Anti-trans campaigners, prominent and obscure

Naomi Cunnningham, barrister, gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee about the GRR Bill on 31 January. Though Robin Moira White, barrister and trans woman, was there, she expressed strong distaste for trans women, whom she sees as men.

Anum Qaisar, SNP MP, put to her that Scottish Women’s Aid and others supported the GRR Bill. Other threats to women’s rights in Scotland include poverty, cuts to services, rape conviction rates, and the experiences of immigrant and refugee women. Yet media attention is devoted to GRR rather than these real issues.

Cunningham called that “whataboutery”. She thought GRR threatened women’s ordinary privacy and dignity. All women are entitled to their own boundaries, and some find it particularly threatening to use a toilet in the presence of men.

She thinks thousands of trans women might get GR. Lord Falconer thought it might be hundreds. She does not know and does not care. She talked of what others call “real transsexuals”, though she did not use the term, a few thousand people envisaged in 2004. She talked of the “man who identifies as a woman who passes,” who has had surgery and hormones, dysphoria for years, assimilated as a woman, where “people would think he was a woman”. But now people might apply who “cross dress for erotic purposes” or to avoid being sent to a men’s prison after they “committed horrible crimes and think they will have a nicer time in a women’s prison,” or just want to exercise power by transgressing women’s boundaries. Not all will be predatory, but there is nothing to stop predatory men.

She says any trans woman without a GRC can be excluded from a women’s service because she is a “man”, contrary to the EHRC statutory code of practice. Unfortunately, Lord Falconer agreed with her. This is becoming the common understanding, without any case law in England to back it up.

She produced an argument I had not heard before. A women’s service which includes trans women to her includes men. “The permission to provide a service for one sex only becomes meaningless”. There is no service which is needed by women and “men with GRCs” because “that is not an actual category at all”. So the entitlement to women’s services ends.

To her, trans inclusion destroys all women’s rights. To me, trans inclusion is a recognition that human categories are fuzzy, and making an exception for a tiny group- less than 1% of the population- who need it. She will never agree with that.

Naomi Cunningham, whom I like and respect because of her Employment Tribunal Claims textbook and blog, which as an ET rep I found useful, finds me repulsive. If 1% of “women” are trans women, that is far too many. She fears us, because we could be dangerous. That ET blog is defunct. Now she blogs on Legal Feminist, where on 10 February she raged about the “law going bonkers” for putting trans women in women’s prisons, just before the guidance in England was changed. Her latest blog is of interest only to trial lawyers and litigants in person, but all her previous ten blogs, long and detailed, were anti-trans. One was against a conversion therapy ban.

She does not tweet in her own name, but is co-founder and chair of Sex Matters, another tiny hate group. So I looked at one of their tweets, and found Marilyn had retweeted it, so took Marilyn as my representative sample of an ATC. Well, this is a blog, not a detailed study.

Marilyn, who shares a name with a New Romantic singer, is a “real actual WOMAN with two beautiful golden retrievers (bitches)”. She tweets about her dogs, and hating trans women. Her pinned tweet is on her dogs, but thirty tweets in three days are anti-trans. Her most recent tweets, as I type, were 3, 13 and 21 hours ago. That is, she goes on twitter several times a day to hate on trans people. This particular hater has not done replies- none of her tweets in those three days are her own words.

I poked about, and found no replies to various anti-trans tweets, but found Lizzie replying to the first trans woman’s tweet I checked. Her latest tweet, a reply, is “I’ll never vote Labour again, due to their shocking disrespect towards women and girls, their utter insanity and their slavish devotion to Transworld. Same with LibDems/Greens, and I will not vote Tory, so am politically homeless. – Lizzie, a woman and Adult Human Female.” In 30 minutes it has had thirteen views, and no likes. One reply is to an ATC- even though the ATC has attacked a trans man, Lizzie corrects him for using a male pronoun.

After scrolling for what seemed like ages, I found a reply from two days ago. It had 53 views, and three likes. It was her reason for not using the term “trans woman”- instead she will only use transsexual, transgender or transvestite. Her latest tweets are, as I type, 3 and 35 minutes, 12 and 16 hours, all anti-trans.

Gender Martyr

Rob Hoogland has been jailed, and the extreme Right are up in arms against it. He was jailed for refusing his child medical treatment which doctors said was necessary, and denying the child’s medical condition, then holding the court in contempt for two years. On being jailed, he expressed remorse and said he had been used as a pawn, and “played”, by transphobes opposing all treatment of trans children.

