Especially since that is the entire reason why Kimberlé Crenshaw, a Black woman, popularised the concept of intersectionality - because her experience of 'femaleness' was so different to that of white women. It isn't a coincidence that misogynoir and transmisogyny are strongly connected terms.
But I don't see how "people taking existential questions in directions I wouldn't take" is threatening unless you insist on living in a homogenous world.
It’s about whether the concepts of “man” and “woman” have any actual meaning. That’s the “ideology” I was talking about - the assertion that those concepts have no definition other than whatever each individual wants them to mean. But if that’s true then it means those concepts are in fact meaningless.
Pardon me if I'm misreading.
I think that you're conflating objectivity with meaning in a way that depends on what I referred to as homogeneity. The idea that I (or you) must have the authority to objectively label everything with or without consent, or have it be rendered "meaningless."
I have lived a life where I spend a lot of time navigating other people's subjectivity and granting them the dignity to live in their subjectivity without presuming that I can objectively define them. Honestly, I don't even treat my spouse that way, and I think I know that person about as well as I know anyone. It'd be rather forward of me to presume to objectively define another person's existence.
To borrow a metaphor, these waters you find so terrifying are waters I have been navigating for most all of my adult life. Of course a lot of meaningful stuff about a particular person is deeply subjective, subject to their own personal interpretation.
I don't think that it's necessary to say that all subjectivity is meaningless. Everyone has their own personal facts and I think, for me, showing respect for that is how I show respect for their persons.
I can see the internal logic of what you're saying, I think. It's consistent, but I don't think that it lines up with my experience of people.
I think that you're conflating objectivity with meaning in a way that depends on what I referred to as homogeneity. The idea that I (or you) must have the authority to objectively label everything with or without consent, or have it be rendered "meaningless."
It’s not about me or you defining words for everyone, it’s about there needing to be an agreed shared definition of words and concepts for them to have any meaning.
Everyone has their own personal facts
Do they, though? A commonly-used phrase on this website is “you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts”. Is that wrong?
I think that you're conflating objectivity with meaning in a way that depends on what I referred to as homogeneity. The idea that I (or you) must have the authority to objectively label everything with or without consent, or have it be rendered "meaningless."
It’s not about me or you defining words for everyone, it’s about there needing to be an agreed shared definition of words and concepts for them to have any meaning.
Everyone has their own personal facts
Do they, though? A commonly-used phrase on this website is “you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts”. Is that wrong?
There are external objective facts, and there are internal subjective ones. By definition, the latter are indeed one's own.
It's the difference, I suppose, between physical and mental. The outer world and the inner one.
For you, your gender identity, part of your inner world, is driven by an external objective reality - external gonads and plumbing convenient for al fresco widdling and inconvenient for negligent fly-zipping.
Other people find that that simply isn't the case.
We all have inner subjective realities that are not driven by external facts. Music taste. Food preferences. Hobbies. Sports.
We all have inner subjective realities that are not driven by external facts. Music taste. Food preferences. Hobbies. Sports.
Though, the point is one that's good, there's a danger of putting gender identity into the same sort of category as musical or food tastes. Whereas, our identity is something far deeper than that.
For me, a better (though still imperfect) analogy would be with Christian faith. Most of us here identify in some way with being Christian, and view that as some form of ontological reality fundamental to who we are, how we view the world, how we interact with others - something much more than liking to sing hymns and sit for half an hour listening to a sermon. Some people would try to make being a Christian linked to something objective (eg: having been baptised, or signing their agreement to a creed or other statement of belief) but most of us know we're Christian by our own testimony - some may have particular conversion experiences that they can point to, others particular experiences of God working in their lives, others can point to particular "fruit" that they attribute to their faith. For me my faith is founded on having tried it and found that it makes more sense of the world than not having faith - which to me sounds quite like the earlier descriptions of people "trying on" different gender identities until they find something that fits who they are. We've had 25y of discussion here on the Ship which would put beyond doubt that there are no objective realities that can define who is or isn't Christian - no list of fundamental beliefs that we produce to mark that division, no rite that can be used for that ... we've seen just about every example of "if you haven't been baptised [according to a particular understanding of baptism]" or "if you don't believe [this particular doctrine]" or "if you don't vote for [particular social issue]" etc and most such attempts to define who is or isn't Christian end up in Hell. Very few of us find that these arguments shake our own identity as "Christian".
Ultimately, for all of us, "I'm a Christian" is an inner subjective reality not driven by external facts. What's so difficult to also put "I'm male" or "I'm female" or "I'm neither of those" into the same category of something like "I'm a Christian"?
I, too, am a bit leery of the phrasing around having "our own personal facts," probably because of the rise of "alternative facts"-based misinformation via social media etc. Having our own personal facts seems to lead through the minefield of climate-change-deniers and anti-vaxxers, all the way to the flat-earthers.
However, we can know "facts" about our own life experience that aren't verifiable by external standards. I think the distinction between "external objective facts" and "internal subjective facts" that @KarlLB makes is a good one, but as @Alan Cresswell points out, some of those "subjective facts" are really opinions rather than facts -- like the kind of music or food we prefer. It's a fact, I suppose, that I like Springsteen, but it's only a fact because of my subjective opinions about the impact his music has on me.
I think @Alan Cresswell 's analogy with religion is a bit stronger -- while my beliefs about God are still opinions, it's a fact, to me, that I am a Christian, and that's an essential part of my identity.
When it comes to gender, a statement like "Only a person with a uterus can gestate and give birth to a child" seems to me to be (in the current state of medical science) an objective fact that is externally verifiable and everyone can agree on.
A statement like "Only a person with a uterus is a woman" is the sort of thing that sounds like a fact, and that a lot of folks might accept as a fact, but actually isn't. It excludes trans women; it also excludes women who've had hysterectomies, quite a fair-sized chunk of the woman-identifying population. (You could include them by saying "Only a person born with a uterus is a woman" but you'd still miss out something like 1 in 5000 cis women, as well as trans women -- the point of making statements like that is usually to exclude trans women, but it's hard to do so without leaving out certain categories of cis women also. Which I guess is why immutable biological "facts" about gender are a bit trickier than they seem). So to me, that's an example of a statement that appears to be factual but really isn't.
I wouldn't presume to speak on behalf of a trans person, but based on what I've heard/read from trans people, I would assume that if a trans woman says to me, "I know that I am a woman," then for her, that is a fact. Not, perhaps, externally verifiable in the same way some scientific facts are, but a fact that within her experience she knows to be true.
