Remember when The Telegraph used to be a serious paper? Now it’s reduced to this.
The story is based on claims by one anonymous woman who claims that the children’s channel CBBC somehow turned her child trans. The age of this child? 19.
Category: LGBTQ+
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You can’t trust this story about the National Trust
The National Trust did no such thing. It merely told its volunteers that if they wanted to wear face paint or glitter to mark Pride month, they wouldn’t get into trouble for doing it.
See also: Stonewall supposedly banning the word “mother” or any of the other anti-trans culture war stories infesting both right- and left-wing media.
This isn’t just disgraceful. It’s dangerous. This week in Hungary, the “anti-woke” government – of which Spiked and other right-wing bullshit factories are very fond – brought in some of the most repressive anti-LGBT+ legislation we’ve seen outside Russia to widespread public support from people who’ve been consistently lied to about “gender ideology” and “woke” policies.
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Belief
Over the next few days you’re going to hear a lot about Maya Forstater, the contractor who took her former employer to a tribunal after they didn’t renew her contract. Forstater is vocally anti-trans and claims that she was discriminated against because of this.
The tribunal found that Forstater’s views, which she claimed were a protected belief under the Equality Act, were not worthy of respect in a democratic society. Forstater appealed and a judge ruled yesterday that unless you’re actually advocating for a Final Solution, your beliefs are not relevant to your employment – unless, and this is crucial, those beliefs lead you to abuse other people.
This has been predictably misinterpreted by the transphobe crowd, who believe they’ve been given carte blanche to abuse trans people in the workplace. But the judgement does not say that. In fact, it specifically says that trans people are protected from workplace discrimination and malicious behaviour, and that having a protected belief is not a get out of jail card for harassment or hostility.
This is not new. Lots of cases have said that yes, vile views are protected beliefs under the EqA; no, that doesn’t mean you can be a dick to people at work.
Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube summed up the verdict and the anti-trans mob’s reaction perfectly:
Judge: “Yeah so you’re free to believe the moon landing was fake and you can maybe even work at NASA if they’ll have you, but you can’t keep calling Buzz Aldrin ‘a lying piece of shit who fucks dogs’ to his face okay?”
MF: “Ah, my beliefs about the “Moon” have been vindicated!”
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The war on Stonewall
Stonewall is Europe’s leading LGBT+ charity, and for the last few weeks it’s been under sustained attack by The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, Spiked and The Spectator, as well as the UK government’s Equalities Office. The allegations against it are demonstrably false, but that hasn’t stopped gallons of ink being spilt.
Stephen Paton writes in The National about the latest flood of bullshit, and notes:
Without doubt, this Pride Month is taking place against a backdrop of the most open hostility toward lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and queer folk in recent history.
This manufactured outrage against trans people has now begun leading to dire outcomes that will affect the entire LGBTQ+ community in Scotland and the rest of the UK – as many of us repeatedly warned that it would.
With its relentless attacks on Stonewall, the anti-trans brigade has handed the most right-wing British Government in recent history the means to begin cutting ties with Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ rights organisation with little in the way of push back – and it has gleefully snatched that opportunity.
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Straight talking
One of the many irritating things about the endless torrents of anti-trans bullshit is the false distinction between trans people and LGB people, as if trans people aren’t also lesbian, gay, bisexual or any other part of the rainbow. Fewer than 10% of us are straight.
This is something that comes up again and again in large scale surveys of LGBT+ people. For example, according to the UK Government’s National LGBT Survey in 2018, 71% of trans people are gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual or queer; 5.4% are asexual, and 9.4% are straight. This aligns with previous surveys in the US that found 60% to 70% of trans people did not consider themselves to be straight.
Anyone who tells you trans rights are in conflict with LGB rights is lying to you. Most trans people aren’t just the T in LGBT+: they’re the L and the G and the B (and the Q and the A).
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Stick your rainbow
I wrote a piece for T3 about Pride Month and the way some tech firms’ support for the LGBT+ community doesn’t go beyond putting a rainbow on their social media logo.
Earlier this year, a damning study by GLAAD confirmed what marginalised people already know: every single major social networking platform is “categorically unsafe†for LGBT+ people. But hey! They’ve put a rainbow on their logo!
