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.

Changing the wording of sex based rights to gender based shows you aren't here in good faith either

And embrace the death threats, cos reasons.

I think I'm done here.

So go back to those thousands of other threads calling me and the people I love perverted degenerates, if it makes you feel good.This is pure bullshit and if you had even bothered to read some of the threads here you would know that. Instead you barge in making demands of women.

Retaliation in the face of existential violence is to be expected. You expect us to go quietly into lives stripped of dignity?

And didn't actually answer the questions posed, either...

I'm shocked to the core.

Oh dear, how sad, what a shame! Never mind, eh?! :-/

@invalide " I'm putting this here into your echo chamber to let you know what this moment in time is like for the other side. "

How can i say this, so that you can understand it quite easily?...
I DON'T CARE!!!

As for dog whistles... Maybe, if there weren't so many dogs, do you think?! Though as i remember, you were more than 1000 of them gone walkabout when they were due to attend the protest, perhaps you should have put more of them on those leads some of your cohort use to walk people in the street!

Hi op,

As a trans woman mother who uses Mumsnet, I would never recommend coming here.

You're too naive, You will never get through to gender-critical people.

We expect men not to be violent towards women who are not threatening or violent towards them, yes
You don't have the right to answer words with violence. No matter how much the words make you cross.

You haven't yet answered my 3 straightforward questions earlier, but I'll add a 4th anyway.

4. What's wrong with asking for 3rd spaces rather than wanting in on women's single sex spaces?

☝👏

That would be 'trans people'? your tendency to politicise every member of our community is sickening and tiring.

PP specifically doesn't say trans people. It's you confusing a political position with a group of people.

Suggesting all trans people think the same is honestly a bit prejudiced.

Retaliating against a political movement....in an already hostile and quickly worsening political climate is only right.

It's ironic that you complain about fascism then say it is right to threaten people with 'wrong' views. It is you who stoke transphobia when you espouse violence then claim to be speaking on behalf of trans people.

So, in succinct summary to the two questions that you claimed were not in good faith,

1. No women don't get to have any sex based rights
2. Violence and threats against women who object is justified because it's the right thing to do.

For once, it's been clearly stated, which makes a change.

I'll bite. Why is it okay for a male to appropriate womanhood, but it would be offensive for me, a white woman, to paint myself black and claim that I'm far more oppressed than black people and that I deserve anything that has been put aside for them in order to bring them a little closer to the equality they deserve? And then if they object, for me to print signs threatening to decapitate them, or to pose with an axe and threaten them, using disgusting slurs?
Can you genuinely not see why men claiming to be the class they have oppressed for years might be a bit offensive to us?

Because your arguments fall apart at first contact with reality?

Retaliation in the face of existential violence is to be expected. You expect us to go quietly into lives stripped of dignity?

I expect you (general you) to behave like decent well behaved adults. Not like violent tantruming toddlers who get angry because women say no to mixed sex spaces.

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.

Well as my Dad used to say to me in reply to me saying 'I think" or "I thought.

"You know what thought did don't you? You thought you farted but you shit yourself"

Ah the Vladimir Putin argument.
As also used by men to justify violence against women since the year dot.

Thanks for making it so clear where you’re coming from.

The problem is patriarchy and vile men, not the trans community. People do not come away from your demonstrations more aware of sick abusive men, instead they grow hate towards any and all trans and gender non-conforming people, and anyone who stands with us.

It's alright. The OP doesn't want to "get through" to us. They just want to scold and berate the nasty old women who won't do as they're told. Meh, same old same old.

Also it’s a flat out lie that the women’s crowd was not made up mainly of locals. It was and I have only heard the MRAs say otherwise. I was in the crowd and it was mainly locals.

there was a great atmosphere among the women’s crowd. I was really impressed at kjk- never been to anything she’s done before. The women speaking up were inspiring.

if people genuinely were rude to you, you have to take that in the context of the death threats and violence towards women who speak up particularly against trans identified men. There were threats to mow us down with cars together with the usual vile decapitate terfs, etc etc. it was an event for women- why don’t you try to have some respect and not attend. Women are rightly scared of tra activists.

that said- lots of men and journalists were in the crowd and in two hours I never heard anything negative to them.

You're too naive, You will never get through to gender-critical people.

'You will never convince women to put the needs of men first'

Sod that. We end up with men in prisons, men in women's sport etc etc.

Where is the sympathy for the women and girls whose lives are damaged in the name of transgenderism? Let me guess , that doesn't matter does it? So long as the men get what they want.

Has it occurred to you, OP, that we have extensively listened to what trans people have had to say, and it has failed to reassure us that we will be able to safely eject all men (no matter how they feel, no matter what they wear, no matter how sad it makes them) from our changing rooms, prisons, toilets, sports competitions and dating pool?

I started out in the TWAW good little ally camp. It was the behaviour of trans activists that changed my mind, not listening to Julie Bindel. I know trans women and most of them are really nice, but I still don’t want them in women’s spaces because if we make an exception for them we make an exception for Isla Bryson and Karen White, et al.

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.

Don't even attempt to patronise us.

I suggest that you speak to the men who are doing the violence you're worried about and leave the rest of us alone.

"Retaliation in the face of existential violence is to be expected"

Is this kind of threatening misogyny appropriate, on the feminist board of a primarily female website?