I, too, am a bit leery of the phrasing around having "our own personal facts," probably because of the rise of "alternative facts"-based misinformation via social media etc. Having our own personal facts seems to lead through the minefield of climate-change-deniers and anti-vaxxers, all the way to the flat-earthers.
However, we can know "facts" about our own life experience that aren't verifiable by external standards. I think the distinction between "external objective facts" and "internal subjective facts" that @KarlLB makes is a good one, but as @Alan Cresswell points out, some of those "subjective facts" are really opinions rather than facts -- like the kind of music or food we prefer. It's a fact, I suppose, that I like Springsteen, but it's only a fact because of my subjective opinions about the impact his music has on me.
I think @Alan Cresswell 's analogy with religion is a bit stronger -- while my beliefs about God are still opinions, it's a fact, to me, that I am a Christian, and that's an essential part of my identity.
When it comes to gender, a statement like "Only a person with a uterus can gestate and give birth to a child" seems to me to be (in the current state of medical science) an objective fact that is externally verifiable and everyone can agree on.
A statement like "Only a person with a uterus is a woman" is the sort of thing that sounds like a fact, and that a lot of folks might accept as a fact, but actually isn't. It excludes trans women; it also excludes women who've had hysterectomies, quite a fair-sized chunk of the woman-identifying population. (You could include them by saying "Only a person born with a uterus is a woman" but you'd still miss out something like 1 in 5000 cis women, as well as trans women -- the point of making statements like that is usually to exclude trans women, but it's hard to do so without leaving out certain categories of cis women also. Which I guess is why immutable biological "facts" about gender are a bit trickier than they seem). So to me, that's an example of a statement that appears to be factual but really isn't.
I wouldn't presume to speak on behalf of a trans person, but based on what I've heard/read from trans people, I would assume that if a trans woman says to me, "I know that I am a woman," then for her, that is a fact. Not, perhaps, externally verifiable in the same way some scientific facts are, but a fact that within her experience she knows to be true.
I was trying to use examples that are reasonably non-controversial as being personal but still realities; there are plenty of people who will insist that identifying as a Christian doesn't make you one.
I'd not say that the examples I gave are opinions either - they're more discoveries a person makes about themselves. I remember being brought up to consider heavy rock to be a bit rubbish, but when I got to university and heard lots of different music I couldn't escape the truth that I liked heavy rock. I don't choose to love cheese and hate fish - it's just the personal reality I get from my taste buds via the bits of the brain they talk to.
I'd distinguish them thus: "I like Jazz" is a personal subjective reality. "Jazz is better than Baroque" is an opinion.
Ultimately, for all of us, "I'm a Christian" is an inner subjective reality not driven by external facts. What's so difficult to also put "I'm male" or "I'm female" or "I'm neither of those" into the same category of something like "I'm a Christian"?
Because it's not true that Christianity has no definition other than what the individual claimant to that identity gives it - there is still at least some level of objective definition of that particular faith, even if only "follower of Christ". If someone who utterly denied the existence of Christ as a historical person, who ignored every teaching credited to Him, and who sacrificed goats to Nurgle, Lord of Pestilence, God of Disease, Decay, Despair, Destruction and Death every Friday claimed to be Christian would you accept that that was just as valid a definition of Christianity as your own?
I'd not say that the examples I gave are opinions either - they're more discoveries a person makes about themselves. I remember being brought up to consider heavy rock to be a bit rubbish, but when I got to university and heard lots of different music I couldn't escape the truth that I liked heavy rock. I don't choose to love cheese and hate fish - it's just the personal reality I get from my taste buds via the bits of the brain they talk to.
I'd distinguish them thus: "I like Jazz" is a personal subjective reality. "Jazz is better than Baroque" is an opinion.
OK, but if someone says "I love jazz, especially Metallica and Iron Maiden" would you accept that Metallica and Iron Maiden are genuinely jazz bands? Or would you say that while whether someone likes jazz or not is their own subjective reality, what jazz actually is is an independent objective fact?
Both of these examples actually make my point perfectly, because both "Christian" and "jazz" have definitions that are independent of any particular person who claims them as an identity (and yes, the specific definition of each may be a matter of debate, but nobody is seriously claiming that no such definition exists or can ever exist in the first place). Honestly, I don't even care who claims a particular gender or sex identity, but can we at least agree that those identities are capable of independent objective definition? Can we at least agree that they mean something?
OK, biological sex is chromosomally determined - and gender is a social role you perform that is usually, but not always, concordant with your biological sex. This social role affects social expectations of you, and the organisation of social spaces. Gender role specifics are vary in time, place, number, and cultural group.
But how is this relevant as to whether it is, or is not, sensible for Scottish prisons to determine prisoner placement without appropriate risk assessment ?
Guys: If you want to argue about the importance of definitions in general and the nature of truth, can we take that out of Epiphanies please. Definitions can absolutely be relevant to Epiphanies, but it is more the place for sharing your thoughts and listening to those who are effected than for analytical discussions about definitions.
Marvin hasn't responded to anyone who isn't a cis man, nor explained what he means by 'trans ideology' which is generally meant as a dogwhistle. I would be perfectly willing to accept that it wasn't intended as a dogwhistle if he responded to the question! However avoiding the question alongside avoiding responding to the points made by not-cis-men makes me a bit suspicious.
It isn't the job of trans people to reassure people who see us as a threat, because feeling threatened by trans people existing (there is no 'trans ideology' separate to trans people) is a personal issue that's up to that individual to resolve within themselves. If a gender-expansive world is a threat to your (general your) sense of self, that is something for you to work through yourself and not something trans people have done to you.
Anyway it took me until today to find out that Brianna Ghey, a trans teenage girl who was murdered in the UK by other teenagers, was trans because the report on The Guardian erased the fact that she was trans. The Times updated their report to erase the fact that she was a girl and to insert her deadname. She will be misgendered on her death certificate. But apparently she was the threat.
The BBC also erased the fact she was trans on the Radio 4 news on Sunday.
In Scotland thanks to the moral panic created around the GRR we were treated to newspapers splashing on the front page about people who hadn't even been charged, whose actual gender identity we couldn't know, headlines like
(offensive headline)
'Transgender Butcher'
But when a young trans woman gets murdered in the middle of the moral panic our press and media have whipped up - shhhhh! Nobody mention it!
And indeed that's one of the things the bill was meant to do, to prevent people facing a final indignity in death with the death certificate. Keir Starmer refused to oppose the Section 35 attack on the bill because 16 year olds were 'too young' to self ID. Alas they're not too young to get murdered.
