The UK public is most likely to have feelings of respect and admiration towards LGBTQ+ community, according to new research from Stonewall, Pink News reports.
Our research shows that today, the UK public is significantly more likely to take pride in supporting the LGBTQ+ community than it is to find them ‘wrong’. One in three people reported they actively ‘respect’ us, and one in five declared ‘admiration’. Less than one in 20 reported feelings of ‘envy’, ‘resentment’ or ‘fear’.
YouGov reports that some 85% of Britons would be supportive if their family member came out as lesbian, gay or bisexual, while 71% would feel the same if the person said they were transgender or non-binary.
Veteran LGBTQ+ rights activist Peter Tatchell says to PinkNews: “This is terrific news that debunks the bigoted agenda of government ministers, right-wing culture warriors and transphobes like the LGB Alliance.”
Photo: Solstock
If the binary is so natural why does it requite such rigid enforcement?
This quote from Samantha over at CDL got me thinking: Are there any other presumably natural processes than requires the kind of policing transphobes are engaging in these days?
Hunger maybe? Nah. People seem, for the most part, to eat when they are hungry (and even when they are not). You do not have to force them to add more energy and nourishment to their bodies. Thirst? Nope.
The strict gender binary has to be enforced because it is a cultural and not a natural phenomenon. Sure, there are eggs and sperm, “innies” and “outies”, but as far as gender identities go, they are not necessarily following these binaries. The same applies to gender expression and abilities and interests.
This why so many do not live up to the sexual binary (being some shade of homosexual, bisexual or pansexual) and also why so many mix the masculine and the feminine to their heart’s delight.
Men and women are not two separate species. We are one species, and we all share a wide palette of sex and gender colors.
Yasmin Finney, a transgender playing the perfect role of a young trans woman in Heartstopper, is joining the Doctor Who crew.
The Guardian writes:
Finney’s character is called Rose, which was also the name of the companion famously played by Billie Piper in the mid-00s. The relevance of this is currently unknown. What we do know is that Finney was recently spotted filming scenes alongside David Tennant, AKA the Tenth Doctor, and Catherine Tate, AKA the Tenth Doctor’s companion, Donna Noble. In other words, there are more than enough cryptic developments to keep Whoniverse obsessives in a tizzy until the end product finally airs in 2023.
Ncuti Gatwa (left below) will play the Fourteenth Doctor. The Black gay actor stars in another queer-friendly TV series: Sex Education.
(And yes, you should take a look at both Heartstopper and Sex Education, if you have not already!)
I want to introduce you to two Nazi terms, Jugendverführer and Jugendverderber: “seducer” and “corrupter” of youth (see: “groomer”). These stereotypes depicted a figure who lured young people into the “epidemic” of Weimer queer and trans communities.
‘Conflating queer/trans with pedophilia helped Nazis rally support for their genocidal policies. In 1935, they changed existing German anti-sodomy law to make it illegal to even “act” queer (whatever that’s supposed to mean). It was all in the name of protecting (Aryan) children.
‘After passing these new laws, Nazis revoked trans peoples’ gender recognition cards. They began arresting sex workers and drag queens. By 1936, they were rounding them up en masse for labor camps. Again, this terror campaign was in the name of stopping supposed “Jugendverderber.”
‘We still have time to combat these anti-queer policies and beliefs. Even if it seems unbearable, knowing they would love to end us, we must continue to fight back. Groomer discourse has a deadly historical grounding we must pay more attention to while speaking out against it.’
So-called “conversion therapy”, which aims at forcing queer and trans people to become “normal”, is both both evil and meaningless. It does not work.
Still, homophobes and transphobes are so deeply embedded in the “only straight and cis people are normal” narrative, that they cannot let go of these practices.
I guess that even if it does not work, they think that they may succeed in forcing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people back into the closet. In that way they will not be constantly reminded of their own bigotry.
Reuters Health and Medscape report that conversion therapy leads to huge financial costs in addition to the emotional and social harm it causes.
Dr. Anna Forsythe of Purple Squirrel Economics in Waltham, Massachusetts, explains:
“Our economic analysis estimated the total cost of conversion therapy in the U.S. at $9.23 billion each year. Only a fraction of these costs, $650 million, are attributable to the costs of actual therapy. The rest of the economic burden is the quantification of harms associated with undergoing conversion therapy, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide attempts…These consequences are over 13 times more costly than the direct costs of conversion therapy itself - an estimated $8.58 billion annually.”
Dr. Forsythe and her colleagues conducted a systematic literature review and economic evaluation of published evidence on “sexual-orientation and gender-identity-change efforts” among LGBTQ individuals of any age in the U.S.
Jayne Ozzane writes about the British Conservative government’s intention to ban conversion «therapy» for gay and bisexual people, but not for transgender people:
«One has to wonder who is advising the prime minister, given that he was prepared to go against the advice of three highly eminent UN independent experts, the entire British medical profession and the Church of England when he decided to renege on his promise to protect vulnerable LGBT+ people.
