LGBTQ+ rights in the United Kingdom

I was just reading a review on the Guardian's website about a recent book (which I won't name so as to not distract from the topic at hand) which included what seemed like a completely gratuitous and unnecessary reference to 'left-liberal men' not respecting free speech in regards to womens' rights, along with a link to an article from 2021 which, against my better judgment, I clicked. As expected, it was one of those 'trans people are okay, it's the eeeeevil trans rights activists not inviting GC speakers to universities and silencing Honest Feminists who are Just Asking Questions that are the real problem!' articles.

This got me thinking; has this persistent characterization of the UK TERF movement as 'feminists who Just Have Some Concerns' ever been remotely true?

My current reading on them is that, like a lot of things, they've gone full mask-off and spend most of their time chasing clout on Twitter while harassing people just trying to live their lives or anyone who suggests you're not wholly defined by what's in your pants (and also being anti-nontraditional families going from that attempted Primark boycott a while back, which seems bizarre to me because that doesn't sound like it necessarily has anything to do with trans people).

What I want to know is, like, were they always like this? Or did they start out differently but slowly get subverted from within by all-purpose bigot agitators? Or perhaps the backlash against them just made them dig themselves even deeper into the rabbit hole? I dunno, I feel it's a question worth asking to maybe tabulate where the movement can go from here, especially in the event of a Labour victory despite 'anti-woman' smear attempts.

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Dec 23rd 2023 at 5:26:25 PM

They were basically always like this. In the US, the various feminist waves tended to have a strong diversity component to some degree or another, but that element was much weaker in the UK.

A lot of the women who are active in the terf movement were part of what I call 2.5 wave feminism, which is like this weird "we want rights but only in a respectable way" thing. A lot of the big UK names in that group did very little to deserve their reputation as feminist leaders. And some did literally nothing at all.

Baroness Nicholson, a pretty big deal terf (who also happens to be the one who laundered the fake evidence of WM Ds to justify the Iraq war) got the feminist leader label too but the only thing she ever appears to have done is vote in favour of a few things and...be a prominent woman in politics. It's like the people who think Margaret Thatcher was a prominent feminist. She really wasn't.

But the actual important part is that the vast majority of the terf movement is not actually women. It's mostly conservative men who get to feel like they have the moral high ground and get to spew horrible misogyny at women they get to decide are on the other side.

So essentially it's people thinking that 'woman with opinions' has to mean 'feminist'? At least partly.

On a related note, what's the best argument against the TERFy talking point I've seen lately that suggests that trans and nonbinary people actually reinforce gender norms by... I assume their logic is that 'they're saying that if you're a man who acts feminine you must actually be a woman!' and variations thereof. Besides just pointing out that that's not a position any gender nonconforming person I've ever seen actually holds.

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Dec 23rd 2023 at 8:46:56 PM

"So what?" Identifying as something does not require one to adopt that "role".

Yeah it's a nonsensical argument. Tomboyish trans women exist, as do effeminate trans men, and non-binary people aren't necessarily androgynous (I live with one who presents as feminine).

Trans rights, and LGBTQ rights in general, do more to break down gender norms than enforce them.

I'm pretty sure I wore more skirts before coming out than after.

If anything, cis folk push trans people to be gender conforming.

Edited by Bisected8 on Dec 23rd 2023 at 11:26:21 AM

Rishi Sunak refuses to apologise for swiping at Starmer with a transphobic "what is a woman" gag while the mother of murdered trans teenager Brianna Ghey was visiting parliament.

Rishi Sunak makes a transphobic joke during PMQs, less than 24 hours after offering his condolences to the family of (murdered trans teenager) Brianna Ghey. Refuses to apologise after it's pointed out^note Incorrectly, but neither of them were aware of that her mother is in the audience watching, and doubles down.

Also a rare case of Starmer showing something resembling a spine.

The GMC to apologise to British doctors investigated or barred from the profession because of their sexuality

...which happened up until the 1990s, despite homosexuality being decriminalised decades earlier.

Noted British anti-trans activist J. K. Rowling is apparently now denying that the Nazis persecuted trans people and engaged in the targeted destruction of transgender health research.

Excerpt from the article:

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Mar 14th 2024 at 9:13:46 AM

Ah yes, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was made up. Right.

