As a cis-gendered lesbian I'm incredibly disappointed in groups like this. I've participated in lesbian meetups and events that are open to all women (including trans and bi) and the vast majority...
As a cis-gendered lesbian I'm incredibly disappointed in groups like this. I've participated in lesbian meetups and events that are open to all women (including trans and bi) and the vast majority of people who show up are cis-gendered lesbians. The presence of those who are not in no way takes away from the experiences.
I believe a very small minority do, but the movement has clearly been co-opted by some on the far right, for whom "divide and conquer" is a winning strategy. It's no secret that the LGB Alliance...
I believe a very small minority do, but the movement has clearly been co-opted by some on the far right, for whom "divide and conquer" is a winning strategy. It's no secret that the LGB Alliance has been working closely with the likes of the Heritage Foundation and other such conservative think tanks, who clearly don't have the best intentions for anyone of the LGBT+ kind.
Maybe their intentions are exactly what they say they are: to hinder and attack transgender people, rather than to "divide and conquer" as @StarlingUK suggested. Not every social movement has to...
Maybe their intentions are exactly what they say they are: to hinder and attack transgender people, rather than to "divide and conquer" as @StarlingUK suggested. Not every social movement has to have ulterior motives, or consist of wheels within wheels within wheels. Sometimes it is just as simple as "haters gonna hate", without any Machiavellian motives beyond that simple one.
I'm not saying that these anti-transgender people are saints. Some of them are hateful, some of them are ignorant, some of them are misguided, but they're all denying acceptance to transgender people.
But, why do we always have to assume there's something behind what we can see? Why do we have to assume that somehow these poor misguided people are being manipulated by more evil people behind the scenes? Why can't they just be acting on their own behalf?
This sort of thinking is how conspiracy theories start.
Because in this case there actually are evil people behind the group!!!! The LGB Alliance has direct ties to the Heritage Foundation, and Witherspoon Institute, as well as the Center for Bioethics...
But, why do we always have to assume there's something behind what we can see? Why do we have to assume that somehow these poor misguided people are being manipulated by more evil people behind the scenes? Why can't they just be acting on their own behalf?
Of course, but in the case of the LGB Alliance, which is named in the article, their ties to far right anti-LGBT+ groups are documented. Someone is also funding these groups and I suspect they...
Of course, but in the case of the LGB Alliance, which is named in the article, their ties to far right anti-LGBT+ groups are documented. Someone is also funding these groups and I suspect they wouldn't have the same level of prominence or media attention as they do without that funding. Given the vast majority of LGBT+ individuals disavow these kinds of anti-trans "LGB" groups, I doubt all of the funding comes from LGBT+ individuals. Even in the absence of a direct link, these groups are still being cheered on, encouraged and amplified by organisations whose cause stands to benefit from such a movement existing. That should give anyone pause, at least anyone with common sense.
@StarlingUK's claim is that some mysterious "they" want us to be divided, and that this "they" are therefore orchestrating this human rights exemption so that "they" can separate transgender...
Exemplary
@StarlingUK's claim is that some mysterious "they" want us to be divided, and that this "they" are therefore orchestrating this human rights exemption so that "they" can separate transgender people from same-sex attracted people. And you seem to be buying into this idea.
Is that really what we think is going on here? Do we really believe there's a conservative think-tank somewhere that's strategising about how to defeat the queer community, and someone has come up with the strategy of giving funding to a local lesbians' group, not to help them request an exemption to the anti-discrimination law, but to sow the seeds of dissent between transgender people and same-sex attracted people, so that the rainbow community will split asunder, and the conservatives can pick us off one by one? Do we really believe that?
I think that's a long bow to draw.
I think we should simply assume that a local bunch of lesbians truly believe that trans women don't belong at "womens only" events. Because of their beliefs, they've aligned with other groups that have similar beliefs. And maybe they share ideas and make suggestions to each other, to achieve their own short-term goals - such as excluding trans women from an International Women's Day event these lesbians are holding. And that's it.
There's no puppet-master behind the scenes.
How self-important are we, that we think there's a Machiavellian scheme of such complexity aimed at destroying us?
I think there are parallel focuses going on here — one that’s specific to this event, and one about the broader tactic of “divide and conquer”. We can’t definitively say anything about the...
Exemplary
I think there are parallel focuses going on here — one that’s specific to this event, and one about the broader tactic of “divide and conquer”.
We can’t definitively say anything about the specific intent of those organizing this event. It’s possible they’re acting at face value and there’s no broader plan.
What we can say is that “divide and conquer” is a legitimate strategy that is being applied to our community, not a phantom enemy we’re inventing from our conspiratorial thinking. Sorry for supplying a US-centric link, but it’s the best I can find that makes the tactic explicit:
In her presentation, Kilgannon mapped out 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.”
Kilgannon identified a wide coalition of potential allies outside the Christian Right who could confront trans friendly measures. Here’s her advice on how to draw them in:
Explain that gender identity rights only come at the expense of others: women, sexual assault survivors, female athletes forced to compete against men and boys, ethnic minorities who culturally value modesty, economically challenged children who face many barriers to educational success and don’t need another level of chaos in their lives, children with anxiety disorders and the list goes on and on and on.
The strategy not only relies on separating trans people from the rest of our community as a way of weakening our community as a whole (essentially it’s union busting for LGBT people), but it also relies on getting well-intentioned people to support anti-trans policies under ”kinder” framings. Note the mention of female athletes in her list at the end. I don’t know what the political climate has been like in Australia relative to that topic, but trans people in sports has been a right-wing topic that has been driven hard for years now as a way of sowing controversy and negative opinion about trans people in general. It has, unfortunately, been incredibly effective.
When people look at this festival and see the fingerprints of that strategy — using lesbians as a palatable front for anti-trans hate — they’re seeing that because it’s consistent with other examples we’ve seen of the strategy at play. We can’t prove the event organizers’ intent of course, which is part of what makes the strategy work. We look like asses if we make false accusations, but we also look like asses if we let a flimsy cover story for hate go unchecked.
I'm so glad the Kilgannon quote was included. I'd highly recommend that @Algernon_Asimov checks out the book The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice For All by Shon Faye, notably Chapter 6...
I'm so glad the Kilgannon quote was included.
I'd highly recommend that @Algernon_Asimov checks out the book The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice For All by Shon Faye, notably Chapter 6 (Kissing Cousins: The T in LGBT) as it very clearly outlines the astroturfing strategy that anti-LGBTQ+ groups are using.
Okay. Good point. However, I'm also aware of people mistakenly conflating two groups who just happen to be standing next to each other, and assuming there's more going on than there really is....
What we can say is that “divide and conquer” is a legitimate strategy that is being applied to our community, not a phantom enemy we’re inventing from our conspiratorial thinking.
Okay. Good point.
However, I'm also aware of people mistakenly conflating two groups who just happen to be standing next to each other, and assuming there's more going on than there really is.
There were a few pro-womenanti-transgender public speaking events around Australia earlier this year, when a British woman came to do a speaking tour. They were organised by women, to speak about how "real" women should be safe from transgender women trying to invade their spaces.
However, things got particularly heated in Canberra and down in Melbourne when some male neo-Nazis decided to gate-crash the events, to "support" the anti-trans women. Now, I have read and watched documentaries about how our local neo-Nazi boys are deliberately infiltrating every right-wing movement that comes along, from anti-vax protests to anti-trans speaking tours, to seduce sympathetic people into their movement. And this was obviously one of those public relations exercises for them.
However... and this is the point that's taking me forever to get to... people started accusing the women who organised the speaking tour of supporting neo-Nazis. Some of the female Members of Parliament who spoke at those events (Yep!) were castigated in Parliament for being pro-Nazi. What the fuck? That's not how it happened at all. Some of those women were horrified to have neo-Nazis turn up at their protests, even if they appeared to be there to "support" the women (while actually trying to find people to recruit into neo-Nazism).
So, I'm used to seeing outsiders make the mistake of misinterpreting who's doing what with whom and why.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a transphobe is just a transphobe.
Note the mention of female athletes in her list at the end. I don’t know what the political climate has been like in Australia relative to that topic,
Mixed. There are people for, against, and undecided.
I mean, Posie Parker isn't just some British woman, she's been speaking at events organised by far right think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, an organisation that is openly anti-LGBT,...
I mean, Posie Parker isn't just some British woman, she's been speaking at events organised by far right think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, an organisation that is openly anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, and anti-birth control. Not going to call them nazis but their respective values are a venn diagram with a nice big overlap in the middle. None of this is secret and if the event organisers didn't want nazis to show up at their doorstep they should have done their due diligence. If people don't want others to think they're buddies with nazis, maybe they shouldn't be giving a platform to people who very vocally align with a good chunk of their policies and values.
You may want to read up a bit more about Posie Parker, or watch something like https://youtu.be/JBy93QX7ysE She's the main organiser of the LWS event and she has outright stated that she doesn't...
She's the main organiser of the LWS event and she has outright stated that she doesn't care where support/funding comes from and that she doesn't care if someone's a nazi if they help further her goal. She has taken selfies and gone to interviews with known nazis and white supremacists, and in one case had someone quote Adolf Hitler's "Big Lie" on mic at one of her events. The neo-nazis showing up to her Australian thing wasn't a big surprise; it was a pattern.
Parker is controversial even amongst gender critical people. Her "eradication of trans people at any cost" policy leads other anti-trans groups (as vile as they may be) to try to distance themselves from her.
She herself is probably not a white supremacist, but she's very happy taking support from anti-gay, anti-women groups. She isn't trying to "divide and conquer", but she's fine cozying up to those who are because at the end of the day the single most important thing to her is that trans people disappear.