The child, whose real name I don’t know, socially transitioned at school for a period of years. He did not feel able to tell his parents, and his parents justified his suspicions by completely opposing his treatment. He was assessed by doctors including an endocrinologist who set out a course of treatment. Hoogland refused to co-operate, so the hospital decided they knew best the medical treatment the child needed, and would treat the father’s consent as unnecessary under the law.

Hoogland continued to act up. He was adopted by the hard right, as he says as a pawn for them to use to oppose gender affirming care, and in 2019 the court ordered him to use male pronouns when referring to his son.

In March he was arrested, and, overwhelmed by a sense of his own righteousness backed up by the wealthy, powerful transphobes, he stayed in jail rather than consenting to admit his son’s medical needs. At the hearing on Friday, he finally expressed remorse, so his sentence was reduced to six months.

If the British Columbia Supreme Court publish the judgment, I will have a look at it. However, otherwise, I can only find reports of the case on the nutcase transphobe/ hard right press: New York Post, “Christian Concern”, and a host of tiny websites. “Trans ‘Justice’ has gone haywire” blares some worthless transphobe on some site. No, transphobes feel entitled to ignore medical advice, the needs of their children, and the orders of the court.

What about the detransitioners? ask the phobes. Well, what about the retransitioners. The phobe conditional positive regard- lovebombing any trans man who will detransition, withdrawing the love if they break increasingly stringent rules- works with incessant societal transphobia to make some detransition.

There’s a lot of transphobe money around. Rob Hoogland’s crowdfunder raised $56,000. So the judge ordered him to donate $30,000 to a charity.

The phobes don’t care how many lives they ruin. Trans children can just go hang. Poor Hoogland regrets how the phobes manipulated him, now. Hysterical phobes are milking the story still. There’s a picture of a pair of fists grasping jail bars, the fists brightly lit against blackness in the cell, which hardly reflects Canadian prison conditions now.

I really should not go on Twitter. This morning over breakfast I read a New York Times opinion article about Planned Parenthood, how Margaret Sanger, its founder, was a racist eugenicist, and how the charity should reckon with this blighted heritage. There’s an aside near the end about how language might exclude trans and nonbinary people, and phobes Jesse Singal and Hadley Freeman choose to emphasise this as if PP no longer cared about women. “Misogynistic!” I found that when I ill-advisedly clicked on a link on a facebook trans group.

The obsessive haters in Britain have chosen yet another new name. This time the same tiny group of phobes have decided to call themselves “thoughtful therapists”. Perhaps Robert Withers, the Andrew Wakefield of trans health, is one of them. They oppose law on trans conversion therapy based on the Memorandum of Understanding, even though it is signed by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy and nineteen other health, counselling and psychotherapy organisations. It’s like the American Academy of Pediatrics being condemned by some nutcase far right Christian group with “Pediatrics” in their name.

I hope the robust commitment to rehabilitation of the Canadian justice system does Rob Hoogland some good.

Is Richard Dawkins transphobic?

Is Richard Dawkins a transphobe? He compared trans women to Rachel Dolezal, then tweeted “discuss”. Responses to his tweet showed the failure of twitter. Some tweets said that transition is not a choice. Some said that being a woman is not a feeling. No-one learned anything.

He claimed “you will be vilified” if you deny trans women are women. Well, yes, and also you will get loud enthusiastic affirmation from a whole load of twitter accounts and be echoed by powerful media organisations and institutions. “I do not intend to disparage trans people,” he tweeted later, but it’s hard to interpret his tweets as anything else.

In 1991 he gave this children’s lecture, explaining evolution. I was not a child, but I was inspired and have felt warmly towards the man ever since. His metaphor “Climbing Mount Improbable” explains that an eye does not spring into existence fully formed, but each step of evolution is an advance on what came before. So, light-sensitive skin is an advantage, then if that sensitive area is concave it gives some information of the direction from where the light comes. Each step is an advantage, and many such advances still exist in creatures today.

I have not followed his anti-theism, but have sympathy with the man. Young Earth Creationists were calling him deluded by the Devil or a deliberate liar. Such Creationism is pernicious, and I am pleased with his attacks on it, even though I consider religion and spirituality has value he has not acknowledged and perhaps has not understood. He says of holy books that “they don’t contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out”, which is bizarre- they contain a great deal of wisdom on what it means to be human, which psychology is only just catching up with. He says, “It is important to recognise when we reach the limits of what we understand”, but it is clear he doesn’t, always.

