“If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face!” Speech at Trans Pride London 8 July 2023

[IwantToRetire]

Sarah Jane Baker, on the Trans Pride stage, saying

“If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face!”

to a cheering crowd :)

https://twitter.com/unpopulargenz/status/1677790606561628160

NB to MNHQ the video shows this being said. It is not just an allegation being shared.

I think your sympathy could be far better directed elsewhere.

The Observer mentions Baker in a column by Rowan Moore which is disingenuous. He condemns Baker, but sees his arrest as an overreaction and doesn't mention the cheers that greeted Baker's speech.

"The police, in a dangerous over-reaction, under pressure from the home secretary, Suella Braverman, have now arrested Baker. A round of polarised vituperation, of the kind sadly typical of culture wars, has broken out on social media. The only way out of such destruction is for all parties to call out wrong on their own side. As a trans ally, I’d like to join others in saying what’s plain: there’s no place for statements like Baker’s."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/15/whats-the-point-of-northstowe

No mention either that Baker is an individual on parole with a history of serious violent crime and a number of other behaviours that added up before this one.

It was not the case of a blameless person momentarily getting carried away that would have ended in a police interview but probably ending there - because you cannot stand in front of a mob and call for a pogrom. Not in a civilised country. Or expect your TQ status to exempt you from the law when it comes to your need to bash women who displease you.

There's also no mention that women have been arrested merely for stating facts, and that the open inequality and bias is staring everyone sane in the face at this point. A lot of things are staring everyone sane in the face at this point. It's not a pretty sight.

I actually really hate this ‘culture wars’ framing. it totally distorts the issues in ways that benefit TRAs.

It’s not a clash of belief systems.

Sarah Jane Baker, by his own account, has had a horrible life. Abused at home and in care, illiterate until he learned to read and write in prison. It's awful that anyone would have to go through that.

But he is a dangerous person, who admits to having a personality disorder. The people enabling and supporting him in becoming a figurehead in the trans rights movement are incredibly naive and foolish.

It’s unbelievably irritating to see it used in the media and picked up elsewhere

They could call it a women’s rights debate

But no. All language dismisses women. It’s exactly how power structures win.

The Observer's architecture critic!

If Baker had exhorted a cheering crowd to punch any other group in society, would he condemn his arrest as a dangerous overreaction? I guess it's only women.

I'm another one who can't get over the way the police behaved in the Laughing Auditor video. It's as they were a bunch of teenagers put in charge of a bunch of toddlers and just let them run rampant because they can't be arsed.

Irritating and dangerous

Soon we’ll have no words left with which to state reality

Fuck that. I can’t believe more women aren’t fighting this.

Rather than stand about doing sentimental pity for the person, it would probably more to the point for the establishment to be thinking 'why has this political movement proved so attractive to a person in this state, and how has it worked as a vehicle to meet needs. While escalating them.'

This is not a healthy movement, it very obviously attracts many with extremist misogynistic, ageist, homophobic, totalitarian views, religious intolerants, exhibitionism views, who find safeguarding highly inconvenient. The questions need to be asked why. And how. And what this means.

We are seeing a couple of faint attempts, finally, to sound reasonable and 'middle ground'- 'call out bad behaviour on both sides' (we won't fracture skulls and incite pogroms and you stop mentioning reality or wanting equality) and 'waaaaah they did a tiny transphobia (so its middle ground, innit, even though its really entirely politically biased against women and equality of belief and access, but waaaaaaaaah to make sure everyone thinks this is a huge, huge compromise)'

It's way too late for this. WAY too late. Five years ago, it might have helped. If it was sincere and in good faith, from a movement with the capacity to genuinely care about and respect those not part of their church.

More and more evidence the chattering classes have lost it. The architecture critic in the Observer rolls his eyes, sighing at the distasteful culture wars that have misrepresented what was a pure and positive event.

The bias runs deep in this one.

It is too late. Way too late.

I was listening to someone this morning wittering on about ‘culture wars’ bemused that it keeps coming up

People are total idiots over this. It comes up because women are not ready to roll over

Typically, they are trying to pin the arrest on Suella Braverman. So predictable!

Captain insensible perhaps?

Yes, it is a total construct which is founded on creating predicatble targets and eveil characters on which the goodn guys can vent vent their spleen and hatred.

The 'culture War' is a total fabrication of the progressive left - gives them something to define themselves against.

It probably was a political arrest.

In that it seems likely that if Braveman was involved then the cabinet had to lean on the police to do their job and enforce the law properly, despite their political bias.

Rather like they had to lean on the police to police the Sunday meetings in Hyde Park having seen a woman's skull fractured and an insane crowd try to kill KJK, and realised the police would stand and watch with their hands in their pockets while similar nuts did the job here.

I'll bet at this point the cabinet are realising about political capture.

And perhaps the minister of safeguarding is wishing that in her 'chat' on MN she and HQ had permitted some questions about how political capture is guarded against and managed in government as a safeguarding requirement. Instead of deleting them all and threatening to ban women for asking.

Rowan Moore has a trans identified daughter.

I believe they are autistic.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/came-trans-man-elderly-grandfather-surprising-results/

Maybe we can get David Tenant to write an opinion piece as well?

Aye, well, given that he wasn't the person who was at risk of getting 'punched in the fucking face' I don't think it's really up to Rowan to decide how women should react when a known violent criminal tries to incite a crowd to do so.

Noticing the picture he used... "trans lives are not a debate".

Is that kind of attitude maybe one step away from punching people?

And you can just say, "well women's lives aren't a debate then", "women's rights aren't up for debate"... both sides could play that game.

It's sleazy to claim that because these debates have a personal impact on trans people, so therefore they get to avoid the normal democratic process where a quite radical new concept of "rights" should be justified and debated by society.

And you don't like people debating your identity? Well don't make claims that you can't defend.

It’s all so disingenuous.

framing as a ‘culture war’ - as if saying women do not have penises is merely a matter of competing opinion or values.

insisting that ‘trans lives are at risk’ - when any elevated risk to lives it via suicide or potentially through engaging in behaviours known to be risky for anyone (like prostitution)

claiming that it’s their existence as humans that is the topic of discussion - when it’s actually an issue of them wanting to control how others perceive trans people

insisting that trans rights are human rights - when the issue in the Europe and North America is not that they lack basic rights but that they want additional rights far beyond the standard scope of human rights.

and so on.

All of it is so dishonestly presented.

Even the issue of identity is presented in a way that distorts. ‘It’s my identity and you can’t question it/you must behave in ways that validate it’.

That’s not how identity works.