I understand your concern about a "they", so I'm going to give how I'd define it (though I'm not the OP);
A divide-and-conquer group is one:
That strongly opposed queer people (or group X) in the past
That now strongly opposes transgender people (or allied group Y)
That funds and supports anti-Y groups who belong to group X or who claim to be friends of X
Is Let Women Speak or the LGB Alliance a divide and conquer group? No, probably not. Is The Heritage Foundation a divide-and-conquer group? Yes, absolutely yes.
I'm in the US. I see time and again divide and conquer tactics being used with various wedge issues - in this case transgender related issues. At least in the US, it's a way to get people who...
I'm in the US. I see time and again divide and conquer tactics being used with various wedge issues - in this case transgender related issues. At least in the US, it's a way to get people who would normally vote for Democrats to vote for Republicans but just on "this one very important issue." There's a reason "Think of the children!" is a cliche and a meme - they've used gay panic before but everyone knows someone who is LGB or has someone in their family, so it's less of a boogeyman. They've used abortion quite successfully before but now that Roe v Wade has been overturned, trans issues has become the new wedge issue. They tried with BLM but that didn't work as well as this.
But to your point, yes, the people who want to exclude transwomen from the event could be entirely sincere, unmanipulated, and coming to this with zero outside influence. But I'm sure conservative media will publicize this and make hay of it all over social media. It's just the typical game plan.
Are you misattributing someone else's comment to me? The "they want us to be divided" comment is someone else's, I simply pointed out that you can't necessarily take what TERF groups like this...
@sparksbet's claim is that some mysterious "they" want us to be divided, and that this "they" are therefore orchestrating this human rights exemption so that "they" can separate transgender people from same-sex attracted people.
Are you misattributing someone else's comment to me? The "they want us to be divided" comment is someone else's, I simply pointed out that you can't necessarily take what TERF groups like this claim their motivations are at face value because they constantly misrepresent their goals and beliefs. I don't like having this nebulous "they" in quotation marks attributed to me -- my comments have been specifically addressing TERFs and groups like the LGB Alliance.
I think there are plenty of TERFs who authentically believe the things they say about trans people. That doesn't preclude their organizations from trying to draw an artificial line between trans people and cis gay people to try to advance their goal of removing trans people from all public spaces. The LGB Alliance is, in my opinion, a pretty brazen example of an organization trying to launder its image as a "gay rights" organization when its only purpose is anti-trans -- something that absolutely does attempt to divide the LGBTQ+ community no matter how much intentionality the individual transphobes involved put into that part of it. And given that there's no end do the documented biphobia from the LGB Alliance (including in the desired exclusions from this very event), it seems naive to take their word for which groups they will or will not exclude in the future.
So you pointed to something that I think is important and that can get drowned out in the general condemnation of TERFs. Before I start, I support trans rights. Trans women are women. However, I...
So you pointed to something that I think is important and that can get drowned out in the general condemnation of TERFs.
Before I start, I support trans rights. Trans women are women.
However, I worked with battered women early in my career. In the community of people I met while doing that, there was a range of attitudes about men (and we didn't talk about/ weren't aware of trans issues, or at least I wasn't.) The best example comparison I can point to to possibly shed insight are the black separatist groups. People who are so angry, or so weary of certain abuses that they just don't want to interact with anyone who reminds them of that pain. In that context, among women I knew, some honestly believed in a kind of biological essentialism, that anyone with a penis who had gone through adolescence fueled by testosterone, was a risk for sexual assault, for domineering violent behavior as a romantic partner, for domineering or exploitative, demanding behavior in the work place or other settings.
Culture has changed in intervening decades and men have stepped up, disproving this theory in large part. Sexism is no longer default and prevalent the way it was in the sixties when women in the Civil Rights movement were relegated to getting coffee and taking minutes and organizing housing for the men.
We now know a lot more about trans individuals and their needs and I welcome them. But I am aware of context. Social change is hard.
My experience is the opposite, queer people are often the most affirming and supportive of transgender people, due to recognition of shared experiences and out of solidarity. In my opinion,...
My experience is the opposite, queer people are often the most affirming and supportive of transgender people, due to recognition of shared experiences and out of solidarity.
In my opinion, "feminist" and LGB people who are prominent in these circles are only front-and-center because they provide a convenient face for what would otherwise be the obvious, run-of-the-mill bigotry.
Couching anti-trans bigotry in the language of egalitarian politics simply plays better in the media than Westboro-style fire and brimstone, despite the inherent contradictions. (And credulous journalists are all too happy to run with these narratives.) Since the far right has picked this ball up and started running with it in earnest, though—these people have become less and less important to the "movement", being supplanted by the usual suspects and demagogues of the far right.
Here's some 2023 stats for the UK where the LGB alliance is most prominent: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/articles-reports/2023/08/11/what-do-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender-brito...
Relevant stats - Most (55%) cisgender LGB Britons view transgender people "very positively", with an additional 20% viewing them "fairly positively", 16% "neither positively nor negatively", 5% "fairly negatively", and just 3% "very negatively".
I think a big part of this is that if we don't do any thinking like this, it's too easy to accept their lies about their own motives at face value. After all, they don't say they're out to hinder...
But, why do we always have to assume there's something behind what we can see?
I think a big part of this is that if we don't do any thinking like this, it's too easy to accept their lies about their own motives at face value. After all, they don't say they're out to hinder and attack transgender people, they say they're sticking up for women's rights. The linked article itself uses that very language, so there's a lot of danger in taking their agenda at face value there.
There's also a ton of instances in which groups like these pretend to include some group in order to oust another, only to then discard and oust that very group once they've succeeded with the first. Bisexual people are a good example here -- they're ostensibly the LGB Alliance, but they're also campaigning to exclude bisexual people from this event. It's also definitely true that huge portions of groups like the LGB Alliance are made up of cis straight people, and it's worth calling that out when they pretend they represent the silent majority of the gay community.
Yes, and they have said, explicitly, that they want to attack LGBT+ rights and rights for women, and that the way they do this is to start by attacking trans people, and then move onto bi and gay...
Maybe their intentions are exactly what they say they are
Yes, and they have said, explicitly, that they want to attack LGBT+ rights and rights for women, and that the way they do this is to start by attacking trans people, and then move onto bi and gay people. This is all very clear, they've done it in other countries (notably the UK and US) and they're coming for Australia.
LGB Alliance claim to be pro gay. Show me anything they've done that promotes gay rights rather than attacks LGBT+ rights.
Yes there are definitely groups that are trying to tear down all LGBT rights but that doesn't mean everything anti trans has some dark funding. It's entirely plausible that this is a group of cis...
Yes there are definitely groups that are trying to tear down all LGBT rights but that doesn't mean everything anti trans has some dark funding. It's entirely plausible that this is a group of cis gendered lesbians that don't want anyone other than cis gendered lesbians at their event. Not wanting to date trans people is a valid choice. So the operators could easily see their choice as the default and don't want any chances of running into trans singles at their event. Same concept as straight men being concerned and their date night ends up with two penises.
Personally, I doubt any event would be overrun with trans people. There are a few sub cultures that have a fairly high percentage of trans women, but I'm pretty sure cis lesbians out number them quite a bit. So a lesbian meetup should have plenty of options for all lesbians trying to snag a hookup.
For me it's less that there's a shadowy cabal and more that there is an open alliance with right wing, anti-queer and anti woman money and groups. Plus for people that claim to want safety for...
For me it's less that there's a shadowy cabal and more that there is an open alliance with right wing, anti-queer and anti woman money and groups.
Plus for people that claim to want safety for women, their rhetoric and proposed policies put lots of cis women at risk of discrimination and harassment. Which counters a claim of intending safety for (cis) women IMO.
Because this sort of thing happens all the time and has been for a long time. It’s well documented how lots of peoples groups got infiltrated in the 60s, the things j edgar hoover did, the cnp,...
Because this sort of thing happens all the time and has been for a long time.
It’s well documented how lots of peoples groups got infiltrated in the 60s, the things j edgar hoover did, the cnp, the pnac, etc etc etc.
There is a small, powerful and dedicated group of people who want the world to be a capitalist, theocratic empire, and will do anything they can get away with, and seem to have taken over scotus, and would happily discredit and destroy every trans group and event.
I think this an interesting thought, and I would suggest opening it up a little more broadly to ask: even if we take all that to be true, that this group is arguing disingenuous and doesn't really...
I think this an interesting thought, and I would suggest opening it up a little more broadly to ask: even if we take all that to be true, that this group is arguing disingenuous and doesn't really believe in the morality they are preaching, where does that leave us?
Like, if the whole argument is made up by people who don't believe in it, then what is the endgame of this discussion?
The endgame isn't to figure out the right answer, because the answer doesn't matter, the people who started this never cared that they were wrong.
The endgame isn't to win the argument, because creating the argument was the goal of the bad people. Engaging with it is playing into their hand.
If the endgame is to invalidate the argument as a whole so no one can ever bring it up again, well that's been done a hundred times before and yet here we are again.
Doesn't this whole discussion just become a waste of time once you've decided that your opponent doesn't actually believe in what they say they believe?
ugh the language in this article is absolutely disgustingly biased towards the TERFs campaigning for this bullshit. Also they totally gloss past this but they also want to exclude bisexual women...
ugh the language in this article is absolutely disgustingly biased towards the TERFs campaigning for this bullshit.
Also they totally gloss past this but they also want to exclude bisexual women lol. Not that big of a surprise, exclusionists be excluding, but usually the TERFs at least pretend they want to keep the B until they finiah kicking out the T. Of course the article completely fails to even ask about this beyond mentioning it being in the request, since it's simping hard for the TERFs the whole time.