«The sad truth is that he has only backed down because of a major revolt in his own party and the backlash from campaigners like myself, which has left him with a public relations disaster. Notably, he has made no apology for his actions, and has continued to show that he does not have any understanding of the harm that trans people will continue to endure. My advice to him would be to sit down and meet with survivors as a matter of urgency.
«Trans people are the most likely to be offered and put through “conversion practices”. In the government’s 2018 LGBT survey, trans people were shown to be nearly twice as likely as lesbian and gay people to be offered and to undergo these interventions. It is deeply ironic that on the one day that the international community seeks to support and celebrate trans people, Trans Visibility Day, the prime minister decided instead to exclude them from the urgent protections they need.»
Today, the Strands for Trans map includes more than 7,000 businesses across all 50 states — even Florida and Texas, which have recently been at the center of heated debates over LGBTQ rights — and several countries, including the Netherlands, Finland and Australia.
This came alongside the group’s message of resistance in Ukrainian, saying “We remain strong, we are not intimidated. Putin will break all his teeth trying to bite us.”
“We have left far behind the past to which he seeks to draw us. We are a country that has chosen the values of human rights, humanity, life and personality.”
“Putin lives in the past, he has a place there.”
Another thing you can do: Share your support for Ukraine in social media!
[Image: Tweet from @KyivPride: “To all our supporters in the world: Call on your governments to stand up and to take action against the war in Ukraine! We need to stop it now, we need to show how powerful we are all together, and Putin will stand no chance!”]
In Norway lesbian LGBT+ activist Brita Møystad Engseth has published a clear challenge to lesbian TERFs.
Norway does not see the same amount of “gender critical” anti-trans activism as Britain, I am glad to say. But there are a some who are given ample space in mainstream media.
Recently one of the country’s leading lesbian feminists and LGBT+ activists, Brita Møystad Engseth (photo from LGBT-magazine Blikk above), had had enough of the activism of the lesbian trans-exclusionary radical feminist Tonje Gjevjon and her associates. Engseth published a fierce attack in the national newspaper Dagbladet.
Her observations are also relevant for the debate in other countries, which is why I will provide you with some highlights here.
Note that Gjejjon is known for her hateful attacks against Norwegian trans women, using misgendering and accusations about sexual deviance and potential violence as standard tools of oppression.
Lesbian privilege
The debate about gender and trans is far too important to be left to “boogeywomen” (literally “dark women”), Engseth writes, before going into the privileged position of lesbians like herself and Tone Gjevjon:
“Both Gjevjon and I belong to the generation of lesbians who were allowed to be ourselves without risking lives and limbs. We can thank the uncompromising gay heroes who went before us for this.
…for us it was never - never - anything other than a matter of course that we could occupy any public space and take part in any public debate like the ones we truly are.”
Engseth adds, though, that even if they were given room to be themselves when younger, many would experience loneliness, separation and the longing to find someone like themselves. This is why she finds it so hard to understand why Gjevjon and her fellow “radical lesbians” cannot empathize with others who experience something similar.
Pulling up the ladder
Engseth find it incomprehensible that members of a sexual minority will pull up the ladder and exclude people who will not or cannot follow the binary sex norm.
It is as if all the previous battles for freedom and justice have never happened, Engseth observes.
Gjevjon also claims to be an expert in many fields, Engseth says:
“…fields that actually requires more than posting selected links, statistics and reports fetched from the dark deep of American internet communities, only with the purpose of strengthening the TERF movement’s painfully ignorant universe.”
This is the photo of Gjevjon the newspaper Dagbladet used to illustrate Engseth’s article. It reminds us that most TERFs are white, privileged, middle and upper class women. (Photo: Hampus Lundgren).
Engseth finds it inconceivable that Gjevjon does not understand that she, through her attitudes and use of language (”which in no ways are censored, rejected or canceled”) actually harms other people, and not just in the figurative sense, but in the true sense of the word: “Injuries, wounds and destroys,” as Engseth puts it.
Queer people have to get up of their comfy sofas
Engseth points out that many sensible queer persons are reluctant to take part in this debate, because they are immediately accused of bullying and censorship.
“To Gjevjon and other anti-trans-activists I will just say: Really? Was someone mean to you online because you promote ideas which no one has seen since the boogeymen (”dark men”) of the Church had their heyday in the nineties? Did you present ideas that made someone think you are narrow-minded and mean?
“Not even the world’s smallest violin would bother to play for those who seeks the holy martyrdom of of cancel victims on such a weak basis. And to all of us, the party gay and party lesbians who surfed into the new millennium without a scratch: We have to turn off RuPaul’s drag race, get out of our comfortable couches and get a grip.”
Nathan Bruemmer on a rally against the proposed Florida Don’t Say Gay” bill, which aims at prohibiting teachers and school districts from talking with students about gender and sexual orientation:
“Some of these fights are gonna be tough, but we’re not making it easy. We’ve got to start saying it loud and proud. It’s OK to say trans. It’s OK to say non-binary. It’s OK to say queer. It’s OK to say bi. It’s OK to say pan. It’s OK to say ace. It’s OK to talk about who we are in the state of Florida and to know our history.”
Bruemmer is first transgender appointed statewide LGBTQ+ liaison in the U.S.
