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.

So an echo chamber is now a place where people laugh and make jokes ?

An echo chamber supposed to be a place where everyone agrees.

But I can see that if you're extremely narcissistic, then anywhere where no-one does what you want would seem like an "echo chamber".

"Everyone's agreeing that I'm not the centre of the universe!"

We could suggest ‘brazen’ was projection.

Because walking through a group of women recording their faces, when it is likely those women had seen this young male hyped up on righteousness protesting with their group, when it is likely this male had covered their face, and may have been even presenting themselves in other ways that matched the profile of those holding threats on their signs could be very accurately described as ‘brazen’.

That with all this, this male person felt entitled to be ‘welcomed’? Fuck me the word entitlement was created for such occasions. And so to I think the word ‘brazen’.

It's a Michelle Obama situation- they go low we go high

It's up to individual posters what they do. People obviously were going to respond when being lectured by someone like the OP.

If at any point the OP had engaged in an adult, good faith way, people would have engaged in like manner.

I’m jokes are quite inconvenient if you just want to get in, scold, then get out to deliver your next scolding

I mean heaven forfend that you stick around and read a bit

might pollute your brain with differing opinions and no one needs that

It means the bad women aren't suitably chastised.

I’m quite excited to discover the existence of truffle marmite though

I'm not

Thing is had the SFW crowd been all smiles as opposed to, understandably, guarded, this bloke would still have twisted it to suit his own prejudices. We'd have been reading 'false' and 'insincere' instead.

OK, having gone back and looked at my witterings from last night... My humour is obviously not your cup of tea!

I and other women tried smiling at screaming protesters (not hyperbole, they were screaming) on Sunday while we stood holding hands to establish clear boundaries so women trying to listen to Natalie and others could do so. And they stuck cameras in our faces, which were uncovered. Whereas theirs were covered.

It did nothing at all to stop them or to calm them down. Not did trying to assure them that no one hated them or wished them dead. That assurance just meant more screaming and even more cameras in our faces.

Just to be clear, the smiles were hiding the deep concerns they had about what these protestors would try to do.

Me thinks someone looked a little to closely at the unsolicited duck pic!

(Goes off to work out how you sex a duck)

Well I'm being paid a mini baby bel per twenty words and a mini individual wrapped cheddar for every photo.

HAVE I MISSED THE PEGGING AGAIN

Aren’t boy ducks more colourful than girl ducks?

do not be checking its genitals!

A BIGLY ECH'S BETTER THAN A WEE ONE ANYWAYS

This is something really basic, and IIRC several other posters have also made much the same point, but this morning I find myself struck again by this question:

WHY would you turn up in a group and at an event that you know is very much opposed to one part of how you view the world, and expect to be welcomed? I mean, you even turn up in the "uniform" of the "other side", and we're still expected to be NICE to you? It's not a fucking school disco.

😬

HAVE I MISSED THE PEGGING AGAIN

sure someone can fill you in

WHY would you turn up in a group and at an event that you know is very much opposed to one part of how you view the world, and expect to be welcomed? I mean, you even turn up in the "uniform" of the "other side", and we're still expected to be NICE to you? It's not a fucking school disco.

I wonder what my reception will be like if I hop onto any trans subreddit right now.

It's soo nice.
(@Ereshkigalangcleg close your eyes you won't want to see)

If it is like sexing a budgie, or a baby chicken it can be done by feeling the pelvis.

But luckily Mallard's plumage is a give away once the male gets their adult plumage, so no need to be walking up to a duck and asking if you can feel its pelvic bone configuration....

This is the point at which Empress usually tells us that ducks have cork screw penises.

Squeaky

The point that this male poster seems to be missing, is that they felt absolutely NO FEAR in strolling into a group of women (who are exaggerated as being 50:50 men, probably because this male poster cannot recognise gender non-conforming women).

The entire point was about their deliberate ignoring boundaries, while then claiming manufactured victimhood! It defies belief that not one poster who came to support them even understood this posters motivations and the dynamics involved!

It is like this poster used the special word, and all the supportive posters were 100% supportive without fucking even thinking .... hang on.... you did WHAT? And you are here doing it again???

This thread has been a very good example of just how people who perceive themselves as being the most reasonable on earth, dismiss the ignoring of women's boundaries when those are women who those 'reasonable' people disagree with.

Fun fact: mallard drakes grow a new penis each mating season.
www.popsci.com/duck-penis-social-pressure/

Their sexual behaviour isn't very pleasant (a 2003 Ig Nobel Award went to a paper documenting a case of "homosexual necrophilia"...)

I wouldn't "sex a duck" if I were you, Boiled!