That stood out to me as well. If they can have a lesbian only event that forces others to stay out, why not an event where you can discriminate against anyone that isn't a cis-gendered straight...
That stood out to me as well. If they can have a lesbian only event that forces others to stay out, why not an event where you can discriminate against anyone that isn't a cis-gendered straight woman + from Timbuktu + born between 1965 and 1970. You know, because of unique lived experiences.
It's a news article, not an opinion piece. The journalist is merely reporting what's happening, and what the lesbian group is requesting. I don't see any bias here by the journalist.
It's a news article, not an opinion piece. The journalist is merely reporting what's happening, and what the lesbian group is requesting. I don't see any bias here by the journalist.
I can no longer access the article (lou's archive link was the only way I could before and it's no longer working for me) to grab quotes but they repeatedly frame it as a battle between trans...
I can no longer access the article (lou's archive link was the only way I could before and it's no longer working for me) to grab quotes but they repeatedly frame it as a battle between trans people and "women's rights" and use the same language these "gender critical" TERF oragnizations trot out at any opportunity. Do they interview any trans women or trans lesbians or trans rights organizations in the article? I don't recall them doing so but I can't go back to check. All I recall is a "trans groups will probably object to this" -- it was not a balanced framing of the issue whatsoever imo.
Why does it have to be a balanced framing, when it's reporting something that people are doing? If I report that someone robbed a bank, do I also have to interview the bank manager to get the...
Why does it have to be a balanced framing, when it's reporting something that people are doing?
If I report that someone robbed a bank, do I also have to interview the bank manager to get the viewpoint that robbing banks is wrong?
It's written in a way that's extremely sympathetic to the TERFs and their bogus attempt at a human rights exemption imho -- it's like exclusively interviewing a bank robber about how bad they feel...
It's written in a way that's extremely sympathetic to the TERFs and their bogus attempt at a human rights exemption imho -- it's like exclusively interviewing a bank robber about how bad they feel that they don't get all the money they need when they go to withdraw and ignoring that they started shooting hostages. Ideally they would have a framing that portrays these TERFs as the scumbags they are, but if they're going to do the opposite they should at minimum provide a balanced framing that includes responses from any actual trans people.
This is why I stopped watching TV debates about [insert minority issue]. Like there will be half a dozen cisgender, straight, upper class, white (etc.) people behind lecterns talking about...
they should at minimum provide a balanced framing that includes responses from any actual trans people.
This is why I stopped watching TV debates about [insert minority issue]. Like there will be half a dozen cisgender, straight, upper class, white (etc.) people behind lecterns talking about minority issues and maybe one person belonging to that minority who keeps getting shut down because unlike the politicians, they haven't had decades of experience with rhetoric etc., and then they will - to most viewers - be able to "win" the argument...
Anyway, yeah, I also constantly see this happen and it is tiring as hell. Why is it so hard to talk to the people that the issue actually concerns!? It certainly isn't good journalism.
I don't think your analogy is apt. Imagine if the bank robbery was performed by a radical leftist militia group. They don't describe it as a robbery at all. Rather they frame the whole thing in...
I don't think your analogy is apt. Imagine if the bank robbery was performed by a radical leftist militia group. They don't describe it as a robbery at all. Rather they frame the whole thing in radical terms like "liberating stolen money" or "seizing the means of production."
Imagine such a robbery, and then imagine that a newspaper reported on the event by uncritically adopting the militants' framing. They don't even call it a robbery; the headline reads "group liberates thousands stolen from workers."
Perspective matters in news coverage. There can be no such thing as purely objective reporting. If you think you're reporting on a story without bias, then you are simply blind to your own biases.
But that's not the case here. If that was happening here, the headline would read something like "Women's group seeks right to defend their event from trans intruders." The take in this article is...
They don't even call it a robbery; the headline reads "group liberates thousands stolen from workers."
But that's not the case here. If that was happening here, the headline would read something like "Women's group seeks right to defend their event from trans intruders."
The take in this article is neutral - obviously too neutral for some people, because the journalist has not questioned or challenged what the lesbians are asking for, but has merely passed it on to the reader as the lesbians wrote it or said it. LeGrand has given us their unfiltered words, without adding any interpretation or extra layer between us and them, and, for that, he's being accused of being biased.
I think that's merely good reporting: disseminate the facts, and let the readers judge for themselves.
But, that's not good enough for some people. By not expressing disapproval of what these lesbians are doing, the journalist is assumed to be biased in their favour. Because that's how the world works these days. Everyone has to take a side. "If you're not with us, you're against us." And this journalist, by not proving that he's with us, has obviously shown that he is against us.
No one in this thread has claimed the journalist is "against us", at least I haven't seen that. He might be, he might not be, I wouldn't know. The journalist does not need to be "against us" in...
Exemplary
No one in this thread has claimed the journalist is "against us", at least I haven't seen that. He might be, he might not be, I wouldn't know. The journalist does not need to be "against us" in order to write an article that's biased against us, though. He is certainly comfortable adopting transphobic rhetoric, such as "biological woman" or "sex-based rights".
A couple quotes:
[...] a national test case in the clash between women’s rights and transgender inclusion [...]
A biased take, accepting the transphobes' narrative as fact. Women's rights and transgender rights do not oppose each other despite what the news article implies.
[Lesbian Action Group] is supported by LGB Alliance Australia, the local chapter of a British-based organisation whose promotion of sex-based rights has pushed it into the front line of a rolling gender war.
The article frames it as LGB Alliance being pushed into a "gender war" as if they are an innocent party, not an organization that actively promotes transphobia (and rarely promotes LGB rights).
She also attended the Let Women Speak rally and said she was horrified by the aggression she witnessed against women.
This, and other parts of the article, frame it as people showing aggression towards them because they are women, not because of their actions. Granted, the article doesn't elaborate on what the "aggression" was, so I cannot say whether it was justified or not. But in any case, I would say the aggression was not because they're women, at least from the pro-trans side.
And these are the journalist's own words.
You wrote:
LeGrand has given us their unfiltered words, without adding any interpretation or extra layer between us and them, and, for that, he's being accused of being biased.
Uncritically spreading others' words, unfiltered or not, can easily be biased. Certainly, if the original words were genuine and tried to be unbiased, you could be right. But the source is extremely biased and full of dogwhistles, and uncritically repeating them is just that, spreading hate.
For example the quote about lesbians being "sacked from their jobs" for "speaking out about lesbian rights". It's dishonest on the group's part, and in my opinion an example of poor journalism on the author's part to repeat it unedited and uncommented.
"what happened" in this case is dishonest manipulation. If a journalist repeats that infiltered, they are the one being dishonest. It's like if someone post a news story about an online curse...
"what happened" in this case is dishonest manipulation. If a journalist repeats that infiltered, they are the one being dishonest.
It's like if someone post a news story about an online curse which promise that you can earn 1300$ per month without working, but they present it without offering any "opinion" that it is a scam.
Somehow it's much more disappointing for lesbians to turn out as TERFs than cis women. They should know better. Anyone know what the current climate is for trans people in Australia? Any way to...
Somehow it's much more disappointing for lesbians to turn out as TERFs than cis women. They should know better.
Anyone know what the current climate is for trans people in Australia? Any way to predict what the AHRC is going to say?
There's always been a thread of misandry and anti-man feeling among a significant minority of lesbians, going back decades. In the modern day, that could manifest itself among some lesbians as a...
Somehow it's much more disappointing for lesbians to turn out as TERFs than cis women.
There's always been a thread of misandry and anti-man feeling among a significant minority of lesbians, going back decades. In the modern day, that could manifest itself among some lesbians as a feeling that transgender women are just men trying to gain access to their events under false pretences.
Even some trans-accepting lesbians believe that, because transgender women didn't grow up as girls or women, they can't possibly relate to the experiences of cisgender women who've been treated as girls and women for their whole life. They accept trans women as women, but they believe there's a difference in their personal histories that makes the two subsets of women not able to relate to each other.
But, given that these particular lesbians are associated with the LGB Alliance, I doubt there's any nuance here. They see trans women as men in dresses, who therefore shouldn't be allowed to invade womens-only spaces.
Anyone know what the current climate is for trans people in Australia?
It's generally neutral-to-positive. Of course we have a vocal minority of anti-transgender people, but the majority of Australians are accepting or, at least, apathetic (yay for good old Aussie apathy!).
Australian federal law explicitly prohibits discrimination against people "because of the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of the person". Religious organisations (such as churches, temples, hospitals, and schools) are exempt from these anti-discrimination laws.
I know there are a couple of gay pubs & clubs in Melbourne that have a legal exemption to discriminate against women and only allow men on the premises. However, I believe that they accept trans men, so that ruling doesn't form a precedent in this case.
Even though there are some precedents for legal exemptions to anti-discrimination laws (religions, those gay pubs), a ruling on this particular application for an exemption would require the AHRC to rule that transgender women can be legally differentiated from cisgender women - which would go against every other law in Australia regarding transgender people. Legally, transgender people are indistinguishable from cisgender people: the rights, privileges, and obligations that apply to legally to one woman apply to all women, cisgender and transgender alike. It would therefore be very unusual for the AHRC to rule that transgender women can be legally differentiated from cisgender women.
The lesbians could almost certainly get a ruling that would allow them to block men from attending their event, but I don't believe they can get a ruling that would allow them to block trans women from attending their event.
And yet these same women are so rarely accepting of intersectional feminism -- God forbid they acknowledge that women can have different experiences and also similar ones. I'm very glad the...
they believe there's a difference in their personal histories that makes the two subsets of women not able to relate to each other.
And yet these same women are so rarely accepting of intersectional feminism -- God forbid they acknowledge that women can have different experiences and also similar ones.