By the way this is Gemma Stone at transwrites covering it for those not familiar with the case - but we probably need a new thread for this and it's a bit late at night for me to feel I can draw things together
I think that you're conflating objectivity with meaning in a way that depends on what I referred to as homogeneity. The idea that I (or you) must have the authority to objectively label everything with or without consent, or have it be rendered "meaningless."
It’s not about me or you defining words for everyone, it’s about there needing to be an agreed shared definition of words and concepts for them to have any meaning.
Everyone has their own personal facts
Do they, though? A commonly-used phrase on this website is “you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts”. Is that wrong?
If it's my body being discussed, yep. That's mine. Not yours.
And I think this reality is pretty consistent across the board.
I think that the "queer ideology," as you put it, is actually pretty internally consistent and works well for most things. It's an objective reality that a body is a person's private property and they deserve to be granted ownership thereof.
Anyway it took me until today to find out that Brianna Ghey, a trans teenage girl who was murdered in the UK by other teenagers, was trans because the report on The Guardian erased the fact that she was trans. The Times updated their report to erase the fact that she was a girl and to insert her deadname. She will be misgendered on her death certificate. But apparently she was the threat.
I didn't realise that Brianna was trans, as the newspapers didn't report that initially. One of the TV news programmes led with it. I was baffled by the reports of police dismissing a hate crime claim, how would they know?
To be slightly fair to some media outlets, it is widely held you shouldn't disclose someone's trans status without their permission- and it may be they were trying to do the right thing. (Though in fact it appears she was open about her trans status on social media and in her everyday life.)
I can understand the hesitation to out someone who wasn't necessarily out in real life, especially if it will cause gossip that could harm the investigation. But Brianna had a TikTok account where she discussed her life as a trans girl.
Due to her age and the circumstances, I'm not sure Brianna would qualify even if she was cis - but I've been thinking about the person who runs the resource on femicide/misogyny based killings of women, Counting Dead Women I think it's called? It's frequently quoted by articles on misogyny and femicide as an authoritative voice. Only, the person who runs it is publicly and explicitly exclusionary of trans women and doesn't include them in her statistics - so women who die due to being trans women are erased in death twice.
One of the Scottish trans people I follow on Twitter pointed out that Brianna Ghey wouldn't have been able to get a GRC under Scotland's stalled reform
thanks to a labour amendment, she wouldn't have been able to apply until her 16th birthday and would have been in the pointless and arbitrary reflection period -
the reflection period for under 18's is 6 months, for those over 18 it's 3 months
The reform could have, should have and would have avoided tragedies like this [misgendering in death] but it was watered down in an attempt to appease bigots
That's Karen Ingala Smith at Counting Dead Women - exactly as you say @Pomona and this kind of miscounting makes it easy for the people who whip up violence to then overlook the consequences when trans women are murdered and say it never happens.
To be slightly fair to some media outlets, it is widely held you shouldn't disclose someone's trans status without their permission- and it may be they were trying to do the right thing.
Even the earliest reports I saw on twitter mentioned her trans status (of course the Mail went the other way and dead-named her).
The Guardian now has a respectful article which does discuss the updated police response as well as Brianna's transness and the strength of feeling amongst trans people about this incident. I did think it was exceptionally ironic that they chose to feature comments and placards about transphobia in the media when they're part of the media perpetuating that transphobia. Are any mainstream UK newspapers not involved in publishing transphobic content? I feel like the Independent is OK, at least I can't think of any bad instances.
I'm pretty sure (nearly?) all the mainstream TV reporting I've been watching about Brianna's death has included the fact she was transgender, from the beginning, except possibly from the very first breaking news flash? I remember being surprised that the police had initially and so quickly thought it was not a hate crime. Maybe they knew something more about the circumstances, I thought. But I believe they're reconsidering that possibility now. Apparently the alleged assailants are 15 year olds. I don't read newspapers usually so don't know what the coverage there has been.
I think it's been the newspaper/online newspaper content that has mostly been the problem, and they are sadly the usual suspects for this kind of thing.
Both of these comments are completely untrue, as page 4 alone will prove.
Not quite. For example your definition of "trans ideology" is neither trans nor an ideology.
An ideology is (to quote the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy):
Any wide-ranging system of beliefs, ways of thought, and categories that provide the foundation of programmes of political and social action: an ideology is a conceptual scheme with a practical application.
You present no programme of action, and you present nothing beyond a superficial concept. It's hard to understand what you present as an 'ideology' without that deeper intention.
Furthermore your own definition is rather thin as you claim it is
"the assertion that those concepts have no definition other than whatever each individual wants them to mean."
That's just an extreme definition of non-realism, at best, and I've never seen that argued by a transperson, and it seems more of a parody of transgender thinking than an engagement with it.
Indeed, that definition really makes no sense within transgender discourse. There are accepted norms that distinguish male and female in transgender discussions (their meaning is therefore not simply individualised, they represent understood social norms). Most transgender people identify with the 'other' gender (clearly things are different for non-binary individuals). If the definitions were merely internalised, then there would be no need for even social transition.
The term 'trans ideology' is usually used in transphobic discourse to assert that transgenderism is an existential threat to society. The most dominant form is that trans ideology is undertaken by hostile agents to seek to undermine social norms and particularly (undermine) sex protections for women to enable attacks by male sex predators, and to convert and indoctrinate cis-identifying youth to become trans, resulting in traumatised and disfigured young people. The second most common usage is as an ideology that seeks to obliterate gender identification and result in gender being entirely detached from biological roots, this being done to destabilise society and ensure that majority cis-identifying people are marginalised and refused the right to identify based on birth sex. It seems you are closer to the second than the first, but trans people do not as a group (nor have I heard any individual claim) that sex and gender are entirely detached for most people.
While trans folks want society to accomodate them, and not have cis norms imposed on them, there's no expectation that anyone 'cis' would change their own experience of gender or sex. You're imposing on trans folk a pattern of thinking that they'd almost all disavow.
Well done, gbuchanan. In fact, you can reverse it, anti-trans people want to impose cis ideology on trans people, non-binary people, and anybody else who is non-conforming. The notion of trans ideology is familiar now, used by bigots, and often found in right wing media.
Well done, gbuchanan. In fact, you can reverse it, anti-trans people want to impose cis ideology on trans people, non-binary people, and anybody else who is non-conforming. The notion of trans ideology is familiar now, used by bigots, and often found in right wing media.