I got The Magic of Reality from Amazon because it was 99p. It’s aimed at people over 12, and it was explaining a lot of stuff I already knew. I gave up when I read that “protons and neutrons are very very tiny indeed”. But I feel working on “the public understanding of science” is worthwhile.

His ability to research and create new understanding, and to explain complex concepts to lay people, make it surprising that he does not understand about trans people. Despite transphobia, we transition. Apart from the sense of congruence, which is overwhelming, trans women gain little from transition. If we do not transition we do not thrive as our gifts might suggest we would. All this seems well enough established, and simple enough to understand, so that for a trained intellect like Dawkins’ to compare us to Dolezal, six years after everyone else has moved on, needs explanation. The simplest explanation is some aversion to, disgust fear anger or hatred for, trans people- that is, transphobia. Saying he did not intend to disparage us seems disingenuous. I believe Dawkins is generally truthful. So he did not see how disparaging he was being, which indicates a high level of aversion or contempt for us.

I would like to have heroes, but the greatest people are flawed. I can believe that Churchill played a great part in defeating Hitler at the same time as knowing he was a disastrous leader at Gallipoli and a racist. I remain grateful for Dawkins’ explanation of the evolution of eyes, which I will always remember, but he is a transphobe. That’s just as bad as being a racist.

The American Humanist Association has withdrawn the Humanist of the Year Award it bestowed on Prof. Dawkins in 1996.

30 November: as the professor was a clear transphobe before, his pleas to others to sign some transphobic screed tell us nothing new. Any quick google will show that screed is worthless and ridiculous.

Tweets and reality

Is Eddie Izzard a lesbian? It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.

Some words have precise meanings. A zoologist plying his trade would not call her a “cat”, meaning the family Felidae or the genus Panthera or Felis. But you might see her moving on stage with feline grace. She is not a planet, because that has a clear meaning- Pluto was, then it wasn’t- but she is a star. She may be a hepcat- I knew slang, I thought it was 1960s, two words, hep for fashionable, cat for cool person. Words are slippery. Even scientific words have fuzzy edges where they may or may not apply.

Eddie says he’s a lesbian in a man’s body, and is that a good thing? A lesbian is a woman attracted to women. Homophobes find that weird, shameful or disgusting, and mourn the time when more people shared their opinion. If Eddie calls herself a lesbian it’s aspirational, something he wants to be. It becomes something to be proud of.

It’s only a bad thing if it forms some sort of threat to lesbians. The Times argues that it is, that lesbians are erased. Grace Petrie tweeted that if the transphobes were concerned about lesbian erasure, they might start a regular lesbian life column. No, because they only support lesbians in order to attack trans folk. The Daily Mail even supported a trans woman, once- to attack Muslims.

Insisting on too rigid a distinction between lesbian and bi might be biphobic. Trans women are women, so trans women attracted to women and not men are lesbians. If you think that’s a threat to lesbians, please explain why.

Right now, there are things to be angry about. The extreme incompetence of the British government has led to a sudden lockdown, when we can only go out to work if it is impossible to work from home, no more than two people can meet outside in a public place, and all the shops but pharmacies and supermarkets are shut. Schools are shut, but even on Monday 4th the Department for Education had a high-level meeting insisting they would be open, and children would be regularly tested for covid. So schools, without additional funding, have had to plan a testing regime, only to find now they will have to implement distance learning, with no notice. The hospitals are full, but infections have continued to rise, which means people will die who would have survived had they received proper medical care. Bizarrely, churches can open for worship, though many run food banks.

So, the usual suspects stir up anger against trans people instead. Jackie Doyle-Price, Tory MP, tweeted anger at Eddie calling herself a lesbian. Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP who should know better, liked the tweet. Tories, being English Nationalists, need to stir up hatred against enemies. Duffield has no such excuse.

Duffield also liked a tweet about a transphobic picture book, “My body is me”.

Bodies are different. Children are too.
Some prefer pink things. Some prefer blue.

That might be seen as reinforcing gender stereotypes in the most basic way. The book, which is unavailable on Amazon, shows children with “girl” hairstyles and “boy” hairstyles.

My body can act like a low flying plane
A mermaid, a dragon, one part of a train.

The plane- a boy walking, with planks strapped to his arms. Why low-flying? I stuck my arms out, no planks needed, and yelled NEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOWW. I was definitely high flying. It doesn’t set much store by child imagination. The mermaid is clearly a girl. Rigid gender stereotypes, again.

You are born in your body. You don’t have a spare.
So love it, hug it, treat it with care.