I'm very glad the situation in Australia seems to be a lot more sensible and safe than in the UK though. I've gotten too used to hearing stories like this where it's inevitable that the TERFs win from that island.
This is really important, and I need people to understand this point: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE COURT SAYS. The groups bringing the cases do not care what the court says. If they win they win and...
Any way to predict what the AHRC is going to say?
This is really important, and I need people to understand this point: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE COURT SAYS.
The groups bringing the cases do not care what the court says. If they win they win and they think that's good; if they lose they lose, and that means they're being persecuted and you should join their cause because they're right and the courts have been captured by pro-trans activists who have subverted the law and it's all common sense. And either way they get (as we can see from this article) acres of press coverage that push their talking points without much attempt to debunk it.
Anti-trans campaigners lie. They lie about the case they're bringing to court, they lie about what they say in court, they lie about what the judge says, they lie about what they said in court. This gish-gallop of lies is reported by the press mostly uncritically.
Australian pro-trans organisations need to set up some kind of "rapid rebuttal unit" that creates short, easy to understand, press friendly, briefings and responses to the points made by anti-trans campaigners.
I agree with your assessment of why it doesn't matter to them what the court says, but certainly the precedent the court's decision could set would definitely harm transgender people in other...
I agree with your assessment of why it doesn't matter to them what the court says, but certainly the precedent the court's decision could set would definitely harm transgender people in other situations as well. It's very sinister because they have nothing to lose but everything to gain.
No, they shouldn't. The expectations put on someone shouldn't be any higher just because they're a lesbian. It's easy to say "they went through X so they should understand someone else going...
Somehow it's much more disappointing for lesbians to turn out as TERFs than cis women. They should know better.
No, they shouldn't. The expectations put on someone shouldn't be any higher just because they're a lesbian. It's easy to say "they went through X so they should understand someone else going through Y", but not every lesbian has had a hard life because of it and even if they have that doesn't mean they should be expected to empathize with others any more than a straight person should.
It's not so much about what they themselves went through than what they can see when they look around. Some LGBT+ people ignore the LGBT+ community altogether and just do their own thing, but I'd...
It's not so much about what they themselves went through than what they can see when they look around. Some LGBT+ people ignore the LGBT+ community altogether and just do their own thing, but I'd say that most are quite well-integrated into that community, whether it be through personal meetups or reading forum posts online. Sharing the same essential space as trans people and yet marginalizing and excluding them in the same breath just feels like an incredibly tone-deaf cognitive dissonance to me.
Coverage on LGBT+ and especially trans issues is just extremely small outside of certain spaces on the internet. Most people I've talked to in real-life don't really understand what a trans person even is. So while I don't excuse TERFness in any way, shape, or form, for those people who do not share the same spaces as trans people I could at least understand it to some degree. Their bigotry is born in part of malice, and in part of ignorance. Lesbians can claim no such excuse. It's pure malice at that point.
It's important to realize that different people are at different points in their journey. Only about 20% of people in the US disagree with the Supreme Court decision to ban discrimination against...
It's important to realize that different people are at different points in their journey.
Only about 20% of people in the US disagree with the Supreme Court decision to ban discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace:
You are free to call all those people "transphobic" if you wish but trans acceptance is very much "non-binary" and for a long time most people are going to be trans-positive in some ways and trans-negative in some other ways. Blaming it all on a vast right-wing conspiracy is not going to change people's minds and increase acceptance.
Female desire has been a major problem in psychology since Freud and now in the era of Bremelanotide. Particularly you can't expect people to love you any more than pick up artists or incels can.
The more stripes they add to the rainbow flag and the more letters to the acronym the more they add groups that have different interests. People invented the "Queer" label because L, G and B didn't apply to them. Bisexuals have always faced
which points out women being important leaders in the John Birch Society. When women got the vote in the US they voted for Warren G. Harding. Benjamin Disreali gave a famous talk to a left-wing organizer that he wasn't going to get anywhere the way he was going unless he took into account what women thought.
in March 2003, 72% of Americans supported the war in Iraq. and in 1966, 63% of Americans had an unfavorable view of Martin Luther King Jr. I would caution against over-reliance on opinion polls....
Exemplary
in March 2003, 72% of Americans supported the war in Iraq.
and in 1966, 63% of Americans had an unfavorable view of Martin Luther King Jr.
I would caution against over-reliance on opinion polls.
trans acceptance is very much "non-binary"
no, there is an element of trans acceptance that is absolutely yes-or-no, black-and-white, no "yes but" or "yes except":
a) do trans people exist?
b) do trans people have the right to exist?
if someone answers an enthusiastic "yes" to both questions then I'm willing to consider their opinions on topics like qualification requirements for sports leagues, public bathroom etiquette, age minimums for elective medical procedures, or the best way to handle employment & housing discrimination.
they hadn't invented exit polls yet, so we don't know the exact breakdown of how men vs women voted. but with a 60/34 victory it seems very likely he would have won even if the 19th Amendment hadn't been ratified at that point.
Interesting choice to put scare quotes around "transphobic" as if these aren't objectively transphobic things to believe. The fact that these might be fundamentally good people who care about...
You are free to call all those people "transphobic" if you wish but trans acceptance is very much "non-binary" and for a long time most people are going to be trans-positive in some ways and trans-negative in some other ways. Blaming it all on a vast right-wing conspiracy is not going to change people's minds and increase acceptance.
Interesting choice to put scare quotes around "transphobic" as if these aren't objectively transphobic things to believe. The fact that these might be fundamentally good people who care about those around them and have simply been psyopped into believing awful things doesn't make those things less awful. If anything it makes it worse, and you do a disservice to your point to try and handwave it away.
I'm not stupid. I know the reality of our culture. I know why man-in-a-dress narratives work, it's because we have literal centuries of cultural brainwashing to undo. Depictions of the Devil as an androgyne mixing male and female sexuality, the original root of the english word 'bad', this shit runs deep. But pointing these things out is not conspiratorial. It is objective fact that fascists are currently using trans children as a wedge issue to try and drive voter turnout. It isn't working, thank god, but they are still doing it.
Also, this part of your comment especially confuses me:
Female desire has been a major problem in psychology since Freud and now in the era of Bremelanotide. Particularly you can't expect people to love you any more than pick up artists or incels can.
What on earth are you talking about? Do you actually think transfemmes that want to go to a lesbian event want lesbians to 'love' them? Do you seriously think there are transfemmes that go around upset that trans-exclusionary lesbians don't want to have sex with them? As a transfemme I don't care that there are lesbians not attracted to me, and while I don't doubt that there are twitter-poisoned idiots that do genuinely get mad about that they have to be an extreme minority.
Trans people have been a part of the LGBT community from the beginning. The first bricks at Stonewall were thrown by an angry trans woman. Any attempt to split the community by weird gender policing should be met with the same: A brick in the face.
I really had to think hard if I wanted to reply to this, in fact it was probably a mistake to get involved in this discussion at all. I really don’t know what to think about all these issues but I...
I really had to think hard if I wanted to reply to this, in fact it was probably a mistake to get involved in this discussion at all. I really don’t know what to think about all these issues but I do know that different people have different points of view, have their own feelings, etc.
I’ll avoid any generalization that could be wrong but I will point that (1) I think it is an act of othering and dehumanization to call people names because they disagree with you (thus the quotes)…. think of how it makes you feel when people other and dehumanize you, and (2) your reply ended in a threat of violence and that’s behavior that (I think) should never be allowed to become normalized.
Dude, calling a spade a spade is not dehumanization. If someone performs actions commonly agreed upon to be transphobic it is not dehumanizing to say they are being transphobic. And actually yes...
Dude, calling a spade a spade is not dehumanization. If someone performs actions commonly agreed upon to be transphobic it is not dehumanizing to say they are being transphobic.
And actually yes threats of violence are good sometimes. I love humanity despite all its warts but do you expect me and every other queer person to just roll over when fascists try to tell us to stop existing? The human experience is so wideranging and beautiful sure, but the fact that these people that cause untold harm to queer children are still people does not inherently make their viewpoint worth considering. This is basic paradox of tolerance shit, it's mindboggling that I have to even say this on tildes.
Being openminded is good, but we should take care not to have our minds so open that our brains fall out.
And if you can't see the difference between violence used to hurt others and violence used in defense I seriously question your values, not to mention your awareness of events the past few years.
And if you can't see the difference between violence used to hurt others and violence used in defense I seriously question your values, not to mention your awareness of events the past few years.
I think y’all might be getting caught in a semantic loop. My interpretation of @UP8’s view is that they believe that: While it may be bigoted and offensive, is not violent, and thus the proposed...
I think y’all might be getting caught in a semantic loop.
My interpretation of @UP8’s view is that they believe that:
Any attempt to split the community by weird gender policing,
While it may be bigoted and offensive, is not violent, and thus the proposed reaction
should be met with the same: A brick in the face.
Is instigatory, and not self-defense.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that was my interpretation of their comment.
That is violence. Not physical, but the end goal of that kind of community splitting is clearly for the purpose of eradicating queerness by dividing and conquering. The obvious logical end goal of...
That is violence. Not physical, but the end goal of that kind of community splitting is clearly for the purpose of eradicating queerness by dividing and conquering. The obvious logical end goal of this kind of wedge issue is to try and legislate transness out of existence, just like they tried to do with gay marriage, just like they did all throughout history. Social conservatism is a fundamentally genocidal ideology; it doesn't exist without it. Sure, I'm being hyperbolic with saying every attempt should be met with direct physical violence, but let's not kid ourselves - the fascists are being physically violent right now. Stochastic terrorism doesn't get the 'its just words lol' defense in my book.
So, I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m going to push back on this a bit. I see rhetoric similar to yours online a lot, and it distresses me pretty strongly. I say this as someone who...
