Forced to Undress

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized lgbt, transphobia 1 Comment

Scotland passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill the other day and British Twitter, very predictably, exploded in hatred. One tweet that stood out to me is this one:

“I believe every women who voted this through should be forced to undress in a changing room with a trans women.”

An interesting word, that “forced.” (HMS_Ark_Royal has yet to respond to my question about how, exactly, they plan to force me and women like me to undress in front of strangers.) You see, forcing a woman to strip is an act of sexual assault, and I am intrigued as to why this individual thinks sexual assault is a fitting punishment/trial for anybody of any gender.

“But the government is going to MAKE people change in trans-inclusive changing rooms where they will see GENITALS! THAT’S sexual violence! THAT’S what we mean!” Except, that’s not how public changing rooms work. Or public toilets for women. I (cis woman) have been using public toilets and dressing rooms since a very young age and I have never seen a single genital in any of them. Here, I drew you a diagram.

If someone is trying to force their way into one of the private booths, they are a sex offender REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THEY’RE TRANS OR NOT, REGARDLESS OF WHAT GENDER BATHROOM THEY’RE USING. Oh and yes, “I just forced my way in to check whether they had a vagina or a penis!” counts as well, I’m afraid.

Gender neutral bathrooms are already the norm for a HUGE selection of the British population, and I’ve shared crowded public bathrooms with trans women many a time. Probably without even noticing in some cases. Apparently that’s bad, but wanting women to be be forced to strip is just fine, right?

Little bit of projection going on there I think.

#BBCcoverup

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized lgbt, transphobia 1 Comment

Remember the BBC’s anti-trans article from last week? It got even worse. The person quoted most prominently in the article, the one now known to be a rapist, it turns out the BBC probably knew about the accusations against her all along-

-and published anyway, for no reason other than to demonize trans women. Wait. It gets even worse from there, too. Yesterday Lily Cade published what can only be called a manifesto on her own blog, in which she called for the lynching (yes, really, this really happened) of prominent trans women including Caitlyn Jenner, Fallon Fox and the Wachowski Sisters. I’m led to believe at least some of the people she named know about it and have taken steps to protect themselves, but she was also threatening all trans women in the most revolting and violent terms, and-

-Well, the BBC didn’t report on it. Why would they? Not many media outlets did. Newsweek did, if you want to have a look and see what Cade said without having that bile injected directly into your eyeballs. But for the most part, in Britain, just total and complete silence.

This has just been one of the worst weeks I’ve ever witnessed for LGBTQIA people in the UK. I posted some of the information about Cade and the BBC on one of the forums I go to and I got this in response:

Which I’m posting here because it is a perfect snapshot of the UK’s attitude right now to the abuses going on under their nose.