Who do the transgender activists actually represent?

[FrustratinglyIrrational]

From my interactions with transgender women in normal life, I get the impression that many are just trying to get on with their lives quietly, and have no desire to make women uncomfortable. They feel unrepresented and embarrassed by the activist movement, and are nothing like the entitled bullies screaming all over social media. So who are all these people pushing the "trans agenda"? I don't believe they have the best interests of gender dysphoric people at heart, because their actions are doing a huge amount of damage to the public perception of that group, and they must be aware of that. They are giving very tolerant people good reasons to become less tolerant. And then claiming that tolerance for transgender people is at an all-time low, and that we should therefore acquiesce to their every demand. Are these activists not ultimately the biggest oppressors of the people they claim to represent?

@KittenKong

And in other news...

The Crown Prosecution Service leaves the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme.

"We have carried out a review of Stonewall’s Diversity Scheme and have decided to end our membership“

Is this recent? Do you have a link?

Good summary @QueenPeary

My first thought went straight to attention seeking. Like a pp said, this is far removed from people who want no fuss made and just want to carry on as usual. The new breed are all about validation, celebration, centering and woe betide anyone who doesn't acquiesce to every demand. They've had or are still having issues, ignored or bullied, ostracised.

And here comes this very appealing movement that says join us and you'll be popular, people will have to listen to you now, you'll be special. And if you aren't we'll make them pay.

Of course they'll join it, and they'll aggressively defend it. They won't give a damn about the AGPs joining in, lesbians told to do penis, sports, rapists in female prisons, single sex spaces. They get what they want out of it and bollocks to everyone else.

That annoying video of someone singing if you can call it that condescendingly and creepy at women, specifically lesbians that trauma be damned they need to make themselves available as sexual partners - that sums up this activism in a nutshell for me. Power and entitlement.

As others say, I doubt there's one reason or any degree of homogeneity or community.

I do wonder if young people who have been part of social media families via YouTube and Instagram might find it especially difficult to survive what would happen to their social reputation if they were to desist or change their mind and set-up specific organisations (they'll have seen both WPUK and LGB Alliance styled as 'hate groups'). This is a very powerful social phenomenon that has the power to pursue them in much more destructive and persistent ways than people who did not grow up with this as children through to adulthood.

I can't bear the social media archaeology that is being used to denounce young people (the young footballer who'd made a rebarbative comment in Year 9 - which scarcely distinguishes anybody at that age).

Years ago, I attended a talk about where this was all going and the speaker said that his hope was that we'd all become rather more realistic and forgiving of eachother's early and unwise transgressions as a result of social media. Sadly, we seem to have become more hyper-polarised.

OvaHere - it’s the talk of twitter (reliable sources). I’ll take a look...

I don’t know how to link to a twitter thread

I wonder if there’s a generational gap between the more strident trans activists and the trans people who just want to get on with things. In my experience at university the young trans people were heavily onboard with the modern trans activist movement- they have totally bought in. I know a few trans women from lgbt events who seem fairly non confrontational and quiet in person, but on Twitter they have the super abrasive trans activist persona (calling jk Rowling slurs, saying t**fs must be physically attacked, etc.) Someone I know has recently come out as non binary and she honestly thinks that anyone who disagrees with the postmodern trans theory is a transphobic bigot. So I definitely see a connection between trans activism and actual trans people. However , i do think it’s true to say they are maybe more keyboard warriors!

I have noticed a lot of mostly young people who seem to have no particular political opinions about anything else, but are extremely militant on this one issue, to the extent of wanting people who disagree to lose their jobs/get banned from social media/be deplatformed. It is odd.

@KittenKong

I don’t know how to link to a twitter thread

You see the symbol on the far right, underneath the tweet? To the right of the heart symbol? If you select that, it should offer you a dropdown for which an option is 'share' or 'copy' - and that would give you the link to paste.

twitter.com/johnmcm1/status/1437353855457665024?s=21

This?

@KittenKong

twitter.com/johnmcm1/status/1437353855457665024?s=21

This?

Yes. That's it. Thank you.

@KittenKong

twitter.com/johnmcm1/status/1437353855457665024?s=21

This?