So, I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m going to push back on this a bit. I see rhetoric similar to yours online a lot, and it distresses me pretty strongly. I say this as someone who is a member of the queer community and has been on the receiving end of direct, violent threats.
Removing the distinctions between exclusionary actions and violence is not a good thing. It strongly benefits the people who would use violence against our community.
By flattening the distinction between other harmful acts and violence itself, we morally equivocate the two. From our perspective this is done to heighten the harm of actions that might look okay at face value to others, as well as get past “it’s just words lol” defenses like you identified. As has been discussed in this topic, those things do real harm that is often unnoticed or not understood, so I understand the want to try to surface those harms and make them visible.
Unfortunately, by equating them to direct physical violence, we give up a lot more than we gain. The people who are ready and willing to use violence against us relish the idea of a moral flattening that makes bodily harm feel like it’s on the same level as “just words lol”. They use the equivocation as a softening for what they do — a moral escape clause that makes an abhorrent action seem less bad in comparison because it occupies the same ethical space as mean words or non-inclusive actions.
This gives them a direct pretext for violent actions against us. This is why so much of right wing discussion trades on the “harms” we do simply by existing. They know that violence against us is bad and would be seen as such, but if they can dehumanize us enough and flatten the distinctions between speech and physical harm enough, then they can make their violence look normalized or even justified.
I believe strongly that erasing that distinction is doing their work for them. Violent actions are a class of their own. This doesn’t mean that words, exclusionary measures, bigotry, etc. don’t do harm — they certainly do — but those aren’t in the same class as physical violence.
Also, and this is speaking more from my own personal experience: I find it pretty offensive when people equivocate the two because I feel it’s disrespectful to the many queer people who have experienced physical violence. It lessens and dismisses their harms, quite significantly.
I’ve experienced a lot of outright hate and discrimination in my lifetime, and I’m “lucky” enough that I only had a few instances where there was the threat of violence (and I’m “very lucky” in the sense that it remained at the level of threat and didn’t escalate to actual harm to my body). The experiential difference between the violent and non-violent harms I experienced is night and day. Putting those side by side and alleging they’re the same feels dishonest to me. Telling anyone who has actually been queer bashed that “non-inclusivity/words are violence too” is a way of dismissing and underselling their specific trauma.
I understand that what you’re saying comes from a good place — you want to support our community and counter the discrimination and oppressions we face — but I encourage you to consider that it might have some knock on effects that yield opposite outcomes.
You misunderstand I think. I don't think that exclusionary language is inherently always fascist violence. I'm being a bit simplistic with my language for effect. But when it's clearly being used...
You misunderstand I think. I don't think that exclusionary language is inherently always fascist violence. I'm being a bit simplistic with my language for effect. But when it's clearly being used by fascists to justify physical violence that is actually happening I don't really see a distinction.
If it were the case that fascists said all this awful shit and nothing came of it, I would care a lot less. When Republicans say miserable things about trans children its pathetic but ultimately I don't care... until that rhetoric results in actual physical harm to people. And that's the problem imo.
You're definitely partly right, because threats of physical violence are not to be made lightly. I just think that the time has come; the empty threats against queerness are no longer empty.
When that exclusionary language comes from children or the uninformed it obviously doesn't justify punches being thrown. We should always endeavor to educate where we can. I just think that the fascists have forced our hand.
People get a really visceral reaction to being described as phobic of something, but it really doesn't have to be dehumanizing or received as an attack. If you reduce a person to, "a transphobe,"...
People get a really visceral reaction to being described as phobic of something, but it really doesn't have to be dehumanizing or received as an attack. If you reduce a person to, "a transphobe," that is othering. Like how too many people refer to any trans person as, "a trans."
Just so you're aware, there are such things as internalized homophobic feelings. Just because someone's view is described as phobic, doesn't mean that person's value is being questioned.
As a cis-gendered lesbian I'm incredibly disappointed in groups like this. I've participated in lesbian meetups and events that are open to all women (including trans and bi) and the vast majority of people who show up are cis-gendered lesbians. The presence of those who are not in no way takes away from the experiences.
They want us to be divided, because together we're stronger. This is deliberately orchestrated by conservative groups and trolls.
You don't think some of these people sincerely believe what they say they believe?
I believe a very small minority do, but the movement has clearly been co-opted by some on the far right, for whom "divide and conquer" is a winning strategy. It's no secret that the LGB Alliance has been working closely with the likes of the Heritage Foundation and other such conservative think tanks, who clearly don't have the best intentions for anyone of the LGBT+ kind.
Maybe their intentions are exactly what they say they are: to hinder and attack transgender people, rather than to "divide and conquer" as @StarlingUK suggested. Not every social movement has to have ulterior motives, or consist of wheels within wheels within wheels. Sometimes it is just as simple as "haters gonna hate", without any Machiavellian motives beyond that simple one.
I'm not saying that these anti-transgender people are saints. Some of them are hateful, some of them are ignorant, some of them are misguided, but they're all denying acceptance to transgender people.
But, why do we always have to assume there's something behind what we can see? Why do we have to assume that somehow these poor misguided people are being manipulated by more evil people behind the scenes? Why can't they just be acting on their own behalf?
This sort of thinking is how conspiracy theories start.
Because in this case there actually are evil people behind the group!!!! The LGB Alliance has direct ties to the Heritage Foundation, and Witherspoon Institute, as well as the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network (anti-abortion, anti-surrogacy, and anti-trans group), and Alliance Defending Freedom (an evangelical hate group), both of which were initially set up by Novae Terrae (a money laundering, religious fundamentalist, right-wing lobbying group).
Source: https://www.thepinknews.com/2020/06/03/lgb-alliance-gary-powell-center-bioethics-culture-alliance-defending-freedom-anti-lgbt/
Of course, but in the case of the LGB Alliance, which is named in the article, their ties to far right anti-LGBT+ groups are documented. Someone is also funding these groups and I suspect they wouldn't have the same level of prominence or media attention as they do without that funding. Given the vast majority of LGBT+ individuals disavow these kinds of anti-trans "LGB" groups, I doubt all of the funding comes from LGBT+ individuals. Even in the absence of a direct link, these groups are still being cheered on, encouraged and amplified by organisations whose cause stands to benefit from such a movement existing. That should give anyone pause, at least anyone with common sense.
@StarlingUK's claim is that some mysterious "they" want us to be divided, and that this "they" are therefore orchestrating this human rights exemption so that "they" can separate transgender people from same-sex attracted people. And you seem to be buying into this idea.
Is that really what we think is going on here? Do we really believe there's a conservative think-tank somewhere that's strategising about how to defeat the queer community, and someone has come up with the strategy of giving funding to a local lesbians' group, not to help them request an exemption to the anti-discrimination law, but to sow the seeds of dissent between transgender people and same-sex attracted people, so that the rainbow community will split asunder, and the conservatives can pick us off one by one? Do we really believe that?
I think that's a long bow to draw.
I think we should simply assume that a local bunch of lesbians truly believe that trans women don't belong at "womens only" events. Because of their beliefs, they've aligned with other groups that have similar beliefs. And maybe they share ideas and make suggestions to each other, to achieve their own short-term goals - such as excluding trans women from an International Women's Day event these lesbians are holding. And that's it.
There's no puppet-master behind the scenes.
How self-important are we, that we think there's a Machiavellian scheme of such complexity aimed at destroying us?
EDITED to fix the username that I got wrong.
I think there are parallel focuses going on here — one that’s specific to this event, and one about the broader tactic of “divide and conquer”.
We can’t definitively say anything about the specific intent of those organizing this event. It’s possible they’re acting at face value and there’s no broader plan.
What we can say is that “divide and conquer” is a legitimate strategy that is being applied to our community, not a phantom enemy we’re inventing from our conspiratorial thinking. Sorry for supplying a US-centric link, but it’s the best I can find that makes the tactic explicit:
The strategy not only relies on separating trans people from the rest of our community as a way of weakening our community as a whole (essentially it’s union busting for LGBT people), but it also relies on getting well-intentioned people to support anti-trans policies under ”kinder” framings. Note the mention of female athletes in her list at the end. I don’t know what the political climate has been like in Australia relative to that topic, but trans people in sports has been a right-wing topic that has been driven hard for years now as a way of sowing controversy and negative opinion about trans people in general. It has, unfortunately, been incredibly effective.
When people look at this festival and see the fingerprints of that strategy — using lesbians as a palatable front for anti-trans hate — they’re seeing that because it’s consistent with other examples we’ve seen of the strategy at play. We can’t prove the event organizers’ intent of course, which is part of what makes the strategy work. We look like asses if we make false accusations, but we also look like asses if we let a flimsy cover story for hate go unchecked.
I'm so glad the Kilgannon quote was included.
I'd highly recommend that @Algernon_Asimov checks out the book The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice For All by Shon Faye, notably Chapter 6 (Kissing Cousins: The T in LGBT) as it very clearly outlines the astroturfing strategy that anti-LGBTQ+ groups are using.
edit: added tag instead of "OP"
Okay. Good point.
However, I'm also aware of people mistakenly conflating two groups who just happen to be standing next to each other, and assuming there's more going on than there really is.
There were a few
pro-womenanti-transgender public speaking events around Australia earlier this year, when a British woman came to do a speaking tour. They were organised by women, to speak about how "real" women should be safe from transgender women trying to invade their spaces.However, things got particularly heated in Canberra and down in Melbourne when some male neo-Nazis decided to gate-crash the events, to "support" the anti-trans women. Now, I have read and watched documentaries about how our local neo-Nazi boys are deliberately infiltrating every right-wing movement that comes along, from anti-vax protests to anti-trans speaking tours, to seduce sympathetic people into their movement. And this was obviously one of those public relations exercises for them.
