Yesterday, the BBC reported a massive increase in hate crimes against trans people. The online response was utterly predictable: the anti-trans faux-feminists decided that Stonewall had managed to infiltrate every level of every police force in the UK in order to churn out fake statistics; in slightly less unhinged circles a very worrying number of people argued that hate crimes against trans people “serve them right” for “shoving their lifestyles down people’s throats”. That old classic.

More insidiously, many commenters claimed that the numbers were a reflection of trans people as easily triggered snowflakes who go clutching their pearls to the police at the slightest provocation – a trope that’s often published by some of the worst anti-trans bigots in the media and clearly believed by too many people. Some of them shared links to supposed free speech martyrs who’d been visited by the police, apparently unaware that in every single case the people concerned had been warned – not prosecuted; warned – after engaging in months-long campaigns of abuse and harassment against specific people. Which, y’know, is illegal.

The idea of trans people and LGBT people generally as touchy offence-seekers is completely at odds with the reality, where many of us hide our identities to avoid abuse: many LGBT people aren’t open about their relationships at work for fear of abuse and discrimination; many trans people, trans women especially, don’t present in their correct gender at work because of similar fears. Simply holding our partners’ hands in public is too dangerous for two-thirds of us to contemplate.

And as for reporting abuse, here’s a key bit of information courtesy of Stonewall:

If hate crimes against trans people are up by 81%, and 80% of hate crimes against trans people go unreported, there’s clearly a very serious problem.

Meanwhile in the US, where bigotry is even more visible than it is here, trans women of colour – the very group that kicked off the Stonewall riots and the modern LGBT rights movement – face an epidemic of murderous violence. The linked article is a hard read.

I mentioned the gap between firms’ embrace of the Pride rainbow and their actual actions the other day. Here’s a great example.

I was in a minor car crash on Friday, and over the weekend various companies – my insurer, the repairer and the car hire firm that’s sorting out the courtesy car – all phoned me. Each one of them had the same details, Ms Carrie Marshall, and every single one of them called me sir, mister, mate and man throughout the phone calls.

Today I went to pick up the courtesy car, presenting fully female, and admired the Pride lanyards worn by all the staff.

All the staff including the guy who took me to the car while variously calling me sir, mister and man.

I’m not hugely bothered by this (although obviously I’m a little bit bothered or I wouldn’t be blogging about it) because it’s very common. All too often, sir/madaming happens based on what I sound like, even when the paperwork and my actual physical presentation tell a different story.

But it does illustrate the problem with Pride marketing. If the rainbow isn’t reflected in the interactions between your staff and LGBT+ customers, it’s meaningless.

I’m at a bus stop in Glasgow, early on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Two neds stare at me as they swagger past.

Ned #1: [unintelligible]
Ned #2: That’s no’ a wumman!
Ned #1: Ah’d still stick it with ma willy.

The neds swagger on, laughing.

I’ve been outside for four minutes.

Psychology Today asks a question: what precisely do transgender people threaten?

The piece is based on a single study, albeit one that draws on multiple others and widely accepted social phenomena. The short version is that trans people get shot by both sides.

transgender individuals can be perceived as simultaneously transgressing the gender norms of BOTH binary genders. For example, a trans woman (i.e., someone assigned male at birth who now identifies as a woman) is transgressing male norms by identifying as a woman, but also may be seen as transgressing the norms of being a woman by not appearing feminine enough. Indeed, other research has found that transgender women are particularly at risk for prejudice and violence due to society’s general tendency to police femininity and to punish transgressions of misplaced femininity.

That’s something you see a lot of in anti-trans faux-feminist circles, where trans women are simultaneously mocked for not measuring up to standards of stereotypical femininity and condemned for trying to measure up to standards of stereotypical femininity.

I thought this bit was interesting: for some people, the most threatening trans people aren’t the genderqueer ones or those who look visibly trans. What makes them upset and angry are the people who “pass”, who appear to be the gender they are rather than the one they were assigned at birth.

if you yourself are a man and hinge a great deal of your identity on being a man, what does this piece of your identity really mean if someone born female can ‘pass’ as being just “as much of a man” as you?

Thus, the more an individual strongly believes in the gender binary, the more threatening transgender individuals (especially those who ‘pass’) are to that individual’s own personal identity as either a man or a woman.

The article gives an example.

imagine that you are a police officer and that being a police officer is central to your identity. Then imagine that the category of a police officer was replaced with “Security Professional,” and that this new category would include police officers, security guards, and installers of home security systems. This experience would trigger high levels of distinctiveness threat in police officers whose identities were highly enmeshed with being a police officer… with nothing left to distinguish them from a mall cop or a summer student installing home security systems.

Not a perfect comparison, I know: it’s more like expanding the category to include “police officers who don’t have exactly the same background as you” rather than less qualified people. But you get the point.

It’s awfully reminiscent of some of the pushback against equal marriage: I’ve heard many people claim that “if gay and lesbian people can marry, that somehow makes marriage worth less.” It doesn’t, unless you believe that being married makes you better than people who aren’t and that letting others marry makes you less special. And if that’s the case, it says a lot more about you than it does about gay or lesbian people – especially if you’re driven to oppose, vote against or campaign against giving the same rights to those people.