Experiences of a Trans Person

[invalide]

I think it might be healthy to document here the experiences of someone from the other side, and for you to pay it some mind.

I'm an early-twenties STEM student working in renewable energies, and outside of my course I'm a photographer and musician. I've travelled a fair amount and adore my home country of Scotland. Living in Glasgow, I have found a queer community of beautiful people who create a joy to everyday life I treasure.

At the beginning of this month there was a 'Let Women Speak' rally held here that some of you here attended; I have seldom felt more unwelcome and stripped of dignity than while in your crowd, carrying out my photojournalistic duties (images 1&2). While capturing Kellie-Jay Keen pathologising my friends as subhuman perverts and members of the crowd flaunting their homophobia and their use of dogwhistles (subliminal far-right messaging) I was being brazenly looked up and down, receiving steely gazes and pursed lips and hushed whispers behind my back. While photographing the first speaker after Keen, who began her piece portraying autistic people as children devoid of agency, I was approached by one of you who made it clear I looked too queer for their liking and was squaring up for assault. I made my way out at this point (captured at 8:42 here and 9:09 here).
The atmosphere your movement brought to George Square was one I've only before experienced while documenting far-right rallies in Eastern Europe, where I have been hounded through the streets and beaten up for the same reason. I assure you, your ideology would feel very much at home there.

At the other side of the square things couldn't have been more different, you were bathed in colour and music and hugs and laughter, the place is full of friends dancing and dressed resplendent in whatever camp pretty things they felt like (images 2&3).

Ours was a crowd of locals; I strained to hear a Glasgow accent in yours.

Ours is a city that at short notice manages to fill the top of Buchanan Street (image 5) in solidarity with the queer community - the last time I saw it like this was during COP26. It's one that fills George Square in a candlelit vigil for Brianna Ghey.

Your movement has meant I'm called a pervert and a groomer while going about my average daily life. Our morally vacuous, increasingly fascist political class (thinking also of Magnus Hirschfeld and of Martin Niemöller's famous poem) is picking up what you've started and they're running with it. You may not call yourself a homophobe, a white nationalist or an antisemite, but you're sitting awfully comfortably considering that those that do find your movement incredibly attractive.

Yeah...but....NO!

I agree with every word you said💐

This is gonna blow your mind...

Those giant babybels? They are babybels.

The ones we get in the little nets...those are mini babybels!

Which suggests maybe out there somewhere....there are even bigger bels. Not baby at all, just bel.

😮

Women: we don't want males in our spaces
TRAs: you bitches, we will fuck you up, I'm a gon beat your ass, kill the TERFs, behead TERFS
Women: yeah, that's why.

Very much on point, @AlisonDonut

I will ask her this afternoon, when she's back from work. As she's Procrastination Personified, be prepared to wait a while!

"I'm a stem student" 😱 really? I am shook, I tell you.
"I felt unwelcome carrying out my journalistic duties" wait, I thought you were a stem student, not a journalist.
I mean, it's a bit creepy taking photos of women, but you do you boo.

Half the language you say we use MN would deleted straight away, I often wonder why you invade our space, rather than fighting with men on Facebook or Twitter. Whatever, you just increase traffic and interaction for these boards.

Nutshell 👏

Do you understand the lapse in logic there at all?

You and the OP have attempted to use cognitive distortions to present a group of people as being untouchable by the word ‘pervert’. No group of adults on earth are exempt from that.

There will be at least the same amount of male perverts who are in the trans community as there is in the general male population.

Do you believe that no pervert should be called out ever?

Do you believe a male with penis above the age of about 8, should undress in a female communal changing room ?

Maybe you can now also tell us why you are supporting a poster who has been clear that threatening women is expected and applauded because ‘retaliatiion’.?

Helleofabore · Today 07:38

There will be at least the same amount of male perverts who are in the trans community as there is in the general male population.

I'm sure you'll recall the recent discussions on MN, regarding Pink Leggings and the fact that transw in prison are five times more likely to be there for sex offences than the other prisoners. So, it's a far higher proportion.

(Not being critical of you!)

Mind. Is. Blown.

How big is a giant baby bel?

There are giant babybels? Mind. Blown.

I think they're medium sized bels, but I'd still like to know how big they are.

Are they bigger than a wagon wheel?

I agree, Helleofabore.

Initially I thought this thread would last about 5 minutes before HQ nuked it on the basis of good faith issues, but it's useful that it's been left to stand. Women with concerns about women's equality, access and the extreme violent misogyny inherent in this political movement have no reason to wish to delete or hide any post. They're happy to respond to them, to explain the issue, and to let all reading here now and in the future to use this as a means of gathering the views equally from all sides of the debate and 'educating themselves'.

Sunlight, let's get it all out there. And then we can all as women compare it to the threads on the relationship boards that go 'she made me batter/attempt to strangle her/break her nose/push her downstairs (just remembering some posters there) and it's all her fault cos she upset me'.

I also agree Helleofabore, it's good that it stands because it is clear that this young male thinks inciting violence is the appropriate response when women say no to him which kind of illustrates the reason that we need safeguarding in the first place.

Because you don't want to hear that people are calling Trans people sexual deviants and perverts? It is happening, and I said I was sorry that was happening. As I am. Because the more people shout only about the risk of trans women in their spaces, the more the real issue is ignored - the issue of dangerous men. Of predatory men. Of male abusers. The more anyone who doesn't follow you EXACT line gets silenced, the more dangerous men will be allowed to get away with it.

And there is a name for young male people who feel violence is justified against women for saying no to them.

And I can’t post it because it will be deleted. But I think we all know what it is.

And in a word: bollocks.

No. It's not happening anywhere except in fevered imaginations.

And no, dangerous men and male people with TQ identities are not two separate groups. Karen White. Isla Bryson. Katie Dolotowksi. The butcher currently under arrest for the abduction rape of a child.

Yes, it helps to frame everything as a distant, evil, separate voldemort but it is a frantic identifying out of the realities.

Do you think OP in this thread is a 'dangerous man'? He appears to think violence is the appropriate response when women don't agree with him?

Hi.

Can you let us know how to tell whether the man in the female [spaces - any spaces] is not predatory and just a non-predatory trans person.

This knowledge might be the answer and get into UK policy so I'm sure everyone would love to know.

Thanks in advance.

This is where you are all adding your own strange tint to my post:

"Maybe you can now also tell us why you are supporting a poster"

I didn't support the poster. I said I was sorry that people (and it is happening) are calling all trans people perverts and deviants. And I am because I don't tar sections of people on the behaviour of a minority.