However... and this is the point that's taking me forever to get to... people started accusing the women who organised the speaking tour of supporting neo-Nazis. Some of the female Members of Parliament who spoke at those events (Yep!) were castigated in Parliament for being pro-Nazi. What the fuck? That's not how it happened at all. Some of those women were horrified to have neo-Nazis turn up at their protests, even if they appeared to be there to "support" the women (while actually trying to find people to recruit into neo-Nazism).
So, I'm used to seeing outsiders make the mistake of misinterpreting who's doing what with whom and why.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a transphobe is just a transphobe.
Mixed. There are people for, against, and undecided.
I mean, Posie Parker isn't just some British woman, she's been speaking at events organised by far right think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, an organisation that is openly anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, and anti-birth control. Not going to call them nazis but their respective values are a venn diagram with a nice big overlap in the middle. None of this is secret and if the event organisers didn't want nazis to show up at their doorstep they should have done their due diligence. If people don't want others to think they're buddies with nazis, maybe they shouldn't be giving a platform to people who very vocally align with a good chunk of their policies and values.
You may want to read up a bit more about Posie Parker, or watch something like https://youtu.be/JBy93QX7ysE
She's the main organiser of the LWS event and she has outright stated that she doesn't care where support/funding comes from and that she doesn't care if someone's a nazi if they help further her goal. She has taken selfies and gone to interviews with known nazis and white supremacists, and in one case had someone quote Adolf Hitler's "Big Lie" on mic at one of her events. The neo-nazis showing up to her Australian thing wasn't a big surprise; it was a pattern.
Parker is controversial even amongst gender critical people. Her "eradication of trans people at any cost" policy leads other anti-trans groups (as vile as they may be) to try to distance themselves from her.
She herself is probably not a white supremacist, but she's very happy taking support from anti-gay, anti-women groups. She isn't trying to "divide and conquer", but she's fine cozying up to those who are because at the end of the day the single most important thing to her is that trans people disappear.
I understand your concern about a "they", so I'm going to give how I'd define it (though I'm not the OP);
A divide-and-conquer group is one:
That strongly opposed queer people (or group X) in the past
That now strongly opposes transgender people (or allied group Y)
That funds and supports anti-Y groups who belong to group X or who claim to be friends of X
Is Let Women Speak or the LGB Alliance a divide and conquer group? No, probably not. Is The Heritage Foundation a divide-and-conquer group? Yes, absolutely yes.
PP / KJKM's twitter avatar was a Barbie in an SS uniform.
I'm in the US. I see time and again divide and conquer tactics being used with various wedge issues - in this case transgender related issues. At least in the US, it's a way to get people who would normally vote for Democrats to vote for Republicans but just on "this one very important issue." There's a reason "Think of the children!" is a cliche and a meme - they've used gay panic before but everyone knows someone who is LGB or has someone in their family, so it's less of a boogeyman. They've used abortion quite successfully before but now that Roe v Wade has been overturned, trans issues has become the new wedge issue. They tried with BLM but that didn't work as well as this.
But to your point, yes, the people who want to exclude transwomen from the event could be entirely sincere, unmanipulated, and coming to this with zero outside influence. But I'm sure conservative media will publicize this and make hay of it all over social media. It's just the typical game plan.
Are you misattributing someone else's comment to me? The "they want us to be divided" comment is someone else's, I simply pointed out that you can't necessarily take what TERF groups like this claim their motivations are at face value because they constantly misrepresent their goals and beliefs. I don't like having this nebulous "they" in quotation marks attributed to me -- my comments have been specifically addressing TERFs and groups like the LGB Alliance.
I think there are plenty of TERFs who authentically believe the things they say about trans people. That doesn't preclude their organizations from trying to draw an artificial line between trans people and cis gay people to try to advance their goal of removing trans people from all public spaces. The LGB Alliance is, in my opinion, a pretty brazen example of an organization trying to launder its image as a "gay rights" organization when its only purpose is anti-trans -- something that absolutely does attempt to divide the LGBTQ+ community no matter how much intentionality the individual transphobes involved put into that part of it. And given that there's no end do the documented biphobia from the LGB Alliance (including in the desired exclusions from this very event), it seems naive to take their word for which groups they will or will not exclude in the future.
Sorry! I did misattribute that idea. Two people with usernames in this thread starting with 's'... and I didn't double-check. Sorry about that.
No worries, completely understandable
So you pointed to something that I think is important and that can get drowned out in the general condemnation of TERFs.
Before I start, I support trans rights. Trans women are women.
However, I worked with battered women early in my career. In the community of people I met while doing that, there was a range of attitudes about men (and we didn't talk about/ weren't aware of trans issues, or at least I wasn't.) The best example comparison I can point to to possibly shed insight are the black separatist groups. People who are so angry, or so weary of certain abuses that they just don't want to interact with anyone who reminds them of that pain. In that context, among women I knew, some honestly believed in a kind of biological essentialism, that anyone with a penis who had gone through adolescence fueled by testosterone, was a risk for sexual assault, for domineering violent behavior as a romantic partner, for domineering or exploitative, demanding behavior in the work place or other settings.
Culture has changed in intervening decades and men have stepped up, disproving this theory in large part. Sexism is no longer default and prevalent the way it was in the sixties when women in the Civil Rights movement were relegated to getting coffee and taking minutes and organizing housing for the men.
We now know a lot more about trans individuals and their needs and I welcome them. But I am aware of context. Social change is hard.
My experience is the opposite, queer people are often the most affirming and supportive of transgender people, due to recognition of shared experiences and out of solidarity.
In my opinion, "feminist" and LGB people who are prominent in these circles are only front-and-center because they provide a convenient face for what would otherwise be the obvious, run-of-the-mill bigotry.
Couching anti-trans bigotry in the language of egalitarian politics simply plays better in the media than Westboro-style fire and brimstone, despite the inherent contradictions. (And credulous journalists are all too happy to run with these narratives.) Since the far right has picked this ball up and started running with it in earnest, though—these people have become less and less important to the "movement", being supplanted by the usual suspects and demagogues of the far right.
Here's some 2023 stats for the UK where the LGB alliance is most prominent: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/articles-reports/2023/08/11/what-do-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender-brito
Relevant stats - Most (55%) cisgender LGB Britons view transgender people "very positively", with an additional 20% viewing them "fairly positively", 16% "neither positively nor negatively", 5% "fairly negatively", and just 3% "very negatively".
I think a big part of this is that if we don't do any thinking like this, it's too easy to accept their lies about their own motives at face value. After all, they don't say they're out to hinder and attack transgender people, they say they're sticking up for women's rights. The linked article itself uses that very language, so there's a lot of danger in taking their agenda at face value there.
There's also a ton of instances in which groups like these pretend to include some group in order to oust another, only to then discard and oust that very group once they've succeeded with the first. Bisexual people are a good example here -- they're ostensibly the LGB Alliance, but they're also campaigning to exclude bisexual people from this event. It's also definitely true that huge portions of groups like the LGB Alliance are made up of cis straight people, and it's worth calling that out when they pretend they represent the silent majority of the gay community.
Yes, and they have said, explicitly, that they want to attack LGBT+ rights and rights for women, and that the way they do this is to start by attacking trans people, and then move onto bi and gay people. This is all very clear, they've done it in other countries (notably the UK and US) and they're coming for Australia.
LGB Alliance claim to be pro gay. Show me anything they've done that promotes gay rights rather than attacks LGBT+ rights.
Yes there are definitely groups that are trying to tear down all LGBT rights but that doesn't mean everything anti trans has some dark funding. It's entirely plausible that this is a group of cis gendered lesbians that don't want anyone other than cis gendered lesbians at their event. Not wanting to date trans people is a valid choice. So the operators could easily see their choice as the default and don't want any chances of running into trans singles at their event. Same concept as straight men being concerned and their date night ends up with two penises.
Personally, I doubt any event would be overrun with trans people. There are a few sub cultures that have a fairly high percentage of trans women, but I'm pretty sure cis lesbians out number them quite a bit. So a lesbian meetup should have plenty of options for all lesbians trying to snag a hookup.
You seem to have missed my point entirely.
For me it's less that there's a shadowy cabal and more that there is an open alliance with right wing, anti-queer and anti woman money and groups.
Plus for people that claim to want safety for women, their rhetoric and proposed policies put lots of cis women at risk of discrimination and harassment. Which counters a claim of intending safety for (cis) women IMO.
Because this sort of thing happens all the time and has been for a long time.
It’s well documented how lots of peoples groups got infiltrated in the 60s, the things j edgar hoover did, the cnp, the pnac, etc etc etc.
There is a small, powerful and dedicated group of people who want the world to be a capitalist, theocratic empire, and will do anything they can get away with, and seem to have taken over scotus, and would happily discredit and destroy every trans group and event.
I think this an interesting thought, and I would suggest opening it up a little more broadly to ask: even if we take all that to be true, that this group is arguing disingenuous and doesn't really believe in the morality they are preaching, where does that leave us?
Like, if the whole argument is made up by people who don't believe in it, then what is the endgame of this discussion?
The endgame isn't to figure out the right answer, because the answer doesn't matter, the people who started this never cared that they were wrong.
The endgame isn't to win the argument, because creating the argument was the goal of the bad people. Engaging with it is playing into their hand.
If the endgame is to invalidate the argument as a whole so no one can ever bring it up again, well that's been done a hundred times before and yet here we are again.
Doesn't this whole discussion just become a waste of time once you've decided that your opponent doesn't actually believe in what they say they believe?
ugh the language in this article is absolutely disgustingly biased towards the TERFs campaigning for this bullshit.
