The Thinking ‘Kat: Attacking Trans
The UK has recently gone backward, where the treatment of trans people is concerned. The trans community represents a miniscule percentage of the UK’s population, thought to be at most 500,000 people, representing 0.7% of the UK’s total population. Despite this, there is a certain hysteria where trans people, especially trans women, are concerned. If you listen to TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), trans women are loitering in the ladies’ loos, and harrassing cis women at every opportunity. The reality is altogether different, with trans women facing harassment and demonisation from all corners of society.
The religious right, often committed to attacking the LGBT community, has had it in for the trans community in particular of late, whilst the social and political left, via TERFs, follows a similar tact. The vast majority of trans people want nothing more than to exist as who they are, and there is no harm in that, whatsoever. If they were left alone to be who they are, you would find them to be the same as everyone else. Unfortunately, life is purposefully being made more difficult for the trans community.
The odds are that you have sat in a restaurant, or at a bar, or shopped in the same store as a trans person, and you might well have not even noticed. Even if you did, the odds are that they have done nothing but go about their day, and if you don’t make a scene, then there won’t be a scene. Small-minded bigots might point to the atomically-small number of incidents where trans women have been involved in assaults against cis women, but these same people – often deeply religious – should reflect on their own house, before throwing stones (after all, the number of of those in the clergy responsible for sexually assaulting others is alarming, and a cause that should be pursued far more vigorously). Unfortunately, bigots will always be small-minded, clinging to their fears and phobias and hate, rather than acting reasonably.
UPDATE 24th of April: Considering some of the absurd, unhinged ‘responses’ to this post, I challenge those who make wild claims to prove them. I suspect I will be waiting for a very long time.
