans person isn’t even able to question another trans person, what chance do “people who belong to sex that menstruate”* have?

• Christ, I don’t even feel like I can use the word women here without being controversial.

I am so sorry for people to whom I thought I identified alongside (trans people) who are doing this to you. I feel sick and ashamed of what I am, because of people who are representing me.

I feel like I literally have no space left. And I can’t help but feel that a lot of biological woman are feeling the same way. And you have so much more to lose than I ever will, so I simply can’t imagine how this is making you all feel.

Home2018 I'm afraid that I've reported your post as MN do not permit the c** word to describe women. I hope that they will just remove this term and not your whole post.

There isn't such a thing as 'white feminists and everyone else'. 'White feminists' are not a homogenous group, that's a false premise for any sort of argument.

This is a feminist board. There are few places either in RL or on t'internet where women's views, experiences and rights are centred, so it would be good to keep that focus here, I think. This is a power struggle that women have lived with since time began and still are.

Women are being murdered at alarming rate. Women are not murdering Black trans women, or anyone else for that matter.

And yes I'm pretty sure that misogyny and sexism are alive and kicking (women's heads in quite often). This is the struggle women are living now.

Just a few days ago, MB used her platforms to defend a white man who had tweeted highly offensive comments about a trans person. The sort of comments that I have never seen a feminist make. Yet there she was, defending him with no mention of his race, his maleness or the harm that those comments would have mysteriously done to the trans community if they'd have come from a woman's mouth.

How strange. Not.

Thank God

Feel free to do that yourself but don't expect an audience for preaching.

I challenged the statement that they were being killed at "alarming rates"

Yes, by saying it's certainly not happening in the UK, you missed that bit off.
What about the rest of the world? Does that not matter too?

@HH160bpm

No I agree.

Logically, it would make sense to focus on the actual murderers no?

Cis gendered men!

Or maybe you would rather focus on a group that 'may' be going to the effort to live a very difficult life and change their entire identity, to what, attack cis gendered women?

If that was their aim, why wouldn't they just do it as cis gendered men.

This logic is so stupid.

@Home2018 When you have these conversations, are you in rooms full of people who only look like you Sometimes I am, sometimes not. But I guess you weren’t aiming that question at me?

First this The MN feminist board is such an echo chamber and it's becoming more and more apparent the day.
Then in the same post this Ask people in your community. You wont get a reasonable or educated answer here

Sounds like there are lots of echo chambers then.

And yes there are a lot of criticisms of gender ideology on the MN feminist board.

I suspect that's because these views are deleted and accounts banned on platforms like Twitter and whole forums involving I believe 65k feminists shut down as what happened with Reddit.

And some of the people who are criticising gender ideology are trans and/or black.

An average of 3 women - biological women - are murdered daily in the US.

It's actually considerably more than that. Those are the known femicide statistics. Femicide has a narrower definition as it rests on the presumed motive of a male killing a female.

There are between 3 and 4K women murdered in the US every year, so around 10 a day.

@Ereshkigalangcleg It seems to be the case. Almost as if they think that black women are easier to manipulate.

A quick look

From the US, HRC (I've no idea how reputable or accurate this organisation and its data are), suggests that on average ~25 transgender, non-binary etc... are murdered each year (from 2013 to 2019).

www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-trans-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2020

Pink News (which I understand has a shitty reputation but I'm not overly-invested in putting loads of time into this, it was the first result returned on my web search) suggests that 0.6% of adults in the US (1.3 millions adults) identify as transgender.

www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/04/02/percentage-us-population-transgender-statistics/

In 2019, 27 trans people were murdered (per HRC) out of a population of 1.3 million = murder rate of 2 per 100k.

According to this wiki page - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicide_rate - there are only 11 states with a lower murder rate in 2018.

Thus, assuming these stats to be accurate (and I have no way of proving this, only what I found quickly online), trans people appear to be murdered at a much lower rate than the general US population.

WIthout details of the perpetrators too, there is also no proof of any particular racist element.