Also they totally gloss past this but they also want to exclude bisexual women lol. Not that big of a surprise, exclusionists be excluding, but usually the TERFs at least pretend they want to keep the B until they finiah kicking out the T. Of course the article completely fails to even ask about this beyond mentioning it being in the request, since it's simping hard for the TERFs the whole time.
That stood out to me as well. If they can have a lesbian only event that forces others to stay out, why not an event where you can discriminate against anyone that isn't a cis-gendered straight woman + from Timbuktu + born between 1965 and 1970. You know, because of unique lived experiences.
It's a news article, not an opinion piece. The journalist is merely reporting what's happening, and what the lesbian group is requesting. I don't see any bias here by the journalist.
I can no longer access the article (lou's archive link was the only way I could before and it's no longer working for me) to grab quotes but they repeatedly frame it as a battle between trans people and "women's rights" and use the same language these "gender critical" TERF oragnizations trot out at any opportunity. Do they interview any trans women or trans lesbians or trans rights organizations in the article? I don't recall them doing so but I can't go back to check. All I recall is a "trans groups will probably object to this" -- it was not a balanced framing of the issue whatsoever imo.
Why does it have to be a balanced framing, when it's reporting something that people are doing?
If I report that someone robbed a bank, do I also have to interview the bank manager to get the viewpoint that robbing banks is wrong?
It's written in a way that's extremely sympathetic to the TERFs and their bogus attempt at a human rights exemption imho -- it's like exclusively interviewing a bank robber about how bad they feel that they don't get all the money they need when they go to withdraw and ignoring that they started shooting hostages. Ideally they would have a framing that portrays these TERFs as the scumbags they are, but if they're going to do the opposite they should at minimum provide a balanced framing that includes responses from any actual trans people.
This is why I stopped watching TV debates about [insert minority issue]. Like there will be half a dozen cisgender, straight, upper class, white (etc.) people behind lecterns talking about minority issues and maybe one person belonging to that minority who keeps getting shut down because unlike the politicians, they haven't had decades of experience with rhetoric etc., and then they will - to most viewers - be able to "win" the argument...
Anyway, yeah, I also constantly see this happen and it is tiring as hell. Why is it so hard to talk to the people that the issue actually concerns!? It certainly isn't good journalism.
I don't think your analogy is apt. Imagine if the bank robbery was performed by a radical leftist militia group. They don't describe it as a robbery at all. Rather they frame the whole thing in radical terms like "liberating stolen money" or "seizing the means of production."
Imagine such a robbery, and then imagine that a newspaper reported on the event by uncritically adopting the militants' framing. They don't even call it a robbery; the headline reads "group liberates thousands stolen from workers."
Perspective matters in news coverage. There can be no such thing as purely objective reporting. If you think you're reporting on a story without bias, then you are simply blind to your own biases.
But that's not the case here. If that was happening here, the headline would read something like "Women's group seeks right to defend their event from trans intruders."
The take in this article is neutral - obviously too neutral for some people, because the journalist has not questioned or challenged what the lesbians are asking for, but has merely passed it on to the reader as the lesbians wrote it or said it. LeGrand has given us their unfiltered words, without adding any interpretation or extra layer between us and them, and, for that, he's being accused of being biased.
I think that's merely good reporting: disseminate the facts, and let the readers judge for themselves.
But, that's not good enough for some people. By not expressing disapproval of what these lesbians are doing, the journalist is assumed to be biased in their favour. Because that's how the world works these days. Everyone has to take a side. "If you're not with us, you're against us." And this journalist, by not proving that he's with us, has obviously shown that he is against us.
No one in this thread has claimed the journalist is "against us", at least I haven't seen that. He might be, he might not be, I wouldn't know. The journalist does not need to be "against us" in order to write an article that's biased against us, though. He is certainly comfortable adopting transphobic rhetoric, such as "biological woman" or "sex-based rights".
A couple quotes:
A biased take, accepting the transphobes' narrative as fact. Women's rights and transgender rights do not oppose each other despite what the news article implies.
The article frames it as LGB Alliance being pushed into a "gender war" as if they are an innocent party, not an organization that actively promotes transphobia (and rarely promotes LGB rights).
This, and other parts of the article, frame it as people showing aggression towards them because they are women, not because of their actions. Granted, the article doesn't elaborate on what the "aggression" was, so I cannot say whether it was justified or not. But in any case, I would say the aggression was not because they're women, at least from the pro-trans side.
And these are the journalist's own words.
You wrote:
Uncritically spreading others' words, unfiltered or not, can easily be biased. Certainly, if the original words were genuine and tried to be unbiased, you could be right. But the source is extremely biased and full of dogwhistles, and uncritically repeating them is just that, spreading hate.
For example the quote about lesbians being "sacked from their jobs" for "speaking out about lesbian rights". It's dishonest on the group's part, and in my opinion an example of poor journalism on the author's part to repeat it unedited and uncommented.
"what happened" in this case is dishonest manipulation. If a journalist repeats that infiltered, they are the one being dishonest.
It's like if someone post a news story about an online curse which promise that you can earn 1300$ per month without working, but they present it without offering any "opinion" that it is a scam.
Somehow it's much more disappointing for lesbians to turn out as TERFs than cis women. They should know better.
Anyone know what the current climate is for trans people in Australia? Any way to predict what the AHRC is going to say?
There's always been a thread of misandry and anti-man feeling among a significant minority of lesbians, going back decades. In the modern day, that could manifest itself among some lesbians as a feeling that transgender women are just men trying to gain access to their events under false pretences.
Even some trans-accepting lesbians believe that, because transgender women didn't grow up as girls or women, they can't possibly relate to the experiences of cisgender women who've been treated as girls and women for their whole life. They accept trans women as women, but they believe there's a difference in their personal histories that makes the two subsets of women not able to relate to each other.
But, given that these particular lesbians are associated with the LGB Alliance, I doubt there's any nuance here. They see trans women as men in dresses, who therefore shouldn't be allowed to invade womens-only spaces.
It's generally neutral-to-positive. Of course we have a vocal minority of anti-transgender people, but the majority of Australians are accepting or, at least, apathetic (yay for good old Aussie apathy!).
Australian federal law explicitly prohibits discrimination against people "because of the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of the person". Religious organisations (such as churches, temples, hospitals, and schools) are exempt from these anti-discrimination laws.
All Australian states allow people to change the gender on their birth certificates, with some variations and legal requirements.
No.
I know there are a couple of gay pubs & clubs in Melbourne that have a legal exemption to discriminate against women and only allow men on the premises. However, I believe that they accept trans men, so that ruling doesn't form a precedent in this case.
Even though there are some precedents for legal exemptions to anti-discrimination laws (religions, those gay pubs), a ruling on this particular application for an exemption would require the AHRC to rule that transgender women can be legally differentiated from cisgender women - which would go against every other law in Australia regarding transgender people. Legally, transgender people are indistinguishable from cisgender people: the rights, privileges, and obligations that apply to legally to one woman apply to all women, cisgender and transgender alike. It would therefore be very unusual for the AHRC to rule that transgender women can be legally differentiated from cisgender women.
The lesbians could almost certainly get a ruling that would allow them to block men from attending their event, but I don't believe they can get a ruling that would allow them to block trans women from attending their event.
But, I'm open to being surprised.
And yet these same women are so rarely accepting of intersectional feminism -- God forbid they acknowledge that women can have different experiences and also similar ones.
I'm very glad the situation in Australia seems to be a lot more sensible and safe than in the UK though. I've gotten too used to hearing stories like this where it's inevitable that the TERFs win from that island.
This is really important, and I need people to understand this point: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE COURT SAYS.
The groups bringing the cases do not care what the court says. If they win they win and they think that's good; if they lose they lose, and that means they're being persecuted and you should join their cause because they're right and the courts have been captured by pro-trans activists who have subverted the law and it's all common sense. And either way they get (as we can see from this article) acres of press coverage that push their talking points without much attempt to debunk it.
Anti-trans campaigners lie. They lie about the case they're bringing to court, they lie about what they say in court, they lie about what the judge says, they lie about what they said in court. This gish-gallop of lies is reported by the press mostly uncritically.
Australian pro-trans organisations need to set up some kind of "rapid rebuttal unit" that creates short, easy to understand, press friendly, briefings and responses to the points made by anti-trans campaigners.
I agree with your assessment of why it doesn't matter to them what the court says, but certainly the precedent the court's decision could set would definitely harm transgender people in other situations as well. It's very sinister because they have nothing to lose but everything to gain.
No, they shouldn't. The expectations put on someone shouldn't be any higher just because they're a lesbian. It's easy to say "they went through X so they should understand someone else going through Y", but not every lesbian has had a hard life because of it and even if they have that doesn't mean they should be expected to empathize with others any more than a straight person should.
It's not so much about what they themselves went through than what they can see when they look around. Some LGBT+ people ignore the LGBT+ community altogether and just do their own thing, but I'd say that most are quite well-integrated into that community, whether it be through personal meetups or reading forum posts online. Sharing the same essential space as trans people and yet marginalizing and excluding them in the same breath just feels like an incredibly tone-deaf cognitive dissonance to me.
Coverage on LGBT+ and especially trans issues is just extremely small outside of certain spaces on the internet. Most people I've talked to in real-life don't really understand what a trans person even is. So while I don't excuse TERFness in any way, shape, or form, for those people who do not share the same spaces as trans people I could at least understand it to some degree. Their bigotry is born in part of malice, and in part of ignorance. Lesbians can claim no such excuse. It's pure malice at that point.
Archived.
It's important to realize that different people are at different points in their journey.
