No Truth in the Scotsman

 

All the lies - "Scotland's LGBT community is frightened by the current anti-trans obsession"

By Josh Mennie
- Josh Mennie is an SNP activist. This is his take on the steady erosion of women's rights, boundaries and the constant abuse feminists face in Scotland. It is replicated here in full, but if you want to see it in all its glory, the original is here

"I NEVER picked a "side" – I was born this way. Common decency would argue that a group of people put into the continuous, never-ending, daily cycle of defending their existence should not be simply classed as a "side". For many of us, this "side" was never a choice.

However, undermining LGBT+ rights and inclusion – the other side in the so-called debate – is a choice."

- Ok, so Josh is a gay man. A young one. And of course, sexuality is immutable and likely innate. But to imply that means you are by default aligned with reactionary, mantra-led pseudo-politics which can't hold, tolerate or accept any kind of discussion, well - seems a little patronising to me.

Josh, I didn't choose to be female. I didn't choose to be born into a culture filled with sex stereotypes, in a world which oppresses women on the basis of our biology, in the same way, across space and time. Where, as a woman, I am part of that half of the population who is the major victim of sexual assault and who hardly ever commits it. Who is generally smaller, less physically forceful, and indoctrinated to be submissive, sacrifice my self-interest and defer to males. But, clearly this is no concern of yours.

Using the phrase 'so called debate' is about the only bit you got right. Because there's no debate - that's even one of your mantras, innit?

"It never really was the gender debate, though. More like a misinformation war, targeting a particular sector of the LGBT+ community by divide-and-conquer tactics."

- Josh, why are you lying? 

I went to view your Twitter and saw that, despite my complete lack of any interaction with you previously; despite having no engagement in Scottish politics and having had no arguments over nationalism vs unionism etc, I am blocked. Still, you'll claim to know what women like myself think. Pretty weak, pretty brittle and cowardly from someone involved in politics, if you ask me.

"Despite this, LGBT+ people across the political spectrum are now jumping to the defence of our trans siblings. Because we have seen this pattern of discrimination before. It is the same pattern that we witnessed against gay men in the 1980s. I know many of you will recall the typical "gay men are paedophiles and a danger to children". Except only now it's, "trans people are a danger to women and children"."

- That's another lie. It's an embarrassing one, too, because I don't think you've actually insulated yourself from feminists enough to honestly believe this crock of shit. Many of us are gay. What we tend to take issue with is your side's frequent conflation of gayness and 'gender diversity' with sleaze - from using the slur 'queer' (those of us who actually remember the gay panic shit of the 80's tend to flinch on hearing that) to 'packers' - i.e. prosthetic penises for girls as young as four, to that charming drag queen (Flow-Job) your ally Mhairi Black took to a fucking primary school.What is the real concern, for anyone in doubt, is this -Males are the ones who commit almost all sexual offences and this has become a bit of a problem, to no one's surprise (see The Rich Fantasy Self ID Endangers Women). There are frequently obvious males, who haven't even bothered to shave, in the press having been convicted of serious sexual offences and being granted female pronouns and referred to as women, or even escaping jail altogether because their identity makes them too vulnerable.There's a reason we don't tell our kids to go ask a man for help if they get lost. There's a reason our hearts leap into furious adrenalin-fuelled panic when we see a man walking quickly up towards us on a dark night. There's even a reason trans activists demand male-bodied people who identify as women want to use our spaces. How long can you continue to feign ignorance of this?Trans people are not the danger - that is not the argument, as Josh well knows. The danger is, of course, men.Question is, why is he crying misrepresentation while deliberately misrepresenting us? Why is he protecting himself from the views of those who speak for the rights of half the population? What the fuck is going on that this passes for legimate comment?

"Looking at fact-based evidence, let's look at where the real dangers are. According to the Williams Institute, transgender people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime."

- Who are the perpetrators of that harm, Josh? Is it terrible women on Twitter? Is it those evil TERFs hanging trans people from railings with nooses made of suffragette-striped ribbons? And what does this have to do with feminism?

The link Josh has added above refers to a study by the American Civil Liberties Union. They who filed a lawsuit against an ordinary woman who applied for a freedom of information request on how many male prisoners were entering women's prisons. Sure their data is second to fucking none - they're as open, honest and non-ideologically blinkered as the best ally!

Their data comes from crime surveys. Which is hardly the best in empirical evidence. They mention “The media has rightly given attention to the 2020 increase in murders of transgender women of color,” 

But, as you can see from my earlier blog Sex, Lies and an Invidious Landscape, the real rate of trans people who are murdered is tiny - with trans people facing an annual murder rate 1.48 per 100,000.

Let's compare that to the average, shall we? For the general population, for 100,000 around 5 will be murdered annually.