What's astonishing is the TERFs who 10, 20 years ago would have railed against claims of "feminist ideology" or the "homosexual agenda" are now turning round and attacking trans folk in exactly the same terms.
Furthermore your own definition is rather thin as you claim it is
"the assertion that those concepts have no definition other than whatever each individual wants them to mean."
That's just an extreme definition of non-realism, at best, and I've never seen that argued by a transperson, and it seems more of a parody of transgender thinking than an engagement with it.
It has been said more than once on these boards that the only valid way to establish whether someone is male or female is to ask them. That must perforce mean that any other way or definition is invalid.
Indeed, that definition really makes no sense within transgender discourse. There are accepted norms that distinguish male and female in transgender discussions (their meaning is therefore not simply individualised, they represent understood social norms).
Well done, gbuchanan. In fact, you can reverse it, anti-trans people want to impose cis ideology on trans people, non-binary people, and anybody else who is non-conforming. The notion of trans ideology is familiar now, used by bigots, and often found in right wing media.
What's astonishing is the TERFs who 10, 20 years ago would have railed against claims of "feminist ideology" or the "homosexual agenda" are now turning round and attacking trans folk in exactly the same terms.
Yes, there are some queasy parallels. I notice that the grooming accusation is being levelled at trans people and drag queens, familiar from days of clause 28. Think of the children!
Well done, gbuchanan. In fact, you can reverse it, anti-trans people want to impose cis ideology on trans people, non-binary people, and anybody else who is non-conforming. The notion of trans ideology is familiar now, used by bigots, and often found in right wing media.
What's astonishing is the TERFs who 10, 20 years ago would have railed against claims of "feminist ideology" or the "homosexual agenda" are now turning round and attacking trans folk in exactly the same terms.
Sorry, I misinterpreted your post earlier. Another historical reversal, is that biology or anatomy was discredited in feminism, well, second phase feminism, but now anatomy is destiny, paraphrasing Freud, for gender critical feminists. Your identity is anatomical. Gulp.
And furthermore, your identity will be determined by me, not you. Sorry for multiple posts.
Or worse by doctors through intrusive interrogation which can be riddled with prejudices and demands for stereotyped behaviour - as @Pomona has pointed out previously. Which of us cis-folk would want to be put through that over things like gender or sexuality?
I agree that trans people are not a physical danger to me, at least not any more than anyone else is. But I still struggle with the strong feeling that trans ideology is a metaphysical danger to my own sense of identity. And I feel like that perception of risk is being minimised, as if as long as nobody is trying to kill you then your existential anxiety is irrelevant.
But it’s not. A sense of identity is a sense of identity, and should not be casually dismissed.
@Marvin the Martian sorry for any confusion, I meant re my previous comments the comments responding to the above quote.
What exactly do you mean by 'trans ideology'? I'm perfectly willing to accept that it was meant in an innocuous way, you just haven't answered anyone asking what you mean by it.
Everyone will experience their own gender differently because it is bound up with other forms of identity, sexuality, your relationship with your body etc. Trans people haven't caused any risk to your own sense of identity - saying that isn't dismissing your sense of identity, because ultimately your sense of identity is your own to live in, and no trans person is suggesting that your identity is somehow wrong. But also a post-structuralist view of gender (for instance) is not a specifically trans thing, and generally the people talking about 'trans ideology' see trans people in general as an existential threat to society at large.
What exactly do you mean by 'trans ideology'? I'm perfectly willing to accept that it was meant in an innocuous way, you just haven't answered anyone asking what you mean by it.
It’s about whether the concepts of “man” and “woman” have any actual meaning. That’s the “ideology” I was talking about - the assertion that those concepts have no definition other than whatever each individual wants them to mean. But if that’s true then it means those concepts are in fact meaningless.
This is what I find so difficult. Words have to mean something in an objective and independent sense, or they are just pointless sounds/scribbles. And without words how can we understand the world we live in, or even ourselves?
Everyone will experience their own gender differently
This may be where we start thinking the problem is how my brain processes information, because I don’t think differences of experience equate to differences in the actual thing being experienced.
I mean, this is obviously an imperfect analogy but it may help to illustrate my thinking: everybody who drives along the M1 has a different experience of it based on time of year, time of day, weather, vehicle driven, traffic levels, and exactly which other drivers (and in which other vehicles) happen to be there at the same time. But those different experiences, valid though they all are, don’t mean those people are actually driving down different roads. The road itself is the same, regardless of how anyone may happen to experience it.
The problem being, of course, that if it is in fact true that every person drives down a different M1 then how the hell am I supposed to know how to get from Leeds to London? I can’t rely on anybody’s directions, not even those in maps, because I won’t be driving on the same road as them. And that means I don’t know where I’m going, which brings on the anxiety.
But such a view of gender isn't a specifically trans viewpoint - it's not like all trans people agree on this, and the most famous exponent is arguably Judith Butler who is a cis woman. So it just seems a bit odd to call it 'trans ideology'. Also I'm happy that it wasn't meant in a more loaded way, but it was quite alarming to see it used in such a way when it is usually used in a wholly negative way - it's very much a current term used by people who call trans people groomers, hence the need to clarify.
I'm not sure anything as impersonal as a motorway journey is a good analogy here - I know you said it was an imperfect analogy, but I think something like a religion or the previous example of Mary within different faiths is a better one. There are arguably many Christianities for example, but it doesn't mean differing Christians belong to different religions. Leeds exists in the same form and quantity whether you travel there or not, but different people have different quantities and forms of gender while also still really having those genders. Gender is an experiential thing in a way Leeds isn't.
I think it is very hard to enter into the experience of others.
I am an AMAB man attracted to the opposite sex. While I hope I have some insight into the minds of others I couldn’t say I know what it is like to be a woman, or someone AMAB at birth who considers themselves to be female/a woman.
Similarly if I were red/green colourblind I can’t comprehend how anyone could explain to me the difference between red and green that would in any way be meaningful to me.
I do understand why (some) women have reason to be fearful of men, and why, therefore they might be fearful of trans women. But in fact the actual incidence of harm appears to be vanishingly small. And I’ve not seen any evidence from other jurisdictions where self identifying is already allowed that it has been used by predatory men. OTOH it’s easy for me y to say this as I’m not, in any respect that is relevant to this debate, a person who is vulnerable.
As for my own gender identification, I’d be hard put to say what makes me confident that I am comfortable identifying as a man. I would say there is no single conclusive factor. And, in addition, there are some things about maleness/masculinity as it presents in my own culture that I find irrelevant or even problematic.