“My body is me” might be materialist, denying the existence of an immortal soul, so distressing Christians, but “You are born in your body” is denying the truth of trans children. Most children simply won’t understand, they won’t know what the alternative might be, but the five year old AMAB child who knows she is a girl will learn in the most direct way that she is not acceptable as she is, and has to keep quiet about it. Most children are cis, so will be unaffected. Some are trans, and will be traumatised.

Pink News reported, and quoted Duffield’s response- “click bait non story sourced solely from the weird world of Twitter” which she inhabits.

Duffield is doing the Nationalists’ work for them, spreading hate. It is deeply hypocritical of her to say that the pandemic and Brexit chaos are more important issues.

Should we respond to the phobes? Arguably not, it just gives them oxygen. Trans people spending too much time looking at this may become depressed. Haters will be encouraged to hate more. On the other hand, Duffield is doing Tory work, supporting Tories, and spreading hate in the Tory interest, so the Labour Party should take action against her.

Can tweeting be a crime?

As a trans woman, you may be a public figure without realising it.

Kate Scottow was found guilty of a criminal offence for defaming Stephanie Hayden on Twitter, but won her appeal. The prosecutor and Scottow agreed that Hayden was a “public figure”, simply because she tweets her opinions. The judge said “such a person has ‘inevitably and knowingly laid themselves open to close scrutiny of their every word and deed’, and others can expect them to be more robust and tolerant accordingly” of comment or abuse. The comments of a public figure about court action are matters of public interest, and people may weigh in to a public conversation about it.

So I am probably a public figure because of this blog. You may be, if you have a twitter account, or have ever posted a tiktok video.

There are various possible offences if you tweet nastily.

Sending indecent, threatening or false tweets with the intention of causing distress or anxiety to the recipient is an offence.

Harassment is an offence, but just causing alarm or distress is not enough: it must be “oppressive and unacceptable”. This does not depend on the victim’s feelings, but the judge’s supposed objectivity.

Persistently tweeting for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another is an offence. The judge said, surely Parliament did not mean mere annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety. This is so bizarre that I have to quote the exact words used.

The Communications Act 2003 s 127(2)(c) says “A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—… (c) persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.”

But the judge said, “It is clear, in my judgment, that these provisions were not intended by Parliament to criminalise forms of expression, the content of which is no worse than annoying or inconvenient in nature, or such as to cause anxiety for which there is no need.” He says they have to be persistent, and for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety, para 29, and later in para 32 he says they must have no other purpose.

All these are subject to the right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas. States can restrict that right if it is necessary to do so for particular purposes including protecting the rights of others.

So it is always a balance.

The Magistrate’s court found Scottow guilty of persistently tweeting for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety, but they faced an additional hurdle, a six months’ time limit. There were tweets less than six months before, and tweets more than six months before which could only be considered if they were a single course of action.

The police and the district judge thought the tweets were bad enough to be criminal. The appellant judge disagreed.

The judgment quotes the offensive tweets. There is misgendering: “he is a very sick individual I’ve evidence of that”. I don’t like Scottow calling Ms Hayden “sick”, but that was more than six months before, so not relevant. Also more than six months before, “I have many leads on the claimant”, which is threatening. Hayden got an injunction against Scottow, and Scottow used a new Twitter account to abuse the injunction.

The judge says the older tweets are defamatory or insulting.

It may be possible for abusive tweets to be criminal. Violent threats may be. Prosecutors may not think them serious enough to take action.

If you tweet, and someone tweets nastily at you, block them. After the appeal judgment, the courts may just not get involved. This is the judgment.

Suzanne Moore and Harry Styles

“I have left the Guardian. I will very much miss SOME of the people there. For now that’s all I can say.” So tweeted Suzanne Moore, a transphobe. Is Catherine Bennett considering her position there? “Gutted” tweeted Jess Phillips, who is not a transphobe.

This is a transphobia row. The Guardian welcomes transphobia, but also has articles standing up for trans rights. Moore published the names of employees of the Guardian who complained about her transphobia. Obsessive transphobes started abusing them.

In replies to Jess Phillips’ tweet, there is a lot of abuse. Some of it is from the Left, attacking her as a right-winger. Some of it is from transphobes, such as this from Loulabelle:

I don’t believe you. Prove it! Be brave and fight for women and little girls. We need more voices otherwise we won’t have any. Our speech, words, experience, rights will be gone. Then remember the part you played.

That would be heartrending, if it were related to reality. She imagines trans rights means the end of women’s rights. But some calls Phillips out on transphobia:

For someone who continually claims they are pro LGBT rights, why are you yet again, tweeting in support of a transphobe?