Only about 20% of people in the US disagree with the Supreme Court decision to ban discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace:
https://law.marquette.edu/poll/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/MLSPSC15CourtIssuesPressRelease.pdf
About 55% of people in the US think that teens should not have access to gender affirming care:
https://law.marquette.edu/poll/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/MLSPSC14PressRelease_NationalIssues.pdf
About 71% of people in the US want transgender athletes to play on teams that match their assigned-at-birth gender
https://law.marquette.edu/poll/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/MLSPSC14PressRelease_NationalIssues.pdf
You are free to call all those people "transphobic" if you wish but trans acceptance is very much "non-binary" and for a long time most people are going to be trans-positive in some ways and trans-negative in some other ways. Blaming it all on a vast right-wing conspiracy is not going to change people's minds and increase acceptance.
Female desire has been a major problem in psychology since Freud and now in the era of Bremelanotide. Particularly you can't expect people to love you any more than pick up artists or incels can.
The more stripes they add to the rainbow flag and the more letters to the acronym the more they add groups that have different interests. People invented the "Queer" label because L, G and B didn't apply to them. Bisexuals have always faced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisexual_erasure
If rainbow people suppress all internal differences they are going to wind up representing nobody and having at best broad but very shallow support.
Also, women are not naturally left-wing or right-wing. I was reading this book
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/19/birchers-review-republican-far-right-trump-desantis-dallek-john-birch-society
which points out women being important leaders in the John Birch Society. When women got the vote in the US they voted for Warren G. Harding. Benjamin Disreali gave a famous talk to a left-wing organizer that he wasn't going to get anywhere the way he was going unless he took into account what women thought.
in March 2003, 72% of Americans supported the war in Iraq.
and in 1966, 63% of Americans had an unfavorable view of Martin Luther King Jr.
I would caution against over-reliance on opinion polls.
no, there is an element of trans acceptance that is absolutely yes-or-no, black-and-white, no "yes but" or "yes except":
a) do trans people exist?
b) do trans people have the right to exist?
if someone answers an enthusiastic "yes" to both questions then I'm willing to consider their opinions on topics like qualification requirements for sports leagues, public bathroom etiquette, age minimums for elective medical procedures, or the best way to handle employment & housing discrimination.
you'd think those should be easy questions, but earlier this year Michael Knowles (a host on Ben Shapiro's news site Daily Wire) said “For the good of society ... transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.” and he got cheering applause, at the biggest annual convention for political conservatives in the US.
if someone answers no to either of those two questions, I am perfectly happy excluding them from my "big tent".
this is just factually wrong.
it was a pejorative for decades, before it was reclaimed by LGBT people.
Harding won by a landslide:
they hadn't invented exit polls yet, so we don't know the exact breakdown of how men vs women voted. but with a 60/34 victory it seems very likely he would have won even if the 19th Amendment hadn't been ratified at that point.
Interesting choice to put scare quotes around "transphobic" as if these aren't objectively transphobic things to believe. The fact that these might be fundamentally good people who care about those around them and have simply been psyopped into believing awful things doesn't make those things less awful. If anything it makes it worse, and you do a disservice to your point to try and handwave it away.
I'm not stupid. I know the reality of our culture. I know why man-in-a-dress narratives work, it's because we have literal centuries of cultural brainwashing to undo. Depictions of the Devil as an androgyne mixing male and female sexuality, the original root of the english word 'bad', this shit runs deep. But pointing these things out is not conspiratorial. It is objective fact that fascists are currently using trans children as a wedge issue to try and drive voter turnout. It isn't working, thank god, but they are still doing it.
Also, this part of your comment especially confuses me:
What on earth are you talking about? Do you actually think transfemmes that want to go to a lesbian event want lesbians to 'love' them? Do you seriously think there are transfemmes that go around upset that trans-exclusionary lesbians don't want to have sex with them? As a transfemme I don't care that there are lesbians not attracted to me, and while I don't doubt that there are twitter-poisoned idiots that do genuinely get mad about that they have to be an extreme minority.
Trans people have been a part of the LGBT community from the beginning. The first bricks at Stonewall were thrown by an angry trans woman. Any attempt to split the community by weird gender policing should be met with the same: A brick in the face.
I really had to think hard if I wanted to reply to this, in fact it was probably a mistake to get involved in this discussion at all. I really don’t know what to think about all these issues but I do know that different people have different points of view, have their own feelings, etc.
I’ll avoid any generalization that could be wrong but I will point that (1) I think it is an act of othering and dehumanization to call people names because they disagree with you (thus the quotes)…. think of how it makes you feel when people other and dehumanize you, and (2) your reply ended in a threat of violence and that’s behavior that (I think) should never be allowed to become normalized.
Dude, calling a spade a spade is not dehumanization. If someone performs actions commonly agreed upon to be transphobic it is not dehumanizing to say they are being transphobic.
And actually yes threats of violence are good sometimes. I love humanity despite all its warts but do you expect me and every other queer person to just roll over when fascists try to tell us to stop existing? The human experience is so wideranging and beautiful sure, but the fact that these people that cause untold harm to queer children are still people does not inherently make their viewpoint worth considering. This is basic paradox of tolerance shit, it's mindboggling that I have to even say this on tildes.
Being openminded is good, but we should take care not to have our minds so open that our brains fall out.
I am sure fascists would agree with you that “threats of violence are good sometimes”.
And if you can't see the difference between violence used to hurt others and violence used in defense I seriously question your values, not to mention your awareness of events the past few years.
I think y’all might be getting caught in a semantic loop.
My interpretation of @UP8’s view is that they believe that:
While it may be bigoted and offensive, is not violent, and thus the proposed reaction
Is instigatory, and not self-defense.
Maybe I’m wrong, but that was my interpretation of their comment.
That is violence. Not physical, but the end goal of that kind of community splitting is clearly for the purpose of eradicating queerness by dividing and conquering. The obvious logical end goal of this kind of wedge issue is to try and legislate transness out of existence, just like they tried to do with gay marriage, just like they did all throughout history. Social conservatism is a fundamentally genocidal ideology; it doesn't exist without it. Sure, I'm being hyperbolic with saying every attempt should be met with direct physical violence, but let's not kid ourselves - the fascists are being physically violent right now. Stochastic terrorism doesn't get the 'its just words lol' defense in my book.
So, I understand where you’re coming from, but I’m going to push back on this a bit. I see rhetoric similar to yours online a lot, and it distresses me pretty strongly. I say this as someone who is a member of the queer community and has been on the receiving end of direct, violent threats.
Removing the distinctions between exclusionary actions and violence is not a good thing. It strongly benefits the people who would use violence against our community.
By flattening the distinction between other harmful acts and violence itself, we morally equivocate the two. From our perspective this is done to heighten the harm of actions that might look okay at face value to others, as well as get past “it’s just words lol” defenses like you identified. As has been discussed in this topic, those things do real harm that is often unnoticed or not understood, so I understand the want to try to surface those harms and make them visible.
Unfortunately, by equating them to direct physical violence, we give up a lot more than we gain. The people who are ready and willing to use violence against us relish the idea of a moral flattening that makes bodily harm feel like it’s on the same level as “just words lol”. They use the equivocation as a softening for what they do — a moral escape clause that makes an abhorrent action seem less bad in comparison because it occupies the same ethical space as mean words or non-inclusive actions.
This gives them a direct pretext for violent actions against us. This is why so much of right wing discussion trades on the “harms” we do simply by existing. They know that violence against us is bad and would be seen as such, but if they can dehumanize us enough and flatten the distinctions between speech and physical harm enough, then they can make their violence look normalized or even justified.
I believe strongly that erasing that distinction is doing their work for them. Violent actions are a class of their own. This doesn’t mean that words, exclusionary measures, bigotry, etc. don’t do harm — they certainly do — but those aren’t in the same class as physical violence.
Also, and this is speaking more from my own personal experience: I find it pretty offensive when people equivocate the two because I feel it’s disrespectful to the many queer people who have experienced physical violence. It lessens and dismisses their harms, quite significantly.
I’ve experienced a lot of outright hate and discrimination in my lifetime, and I’m “lucky” enough that I only had a few instances where there was the threat of violence (and I’m “very lucky” in the sense that it remained at the level of threat and didn’t escalate to actual harm to my body). The experiential difference between the violent and non-violent harms I experienced is night and day. Putting those side by side and alleging they’re the same feels dishonest to me. Telling anyone who has actually been queer bashed that “non-inclusivity/words are violence too” is a way of dismissing and underselling their specific trauma.
I understand that what you’re saying comes from a good place — you want to support our community and counter the discrimination and oppressions we face — but I encourage you to consider that it might have some knock on effects that yield opposite outcomes.
You misunderstand I think. I don't think that exclusionary language is inherently always fascist violence. I'm being a bit simplistic with my language for effect. But when it's clearly being used by fascists to justify physical violence that is actually happening I don't really see a distinction.
If it were the case that fascists said all this awful shit and nothing came of it, I would care a lot less. When Republicans say miserable things about trans children its pathetic but ultimately I don't care... until that rhetoric results in actual physical harm to people. And that's the problem imo.
You're definitely partly right, because threats of physical violence are not to be made lightly. I just think that the time has come; the empty threats against queerness are no longer empty.
When that exclusionary language comes from children or the uninformed it obviously doesn't justify punches being thrown. We should always endeavor to educate where we can. I just think that the fascists have forced our hand.
Racist POS are still racist pos, same with homophobic pos and transphobic pos. To say otherwise will be to coddle bigots.
People get a really visceral reaction to being described as phobic of something, but it really doesn't have to be dehumanizing or received as an attack. If you reduce a person to, "a transphobe," that is othering. Like how too many people refer to any trans person as, "a trans."
Just so you're aware, there are such things as internalized homophobic feelings. Just because someone's view is described as phobic, doesn't mean that person's value is being questioned.