There are plenty of words in the world that people can use to define things, including themselves.
But "male" and "female" are only two, and maybe we have just piled too much crap onto them.
And the idea that identity is complicated and often hard to pin down is something that's been true for my life. I can look at myself in the past and say, very comfortably, "that kid didn't know jack shit about himself." And yet, I did ok. Why is it so scary to live in an uncertain world?
I can relate to the anxiety around uncertainty and negotiated definition, but I think I got forced out of that world so long ago that it seems kind of whiny, like a kid insisting they can only eat one particular kind of food. I don't deserve the privilege to assert that kind of dominance over my surroundings, especially when they involved other persons who deserve their own personal dignity.
It has been said more than once on these boards that the only valid way to establish whether someone is male or female is to ask them. That must perforce mean that any other way or definition is invalid.
I'm not certain the term 'valid' is appropriate - perhaps 'certain' is more apt? As in any case where something affects a person, the principle of if-you're-not-sure-then-ask is a perfectly reasonable one.
So what are those norms?
Online, we have very few gender signifiers, but we still have some: e.g. I'd hazard a guess that Louise identifies as female given her name, though I remember her from way back on an older version of the boards, so I could be cheating!.
In real life, if someone has smooth skin, little body hair, long hair on the head, has a handbag and wears a dress, then that ensemble of presentation is normed feminine and pretty much guarantees they identify female; if they have a beard, wearing pretty regular men's clothing like a business suit, have short-cropped hair etc., we can be pretty certain they identify male. Gender is primarily a social performance done to further disambiguate the fact that human biology is primarily (if not simply) dimorphic.
Where clothing is similar (e.g. t-shirt and jeans), even there we often see differences in details (e.g. fit to accentuate or hide body shape) to send signals of gender.
Where someone is sending a mixture of signals, then it is more complex, if you're judging from the outside, and other social signals such as voice tone, pitch and name become more pertinent. In a typical case, multiple signals co-occur to send an identity message.
There are social expectations that flow from these signals - men are expected to be more assertive, bolder, louder, more threatening, and more individualistic; women are assigned expectations of being more deferential, quieter, safer, and more collaborative. There's clearly some profoundly negative consequences and biases to this, and expectations can be confounded when they meet cognitive and individual traits.
I'm not sure that I'm answering your question, even from reading the rest of the thread, but it reads to me that you're saying something like it's way too complex and ridiculous these days; as an educator at university, I operate in an environment where there are a lot of different identities compared to a normal workplace, say, and in practice it really isn't difficult at all, even in a relatively complex context.
I do understand why (some) women have reason to be fearful of men, and why, therefore they might be fearful of trans women.
Aside from the fact that trans women aren't men, cis men already assault women without needing to present as trans women.
Trans women aren't a threat to cis women, but cis women are a threat to trans women by weaponising fear as a way to stir up transphobia and especially transmisogyny. It is reminiscent of white women weaponising fear against men of colour. There is a difference between realistic and substantiated fears, and fears caused by prejudice.
cis men already assault women without needing to present as trans women.
This is the most bizarre of the typical anti-trans talking points, to me: the idea that a cisgender man would dress in women's clothing, put on makeup, change his name, and claim to be a trans woman -- all to get access to a women's bathroom so he could do the thing that thousands of cis men do, in all sort of spaces, every single day: assault a woman.
They really don't need to put in that much effort.
'hysterical' is a sexist word with a long sexist history. It's really not OK to me as a woman to have it used even of people I disagree with fervently.
(posting as shipmate)
I'm putting a line under the discussion about definitions here. As noted earlier, focusing on definitions can be exclusive and takes the focus away from the actual people in question. @Bullfrog , @Marvin the Martian that includes both of you.
It is reminiscent of white women weaponising fear against men of colour. There is a difference between realistic and substantiated fears, and fears caused by prejudice.
Yes this - and not just against Black men, white women also weaponised unsubstantiated fears against Black women
CW- racist myths and panic
In modern times a variant of the 'toilet danger' myth was actually used by white women against Black women claiming that if loos weren't segregated they would among other things catch STDs
These attacks on trans people (which we're seeing so much of in Scotland at the moment) rely on a sleight of hand - trans women are one of the most persecuted minorities, much more at risk of sexual assault than cis women, but by misgendering trans women, anti-trans commentators reverse victim and offender and pretend the people most at risk are instead dangerous and violent.
Trans women, at greater risk of rape and violence, are seamlessly replaced in the cis imagination with the hypothetical man who bothers dressing up to commit assaults and they then get treated as if they're trying to enable rape, just for asking to have their human rights respected. Evidence from countries which have had Self-ID for years and not found this to materialise just gets ignored
Attacks like this also rely on demonisation by salience in the media - of the same sort used against Black men and gay people. This is going on right now in Scotland in the wake of the GRR bill and is being used to score political points while putting trans people's lives at risk. Even if a minority produces either far fewer or the same percentage of dangerous offenders as the majority, it's the minority offenders who get labelled and splashed disproportionately across the front pages to create a perception of greater threat. The Daily Record has been doing this to a horrific extent.
In a climate of fear where LGBT+ people are not out to everyone around them, many people accept the demonised portrayal in the press and don't realise that the blood the press bays for on the back of it ends up belonging to their own friends, colleagues and family who are not out to them. Offenders from persecuted groups are made super visible while the ordinary and innocent hide away for fear of violence against them.
It needs to be remembered that cis women can be powerful or oblivious dangers to minority women too. We can hurt those who are less powerful than us, even without meaning to, and this is often framed in terms of fears which rally cis straight men to our side to 'save' us from the feared minority, be they Black, lesbian or trans women who we claim are frightening us by being Black, lesbian or trans in 'our' spaces. (Yes, lesbian women used to be demonised in this way too over spaces like changing rooms)
Given the state of our press and media, it's worth becoming familiar with the workings of moral panics so as not to end up spreading them as 'legitimate concerns'. I see these moral panics as a whole coupled with extreme ethnic nationalism as the bedrock of right-wing authoritarianism, but they can happen on the left too.
Comments
Interestingly enough, the Scottish government website has a resource on using intersectionality to understand structural inequality. These concepts aren't anything new.
Pardon me if I'm misreading.
I think that you're conflating objectivity with meaning in a way that depends on what I referred to as homogeneity. The idea that I (or you) must have the authority to objectively label everything with or without consent, or have it be rendered "meaningless."