Then there are little squabbles about the different tweets. I wondered if Phillips could use them as a poll- count up the tweets and the Likes, and decide which side was stronger. Unfortunately, the replies seem mostly from phobes. Phobes are energised by such tweets. They get to shout their hatred. Trans people will be discouraged. It’s personal for us, our lives are afflicted by transphobia. We will retreat first. We need allies to stand up for us. And nuance is impossible in a tweet reply.

I would rather Moore had ceased her transphobia. She wrote other stuff as well. She never said anything original about trans rights, just repeating the same old boring lies arguing that trans rights in any way conflict with women’s rights. She can always go back to the Daily Mail, she never seemed uncomfortable there, writing for the “Femail” pages. The Daily Mail will allow her to write transphobia in every column if she likes.

Moore’s second-last article in The Guardian could be read as transphobic, but I read as confused. She tells her miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy stories, as these things should be generally known, not kept private and shameful. She writes,

It is not transphobic for women to name our experiences as females and mothers. To insist our bodies matter and our losses are real. It is a matter of life and death.

Well, I would not object- unless you name them specifically to score a transphobic point. Yet she also says, “Women and trans men have periods. Why not just say that?” Indeed. “Women and trans men” is one way of doing inclusive language, an alternative to “pregnant people” or “people with cervixes”. She seems to be expecting to be called transphobic, and railing against anyone calling anyone transphobic, and only being transphobic in that she is expecting people calling out transphobia to be completely unreasonable. Or, she is writing about something she does not understand.

Meanwhile Harry Styles wore a dress on the cover of Vogue, and the mad Right got angry.

There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.

These right wing commentators seem to have an idea of a masculinity, proper to men, which can be taught, and can be subverted. All men must fit that narrow masculinity. Women must be feminine. But such masculinity is under threat, such that a singer on a magazine cover can damage it.

I love masculinity. I read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail yesterday, and it is beautifully masculine. Following the example of St Paul, Martin Luther King writes simply, “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here”. He will stand up and oppose it. And I want men to be able to say, with Styles, that “real friendship stems from being vulnerable with someone”- being your true self, without masks, including the imposed mask of permitted masculinity. Meditation has helped him be more present. It changed his life, subtly. He wants to evolve, and finds the fearlessness (a good masculine quality) of David Bowie (in presenting nonbinary gender). Such fearlessness is anathema to the Right- fearless of its incomprehension, hatred and ridiculous rules- but Vogue’s male photographer observes of Styles, “It’s a good thing to be nice”. “He’s really in touch with his feminine side because it’s something natural,” says a friend.

Trans women are women. Harry Styles is a man. Ben Shapiro shows his ignorance on Twitter again, gets owned, and Vogue gets more publicity. Suzanne Moore gets into a nasty war with colleagues, loses her job, and all the transphobes erupt, whining and hating. We don’t fit gender roles, and we cope as best we may.

Social Media Activism

Almost all activism is done in real life.

Social media can organise. On social media, a group recruited trans people to record a video to campaign for trans rights. When that video gets shown to cis people it may achieve some good.

Social media can persuade: my JK Rowling post got over a thousand views on its first day, and most of them were cis people, who were listening, pro-trans rights, and wanting to learn more. Some cis people shared it, extending its audience. WordPress gave me a platform, and facebook gave me an audience.

Social media can encourage. We get together in closed groups, all on the same side though with slightly different perspectives, and we argue, and hone our views. There are support groups for people transitioning, and activist groups for people who in many cases have been transitioned longer. We hang out.

The dopamine hit you get when your posts are liked and commented on is a problem. It gets people spending too much time on social media.

Some people post negative stuff, about transphobes doing their thing. This is not activism. If reading transphobic rubbish makes you depressed, that does nobody any good. It can be worthwhile reading transphobic rubbish to refute it- there were lots of answers to JK Rowling, or Maya Forstater– but generally, only the highest profile transphobia needs directly refuted. It is better to tell the truth about trans, without bothering to give attention to transphobes. It is only worth reading the falsehoods if you are going to do something about them that will do some good: persuading others not to read them, getting the truth out, showing how the falsehoods work. The Spectator and The Times produce so much transphobe drivel that much of it is repetitive and worth no attention whatever.

Abuse on Twitter is counterproductive. Telling Margaret Atwood she is a “gender traitor”, a term from “The Handmaid’s Tale”, for tweeting something mildly pro-trans, is not going to persuade her. Phobes needle trans women on twitter trying to get us to say “Fuck off”, then screenshot it and hawk it round, saying “Look! This is what trans activists are like!”

