Some points, and a question for uk politicians;
- There are around half a million trans people in the uk, including eggs.
- There are a few thousand TERFs.
- Trans people will vote for you if you treat us like human beings.
- Nothing you do will ever satisfy TERFs.
And so to the question: why are you so bad at basic arithmetic?
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Rusty Ring
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sarah Brown likes this.
GeofCox
in reply to Rusty Ring • • •@RustyRing
I think you've put your finger right on it - TERFs are indeed just conservatives of that extreme kind.
I don't really think their views have anything to do with gametes or safe spaces or any of the things they say they're about, because they make no sense in relation to those things.
What I think does explain their views is that conservatives fear any change to a status quo they're invested in - and a certain kind of (generally older) feminist is also invested - I mean intellectually and emotionally - in a neat division of the sexes. They've made that division part of their 'feminist' identity, so they mistake the emergence of cracks in that neat binary as an attack on their own way of being in the world. For them, it's personal.
@goatsarah
Rusty Ring
in reply to GeofCox • • •Anglophone feminism in general has an ideology problem. I learned this while living in France during a formative part of my life. (My twenties.) Having grown up in the 70s, battered by the angry, often hypocritical feminism that was prominent in the States during that era, I had a visceral aversion to the word "feminism".
So when I found myself in a nation of ideologically introspective feminists I had no idea such a thing could exist, and was astonished to find they actually shared some of my resentment of the American movement. I spent much of my time there listening to women and seeking conversations with overt feminists; hell, just finding myself in a place where a man _can_ talk about these things with women was exhilarating. I was completely converted. Frankly, they saved my life. I shudder to think what I might have become in the Internet Age.
So yeah. As French feminists say: "American feminists are more American than they are feminist."
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Stingray's Badger Friend
Unknown parent • • •@jjnevis
Morning Jay.
The technical definition of a TERF is a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. More here: nwlc.org/happy-pride-dont-be-a…
An egg is someone who is showing signs of being transgender but hasn’t come to realise it / come out yet. “Egg” because this person hasn’t “hatched” yet.
Sadly there's loads of #transphobia expressed by #UKpol If you're interested to learn more about transphobia there's a really good read here transactual.org.uk/transphobia…
Happy Pride. Don’t Be a TERF. - National Women's Law Center
Hallie Meisler (National Women's Law Center)nuclear powered ash
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Paul H 🏴🇪🇺
in reply to nuclear powered ash • • •This is the problem with the UK system. Politicians need to (1) keep a "core" vote and then (2) get some "boundary" votes to get over the line.
nuclear powered ash
in reply to Paul H 🏴🇪🇺 • • •nuclear powered ash
in reply to nuclear powered ash • • •Sarah Brown
in reply to nuclear powered ash • •like this
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Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫
in reply to nuclear powered ash • • •@natomic
That would still be a terrible reason, and yes, they may think so
But I don't see how it can be. Unless the pro-human-rights vote (including everyone with a trans person they care about in their life, not just trans people themselves) are deemed to be already far to the left of Labour and trapped with nowhere to go, electorally.
That may be true in parts of England, (not at all true in Scotland and Wales) and it's not sustainable as younger voters lean Green.
Katie Fenn
Unknown parent • • •@christineburns Honestly in terms of the general electorate, there’s no votes in anti-trans policies.
If there is political maths being done, it’s all about the influence to be gained among people who are active politically, both within parties and without.
Terfs are over-represented in political parties.
Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖
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Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Alexandra Lanes
in reply to Christine Burns MBE 🏳️⚧️📚⧖ • •Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •@Paul Harland Furthermore, there is no test for being trans. You just know. “Self identification” as you call it is literally the only thing there is. It’s not like Lt Commander Data comes along with a gizmo that scans for transion particles.
Sometimes the stuff cis people come out with boggles my mind a bit. I swear, you lot have some very odd ideas.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Paul Harland No. it’s an umbrella term but is generally short for transgender.
Are you seriously asking me why I didn’t transition at the age of five? Seriously, maybe just think about that for a few seconds.
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Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Paul Harland The fuck am I supposed to know? I’m an expert in microelectronics, not human sexuality, gender and psychology.
And that’s at the age of 50. At 5 I barely knew my own native language. You seem to expect a lot from toddlers.
Since you seem very interested in sexuality, let me quiz you about yours. Presumably you have a preference with respect to who you fuck?
How do you know?
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Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Paul Harland I don’t believe I used the word confused.
I wasn’t confused. I knew.
As for how. I just did.
And my point is that that same situation consistently, regardless of demographic, occurs in about 1% of live births.
And when people like Sunak or Starmer portray trans people as dangerous predators who don’t deserve healthcare or equal rights, those roughly half a million people, evenly distributed about the Uk, the majority of voting age, know they’re speaking about us.