I have lived a life where I spend a lot of time navigating other people's subjectivity and granting them the dignity to live in their subjectivity without presuming that I can objectively define them. Honestly, I don't even treat my spouse that way, and I think I know that person about as well as I know anyone. It'd be rather forward of me to presume to objectively define another person's existence.
To borrow a metaphor, these waters you find so terrifying are waters I have been navigating for most all of my adult life. Of course a lot of meaningful stuff about a particular person is deeply subjective, subject to their own personal interpretation.
I don't think that it's necessary to say that all subjectivity is meaningless. Everyone has their own personal facts and I think, for me, showing respect for that is how I show respect for their persons.
I can see the internal logic of what you're saying, I think. It's consistent, but I don't think that it lines up with my experience of people.
It’s not about me or you defining words for everyone, it’s about there needing to be an agreed shared definition of words and concepts for them to have any meaning.
Do they, though? A commonly-used phrase on this website is “you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts”. Is that wrong?
There are external objective facts, and there are internal subjective ones. By definition, the latter are indeed one's own.
It's the difference, I suppose, between physical and mental. The outer world and the inner one.
For you, your gender identity, part of your inner world, is driven by an external objective reality - external gonads and plumbing convenient for al fresco widdling and inconvenient for negligent fly-zipping.
Other people find that that simply isn't the case.
We all have inner subjective realities that are not driven by external facts. Music taste. Food preferences. Hobbies. Sports.
For me, a better (though still imperfect) analogy would be with Christian faith. Most of us here identify in some way with being Christian, and view that as some form of ontological reality fundamental to who we are, how we view the world, how we interact with others - something much more than liking to sing hymns and sit for half an hour listening to a sermon. Some people would try to make being a Christian linked to something objective (eg: having been baptised, or signing their agreement to a creed or other statement of belief) but most of us know we're Christian by our own testimony - some may have particular conversion experiences that they can point to, others particular experiences of God working in their lives, others can point to particular "fruit" that they attribute to their faith. For me my faith is founded on having tried it and found that it makes more sense of the world than not having faith - which to me sounds quite like the earlier descriptions of people "trying on" different gender identities until they find something that fits who they are. We've had 25y of discussion here on the Ship which would put beyond doubt that there are no objective realities that can define who is or isn't Christian - no list of fundamental beliefs that we produce to mark that division, no rite that can be used for that ... we've seen just about every example of "if you haven't been baptised [according to a particular understanding of baptism]" or "if you don't believe [this particular doctrine]" or "if you don't vote for [particular social issue]" etc and most such attempts to define who is or isn't Christian end up in Hell. Very few of us find that these arguments shake our own identity as "Christian".
Ultimately, for all of us, "I'm a Christian" is an inner subjective reality not driven by external facts. What's so difficult to also put "I'm male" or "I'm female" or "I'm neither of those" into the same category of something like "I'm a Christian"?
However, we can know "facts" about our own life experience that aren't verifiable by external standards. I think the distinction between "external objective facts" and "internal subjective facts" that @KarlLB makes is a good one, but as @Alan Cresswell points out, some of those "subjective facts" are really opinions rather than facts -- like the kind of music or food we prefer. It's a fact, I suppose, that I like Springsteen, but it's only a fact because of my subjective opinions about the impact his music has on me.
I think @Alan Cresswell 's analogy with religion is a bit stronger -- while my beliefs about God are still opinions, it's a fact, to me, that I am a Christian, and that's an essential part of my identity.
When it comes to gender, a statement like "Only a person with a uterus can gestate and give birth to a child" seems to me to be (in the current state of medical science) an objective fact that is externally verifiable and everyone can agree on.
A statement like "Only a person with a uterus is a woman" is the sort of thing that sounds like a fact, and that a lot of folks might accept as a fact, but actually isn't. It excludes trans women; it also excludes women who've had hysterectomies, quite a fair-sized chunk of the woman-identifying population. (You could include them by saying "Only a person born with a uterus is a woman" but you'd still miss out something like 1 in 5000 cis women, as well as trans women -- the point of making statements like that is usually to exclude trans women, but it's hard to do so without leaving out certain categories of cis women also. Which I guess is why immutable biological "facts" about gender are a bit trickier than they seem). So to me, that's an example of a statement that appears to be factual but really isn't.
I wouldn't presume to speak on behalf of a trans person, but based on what I've heard/read from trans people, I would assume that if a trans woman says to me, "I know that I am a woman," then for her, that is a fact. Not, perhaps, externally verifiable in the same way some scientific facts are, but a fact that within her experience she knows to be true.
I was trying to use examples that are reasonably non-controversial as being personal but still realities; there are plenty of people who will insist that identifying as a Christian doesn't make you one.
I'd not say that the examples I gave are opinions either - they're more discoveries a person makes about themselves. I remember being brought up to consider heavy rock to be a bit rubbish, but when I got to university and heard lots of different music I couldn't escape the truth that I liked heavy rock. I don't choose to love cheese and hate fish - it's just the personal reality I get from my taste buds via the bits of the brain they talk to.
I'd distinguish them thus: "I like Jazz" is a personal subjective reality. "Jazz is better than Baroque" is an opinion.
Because it's not true that Christianity has no definition other than what the individual claimant to that identity gives it - there is still at least some level of objective definition of that particular faith, even if only "follower of Christ". If someone who utterly denied the existence of Christ as a historical person, who ignored every teaching credited to Him, and who sacrificed goats to Nurgle, Lord of Pestilence, God of Disease, Decay, Despair, Destruction and Death every Friday claimed to be Christian would you accept that that was just as valid a definition of Christianity as your own?
OK, but if someone says "I love jazz, especially Metallica and Iron Maiden" would you accept that Metallica and Iron Maiden are genuinely jazz bands? Or would you say that while whether someone likes jazz or not is their own subjective reality, what jazz actually is is an independent objective fact?
Both of these examples actually make my point perfectly, because both "Christian" and "jazz" have definitions that are independent of any particular person who claims them as an identity (and yes, the specific definition of each may be a matter of debate, but nobody is seriously claiming that no such definition exists or can ever exist in the first place). Honestly, I don't even care who claims a particular gender or sex identity, but can we at least agree that those identities are capable of independent objective definition? Can we at least agree that they mean something?
But how is this relevant as to whether it is, or is not, sensible for Scottish prisons to determine prisoner placement without appropriate risk assessment ?
Gwai,
Epiphanies Host
It isn't the job of trans people to reassure people who see us as a threat, because feeling threatened by trans people existing (there is no 'trans ideology' separate to trans people) is a personal issue that's up to that individual to resolve within themselves. If a gender-expansive world is a threat to your (general your) sense of self, that is something for you to work through yourself and not something trans people have done to you.