Thanks

@WeeBisom

I wonder if there’s a generational gap between the more strident trans activists and the trans people who just want to get on with things. In my experience at university the young trans people were heavily onboard with the modern trans activist movement- they have totally bought in. I know a few trans women from lgbt events who seem fairly non confrontational and quiet in person, but on Twitter they have the super abrasive trans activist persona (calling jk Rowling slurs, saying t**fs must be physically attacked, etc.) Someone I know has recently come out as non binary and she honestly thinks that anyone who disagrees with the postmodern trans theory is a transphobic bigot. So I definitely see a connection between trans activism and actual trans people. However , i do think it’s true to say they are maybe more keyboard warriors!

That reminds me of Lily Madigan (remember them?) on twitter versus Lily Madigan being grilled by Julia Hartley Brewer. The latter being a nonsensical train wreck.

I worked a while ago with a transwoman who had surgically transitioned in the 1980s, very old school, just wore jeans and a jumper and no makeup and got on with her job. She passed, pretty much, as a middle aged woman with no makeup, jeans and a jumper. She was very keen on being treated as a woman in every respect.

I liked her and she was easy to get on with. You’d have expected her not to have any truck with the current TRA stuff, but last time I looked her up she was doing a bit of online crusading in the wokesphere, and fully signed up to the whole agenda. So I don’t think that there is necessarily a clear distinction between groups. I think one shouldn’t underestimate a tribal adherence to the ideology even from people who you’d think would not believe in some or all of it.

In NI there is believed to be a phenomenon of paramilitaries winding up youth and communities and letting them go into the street to create chaos.

It has been suggested that keeping the security forces and community leaders and the general public ‘busy’ with that nonsense is leaving those paramilitary orgs free to get on with their (more) illegal/immoral activities.

Personally I believe something similar is happening here. As more high profile sex offenders got caught, safe-guarding increased, women’s rights/equality and the MeToo movement prospered, sex offenders have had to look for other avenues to:

a) deflect attention from their activities
b) deflect resources (financial/legal/energy wise) from safe-guarding/detection/prosecution
c) create new streams of victims who are mentally, emotionally, physically and financially vulnerable
d) have a ‘get out of jail free/get out of male jail free’ card to hand if caught/prosecuted.

Once the MLaundries, ‘troubled’ children’s homes, easier adoptions/fostering, blind faith in religious orders, medical professions etc became less viable or defunct sources of ready victims, and hitching to gay rights failed to fool the public - sex offenders against women and children needed another route.

Just a theory on my part of course but given the high instance of claims by sex offenders/murderers of ‘trans’ or ‘kink’ as mitigation and the systematic attacks on safe-guarding, its a theory I think that may hold more water than I wish it did.

Been gender non-conforming all my life. Told a younger acquaintance that I don't like the word queer - it's the N word and no amount of "reclaiming " makes it otherwise. I've been blocked.
Like every generation before it, kids think they have discovered sex (the act not "gender") , sexuality and androgyny.
Gender is a made up concept for
a) prudes who don't like saying sex; and
b) kids who think they have the key to the complexity of human self expression.

Have they never seen clips of film from the swinging 60s (the young folk of then who almost died when they saw what their parents feb got up to in the blackouts) etc etc etc.

The trans people i know (a variety of ages and sexes, but mostly in their 40s, including an old school transsexual who transitioned 20 years ago) aren't strongly involved with the activism but are certainly not critical of it. I think that they have been taken for a ride as much as everyone else - they've been told that there are all these people out there who hate them, and so it is imperative to mount a robust counter offensive. That is what they think it's about.

@EdgeOfACoin

Is the distinction between 'transwomen just trying to get on with their lives' and 'transactivists' as clear cut as we sometimes believe?

I mean, who was it in 2004 who campaigned for the GRA and the legal recognition of gender reassignment? (Not rhetorical - a genuine question). Mtf transitioners have used female toilets for years, without ever requesting their own facilities because they were concerned for women.

There is still a belief among the old-school trans community that one has a 'gendered brain' and that one can 'live as a man' and 'live as a woman' in a way that is separate from biological reality. These views are to the detriment of society, particularly to women, no matter how much sympathy one may feel for an individual suffering from gender dysphoria.