For men, this rises to 6.68. For black men it's an actual epidemic and outrage - 18.8 will be murdered annually. ('Trans murder rate 'surprisingly low') These figures are reliable - from the work of professor Wilfred Riley at Kentucky state university who studied the murder rate of trans people using data from the HRC (human rights council - an extremely pro-trans activism organisation) and the FBI. 

So, with black men more than TWELVE TIMES more likely to be victim, and trans people generally THREE TIMES safer than the average American, can we perhaps get some perspective here?

Certainly it's true that in the UK more trans people have been convicted of murder than been murdered. Often these murders are incredibly sadistic (detailed in the above blog 'Sex, Lies...') and of those who have been murdered the most frequent commonality is prostitution.

So, in reality trans people are in one of the safest demographics. But Josh doesn't want you to know this - he wants you to be scared and he wants trans people, those who are apparently already in fight or flight mode, to be especially scared. Ironically, if we were to draw your attention to the number of sympathetically portrayed trans prisoners on their mission to enter women's prisons, and pointed out a terrifying number have absolutely depraved criminal histories of murder, rape and child sex abuse, he'd 1) shit the bed and 2) call it anecdotal.

Again - the ACLU filed a lawsuit against an ordinary woman who applied for a freedom of information on how many male prisoners were entering women's prisons.  Remember that.

"Yet, the finger continues to be pointed at trans people as a danger to cis people. Why?"

- I suppose, Josh, it's because you point blank refuse to acknowledge what's happening. It's a bit like being called a nag by your other half - if they would just do the thing they were meant to do, you could stop going on about it - and, well, nagging them.

This is some nasty gaslighting. It is you and your compatriots who will not listen to what we're saying, what our fears are, and continue to paint us as heartless, hysterical harridans rather than reassure us. So, here's hoping you're about to thrash all of my concerns, prove me wrong and leave me to more enjoyable activities...

"Society is being stirred up by hate and discrimination toward a minority group. Looking back in history, every time a group has been demonised like this without challenge, it ends in absolute disaster"

- And yet, you wont stop...

"We have multiple historical examples of how people's minds buy into irrational hate campaigns toward a minority grouping. Just open your history books – you won't need to read very far."

- Are you comparing the bullies who report women for tweeting images of ribbons as death threats, to antifascists? Are the women who stand up for their rights (as they have long been in law) the fascists, the instigators of pogroms, Josh? Are women who've been forced to flee their own homes to escape escalating violence and rape, only to have a transwoman who dishonestly gained control of their refuge tell them to 'reframe their trauma' the oppressors here? 

"This is real now. We are at a point in history where LGBT+ organisations, rape crises centres, and almost every organisation which uses trans inclusive language are being hounded to the extent it is impacting the work they do – and for what? Is it because they had the audacity to provide services to people daring to be trans? Trans people have existed for millennia. It shouldn't be controversial anymore"

- Again, Josh wants you to believe that women are wielding their mighty swords of oppression to derail good people doing great work for the most vulnerable  - all because he can't honestly and adequately address what is really going on. 

If I could, I'd ask Josh what he thinks of the sustained abuse suffered by the LGB Alliance. Or Vancouver Rape Relief Centre. Maybe he'd like to explain the hounding of teachers, doulas, midwives etc who stand up to the erasure of women; the Girl Guides leaders (who don't think having adult men identify as women is all it takes to remove the risk that males pose) being fired. Or maybe whether he thinks the end of MitchFest was a good thing?!

Josh is feigning perplexed horror here, he is playing dumb - and yeah, I know... but quite seriously he can't be that clueless if he's cobbled this spurious appeal to emotion together.

I suppose, Josh, the sudden boom in trans identification is also a lie? The activists who instruct lawyers to piece together blueprints for how to get self id into law, under the cover of more popular reform, is a fiction?

And the provision of women's services and spaces, the definition of our words, has not seen dramatic infiltration and subversion over the last few years, no? It has always been the way that male people have been able to access any space set aside for women. It has always been the case that women are told to suck lady-dick and choke on it; get over their genital preferences; had their own refuges they built from the ground up headed by males who lied at interview and said they were female, and talk about rape-induced orgasm. Survivors of female genital mutilation have, since their stories were first shared, been told to shut the fuck up about their experiences because their lack is notinclusive enough.

The only realistic bit here is the fact that suffragettes were also harassed by the state for standing for their own rights - go and put 'anti suffragette propaganda' in your search engine and be amazed at the huge difference in how we're portrayed....

*See Refuges for what is really going on here

"The argument that trans rights are eroding women's rights is the mantra from people who cannot specify which rights would actually be eroded."

- This is the most egregious, bald faced lie. Ask youself why exactly is this man talking to you like an idiot? Why is he relentlessly misrepresenting arguments, omitting very pertinent facts and demonising women?. What exactly is the point of this? See Abigail Shrier's excellent piece on the rights at risk here, Kathleen Stock reviewimg Helen Joyces' book Trans here - or just ask a feminist.

