The Guardian reports that polling for Galop, an LGBTQ+ anti-abuse charity, found that one in five British LGBTQ+ people and more than a third of trans people have been subjected to attempted conversion.
More than 400,000 people who are gay, transgender or non-binary have been subjected to someone trying to change, “cure” or suppress their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to new research that suggests a proposed ban on conversion practices will have a wider impact than previously thought.
The majority of LGBT+ respondents who have experienced conversion practices (56 per cent) stated that conversion practices come from the people they should feel safest with – their own family.
Transgender (43%) and non-binary people (36%) are significantly more likely to be subjected to conversion practices that other LGBTQ people.
More than 4 in 10 (43%) trans people have been subjected to conversion practices. Over 1 in 3 (36%) non-binary and gender-diverse+ people have been subjected to this kind of treatment.
One survivor explained that her mother tried to make her date men when she was dating a woman, exposing her to images of male genitalia and heterosexual sex acts and pornography and threatened to poison her food on a regular basis when she refused to break up with her girlfriend.
A trans respondent said:
I was actively told by a friend of
mine at the time that I wasn’t really
trans and that I was doing it for
the attention and that they’ll never
see me as trans and will actively go
against it and tell people I’m lying.
As some of you will have noticed, the newly elected Republican House representative, George Santos, has been caught lying about almost everything. The latest issue is his past as a drag queen – as “Kitara Ravache”.
You cannot make this stuff up, but Santos, who identifies as a gay man, seems to have been taking part in a drag show in Brazil not so long ago.
In an interview with CNN, drag performer Eula Rochards says that she knew Santos from LGBTQ events he attended in the town of Niterói, near Rio de Janeiro. She says he was well known in the gay community when he lived there. She has provided the photo of him dressed up as a woman you find above. You may compare it with this one:
Drag is a celebration of gender
There is obviously nothing wrong in Santos taking part in a drag queen competition. Drag can be a wonderful celebration of gender variance, whether the drag queen identifies as a woman or a man.
However, since the Republican party at the moment is running a campaign of hate against any kind of gender variance, drag queens and transgender kids included, it has become hard for Santos to explain his drag queen past.
With the latest twist of his story, George Santos had an opportunity to make people think well of him again. He might have said, “It’s true I did drag in my younger days; that was a fun time and I want everyone to know that I support everyone’s right to pursue their dreams, whether they are part of my LGBTQ community or part of some other marginalized group still seeking full equality under the law.”
He could have said that, and for a single moment, won back a little of the respect he’s lost since his election.
But he didn’t. Because the crowd he seeks to join has no place in their hearts for anyone who is different. Because the crowd he seeks to join is less interested in legislation than destruction. Because the crowd he seeks to join isn’t really all that concerned with whether the things it says are true.
No lie.
It is hard to understand why anyone queer or trans would like to be associated with organizations that want to erase their identity and destroy their community. That says a lot about the lure of power and the desire to be “an insider”.
Top photo: Performer Eula Rochards provided CNN with this image of a person she claims is George Santos. CNN has not independently verified the image. Photo No. 2 is by John Locher/AP Photo.
2022 has been a tough one for queer and transgender people, but good people have been fighting the good fight and held the line in many parts of the world.
The war in Ukraine teaches us that those attacked by evil can show tremendous strength and win. Let us use that strength in 2023!
The Amazing Craziness of a Russian Transphobe
Euan MacDonald posted this video from Russian TV over at twitter, and added the following:
The result of 20 years of Kremlin propaganda. A woman babbling sick nonsense. Double plus good duckspeak.
Putin’s regime knows that no serious argument can be used to explain its war in in Ukraine. Nor does the Russian regime has any policies on how Russia can get a better future.
Instead they are burying themselves deep into feverish fantasies about a glorious past of Tradition and Purity, a past that has never existed.
In this context queer and trans people become perfects scape goats, as Russia has not gone through the same kind of humanization of queer people as many democratic European countries have. Queer people are yet not so visible that it becomes hard to dehumanize them.
