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.

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.
Your thread* *is entitled "Experiences as a Trans person" but you say you aren't a trans woman, yet you seem very misogynistic. I'm very confused. Are you a trans man then?

The OP seems to make a deal about men being at the SFW event, about 50/50 I think he said. I wasn't there so i don't know and I don't think it's relevant anyway. However, I'd like to ask @invalide

Why does he think it's relevant?

Would the tra side have behaved any differently had SFW been 100% female?

I know, right?

Bloody women on a women's rights forum not being sufficiently patient and listening carefully to a quite staggeringly misogynist male explaining at length how violence towards them is justifiable and normal because they look brazenly and aren't sufficiently respectful. With no interest in actual women's rights or anything.

Here's an idea: why don't you find a forum with the OP where you can have your lovely middle ground listening carefully to a male explain why females can't have rights? Without bloody women talking over you and getting grumpy and waspish?

FlirtswithRhinos for PM 👏👏👏👏

in fact in the times you've been out in public it's been a pretty even 50/50 men/women

How do you know this? Did you carry out chromosome testing? Did you check birth certificates? Walk round asking what everyone identified as or asking to check their genitals? I'd love to know how you established this when it's all so damn complicated.

Yeah, weird. I bet he didn't even bother to ask them how they identified. And 50/50 - how very binary.

It enables a comforting lie to self that its not being anti women. Its the voice of a niggling conscience.

I have seldom felt more unwelcome and stripped of dignity than while in your crowd

lol welcome to what it feels like to be a woman in 2023 OP.

you want people here to read the experiences of someone on “your side”, how about you try and understand the experience of someone on “ours”.

also might I point out, you came here obviously looking for a fight not a sensible debate, making you as bad as the people you criticise in your OP 🙄

TheShellBeach · Today 15:21

And despite your saying you're "non-binary" (whatever the fuck that is) you are using the kind of language men use towards women who they seek to control. Oh, and despite your claim that you're non-binary, you did, in fact, entitle this thread "Experiences of a Transperson" which also suggests that you're male.

I think that he's realised that, as it hasn't gone the way he's wanted, to move the goalposts. Whatever, he comes across as being here in bad faith and being flexible with the actuality.

@nilsmousehammer yes, I think that's it, nail on the head.

Still not clicking on your links, OP.

You want to force team us whilst refusing to allow us the terms we have always used to describe ourselves, our experiences. The spaces we need away from men, no matter how they identify. Fair sporting competition.

Why on earth do men like you think you're in any position to demand women do anything for you?

"Won't somebody think of the enbies, oh the humanity!"

Tiresome weaponising of imagined fragility, forced teaming, sanctimonious scolding and "oh noes, da far right!" pearl clutching.

It's groundhog day on FWR.

<looks down at bingo card>

We've had "brazen", "steely", "pursed" and "waspish" - have we had a "shrill" yet? Because then it'll be the full house.

Complicated and nuanced,it's always so much more nuanced than any of us realise.

Sadly, I think if women hopefully seeking a middle ground did try a conversation such of this on another forum without the back up of HQ's moderation and posting guidelines, and FWR, they'd get a eye opening experience very quickly.

It would be lovely if it didn't happen this time, but we'll be here with tea and sympathy if it ends up going the way it's always gone before.

Feminism is not at odds with LGBT rights.

How lovely that there's a man here to tell us women why we're wrong about feminism.

(Is anyone else wondering if the OP is related to the chap who came onto MN to enlighten us all on IT matters since being a) past it and b) women we'd undoubtedly be grateful for his advice?)

Was that the “I just bash my keyboard with my tits” thread?

But what you and your (mostly) well meaning but naive "community" are doing will not get us there, because while you are faffing about with pronouns and turning up at protests to try and scare women who look like your mum and you know are unlikely, whatever you claim, and unlike other groups you could challenge, to react violently to you you are doing nothing, nothing, about the ingrained patriarchy that already exists in the minds of almost everyone in our society, whether they want it to or not.

Aye, keep attacking women, keep screaming at middle aged feminists. Whatever you do, avoid upsetting any violent males, eh?

We're just soft targets that all these anarcho-twats KNOW won't do anything worse than 'steely gazes'.

FWIW, my 'steely gaze' identifies as a Paddington hard stare. I'm doing it now, can you tell?

🙄 I've learnt in my fight for equality from a womans perspective that shouting over people about why we are right feeds into the "hysterical woman" narrative. It's unhelpful to the cause, and I don't think gained me any fellow feminists when that was my approach in my early 20's. I've had calm and levelled debates minus the sarcasm and insults and people are less likely to get defensive and listen to you. Shout all you want, it's not getting you anywhere, it just makes people embarrassed to side with you 🤷‍♀️

I don't think we've done the pearl clutching yet.

Pro-tip: Every time a fannybaws accuses women of 'pearl clutching', do some pelvic floor exercises.

twitter.com/ThePosieParker/status/1617258018038747137

QUITE RIGHT HEN ALL THESE SHOUTIN WOMMEN ARE DOIN MY HEAD IN

Hiya, I'm truly not sure what these comments talking about tracking are on about, I'm gathering nothing here. Might be cookies or a UTM? What're you seeing?
Where did I link this on twitter?

When it comes to 'males' versus 'socialisation' as our core problem, I think socialisation is our one great hope, the thing that lets men not be bulls or rams, great lumps of testosterone-charged territoriality and sexual aggression, but fully sentient people who can chose to be cooperative and supportive and receptive and, yes, kind. Men don't have to be stinkers - but the genderist movement is training them into it.