Yeah, I saw that happen. She tried to pivot multiple times in different branches of the thread and never really managed to get away from having told someone that (paraphrasing) "where did they get their sources, a fever dream?" in response to a tweet saying that the Nazis burned books about trans people and why is Rowling starting to behave like they did?

Her swarm of followers immediately reacted in one of four ways.

1) PIVOT PIVOT PIVOT trying desperately to avoid addressing the original tweet.

2) "At least the Nazis didn't trans kids"

3) "Burning those books was good actually"

4) "Show me these books that were burned!"

This has happened with Rowling before, where she says something really gross, tries to pivot away from it, and then a bunch of her followers are like "no, she really did mean the worst possible interpretation AND I AGREE WITH HER COMPLETELY!" Last week, when she accidentally implied that adoptive mothers aren't real mothers, a lot of people following her actually did say things like "adoptive mothers are stealing valour from real mothers because adoptive mothers didn't go through the sheer horrific agony of giving birth" because, for some reason, the particular brand of terf that follows Rowling around is really, really intent on framing femininity and motherhood exclusively around pain and suffering.

Point 2 is bafflingly awful as an argument. "Hey, these people I disagree on with literally everything else? They were totally right about this one thing that is also really controversial!" Like, I don't know, maybe don't use the literal Nazis as your reason to deny the existence of trans children? Like, at least set the bar a little higher for yourself, because if your only argument is "the Nazis didn't do it", that's not much of an argument.

It's like "at least the Taliban knows what a woman is!"

Like, you do not actually have to give it to the Nazis or the Taliban and if your first resort is to use regimes like that to back up your argument, you have a terrible argument.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 14th 2024 at 4:41:01 AM

For some reason transphobes always end up siding with fascists at one point or another.

That article seems to need a login, but some of the others mention that JKR is threatening legal action as the phrase "holocaust denial" was used.

This may not burn her professional bridges, but it certainly won't help to reinforce them.

Are you sure? I can see it without having any kind of account.

I get a "register for free to keep reading - unlock article" prompt.

Here's the Times of India version, which has both Twitter links and transcript.

That’d be a dangerous game for Rowling to play, as it could easily end up with her being found by a court of law to have engaged in Holocaust denial, which would likely also get her kicked out of the Labour Party (who have pretty tough rules on Holocaust denial due to past events).

Someone should probably remind them of that considering Rosie Duffield was allowed to make exactly the same comments without issue.

Duffield has not been found to have engaged in Holocaust denial by a court of law.

The Labour Party won’t investigate Rowling for her comments and if they did they’d do a cover up, but you can’t easily engage in a cover up if a court has made a finding of facts.

I don't quite agree with the idea that Trans people were the "first" victims of the Nazis (for the Nazis everything they hated was a Jewish plot and Magnus Hirschfeld was Jewish).

But Rowling and her supporters are vicious bigots with no knowledge of history.

Or as Zendervai gets at, they are basically in the position where they endorse Nazi views on trans people but don't want to admit it because it's a bad look.

LOL at Drunken Northman's description of her as "Noted British anti-trans activist J. K. Rowling." What a way to tank your reputation and turn yourself into a one-note bigot.

The original post JKR posted in indignation of and the post responding to her stated anything about transgender people being the first victims, only that they were among the ones victimized by the Holocaust. The first one to say anything about trans people being the first victims was JKR herself as a means of outrage and offense that the posts could imply such a thing. But the two posts didn't imply anything of the sort, just that trans people were also targeted and to deny it is to deny a part of the Holocaust. It wasn't until a later response where people called her out on her response that she brought up a different post which made the claim that trans people were the first targets, but that was not the subject in the initial posts that started this exchange.

Edited by HeyMikey on Mar 14th 2024 at 4:04:10 AM

Yeah Rowling invented a strawman, either on purpose or she’s so addicted to getting angry at people on Twitter that her brain will now hallucinate outrageous things.

Ah. That makes sense. I mean I have heard people making that argument. Ditto about Socialists/Communists, so I thought I should address it.

But I’m not that surprised JKR was straw manning.

"The original post JKR posted in indignation of and the post responding to her stated anything about transgender people being the first victims, only that they were among the ones victimized by the Holocaust."

This is literally the entire tweet.

This was Rowling's response to it.

There's no way to parse Rowling's response as anything but "you made up that stuff about the Nazis burning trans books" (because if she's referring to the second half...you don't need sources to state a personal opinion) and everything else has been desperately trying to perform damage control while refusing to admit she could possibly be wrong.