Clicktivism works sometimes. Petitions on the UK parliament site can get a response from the government, and sometimes a debate in Westminster Hall. As they get shared over social media, the short statement why the petition should be granted gets read. People signing it make a commitment to it, and that might psychologically make them more committed to its cause. One petition got 4,150,262 signatures, and for a time watching its numbers increase by hundreds every minute was hypnotic. I sat and watched it, feeling amazement and rueful pleasure, knowing it was not enough. I don’t sign or share change.org petitions, though. The people targetted could just ignore them. They provide data on the people signing them. I don’t do, or share, internet personality quizzes either.

Writing to your MP is more useful than social media sharing.

I am better to read books than news sites. From the UK, one account of the Trump response to Portland demonstrations is enough. The NYT and the Atlantic might produce articles on them daily. Even on issues that affect me directly, one article is enough. Possibly Mr Trump will win in November. Possibly Mr Biden will. I can’t influence the result. Reading about the relevant law, or the judges, or the voter suppression efforts, intrigues me with lots of tiny details without making me more informed on the only important question, who will win. I get the illusion of being informed and engaged without making the situation better. All it does is direct my strong emotions at something far away about which I can do nothing, disengaging me from my actual life. Learning about incipient autocracy in Poland and the threat of it in the US and UK has more value.

I enjoy protest marches, the sense of solidarity, the noise, the placards, and Extinction Rebellion, disrupting traffic round Trafalgar Square and Whitehall may have done good. But bad things are happening in the world, and paying them all my attention is unpleasant without doing any good.

Amy Dyess

“We were constantly triggered. Now I realize we were used as pawns in a culture war. It was never about defending and strengthening lesbians. The goal was to divide our community.” Social media does not keep anyone informed. Keeping us triggered is the point. Keeping us angry, defensive, fearful. Amy Dyess has revealed the hate and fear of the anti-trans campaigners, who she calls “gender critical”. She quotes their propaganda in her article, and it is vile, saying trans rights is persecuting lesbians. Amplifying it made her feel needed, that she was helping lesbians, giving her good feelings when her life was so difficult.

She was brought up evangelical, and people said it was immoral for her to marry. Some trans or allies’ tweets “saying lesbians were hateful for not liking penises” seemed lesbophobic to her, even though she is sometimes attracted to trans women. Perhaps they were. She was insecure and in pain, so open to “GC” propaganda. Her recruiter love-bombed her, and co-ordinated action against “Diva, PinkNews, Autostraddle, Juno Dawson, Grace Petrie, Ruth Hunt, Ellen Page, Chase Strangio, Rhea Butcher, and so many more”.

Amy Dyess was living in a car, working full time and trying to get a better job. She was groomed to go on TV to put the gender critical case. She was offered a house. Rosa Freedman, who distanced herself from the Republican and Evangelical right, offered to fly her to Britain, and have her speak at different events. Julie Bindel paid some of her expenses. There’s a lot of money in the GC movement. Much of it comes from Republicans (Julie Bindel spoke out against that).

“Gender-critical” Memoree Joelle, former editor of AfterEllen, supported Donald Trump.

When Amy Dyess considered suing Twitter for discriminating against women’s free speech, the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) proposed she got funding and support from religious right organisations.

Hands Across The Aisle, a religious right organisation seeking out wedge issues to detach leftists from the Democratic Party, worked with Posie Parker and produced anti-trans content as well as the founder’s homophobic content. Julia Beck, Meghan Murphy of Feminist Current, and Julia Long also worked with HATA.

Amy Dyess is against “political lesbianism”, “the harmful idea that women can ‘choose’ to be lesbians and strategically deny men sex”, “an anti-lesbian ideology”. She did not feel safe at WPUK events because Judith Green attacked her for criticising political lesbianism. “Lesbian rights depend on ‘born this way’,” she says. I disagree. It’s nobody’s business who you go to bed with but yours. “Born that way” might make some homophobes relent, a little, on their homophobia, but if they think lesbianism is not a perfectly reasonable choice, needing no justification, they are still homophobic.

I am not sure of the rigid boundary between straight, gay and bi. A woman I knew married a man and had a daughter, and I think she thought she was straight. Then she had an overwhelming affair with a woman, and told me she was lesbian. Then she went back to her husband. “Political lesbianism” could be a cover for a bi woman, and there is biphobia among LGBT folk (internalised in the B). Or a woman who had always been attracted to men could find herself attracted to a woman, and call herself a “political lesbian” because she found it reassuring. “Gold star lesbian” is the mocking phrase for someone who tells others she’s only ever been with women, and makes a point of it.