Of the other 99%, meanwhile, almost none of them actually care. Studies consistently show this.
Regardless of whatever intrusive questions you ask us about whether we had sexual stirrings as toddlers (seriously, dude?), we still know they’re talking about us.
And we vote.
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Katie Fenn
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Sarah Brown
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Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Paul Harland You are being weird, intrusive, annoying and patronising, and asking questions which are facile and exhausting.
We learn very early on that society at large does not tolerate who we are, and that it puts us at a profound risk of being systematically medically and psychologically abused if we are found out.
One develops an instinctive warning system for what’s unsafe, and you’re lighting it up like a Christmas tree.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Paul Harland We can explain it. It’s been explained many times. Research again and again and again concludes that we are, straightforwardly, who we say we are.
And yet people like you never accept it, and demand it’s done time and time again, and that we repeatedly explain ourselves to our.
Who the hell do you think you are?
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markus
Unknown parent • • •Stingray's Badger Friend
Unknown parent • • •@essjayjay @jjnevis
I love the alternative acronym for TERF Sue, thanks, I will use in future, as it certainly is more fitting.
#TransRightsAreHumanRights
markus
Unknown parent • • •Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Jay @Stingray's Badger Friend @Sue Briccay :QueerCat_Ace: The likelihood of me sharing a beer with people who are on the record as using words like “eradicate” about me and my sisters is zero.
And that false equivalence is not only missing the point, it’s also profoundly offensive.
Sarah Brown
Unknown parent • •@Jay @Stingray's Badger Friend @Sue Briccay :QueerCat_Ace: I mean obviously.
Unsure what the point of you is at this point. Don’t care to find out. *plonk*, as we used to say a very long time ago.
JF
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Maybe it's too much social media.
The Tory hopeful for the mayor of London went all in on ULEZ / 15 minutes city conspiracies after her dog whistling got good echoes there. Total flop IRL
A
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •I have a legitimate interest for work in the number of trans people; may I ask where that number comes from?
More than happy to explain more but would have to be by DM as it would give away where I work which I do not want to do on open social media
Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Just got a reply to this post from a single sure TERF instance.
Should be noted if you’re an instance mod, the best thing to do with these is to defederate without replying. A reply will inflict them on the other servers that you federate with.
Charles ☭ is now tooting from queer.party
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •It's also potentially a good idea to post a link to their reply with the hashtag # fediblock so other trans instances can pre-emptively defederate.
(Specifically, I would like to defederatethis server.)
Sarah Brown
in reply to Charles ☭ is now tooting from queer.party • •Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫
Unknown parent • • •Debate is useless. Worse than useless. Debate is a losing game for human rights, because as soon as you concede that human rights have to be successfully debated to achieve progress, you've conceded that they are negotiable and therefore not rights.
Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫
Unknown parent • • •@christineburns
Yes. You stick to a clear statement of your position and don't allow yourself to get derailed.
If your position was highly dubious this wouldn't fly of course. But for example "people have the right to live as their true selves and it isn't within the legitimate authority of the state to say whether they are allowed to" is a good starting point.
Charles ☭ is now tooting from queer.party
Unknown parent • • •Sensitive content
@Tinker52
Hi Paul,
Being trans is not a sexual preference, but I can see how this is confusing for you because OMG, you are so obviously a chaser.
Ok, I've just thrown in a new vocabulary word and I'm going to explain it and how it relates to sexuality.
Only 1% of people are trans, but a much larger number of cis people are sometimes attracted to trans people. Looking at pictures of Elliot Page, it's not hard to see why a large number of people would feel a little flutter if he flirted with them.
Other people are specifically into the transness of the people they fancy. Buck Angel's fan base like him because he's a muscle mary, but also because he's trans. And this is part of the beautiful diversity of human sexuality. Fancying trans people is a completely normal for a straight person, for a bi person or for a lesbian or a gay man or for anybody else.
Some people, however, get weird about it. Maybe it's because they feel bad about themselves. Maybe it's because they want to dehumanise people they fancy. They get fucking creepy and weird. Those people, who fetishise random trans people and who see all trans people as inherently sexual and sexualised, we call chasers.
And some of what they do is like to find random married trans women on the internet and "just ask questions" about their sexuality.
We see you, Paul.
However, hope is not lost for you. Go find a dating app and treat trans women like they're people (or at least as much as you treat any women like they're people) and you'll get a lot further.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Charles ☭ is now tooting from queer.party • •Charles ☭ is now tooting from queer.party
in reply to Sarah Brown • • •Sensitive content
He quit replying when you quit replying because the attention stopped.
He also did not reply to me either because he was offended or because I kept bringing up trans men, which are not interesting for him. That particular genre of being annoying is almost never used against trans men.
Alas, we do also have chasers who are annoying in a completely different way.
Sarah Brown
in reply to Charles ☭ is now tooting from queer.party • •