"The current obsession with trans people and LGBT+ organisations is frightening. It should strike fear into the hearts of every gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and non-binary person and their loved ones out there"

- There we go - they want you to be frightened. They want you to believe that women having the right to say "no, I only want a woman to perform my forensic examination at the Sexual Assault and Rape Centre" is an outrageous, existential threat to the humanity of the vulnerable. It's those damn rape victims, what with their demands on who puts a speculum inside of their torn vaginas and anuses; those bigots who want only a female carer to do the intimate care for their severely disabled daughter or mother; who only want a woman to talk to when in therapy; who only want to live with other women having fled from years of abuse - it's these women, and those who speak up for them, who are the real tyranny. Also, those lesbians with their cisnormative genital fetishes.

"Why does society ostracise people that are different? People tend to fear what they do not know, the unfamiliar. In terms of unfamiliarity around LGBT+ people – to that, I say, get to know us".

- This, dear reader, coming from a man who has pre-emptively blocked a feminist he has never even had vague proximity to. The coward.

"We laugh as you do, bleed the same, cry as you will. We should get to live life as straight cisgendered people do, unhampered by our sexuality and gender identity."

- Ironically, Josh mate - that's what we want for you, too. And, we want to be able to do the same and not have our trauma mocked, our urgent points dismissed as spiteful hysteria, and have our sexuality un-harassed with notions of genital preferences; have our kids live as the beautifully gender non-conforming people they are without a lifetime of pharmaceutical reliance, sexual dysfunction and infertility; we want our biological sex recognised as the profound, immutable and highly relevant, manifest fact it is. 

"Let us do precisely that by supporting all strands of the LGBT+ community because – goodness knows – our trans siblings particularly need it."

- "All but especially the trans community" has started to get a little bit... jarring. Do lesbians ever come into this as anything more than support humans? Are those who end up in refuges and prisons or on the couches of rape crisis centres deserving of anything?

"Support marginalised people instead of meeting them with suspicion. We are amid an onslaught of hate and extremely damaging misinformation that is setting us back decades in the fight for LGBT+ inclusion. I use the term "fight" now because a few years ago, LGBT+ politics felt like a campaign, not a fight."

- You may have noted, Josh is yet to cite a single example of what is being misrepresented.

You may have noted he has made no attempt whatsoever to support or even acknowledge the rights of women. 

You may have noted also, his only tactic is to invoke images of sad, downbeaten trans people, homophobia and allusions to historical persecution of minority groups while offering up nothing but a fuckin survey from a political lobby group which tries to stifle the rights on normal citizens to information.

"I know first-hand, it is pretty heart-breaking when your trans friend tells you they wished they could just have one day where they didn't have to justify that they exist"

- Funny you should mention this, Josh, but I hear trans people every day talk about the abuse they get from your side, all for the crime of having their own, personal thoughts and opinions. For not falling into line with authoritarian diktat from god knows where. 

It would also be just great if one of you explained what 'justify that they exist' means? How can we be transphobic if we don't acknowledge trans people exist? Who says that?

"Instead of pointing the finger of hate and ignorance, cis people could show more empathy and understanding. It would be kinder to extend a hand and ask, "Are things difficult for you? How can we make it easier?""

- Have you ever thought of extending that hand a little further, Josh? Like, to women? To women with nowhere to live, who are utterly broken by trauma? To women in prison? This is the most patronising, infantalising polemic. It is categorically you who is scaremongering, shouting wolf, frantically waving the red flag while performatively comforting your prize victims and pulling mournful expressions with the other side of your face. 

"Trans hate crime has doubled in the last four years, and it is of little wonder with the hate-filled misinformation being perpetuated. The only pandering is the perpetuation of the media platforming the trojan horse of "legitimate concerns” about LGBT+ rights and inclusion."

- What is the misinformation? And can we have a breakdown of those crime statistics?

Misogyny of course isn't a hate crime. JK Rowling, maybe the most famous person in Scotland, has been subjected to thousands of death and rape threats, while in the UK the first person prosecuted for an anti-trans hate crime was in fact a transsexual (with the charges pressed by a 'cis' woman).  There's also been quite a lot of direct intimidation, harassment, targeting and violence in the 'so called debate' - from your side.

"I have hope for the future. And my hope is that people who identify as LGBT+ should no longer have to face daily backlash for simply existing. Why isn't that a reality yet?"

- How will we know when it is? The messengers thus far have been manipulating statistics from the other side of the world, lying, using forced perspective fully aware of the inconsistency due to no comparable crimes to protect your bogey-man (women) and casting the autonomy of rape victims to a semblance of dignity as bigotry. You're actively encouraging people to be frightened, but can't even explain why.

Maybe we shouldn't listen to a man who can't cite a single example, who wants people scared, and who is barracaded into an echo chamber like a paranoid survivalist while claiming to have insight into the outside world.

Maybe, just maybe, women deserve a voice too?