As you can see from the gibberish this Russian woman is giving us, lies upon lies have been amplified by prejudices and fears to the point where it has become impossible for her to see the truth.
This woman represents the extreme of transphobic madness, but what the Republicans are doing in the US and TERFs all over the world are not that different from what Putin is doing. This is why all good people need to defend trans people everywhere, because the defense of trans people is the defense of democracy, decency and human compassion.
In Qatar, trans people can be arrested without charge for “violating public decency”, simply for being trans.
Speaking to the BBC under a pseudonym and through an encrypted messaging service, one trans woman named as “Shahd” said she wanted to speak out about the persecution of trans people in Qatar, telling the publication: “I am very afraid, but I just want people to know that we do exist.”
Shahd said she had been arrested for “impersonating a woman”, and was forced to cut her hair.
Because she had been taking oestrogen, procured from abroad, authorities demanded that she “remove her breast tissue”, leaving her with wounds across her chest.
Shahd said she has been “arrested and interrogated several times because of my identity”, and is constantly in fear of being detained again.
“A fine or imprisonment of up to 3 years shall be imposed on anyone who deliberately or grossly negligently publicly presents a discriminatory or hateful statement. The use of symbols is also considered speech.
Anyone who, in the presence of others, intentionally or grossly negligently makes such a statement towards someone who is affected by it, [cf. list below], is punished by a fine or imprisonment for up to 1 year.
Discriminatory or hateful speech means threatening or insulting someone, or promoting hatred, persecution or contempt towards someone because of their
a. skin color or national or ethnic origin, b. religion or beliefs, c. sexual orientation, d. gender identity or gender expression, e. or impaired functioning.”
Paragraph 186 protects the same groups against discrimination.
This law does not explicitly cover sexism or misogyny. I am not a legal expert and am not aware of the law being used in such a context.
However, Norway has a separate law for gender equality and discrimination. Paragraph 13 of this law bans harassment, sexual harassment included. By harassment is meant “actions, omissions or statements that have the purpose or effect of being offensive, intimidating, hostile, degrading or humiliating.”
So yes, I believe you can sue someone over racist or sexist hate speech.
How can those “silenced” make so much noise?
I am constantly amazed by the way haters and bigots present themselves as the victims of silencing, even though they are given room to make this claim in all kinds of media.
Here are some of the activities included in the ban:
No portraying being transgender as a mental illness, and no more saying that “trans men will never be real men” or “trans women will never be real women”, or intentionally misgendering them
No portraying LGBT people as a whole as “groomers” or “pedophiles”, calling them a slur, or deadnaming them
No genocide denial
No posts meant to generate hate at certain groups
No direct threats of violence directed at specific individuals or groups of people
Do you believe that if a woman or girl requests a female gynaecologist, and the gyno is a pre-transition trans woman, the patient is transphobic for being uncomfortable or asking for a cis woman doctor? Genuine question
crossdreamers answered
Is it transphobic to dismiss the services of a transgender doctor because she is trans?
ALT
Petra De Sutter is a gynecologist and politician, currently serving as the federal Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium.Would it be OK for a cis woman to ask for another female gynecologist, if Petra was the one assigned to her? (Photo from Open Dialogue)
Social conditioning
There are many levels of bigotry – being this racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other kind of aversion felt towards minority groups. The phobia can be conscious, deliberate and hateful, or it can be implicit and an indirect effect of cultural prejudices.
One of the ways society keep marginalized groups excluded is by conditioning its citizens to fear or loathe them. This is not only a mental process; it is an emotional form of conditioning.
Kids will, from a very young age, see that their parents and peers express distaste when meeting – or talking about – members of these groups.
The same adults will often use the same kind of expressions as when they talk about something diseased, rotten or corrupt. Kids pick up on these feelings. They develop the same emotional responses.
Bigoted narratives reinforce the phobias
This process is of course accentuated by the way the bigots present the children with narratives aimed at legitimizing this aversion.