In Scotland thanks to the moral panic created around the GRR we were treated to newspapers splashing on the front page about people who hadn't even been charged, whose actual gender identity we couldn't know, headlines like
(offensive headline)
But when a young trans woman gets murdered in the middle of the moral panic our press and media have whipped up - shhhhh! Nobody mention it!
And indeed that's one of the things the bill was meant to do, to prevent people facing a final indignity in death with the death certificate. Keir Starmer refused to oppose the Section 35 attack on the bill because 16 year olds were 'too young' to self ID. Alas they're not too young to get murdered.
https://transwrites.world/brianna-ghey-tributes-murdered-trans-girl/
If it's my body being discussed, yep. That's mine. Not yours.
And I think this reality is pretty consistent across the board.
I think that the "queer ideology," as you put it, is actually pretty internally consistent and works well for most things. It's an objective reality that a body is a person's private property and they deserve to be granted ownership thereof.
[edited at request of poster]
Sympathy, for what it's worth. That's revolting.
To be slightly fair to some media outlets, it is widely held you shouldn't disclose someone's trans status without their permission- and it may be they were trying to do the right thing. (Though in fact it appears she was open about her trans status on social media and in her everyday life.)
Due to her age and the circumstances, I'm not sure Brianna would qualify even if she was cis - but I've been thinking about the person who runs the resource on femicide/misogyny based killings of women, Counting Dead Women I think it's called? It's frequently quoted by articles on misogyny and femicide as an authoritative voice. Only, the person who runs it is publicly and explicitly exclusionary of trans women and doesn't include them in her statistics - so women who die due to being trans women are erased in death twice.
That's Karen Ingala Smith at Counting Dead Women - exactly as you say @Pomona and this kind of miscounting makes it easy for the people who whip up violence to then overlook the consequences when trans women are murdered and say it never happens.
Both of these comments are completely untrue, as page 4 alone will prove.
Not quite. For example your definition of "trans ideology" is neither trans nor an ideology.
An ideology is (to quote the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy): You present no programme of action, and you present nothing beyond a superficial concept. It's hard to understand what you present as an 'ideology' without that deeper intention.
Furthermore your own definition is rather thin as you claim it is That's just an extreme definition of non-realism, at best, and I've never seen that argued by a transperson, and it seems more of a parody of transgender thinking than an engagement with it.
Indeed, that definition really makes no sense within transgender discourse. There are accepted norms that distinguish male and female in transgender discussions (their meaning is therefore not simply individualised, they represent understood social norms). Most transgender people identify with the 'other' gender (clearly things are different for non-binary individuals). If the definitions were merely internalised, then there would be no need for even social transition.
The term 'trans ideology' is usually used in transphobic discourse to assert that transgenderism is an existential threat to society. The most dominant form is that trans ideology is undertaken by hostile agents to seek to undermine social norms and particularly (undermine) sex protections for women to enable attacks by male sex predators, and to convert and indoctrinate cis-identifying youth to become trans, resulting in traumatised and disfigured young people. The second most common usage is as an ideology that seeks to obliterate gender identification and result in gender being entirely detached from biological roots, this being done to destabilise society and ensure that majority cis-identifying people are marginalised and refused the right to identify based on birth sex. It seems you are closer to the second than the first, but trans people do not as a group (nor have I heard any individual claim) that sex and gender are entirely detached for most people.
While trans folks want society to accomodate them, and not have cis norms imposed on them, there's no expectation that anyone 'cis' would change their own experience of gender or sex. You're imposing on trans folk a pattern of thinking that they'd almost all disavow.
What's astonishing is the TERFs who 10, 20 years ago would have railed against claims of "feminist ideology" or the "homosexual agenda" are now turning round and attacking trans folk in exactly the same terms.
It has been said more than once on these boards that the only valid way to establish whether someone is male or female is to ask them. That must perforce mean that any other way or definition is invalid.
So what are those norms?
Yes, there are some queasy parallels. I notice that the grooming accusation is being levelled at trans people and drag queens, familiar from days of clause 28. Think of the children!
Sorry, I misinterpreted your post earlier. Another historical reversal, is that biology or anatomy was discredited in feminism, well, second phase feminism, but now anatomy is destiny, paraphrasing Freud, for gender critical feminists. Your identity is anatomical. Gulp.
Or worse by doctors through intrusive interrogation which can be riddled with prejudices and demands for stereotyped behaviour - as @Pomona has pointed out previously. Which of us cis-folk would want to be put through that over things like gender or sexuality?
This is what Self-ID is meant to stop.
@Marvin the Martian sorry for any confusion, I meant re my previous comments the comments responding to the above quote.
What exactly do you mean by 'trans ideology'? I'm perfectly willing to accept that it was meant in an innocuous way, you just haven't answered anyone asking what you mean by it.
Everyone will experience their own gender differently because it is bound up with other forms of identity, sexuality, your relationship with your body etc. Trans people haven't caused any risk to your own sense of identity - saying that isn't dismissing your sense of identity, because ultimately your sense of identity is your own to live in, and no trans person is suggesting that your identity is somehow wrong. But also a post-structuralist view of gender (for instance) is not a specifically trans thing, and generally the people talking about 'trans ideology' see trans people in general as an existential threat to society at large.
It’s about whether the concepts of “man” and “woman” have any actual meaning. That’s the “ideology” I was talking about - the assertion that those concepts have no definition other than whatever each individual wants them to mean. But if that’s true then it means those concepts are in fact meaningless.
This is what I find so difficult. Words have to mean something in an objective and independent sense, or they are just pointless sounds/scribbles. And without words how can we understand the world we live in, or even ourselves?
This may be where we start thinking the problem is how my brain processes information, because I don’t think differences of experience equate to differences in the actual thing being experienced.
I mean, this is obviously an imperfect analogy but it may help to illustrate my thinking: everybody who drives along the M1 has a different experience of it based on time of year, time of day, weather, vehicle driven, traffic levels, and exactly which other drivers (and in which other vehicles) happen to be there at the same time. But those different experiences, valid though they all are, don’t mean those people are actually driving down different roads. The road itself is the same, regardless of how anyone may happen to experience it.
The problem being, of course, that if it is in fact true that every person drives down a different M1 then how the hell am I supposed to know how to get from Leeds to London? I can’t rely on anybody’s directions, not even those in maps, because I won’t be driving on the same road as them. And that means I don’t know where I’m going, which brings on the anxiety.
