False flags

Here’s a great example of how anti-trans activism works.

On social media, some anti-trans activists are posting about stickers that prove how evil trans people are. The stickers, which were first spotted in Torquay, have the phrase “genital preferences are transphobic” over a rainbow flag.

The stickers were made and posted by an anti-trans activist trying to discredit trans people.

The phrase on them is an anti-trans trope: in much the same way homophobes want you to think that gay men want to have sex with your children, transphobes want you to think that trans women want to force you to have sex with them even, or especially, if you aren’t into trans people. It’s a vicious libel, and I’ve written more about where it comes from here.

Some of the better known anti-trans groups have condemned the stunt, so for example the LGB Alliance has said “if it is true that agents provocateurs are posting these stickers in an attempt to exacerbate our divisions, we certainly condemn it.”

But really, the arsehole making the stickers is just doing a crude version of what the anti-trans groups and activists do every day. They make false allegations about what trans people think, who trans people are or what healthcare trans people get, and they then call on everybody to condemn trans people (and often, to demand the removal of their rights) based on those false allegations.

How many articles have you read about the supposed prescription of cross-sex hormones to children, which doesn’t happen? About children being given gender reassignment surgery, which doesn’t happen? About trans women being predators, which the religious right made up? That’s much more deserving of your condemnation than a couple of stickers at the seaside.


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