If tech firms really mean it, we need them to do more than post platitudes. We need them to make their platforms safe for marginalised people by actually enforcing their policies against harassment and hate speech. We need them to stop financially supporting anti-LGBT+ politicians in order to get tax breaks. We need them to donate to LGBT+ organisations and advocacy groups who can make a practical difference in the lives of the people who’ve been affected negatively.
But most of all, they need to hire and promote LGBT+ people – particularly people who are also marginalised by race, class, disability or gender. Good decision-making will only come from people who really understand the problems, and who understand the positive and negative impacts of their decisions.
But if you think the tech world is bad, they’ve got nothing on the Tories. Today the Government Equalities Office and the Conservative party have posted their scheduled Pride tweets despite being demonstrably anti-LGBT+. It’s particularly galling to see the GEO claiming credit for equal marriage in Northern Ireland, something the Conservatives and their DUP allies fought tooth and nail.
As I wrote in my piece:
it’s a hollow, selfish gesture: the aim isn’t to help LGBT+ people, but to burnish the corporate image. Telling the world that you agree LGBT+ people exist means nothing when LGBT+ people’s rights, healthcare and safety are under unprecedented attack worldwide.
And it means even less when you’re the ones doing the attacking.
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“These words can be a revelation, but you are not beholden to them”
This, by a poster called Pyrrhiccomedy on Tumblr, is very wise. It’s in response to a question asking them whether they still identified as asexual; the questioner thought they were, but is with a new partner and feels different.
The words you put on your orientation are not elementally a part of you. They are tools, and as tools they should serve a function. That function can be to help you understand and categorize your own experiences and desires. It can be to help you find a community. It can be to help you get laid. It can just be to set social expectations. These words can be a revelation when you first apply them to yourself: they can be life-saving. But you are not beholden to them.
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Read it and weep
This is where all the anti-trans hysteria in the press and online leads: a young mum savagely beaten with a crowbar by a gang of 13 people for no other reason than they thought she was trans.
Lauren Garrison was enjoying a night out with her friends when she was called a “dirty d***” and a “tr****” by a gang of 13 youths outside the Three Fishes pub in Chapel Road, Worthing on Monday.
After confronting the group of ten boys and three girls, the 28-year-old was attacked with a crowbar, leaving her unconscious.
The mother-of-one suffered a concussion and fears she may be left with permanent damage after bursting a blood vessel in her eye.
As Jane Carnall, aka EdinburghEye, writes on Twitter:
The woman this gang of thugs attacked had been visually identified as trans by these men & women who, like the anti-trans activists I was arguing with yesterday, were sure they could just “tell” when a woman is trans or cis.
The crime these 13 anti-trans thugs committed is a transphobic and homophobic hate crime, They beat her, they said “trans people should be shot”, they used slurs – they attacked her violently because they had used that visual “check” & decided she wasn’t “really” a woman.
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“If LGBTQ rights are the preserve of the woke, does that mean real people aren’t gay?”
One of the downsides of not buying overtly transphobic newspapers is that I’m not supporting the work of good people such as Zoe Williams. Today’s column in the Guardian on the so-called war on woke is wise and witty:
Your average transgender woman could be forgiven for wondering what exactly she did so wrong that she’s now seemingly held responsible for such a significant proportion of all political ills
…Social conservatism, a loose and elastic concept, can simply roam about, choosing fresh things to dislike. Yesterday it was trans people; today it’s footballers showing solidarity with Palestine; tomorrow it’ll be Michel Barnier.
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Eighties! We’re living in the eighties!
Back in the 1980s, various fundamentalist right-wing loons decided that the board game Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal music were corrupting the minds of children. Apparently the game was “an occult tool that opens up young people to influence or possession by demons.” This obvious lunacy came from the religious right, but it was laundered by the press who published such nonsense without investigation or criticism.
In 2021, various fundamentalist right-wing loons are claiming that the board game Magic: The Gathering and Japanese anime cartoons are corrupting the minds of children and turning them trans. This obvious lunacy comes from the religious right, and will no doubt soon be laundered by the press who’ll publish such nonsense without investigation or criticism.
Far-fetched? Just last month one of the leading anti-trans groups told the UK government’s Women & Equalities committee that people become transgender because they’re being hypnotised by “sissy porn” on YouTube. This group has been endorsed by all the leading anti-trans groups and many politicians too.