I'm not sure anything as impersonal as a motorway journey is a good analogy here - I know you said it was an imperfect analogy, but I think something like a religion or the previous example of Mary within different faiths is a better one. There are arguably many Christianities for example, but it doesn't mean differing Christians belong to different religions. Leeds exists in the same form and quantity whether you travel there or not, but different people have different quantities and forms of gender while also still really having those genders. Gender is an experiential thing in a way Leeds isn't.
I am an AMAB man attracted to the opposite sex. While I hope I have some insight into the minds of others I couldn’t say I know what it is like to be a woman, or someone AMAB at birth who considers themselves to be female/a woman.
Similarly if I were red/green colourblind I can’t comprehend how anyone could explain to me the difference between red and green that would in any way be meaningful to me.
I do understand why (some) women have reason to be fearful of men, and why, therefore they might be fearful of trans women. But in fact the actual incidence of harm appears to be vanishingly small. And I’ve not seen any evidence from other jurisdictions where self identifying is already allowed that it has been used by predatory men. OTOH it’s easy for me y to say this as I’m not, in any respect that is relevant to this debate, a person who is vulnerable.
As for my own gender identification, I’d be hard put to say what makes me confident that I am comfortable identifying as a man. I would say there is no single conclusive factor. And, in addition, there are some things about maleness/masculinity as it presents in my own culture that I find irrelevant or even problematic.
But "male" and "female" are only two, and maybe we have just piled too much crap onto them.
And the idea that identity is complicated and often hard to pin down is something that's been true for my life. I can look at myself in the past and say, very comfortably, "that kid didn't know jack shit about himself." And yet, I did ok. Why is it so scary to live in an uncertain world?
I can relate to the anxiety around uncertainty and negotiated definition, but I think I got forced out of that world so long ago that it seems kind of whiny, like a kid insisting they can only eat one particular kind of food. I don't deserve the privilege to assert that kind of dominance over my surroundings, especially when they involved other persons who deserve their own personal dignity.
Online, we have very few gender signifiers, but we still have some: e.g. I'd hazard a guess that Louise identifies as female given her name, though I remember her from way back on an older version of the boards, so I could be cheating!.
In real life, if someone has smooth skin, little body hair, long hair on the head, has a handbag and wears a dress, then that ensemble of presentation is normed feminine and pretty much guarantees they identify female; if they have a beard, wearing pretty regular men's clothing like a business suit, have short-cropped hair etc., we can be pretty certain they identify male. Gender is primarily a social performance done to further disambiguate the fact that human biology is primarily (if not simply) dimorphic.
Where clothing is similar (e.g. t-shirt and jeans), even there we often see differences in details (e.g. fit to accentuate or hide body shape) to send signals of gender.
Where someone is sending a mixture of signals, then it is more complex, if you're judging from the outside, and other social signals such as voice tone, pitch and name become more pertinent. In a typical case, multiple signals co-occur to send an identity message.
There are social expectations that flow from these signals - men are expected to be more assertive, bolder, louder, more threatening, and more individualistic; women are assigned expectations of being more deferential, quieter, safer, and more collaborative. There's clearly some profoundly negative consequences and biases to this, and expectations can be confounded when they meet cognitive and individual traits.
I'm not sure that I'm answering your question, even from reading the rest of the thread, but it reads to me that you're saying something like it's way too complex and ridiculous these days; as an educator at university, I operate in an environment where there are a lot of different identities compared to a normal workplace, say, and in practice it really isn't difficult at all, even in a relatively complex context.
Aside from the fact that trans women aren't men, cis men already assault women without needing to present as trans women.
Trans women aren't a threat to cis women, but cis women are a threat to trans women by weaponising fear as a way to stir up transphobia and especially transmisogyny. It is reminiscent of white women weaponising fear against men of colour. There is a difference between realistic and substantiated fears, and fears caused by prejudice.
This is the most bizarre of the typical anti-trans talking points, to me: the idea that a cisgender man would dress in women's clothing, put on makeup, change his name, and claim to be a trans woman -- all to get access to a women's bathroom so he could do the thing that thousands of cis men do, in all sort of spaces, every single day: assault a woman.
They really don't need to put in that much effort.
(posting as shipmate)
Gwai,
Epiphanies Host
Yes this - and not just against Black men, white women also weaponised unsubstantiated fears against Black women
CW- racist myths and panic
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-american-history/article/trouble-with-bathrooms/CD707D181B80EF8C3ADC3B3732E21AEA
These attacks on trans people (which we're seeing so much of in Scotland at the moment) rely on a sleight of hand - trans women are one of the most persecuted minorities, much more at risk of sexual assault than cis women, but by misgendering trans women, anti-trans commentators reverse victim and offender and pretend the people most at risk are instead dangerous and violent.
Trans women, at greater risk of rape and violence, are seamlessly replaced in the cis imagination with the hypothetical man who bothers dressing up to commit assaults and they then get treated as if they're trying to enable rape, just for asking to have their human rights respected. Evidence from countries which have had Self-ID for years and not found this to materialise just gets ignored
Attacks like this also rely on demonisation by salience in the media - of the same sort used against Black men and gay people. This is going on right now in Scotland in the wake of the GRR bill and is being used to score political points while putting trans people's lives at risk. Even if a minority produces either far fewer or the same percentage of dangerous offenders as the majority, it's the minority offenders who get labelled and splashed disproportionately across the front pages to create a perception of greater threat. The Daily Record has been doing this to a horrific extent.
In a climate of fear where LGBT+ people are not out to everyone around them, many people accept the demonised portrayal in the press and don't realise that the blood the press bays for on the back of it ends up belonging to their own friends, colleagues and family who are not out to them. Offenders from persecuted groups are made super visible while the ordinary and innocent hide away for fear of violence against them.
It needs to be remembered that cis women can be powerful or oblivious dangers to minority women too. We can hurt those who are less powerful than us, even without meaning to, and this is often framed in terms of fears which rally cis straight men to our side to 'save' us from the feared minority, be they Black, lesbian or trans women who we claim are frightening us by being Black, lesbian or trans in 'our' spaces. (Yes, lesbian women used to be demonised in this way too over spaces like changing rooms)
Given the state of our press and media, it's worth becoming familiar with the workings of moral panics so as not to end up spreading them as 'legitimate concerns'. I see these moral panics as a whole coupled with extreme ethnic nationalism as the bedrock of right-wing authoritarianism, but they can happen on the left too.