Munroe, at points in her life, has had privilege over biological women. At this point, Munroe does not have that privilege. Come out of your hateful bubble. Can you really imagine what it would feel like to exist in world where the vast majority of people still laugh and question your very existence. I do not think there is a person that suffers more on this earth than a black biological woman, yet, I would still rather this space vs becoming a transwoman
What you're so scared of I do not know. But what I do know is those that have presided over the most hateful acts in history have almost always done so because of fear.
Thank God MN is not a representation of the progressive voice, white women included

Agree with all this - I just changed the c word because I see someone's reported your post for using it and it's a good post well said that there's no reason to come down for (apart from the c word that people on here tend to report)

^Yes, by saying it's certainly not happening in the UK, you missed that bit off.
What about the rest of the world? Does that not matter too?^

Yes of course it does. It isn't happening in the US or anywhere else than arguably Brazil at "alarming rates" either, btw. But also, Bergdorf is mostly concerned about UK issues, as Bergdorf is in the UK and is using this to influence the UK debate.

Also, this is a trans person's thread? Shouldn't you be listening and educating yourself?

Munroe, at points in her life, has had privilege over biological women. At this point, Munroe does not have that privilege.

Really? Because it seems to me that Munroe has a huge platform on which to shit on women from and takes every opportunity to do so.

Let's not forget that activists like Munroe are very proactive and invested in rewriting law and policy and language to disadvantage women as a class and thus far have been fairly successful at it.

The fact that Munroe and those like them have been able to achieve this in such a small amount of time smacks of incredible privilege over women.

LemonadeAndDaisyChains um, people report the c word because MN don't permit it.

What are your views, if any, on MB using her platforms to support Damian Barr? His tweets were VILE, utterly transphobic and despicable.

Yet MB supports him without reference to the fact that he's a white man and seemingly without regard for how harmful his tweets could be to the trans community.

Thank goodness there isn't a massive campaign to make race self ID. It would undermine the whole movement of an oppressed group.

@LemonadeAndDaisyChains

Munroe, at points in her life, has had privilege over biological women. At this point, Munroe does not have that privilege. Come out of your hateful bubble. Can you really imagine what it would feel like to exist in world where the vast majority of people still laugh and question your very existence. I do not think there is a person that suffers more on this earth than a black biological woman, yet, I would still rather this space vs becoming a transwoman What you're so scared of I do not know. But what I do know is those that have presided over the most hateful acts in history have almost always done so because of fear. Thank God MN is not a representation of the progressive voice, white women included

Agree with all this - I just changed the c word because I see someone's reported your post for using it and it's a good post well said that there's no reason to come down for (apart from the c word that people on here tend to report)

How did MB achieve this “less privileged” position?

And does it work both ways? I’m sure the Uighur women in China who are being forcibly sterilised would love to know how to become “more privileged”.

@Home2018 your posts are fine but if you use the c word ( c*s) people are going to try and take it down even though they're good points.
Use biological instead as that's OK on here

At this point, Munroe does not have that privilege

Please describe how this change takes place.

@TheProdigalKittensReturn

Can I be the captain of Team Snark? We'll also need a Team Can't Be Arsed and a Team Do It Yourself.

Team Can’t Be Arsed for me. Blame perimenopause, though another 6 months and I may be pure snark.

@averysuitablegirl

LemonadeAndDaisyChains um, people report the c word because MN don't permit it.

What are your views, if any, on MB using her platforms to support Damian Barr? His tweets were VILE, utterly transphobic and despicable.

Yet MB supports him without reference to the fact that he's a white man and seemingly without regard for how harmful his tweets could be to the trans community.

Did you miss my question LemonadeAndDaisyChains?

I think Munroe Bergdorf is just a deeply unpleasant person, regardless of how she identifies.

I’m mixed-race (I think she is too? Someone tell me if I’m wrong about that) and I can sometimes just about “pass” for white so of course I haven’t had the same experiences as more visible minorities but I have to say I have a real problem with “real” POC saying “White people are like this” or “White people are like that”. Even the word “white” has become loaded with negative connotations, which as someone from a multi-racial family, I am really uncomfortable with. I KNOW that this is nothing compared to what black people experience but I don’t understand why that makes it OK to make generalisations - often quite hateful ones - about the entire white race. It’s not equality to try to replace one kind of racism with another.

Maybe the question should be What are your views, if any, on MB using her platforms to silence the OP, Lemon?

Why has the OP been silenced? The OP was not abusive to MB. How do you explain this?