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Original poster

Experiences of a Trans Person

1000 replies

invalide · 27/02/2023 16:11

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.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
42
DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry · 28/02/2023 14:41

You misdiagnose the problem all women and the queer community face: it is not males, but the way they are socialised

It's males.

DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry · 28/02/2023 14:45

I'm fascinated by the confidence with which someone just out of childhood feels able to reinterpret the world to people who have experienced and witnessed it for decades longer than they have.

It makes me look back at my own younger self and cringe a bit.

HootyMcboob76 · 28/02/2023 14:48

invalide · 28/02/2023 14:32

I'll clear some things up:

  • I'm non-binary, not a trans woman - I left this ambiguous out of curiosity and yes, the majority of you who address me refer to me as a trans woman. Very telling that this way - the most common way we are talked about in the gutter-rag British press - is the first in which you think of our community.
  • We don't resist your movement because you are women, in fact in the times you've been out in public it's been a pretty even 50/50 men/women; we resist you because you are a political movement whose message, picked up by the media and politicians, poses one more threat to our community. We don't do this for fun.
  • You have tellingly chosen to ignore the point in my photos and mentioned, sourced, over and over in my post that alt-right figures and groups, of this country and internationally, are attracted to your movement. Correspondingly, the most prominent heads of your movement sing the praises of these self-proclaimed fascists. It doesn't matter if you reject them, fact is that they see in your political movement another home.
  • You misdiagnose the problem all women and the queer community face: it is not males, but the way they are socialised. It is not men but patriarchy. Feminism is not at odds with LGBT rights. We will only see liberation from this toxic gender paradigm when we recognise it as the source of the violence which women and queer people have experienced all our lives and act against it together.

While I'm here, here are some articles I hope you'll take a chance on. I can dream...

"our community"
"your movement"
"you are a political movement"
"your movement"
"your movement"
"your political movement"
"queer community"

Those are the ways you described "our movement" and "your community".

What about YOUR ideology is not a giant political movement? And what about a group of women coming together to voice concerns about the infringement of their rights and protection, is not a community?

All we are are a bunch of females saying no to men.
That's not a political movment.

On the other hand, YOUR "community" is acting together to try to change acts and protections for women under the law, lobbying parliament to gain access to protected spaces.

You are very much mistaken if you think your "community" is anything other than a blatant political and social attack on women.

DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry · 28/02/2023 14:48

wtaf is 'non-binary' anyway? Sex is binary and I'm female. There is no such thing as gender so I don't have one of those any more than I have a pet unicorn or a fairy at the bottom of the garden.

The OP's naive horror at being looked at suggests a person who has never experienced being female.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 28/02/2023 14:51

I'm fascinated by the confidence with which someone just out of childhood feels able to reinterpret the world to people who have experienced and witnessed it for decades longer than they have.

Quite something, isn't it Grin

ArabellaScott · 28/02/2023 14:52

DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry · 28/02/2023 14:41

You misdiagnose the problem all women and the queer community face: it is not males, but the way they are socialised

It's males.

Yeah, it's men.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 28/02/2023 14:53

Yes, men and their male entitlement. I agree this is a product of socialisation.

lifeturnsonadime · 28/02/2023 14:53

As a non binary OP, do you think you have the right to be in women's spaces?

How strange that you have no empathy for the part of the binary you claim to belong to? Or perhaps I've just misinterpreted.

By the way I'm non binary too. As are most people on the planet.

ArabellaScott · 28/02/2023 14:53

invalide · 28/02/2023 14:32

I'll clear some things up:

  • I'm non-binary, not a trans woman - I left this ambiguous out of curiosity and yes, the majority of you who address me refer to me as a trans woman. Very telling that this way - the most common way we are talked about in the gutter-rag British press - is the first in which you think of our community.
  • We don't resist your movement because you are women, in fact in the times you've been out in public it's been a pretty even 50/50 men/women; we resist you because you are a political movement whose message, picked up by the media and politicians, poses one more threat to our community. We don't do this for fun.
  • You have tellingly chosen to ignore the point in my photos and mentioned, sourced, over and over in my post that alt-right figures and groups, of this country and internationally, are attracted to your movement. Correspondingly, the most prominent heads of your movement sing the praises of these self-proclaimed fascists. It doesn't matter if you reject them, fact is that they see in your political movement another home.
  • You misdiagnose the problem all women and the queer community face: it is not males, but the way they are socialised. It is not men but patriarchy. Feminism is not at odds with LGBT rights. We will only see liberation from this toxic gender paradigm when we recognise it as the source of the violence which women and queer people have experienced all our lives and act against it together.

