And a blog by someone remembering an encounter with Wadwha at a party.
https://virginiasroom.co.uk/f/on-validation-and-tolerance
(found on this thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/4318605-I-think-Ive-figured-out-why-the-Guilty-Feminists-feel-guilty?page=12&reply=109837976 )
On Validation and Tolerance
6 November 2020
A ---- without Gender Recognition Certificate, MW, is currently running as a candidate for a Scottish constituency, as a woman. MW is someone who many years ago applied to run a rape crisis centre without disclosing trans status.... and got the job. I met MW at that time, in a friendly context and this is what happened. It might sound pedestrian to some but I am sharing this story because I believe it sheds light on the main driving force behind this person's actions and why women must resist this encroachment. I use she/her in this text because that is how I addressed MW 14 years ago and it reflects my state of mind at the time. Now, knowing what I know, I wouldn't.
. . .
About 14 y ago, at a party organised by a friend and colleague, I met MW, a friendly hijra. She was introduced to me as a woman but I could not fail to notice the Adam apple and the low voice. I instantly thought that M was trans and that knowledge occupied my thoughts for the best part of 5 seconds. She was fun, interesting and well, we were all having nice drinks and food with lots of people we liked. Everything was great and felt "familial" and relaxed.
Suddenly, my friend demanded our attention and asked us all, out of nowhere: "Is M a man or a woman?"
I looked immediately at M expecting that this question would seem impolite and intrusive to her, but I saw that she was welcoming it. I now realise that she had asked my friend, our host, to question us about how we perceived her.
This question completely ruined the good-natured, warm and carefree ambiance of the party (and really, the party itself). Everyone stopped eating, looked uncomfortable. The trust and acceptance, the openness with which we had all interacted until then were gone. I'm sure most guests knew she was trans but it did not appear to be an issue. However, the demand to categorically validate or invalidate M as female or male felt like an encroachment to all of us. Rapidly though, I brushed aside my discomfort, attributing it to some failing in the "tolerance department" on my part.
Some of the guests were older, high caste Indians. I stupidly believed at the time that their unease was caused by their rejection of trans people, by intolerance, which surprised and shocked me as I knew them and liked them dearly. So, in order to support M, I instinctively answered "woman" while others looked at the floor.
Later on that evening, the party split and we went out, M, my friend and I. They quickly both started to cast disparagingly the ones who avoided answering The Question as bigots, boring old farts, intolerant idiots...
I was not one of them, and I was glad.
But something felt "off", I felt slightly dirty. I felt I was betraying something in me, something called truth and something called self-respect. And I was betraying my other friends who refused to play the validation game.
I now understand better what happened that night. Some friends were having a good evening, men, women, trans or not, all together. There was acceptance and mutual respect. Then someone asked us to lie, or prove that we were willing to forgo truth and self-respect in order to validate someone else's identity. And people became torn between their desire to be kind and their need to be truthful. This was entirely unnecessary. There was already acceptance and validation: we all liked M, none of us were made uncomfortable by who she was.
It is the lie people objected to, not the person, not the person's choice or expression. It was the demand that our moral purity and values (kindness vs. truth) must be put on display, weighed and judged, that people objected to.
. . .
Today, in response to criticisms of his encroachment and disrespect for women's boundaries and consent, MW asked us to be kind, said that kindness will win, all the while telling us that his critics should be destroyed as evil. It is as evident now as it was when I first met him that, for MW, kindness must flow only one way.
Dear MW, it wasn't kind 14 years ago to ask us to lie, and I am truly sorry that I did, in the name of kindness.