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.

Yes, that is the most succint response to this whole thread, tbh.

Is this "Spot the Odd One Out"? (No offence intended - it's an actual thing!)

D'oh - what happened to the photos in the comment I quoted?

Are people seriously getting their posts deleted for saying "mansplaining twit"? Someone is a bit sensitive.

Whatever you do, don't venture onto AIBU, OP.

Just seen the twitter profile. Just as I predicted a man, and a white man at that, trying to claim an “oppressed identity” to exercise power over women.

Wtf? I’ve seen some of the messages that are then being deleted on this thread, and it’s nothing but censorship, MN. These aren’t breaking talk guidelines.

This is coming down on the side of those who want to censor and silence women, and you’re part of it @mnhq. It’s absolutely shocking that silly young people, performative, misogynist non-victims, can have women silenced for saying truths they don’t like. MN is replicating this sexist and ageist dynamic, and it’s bloody wrong.

You need to reconsider this, because angry young men / angry young “non binary” people are not your users here.

And let’s be crystal clear here, whoever is reporting, and whoever is moderating/deleting posts — you are most definitely NOT on the “right side of history”, and you must know it.

Silencing inconvenient truths spoken by women, on behalf of angry men who’ve admitted they rather like violence? Let us know, please, when that’s looked like a great progressive moment in any part of history. Yeah, and get back to us on that — we’ll wait.

These aren’t breaking talk guidelines
They were personal attacks against posters though and that has always been against talk guidelines?

Your movement has meant I'm called a pervert and a groomer while going about my average daily life.

Please expand on this.

Since when has saying someone is mansplaining been a “personal attack”? Half of AIBU would be cheeseholes if MN took the same approach elsewhere on these boards, as they do when the hurt feelings of male-born people, who have been correctly identified as posting silly fact-free rants. And you bet it only happens to this degree when the sensitive feels of the penis-havers are involved.

Since when has saying someone is mansplaining been a “personal attack”?
It isn't 🙄 it didn't just say someone is mansplaining though, did it so why are you pretending it did?

OP in his opening post stops JUST short of saying women are homophobes, racist white nationalists and anti semites.

And the post is allowed to stand.

I could use exactly the same way of phrasing something about transwomen being "such and such" and it would immediately pounced on and deleted.

Don't kid yourself thinking there is ANY kind of fair moderation on these boards.
It's the whim of whoever gets hurty feelings and whoever is moderating.

Blimey, more double standards, whining about posts being deleted. 😂

But when a thread isn't going the way the dominating GC viewpoint prefers - create enough problematic posts to compel Mumsnet to pull the thread altogether rather than constantly moderate, so that nobody can that?! It's a handy (and underhand) way to maintain the prevailing bias.

There's quite a trend going on with thread deletions and it's being observed.

Freedom of Speech in action, eh?

🙄... so that nobody can see that...

On the contrary, it's been my experience that nobody wants deletions.
They are good for lurkers to see the utter batshittery of some of the TRA arguments.
It really does the heavy lifting by itself.

O I think a lot of regular posters can see where the problems really like, and I for one wish those posts weren't deleted, so that people can really see the mentality at work.

Get me deleted, don't get me deleted. Honestly I don't care enough!

The only problem I have when I'm deleted is trying to remember what the fuck I wrote!

So deleting one of my comments is never going to make me learn the error of my ways until mnhq start telling us why a post has been deleted every time they delete one.

It’s absolutely shocking that silly young people, performative, misogynist non-victims, can have women silenced for saying truths they don’t like. MN is replicating this sexist and ageist dynamic, and it’s bloody wrong.
You need to reconsider this, because angry young men / angry young “non binary” people are not your users
Why aren't people who are non binary not MN users?
They have just as much right to be as others.
Also well done painting everyone without a "GC" viewpoint as must be angry, a male, and young.
You've managed to get ageism, sexism and all sorts into there that must have took some doing.
I'm not young or male or non binary and I bet others who are posting with a different view to you aren't always as well.

What on Earth are you on about? The thread was pretty unanimously GC! The total opposite of what you’re falsely claiming.

Deleting posts in which women are pointing out when male people are mansplaining is pure censorship. Even when the original poster has admitted they’d made bits of their original post up (OP said they are trans then admitted they weren’t).

That isn’t trying to get the thread pulled, or it not going how “the GCs” like. We want ALL the posts to stand! It’s the genderists who like having things deleted and censored, not us.

You’re a regular pro-gender ideology poster around here, suggestionsplease, and so you can dispense with that disingenuous tone, too.

Deleting posts in which women are pointing out when male people are mansplaining is pure censorship
Oh come off it, it wasn't "just pointing out mansplaining" at all, if you saw the post why are you and others pretending it did?!
It was name calling to boot and unless you're very new to MN surely you know that's always been against talk guidelines?;

Oh, ridiculous. This is DARVO in action. It’s the OP who has made repeated ageist, angry statements and also admitted lying. So why on earth are you trying some backwards argument here?

I think it’s pretty safe to say the MN user base is largely women aged between 25 and 65. Pandering to plop-and-run penis havers is hardly going to keep the site running, now, is it? Have you missed how angry posters across the site are at the moment with the Sex board attracting an influx of male single-issue posters? Good business sense on MN’s behalf, do you think?