“I didn’t think that I was anti-trans, but looking back over the screenshots it’s clear that I was.” She still had trans friends in real life.

She wanted kindness, and I feel she misunderstands #fuckkind. The point is that being kind and considerate of men’s feelings is part of women’s socialisation. #fuckkind can be liberating. Who should you listen to, or pay attention to? Kind should be a choice not an obligation. If we could all stand up for our rights, and hear each other without being triggered, we might work together. LGBT+ should be allies despite all the tensions, because the prejudice from straightworld is so much greater. But we are traumatised, and triggerable.

1 December: Amy Dyess has written again about the cult of “gender-critical“. She says escapees need reconnection, protection and recovery. They need to reconnect with the loved ones they pushed away, and with former friends. Protection: some angry and desperate GCs will slander you. “If you’re sincere, most trans people will give you a break.” And, Recovery: unpacking what happened, which may require therapy. “There’s life after GC,” she says.

Is “No Platforming” bullying?

Scottish Poetry Library in transphobia row shock! No-one knows whether the Scottish Poetry Library supports transphobes or not, but they have said suspicious things.

They have a code of conduct which says supportive things about trans people: we will not tolerate abuse on the grounds of a person’s… gender identity. However, they also claim they can police all the conduct of people involved with them: Misconduct is when the behaviour of someone undertaking work for, with or on behalf of the SPL does not meet expected standards of behaviour, and their actions or conduct leads to … harm of other people… our code of conduct applies to online activity.

That is, the SPL claims the right to no-platform people when they tweet negatively about others. As an organisation booking speakers and letting rooms, they can’t refuse to book you because you are trans or a woman, but they can if they think you have behaved offensively. Any organisation chooses who may speak from their platform. Others may write criticising those choices, and whether they are listened to depends on how prominent a platform they have.

Then they put out a statement, criticising “disharmony” on social media. Good luck with that. We will no longer ignore bullying and calls for no-platforming of writers. Well. Hachette has cancelled its plans to publish Woody Allen’s memoir, because of protests by staff: they withdrew their platform. There is no-platforming for all sorts of reasons, but only calls for no-platforming when there is disagreement. No openly racist speaker is going to get a platform at the SPL, but what about transphobes? Transphobes get prominent platforms all the time, and trans people and our allies call for it to be withdrawn- on our twitter accounts and in blogs if we have no better platform, in emails and protests.

There are only calls to no-platform someone when the speaker is privileged and protected, and the protesters are weak. Otherwise, the platform is denied without fuss, by the powerful. Transphobe speakers are privileged- prominent in labour unions and universities, with powerful backing from Rupert Murdoch and the Heritage Foundation among others. Someone tweeting that a transphobe should not speak is not a bully, because if they had power they would not need to tweet. If a crowd of people come together on Twitter objecting to a transphobe speaking, they are met with strong tweeted resistance from transphobes powerful and powerless. Who bullies whom?

Trans people and allies sent an open letter to the SPL, worried that their powerless calls for no-platforming would be used as an excuse to no-platform them. They write in solidarity with writers combatting racism, misogyny, ableism and other structural oppressions, so that oppressive action can be freely spoken about. They ask for clarification on SPL’s support for trans people, who receive exceptional online abuse and media scrutiny. They are against bullying and for freedom of expression, but want to call for no-platforming of bullies and transphobes, and want trans people involved in reporting transphobia. They fear the SPL statement means trans people, objecting to transphobes getting to speak. The Times report and many tweets connected the SPL statement to opposition to transphobia, and the SPL tweeted that Times article. Asif Khan of the SPL seems to think trans rights conflict with women’s rights, though they do not. We believe that it is a vital right of people to name oppressive action when we experience it, and to seek accountability from people and institutions who have acted oppressively and made space for oppressive action- by internal procedures and public statements. From the Forstater case, “freedom of speech” is not a legal protection for transphobic statements.

Prominent and less prominent transphobes made a counter-statement, extensively quoted by the Guardian, claiming to promote “intellectual debate and thought” “outside a very narrow ideology” when they were being transphobic. Of course they deny being transphobic, spread transphobic myths, and claim to support “Women’s rights”. No transphobe will ever admit their transphobia.

Scottish PEN’s slogan is “Defending the freedom of writers and readers”. They are aware that hate speech, including transphobia, inhibits and restricts the free speech of trans people and others. PEN says the SPL has a responsibility to the community to consider equality issues, and its workings should be public and open to criticism. Free expression is complex and any policy that ignores such complexity can stifle the free expression of a range of stakeholders, most notably members of marginalised communities. Such as trans people.

