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.

Retaliation?

What violence have women offered transpeople? Actual violence mind, not just hurty words or saying'no'.

Would you link to, say, five of the thousands of threads that call you perverted degenerates? Because I've been reading the FWR board for years and I can't think of one.

Give us those links and I'll pay you some attention. Come on. Thousands of them to choose from, it'll be easy.

No, you expect us to do that. We have rights to privacy and safety and we are going to defend them, thank you very much.

I actually do think it would be good to have the perspective of a trans person on this board. This post hasn't been set up for discussion, though. OP, your original post reduces the issue to laughing, dancing, happy friends on "your side", and violent bigots on "the other side". This thread isn't going to go well. I agree, there is an issue with transphobia. But you knew this wasn't going to be an effective post, surely? I'm part of the LGBT+ community and I'm not even sure I like being put in the group of dancing and rainbows. I'm capable of a challenging, confronting discussion on these issues and it would be great to be able to have one.

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

No. She meant “transactivist”. Tragicomic that you changed her words and then berated her for what the words - your words - then meant.

Not all trans people are extremists who advocate violence and an end to single sex spaces.

It must have been awful for you, OP.

Even if you are, and I don't know why you'd subject yourself to scrolling through this section and this thread if you are, I might as well put this here as one small piece of evidence of the effect this movement has on the queer community, and where we're headed

The problem is patriarchy and vile men

Yes, no argument there. The trans community has them every bit as much as any other. The problem is male.

"What this board really needs is a thread all about me and how important I am ...,"

You expect us to go quietly into lives stripped of dignity?

Um, do you know anything about the experience of women today in the UK, historically, and in places like Iran? You'll be devastated when you learn what the patriarchy has been doing to us, I'm sure.

And to answer the question, no I don't expect you will do much "quietly". No. Experience and history tells me that rarely happens.

@invalide I'm a lesbian not "queer" - try and be less of a homophobe and do not correlate women's rights with the trans community. These two things are not the same.

Is Isla Bryson an abusive man or a trans person?

People do not come away from your demonstrations

@invalide You seem to confuse KJK with all feminists. She's not even on MN. She's got a YouTube channel if you specifically want to argue about her actions.

What is existential violence anyway?

Women won't believe you are 'women" and say no, and in order to retaliate you want to decapitate us.

So the violence is towards us in retailation for saying no to men?

Male violence towards women isn't existential.

As a trans woman mother who uses Mumsnet, I would never recommend coming here.
A trans woman cannot be anybody's mother. We are our children's mothers.

The problem is patriarchal, which doesn't equate to male. Male is a physical descriptor while patriarchy is a social construct that needs to be taken down.

Existential violence isn't real violence, like what happens to women, it's the kind of violence that happens when women say things men don't want to hear.

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.

Hitler was a vegetarian.
Hitler was a mass-murdering lunatic.
My neighbour is a vegetarian.
Therefore my neighbour is a mass-murdering lunatic.

This your argument?

Oh bother, I clicked on this thinking it might be an interesting insight into what it is like to be ‘ Trans’.
Instead it’s just the usual,boring mishmash of false accusations, covert threats and whinging.

Never mind

Patriarchy is set up to benefit people of the male sex. "Gender" is sex stereotypes.

Behold…

The problem is patriarchy and vile men, not the trans community.

The problem is men.

instead they grow hate towards any and all trans and gender non-conforming people, and anyone who stands with us.

Have you spend any time on this board? If you did you would know that most people posting here are proudly gender non-conforming.

Do you not see that misogyny and anti-queer violence are two cheeks of the same arse?

No. It's true that many misogynists are also homophobic. However, many misogynists are gay and/or identify as trans.

Transgenderism itself is profoundly misogynistic, enforcing outdated stereotypes of 'femininity' and 'masculinity'. It is also homophobic in convincing gay young people that they are 'born in the wrong body'.