The UK is rapidly approaching the point where there will be more anti-trans hate groups than there are actual trans people.

The latest group. which launched this week, calls itself the LGB Alliance, and it’s a single-issue hate group: it wants to split the T from the wider LGBT movement. Despite (mainly straight) supporters saying it’s a pro-LGB group, it has no policies about any issues that affect gay, lesbian and bisexual people, issues of which there are many. It exists solely to target so-called “gender ideology”, a phrase beloved of the far right and the religious right.

For a supposedly gay, lesbian and bisexual alliance it all looks very straight. Its Twitter account does not appear to follow anybody active in LGB rights, but it does follow every single anti-trans pressure group and bigot you can think of, most of whom are straight. Its membership seems to include an awful lot of straight people, and its online allies tend to be straight people too. Actual LGB people have been quick to distance themselves.

As I’ve posted before, targeting the T in the LGBT community is straight out of the Christian Right strategy to attack the entire LGBT movement, a strategy discussed publicly  in 2017.

[there are] three non-negotiables in the fight against the so-called gender identity agenda, a conspiracy theory touted by anti-LGBT groups that disavows sexual orientation and gender identity. The first is to “divide and conquer. For all its recent success, the LGBT alliance is actually fragile and the trans activists need the gay rights movement to help legitimize them.” In other words, separate trans activists from the gay rights movement, and their agenda becomes much easier to oppose. As Kilgannon explained, “Trans and gender identity are a tough sell, so focus on gender identity to divide and conquer.” For many, “gender identity on its own is just a bridge too far. If we separate the T from the alphabet soup we’ll have more success.”

One of the people who pointed this out yesterday is Patrick Harvie, the Scottish MSP, who is a bisexual man. His posts attracted a great deal of negative comment on social media, much of it from straight people using far-right terms such as “cultural marxists” and “Christianphobia”.

Isn’t it funny how straight, cisgender men who’ve shown no interest in, or active hostility to, feminism and gay/lesbian rights suddenly proclaim themselves defenders of both when it gives them an opportunity to attack trans people?

Harvie:

They’re already campaigning against sex education in this country. In others they’re rolling back abortion rights, domestic violence legislation, workplace equality… there are genuinely disturbing forces out there in the world, that threaten all the rights and freedoms we fought for. If they succeed and split our community against itself, don’t kid yourself that they’ll end with hostility to trans & NB people.