The TRAs take all of the beliefs of the old-school trans community to their logical conclusions. Tbh, I think all the TRAs have done is shone a spotlight on the whole ideology and many of us, who previously gave it little thought but were broadly sympathetic, are now questioning the premise on which the entire ideology is based.

I'm not sure a lot of these kinds of issues were considered systematically, though. It was really such a small number of people, often not with a group of others around them, that they were almost making it up as they went along and just did what seemed least likely to make waves.

Most people would go through their whole life and meet very few transexuals, probably never meet up with any in a place like a changing room. To have an overarching policy would be difficult, with so few people in some many different environments.

As for who they represent - I agree it's a mix. Parents of kids are totally different than the male transwomen activists, and "allies" are different again.

But I do believe that there is a core of activists, and not just in gender activism but in a few areas, who appear to have the hallmarks of various personality disorders. Those people are representing themselves and their own immediate ends.

TRAs basically represent themselves. People (incels…) who behave like that clearly don’t have the empathy required to actually understand someone else’s needs, let alone represent them.

Still, if ‘ordinary’ trans people don’t like them, it would be nice if they had the balls to say so. Doesn’t exactly cover them with glory by letting it slide.

@irresistibleoverwhelm

I worked a while ago with a transwoman who had surgically transitioned in the 1980s, very old school, just wore jeans and a jumper and no makeup and got on with her job. She passed, pretty much, as a middle aged woman with no makeup, jeans and a jumper. She was very keen on being treated as a woman in every respect.

I liked her and she was easy to get on with. You’d have expected her not to have any truck with the current TRA stuff, but last time I looked her up she was doing a bit of online crusading in the wokesphere, and fully signed up to the whole agenda. So I don’t think that there is necessarily a clear distinction between groups. I think one shouldn’t underestimate a tribal adherence to the ideology even from people who you’d think would not believe in some or all of it.

That reminds me of the "don't ask, don't tell" policies in many institutions. If my lesbian sister in law had married her partner, she would have lost her job. So she could be lesbian, just not be "showy" or "official" about it.

Are we asking that from trans people now? Be trans quietly? Not so "in your face"?

She can’t lose her job though can she - that’s illegal.

I want people at work to be professional, dress and act professionally, I don’t want to discuss their sex lives or medical issues - just get on with the job. Follow the law and don’t play games and make demands that no one else could possibly away with.

I don’t really care to know about their personal lives (unless relevant). And I don’t want it to be all ‘being your whole self to work’ (the NSPCC showed where that could lead).

I am a foul mouthed sweary git, but in the office I am all sweetness and light, super friendly and super helpful. Because it’s my job to get along with the other teams and advise them.

@CatherinaJTV you’re completely missing my point. My point was (in relation to the thread topic), that my colleague was someone who transitioned well before all the current TRA gender ideology side of it came into being. She transitioned when there was a very different idea of the “transsexual” to the current “trans umbrella”. (I’m presuming that you know the current gender ideology simply did not exist in the 1980s?)

Some of the ideas in the current ideology I cannot imagine that she genuinely believes, as they are in direct contrast to her work; but she seems still okay to go along with the current movement, perhaps not quite appreciating what it involves (she’d now be in her seventies so I imagine she doesn’t delve much into youth social media).

That reminds me of the "don't ask, don't tell" policies in many institutions. If my lesbian sister in law had married her partner, she would have lost her job. So she could be lesbian, just not be "showy" or "official" about it.

When and where was this? I’ve been a lesbian woman in the workplace in the 90s and 2000s, and never been openly discriminated against - in fact my partner, and the female and male partners of other gay colleagues, were regularly invited to work events. I’m pretty sure I could have brought a discrimination case for being fired for being lesbian even well before the EQA2010, so are you talking about a time well before this? Except civil partnerships only came in in 2004, and same sex marriage in 2014 (after the EQA2010), so I strongly suspect you are talking a bit of creative nonsense here.

Maybe they are in America? Which most of the world isn’t. Not so’s you’d know sometimes. Different laws, different history, different culture...