We have all heard these stories: “The Jews are part of a world-wide cabal aimed at ravaging white women, sacrificing or kids and turning us all into Communists,” or “Black people are primitive, lazy, violent and promiscuous animal-like beings who threaten white women and kids,” or “Gay people are grooming good kids to become queer pedophiles.”
Fascist propaganda is actually very much about presenting outsiders as a sexual threat to predominantly white women and kids. This tactic legitimizes policies aimed at oppressing those marginalized, and this oppression in turn creates more distrust and disgust.
This is the tactic the Republican party is using against LGBTQA people and immigrants in the US right now, and is a strategy exploited by the so-called “gender critical” TERFs of Britain.
Freeing yourself from phobias
Note that it can be hard to overcome such feelings of loathing and fear, since they are based on long term reinforcement. This means that someone who intellectually have understood the nature of transphobia or racism, and who consciously supports trans rights or the civil rights movement, may still harbor bigoted feelings.
Indeed, getting rid of such feelings may take time. It often requires regular contact with members of the marginalized group, so that your subconscious come to see them as regular people and not as some kind of scary “Other”.
So a woman who – because she has been raised in a racist or transphobic environment – feel unease about being cared for by a Black or transgender woman, may on one level be an anti-racist or trans-supportive person, but may – nonetheless – express racist or transphobic feelings. Because of this she continues to reinforce the negative biases of this world.
Is she a bad person? I wouldn’t say so. But it would definitely help if someone helped her out of that state of mind.
Experienced as invalidating aggression
Dismissing a Black gynecologist because she is Black or a transgender doctor because she is trans, will definitely be experienced as a bigoted reaction. The caretaker will experience this as aggression aimed at invalidating her status as an equal human being.
Now, the question posed is a bit confusing, as it is referring to the female doctor being “a pre-transition trans woman”. A trans female caretaker who works as a woman will have already come out. She has transitioned, at least socially. She presents as a woman. She is a woman.
I know of no one who allows closeted trans women (i.e. those who publicly still present as men) to work as female doctors.
It might be the expression is not referring to this trans woman having socially transitioned. Instead the question might be alluding to whether she has been through hormone replacement therapy and surgery, so that she easily passes for a cis woman.
But that brings us back to the social conditioning: The unease someone feels from facing a woman who is visibly trans (or meeting a female doctor who is clearly a woman of color) is caused by a transphobic or racist culture that teaches us that transgender or Black women are dangerous, contaminated or inferior. That is clearly a transphobic or racist reaction, even if the patient’s conscious intentions are good.
We cannot win the battle against bigotry if we continue to insist on keeping the marginalized groups segregated from “normal” society due to the misguided fears of prejudiced people. That segregation is in itself one of the instruments used to keep the oppressive system in place. This applies to bathrooms, participation in sports, as well as gynecology.
Tonight, shortly after 1 AM, a man attacked London Pub, a popular place for queer people in Oslo, with an automatic weapon. The police arrived quickly on the scene, and apprehended the man in collaboration with civilians at the scene.
So, was I wrong about my rather positive view of Norwegian attitudes towards queer people?
No, it this truly was a terrorist attack, which seems very likely, it is rather a sign of how some transphobes and homophobes try to pour petrol on the bigotry that does exist, gaining more support in the process.
Ironically, this attack is more likely to increase the support for queer and trans people in Norway.
Here is what we know
This is what we know in the morning of June 25, given newspaper coverage and the Oslo Police press conference:
Tonight a 42 year old Norwegian citizen of Iranian origin attacked two pubs in the center of Oslo, Per på hjørnet and London Pub. London Pub is a queer watering hole. Per på hjørnet lies side by side with London Pub. The shooting took place outside these pubs.
The man fired into the crowd, killing two persons in the process. Ten persons are seriously wounded, 11 less severely so.
The police appeared within minutes. In collaboration with private citizens at the scene, they stopped further carnage, and – again in collaboration with civilians – they apprehended the suspect.
The police contacted Oslo Pride and recommended that today’s Pride Parade should be cancelled, due to security reasons. The organizers of Pride Parade agreed. All Pride arrangements have been cancelled today.
