@nestoftables
https://www.ed.ac.uk/equality-diversity/students/educateyourself/what-does-being-trans-and-or-non-binary-mean-new/what-is-transphobia
I don't know if this has been shared here before, but it doesn't feel right! :/
No wonder. The statement is inexpertly argued, surprisingly badly composed and structured, inadequately formatted and desperately crying out for even a basic edit. It is also full of fallacies, unproven assertions, misrepresentations, generalisations, strawmen, and downright moronic statements.
It misrepresents the concerns of women's rights campaigners, it conflates general responses to gender-non-conformity coming from the wider public with the feminist criticism of the enforcement of sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes evident in much of transgender ideology. It provides no evidence for any assertions made and it is inexplicably interspersed with personal statements by anonymous complainers in a way guaranteed to see them ignored and most likely just perceived as a hindrance to the reader.
It makes claims about history that are improbable and unprovable but hides this with a sleight of hand. There is ample evidence of the existence of individuals who break gender norms throughout history and across societies. Many of these individuals were either homosexual or bisexual, and this is typically (but not always) what lies at the root of two-spirit or third gender (or more) groups in typically (but not always) deeply homophobic societies. We have no evidence however of transsexual individuals reaching back thousands of years, precisely because societies tended to be so punitive towards individuals who were not heterosexuals that the only way out for many homosexual or bisexual individuals was to assume an opposite-sex identity. In the absence of modern medicine and because we cannot look into the heads of long dead people who left no written testament to their beliefs, often because they couldn't write, we can only ascertain that they defied their societies' gender norms but not whether that was based on a belief of being the other sex or merely presenting as such to be able to live their sexuality. That 4500 years figure is also oddly specific and likely chosen to make the claim seem more evidence-based. For a statement posted at a university website, I would certainly have expected a footnote referencing the source of this claim. But by throwing in something unverifiable with something that has indeed been shown to be true, it seeks to hoodwink us. And all for the purpose of such an irrelevant appeal to tradition. I mean even if the modern transsexual had existed in 2500 BC, what has their mere existence to do with women's rights campaigners seeking to uphold women's sex-based rights?
The misrepresentation of our concerns, especially those about the treatment of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria is in parts so clumsy, I came away from reading this thinking that my 14 year old could quite credibly have written a better statement and of course the overreach in including disbelief in the definition of transphobia is so preposterous it immediately casts a shadow over everything that follows.
All in all this is possibly the most laughably stupid and worst-written statement of its kind I've come across. And I've seen loads by now. Including some composed by actual children.
So yeah, it doesn't feel right to me either. And not just because a text of such low quality ought never to disgrace a university website.