While I'm here, here are some articles I hope you'll take a chance on. I can dream...

You're a man. Hope that clears things up. You're here to tell women off. How rude.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 28/02/2023 14:54

Everyone on the planet is non binary.

ArabellaScott · 28/02/2023 14:54

We're all bloody 'non-binary', the term is utterly meaningless.

jellyfrizz · 28/02/2023 14:54

How is you being non-binary different to 'us lot' being gender non-conforming?

ArabellaScott · 28/02/2023 14:54

Cross post, Eresh.

Walrussy · 28/02/2023 14:54

in my post that alt-right figures and groups, of this country and internationally, are attracted to your movement.

Oh, mate. Are you sure this is a road you want to go down considering the kind of people that "your community" embraces and defends?

ArabellaScott · 28/02/2023 14:55

Alt right?

Oh, dfod.

lechiffre55 · 28/02/2023 14:55

AlisonDonut · 28/02/2023 14:41

Everyone is non binary OP. You aren't special. You just think you are.

He's desperate to be special. Many are. That's why there's an infinite number of genders. Who wants to join an existing gender when they could make up a new one and be first?
I'm thinking of opening a new type of beauty / hair salon, where instead of going in and just getting some treatment and your hair done, an image stylist will help you come up with a new gender that no one else has thought of before, and then all the piercings, treatments, and hair dye & style will revolve around the newly made up gender. I can't be arsed to come up with a name, so I'm just gonna nick the one off South Park and call it The CumHammer Gender Stylists. I'm gonna make a fortune out of the gullible and deranged.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 28/02/2023 14:56

I believe the majority of posters have referred to you as a man. Identity doesn't make much difference to innate male entitlement.

Yes. Perhaps it's simply a recognition that we all know full well what sex "trans women" are.

Walrussy · 28/02/2023 14:57

ArabellaScott · 28/02/2023 14:54

We're all bloody 'non-binary', the term is utterly meaningless.

But he wears a clip in his hair and everything. No previous generations managed anything so revolutionary! (Apologies to Bowie and Brian Molko and Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire and Prince and Kurt Cobain and Davey Havoc etc.)

WickedSerious · 28/02/2023 14:57

IcakethereforeIam · 28/02/2023 14:35

Oh, non binary, you sound very interesting.Hmm

Cue the dreamy music.....

ArabellaScott · 28/02/2023 14:58

One day, OP, you might look back on the time you crashed a feminist forum full of women to lecture them and fucking cringe. We can dream.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 28/02/2023 15:00

Not likely Arabella. That would require empathy, maturity, self examination, and a sense of self awareness, not qualities common to the OP's movement.

AmaryllisNightAndDay · 28/02/2023 15:01

I'm non-binary, not a trans woman - I left this ambiguous out of curiosity and yes, the majority of you who address me refer to me as a trans woman.

Aren't non-binary people also trans? Why do you want us to guess? You've made all sorts of incorrect guesses about us. But sure, if it matters to you then tell us who you think you are.

And I still can't figure out if you're physically male or not, which is a lot more interesting to me than whether you identify as nonbinary or trans or both. I kind of guess you are male judging from your approach to communicating with women, but sure, you could also be female especially if you have autism (again, I don't know if you have) And really, I'd quite like to know which sex you are.

nilsmousehammer · 28/02/2023 15:05

It's entirely sex based, love. The T political movement is entirely sex based and its about male sexual rights and control/oppression of females. You're identifying into a more comfortable reality to try and ignore that, but I'm afraid it won't go away.

I'm not sure why you feel your choice of label is relevant to posters: you haven't shown any interest in anyone else's. I'm honestly not interested in how someone chooses to identify; only in whether their behaviour is a major problem for women and equality.

lechiffre55 · 28/02/2023 15:06

"I'm non-binary, not a trans woman - I left this ambiguous out of curiosity"
you realise you titled this thread
"Experiences of a Trans Person"
I'm getting an Inspector Clouseau vibe off your mental legerdemain here

TheBiologyStupid · 28/02/2023 15:09

lifeturnsonadime · 28/02/2023 13:29

For me I think that the TRAs have scuppered any opportunity for 'compromise' by ruining women's sport and putting men in women's prisons / rape crisis centres and refuges.

I do think that some people who are wilfully blind to the nature of the demands that TRAs are making are those who just look at children and think there is no way that a trans girl should be in a men's loo after the age of 8 and want to protect 'their' child or their friend's child / neighbours child. This is how these children are really being used as props.

It is these mothers who are giving the rights of all women because they are seeing it through the selfish lens of their child. They are women who want no debate because debate and compromise makes their child face a reality they have shielded them from.

Absolutely spot on!

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