Race Reflections beautifully expresses this discussing “Freedom of Speech” as the right to say anything without consequences. The demand for such freedom is “Insidious reversing”, where the oppressed trans people are positioned as the oppressor. It takes away our right to resist the violence practised against us.

JK Rowling

Is JK Rowling transphobic? Not necessarily. She does not tweet a lot. She has retweeted a bit about Brexit this year, of tweets and articles opposing it. [Update- I wrote this before Rowling’s hate screed. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt.]

I’ve seen a meme claiming she tweeted, Ron Weasley was indeed transgender. Ron was born female but magically transitioned to female [sic] at the age of four. Gender transition is much easier in the magical world than it is in the muggle world- yet so similar. Yet a search doesn’t find those words. It is a forgery. When asked in 2014 if there were LGBT wizards at Hogwarts, she replied, But of course. If Harry Potter taught us anything it’s that no-one should live in a closet.

She followed a number of anti-trans campaigners, and liked some of their tweets, but that does not mean she is an anti-trans campaigner herself. Then yesterday she tweeted,

Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?
#IStandwithMaya

So. It’s proven, say some. She’s transphobic. And the media world wide has an interest: it’s in NBC and CBS. The Times has a picture of three women with a banner “WOMEN SPEAK UP!”. That’s terrifying. The attempt is to make campaigning against trans a mainstream feminist issue.

Pink News quoted LGBT folk condemning her. Some are vitriolic: “Who knew she would identify with Voldemort”.

And I’m not. My greatest fear is that people identified as transphobes or anti-trans campaigners or TERFs will take up that point of view. So this is my defence of JK Rowling.

She says what Maya Forstater did was state that sex is real. The anti-trans campaigners would have you believe that sex is real and gender does not exist. No-one has a “gender identity”, it’s just a word trans people use to try to justify ourselves.

Of course sex is real. Almost everyone has a reproductive system, and which you have, and which you were born with, matters. And trans people talk of our gender identity. But also, there are gender stereotypes in the world which affect everyone, and one way gender-variant people deal with that is to transition.

She did not merely state sex is real, though. She had a public dispute with a non-binary person and insisted that they were a man. That’s the moment where it stops being merely having an opinion, and starts to encroach on others’ rights.

I don’t know why the employer failed to renew the contract. Forstater says the reason is her position on trans. I could not find a statement from the employer on the reason, but they say she was “an unpaid visiting fellow and occasional paid consultant”, so not entitled to challenge the failure to renew. She’s the author of some articles still on their website.

Knowing of JK Rowling’s initial poverty, I see why she has sympathy with people losing their jobs, and I am glad of it. The technical details of Forstater’s employment rights are not in the papers, and possibly few people would think them relevant. Forstater had that source of income, and now she doesn’t.

That’s the defence. Sympathy with someone sacked. I am wary of calling someone a hater or transphobe. Forstater is a proven extreme hater and transphobe- hating trans people is part of her “sense of self”. Rowling- I don’t know. I would rather refer to transphobic acts or speech than transphobic people, unless clearly proven. As for the tweet-

Forstater says gender identity, and gender transition, is a myth. That’s more than saying sex is real, but her backers deny it.

“Force women out of their jobs”? That’s another TERF myth. The idea that trans women are men is widespread, not simply among TERFs.

So, rather than a “transphobe”, leave alone a TERF, I would call JK Rowling ignorant of trans issues but sympathetic with a woman who has lost her job. But, the tweet has worldwide attention, and is at best ignorant, so the tweet is transphobic.

So tweets accusing her of being a TERF are harmful. Attacked like this, anyone might be wounded, and keep asserting what they thought was reasonable, and get attacked more. It could drive her to the TERFs.

Trans women are women. Transition is an appropriate way of dealing with gender variance. Trans women are not a threat in women’s spaces, and should only be excluded if there are specific reasons relating to the particular trans woman. But not everyone contradicting any of that is immutably hostile to trans women. It could just be ignorant. It could be considering others’ rights as well as our own- I sympathise with people losing their jobs, often.

Slate says she’s no longer an LGBTQ ally. It’s a good article to explain what is the nature of Forstater’s case, and saying Rowling is not an LGBT ally- standing together- may get her to rethink. The Spectator, though, exults: this is a turning of the tide, and people will now speak openly of the need [Irony alert] to protect real women from transsexuals.

The more publicity such disputes get, the more our enemies prosper.

8 June: Rowling is more clearly transphobic here.