We Need to Talk About Joanne - Discussion Monday

Content Warning for Transphobia, Violence and Suicide

We need to talk about Joanne do we?

Well, actually, we don't. She gets talked about enough I think. Her and her friends who think that the existence of transness undermines women. Erases a woman's identity. Puts her at risk of assault in public toilets, and in shelters for abused women. Women's spaces in general. Apparently, according to Joanne and her twisted faced, hate filled, bullshit peddler friends, everywhere that women gather will be infiltrated by men who pretend to be women to gain access to 'real' women. 

Ugh.

We have heard so much about Joanne and her ilk, I am bored of giving them oxygen if I am honest, so let's not. Let us instead talk about the people they have targeted. 

Trans people are people. Human beings who are entitled to safety, respect and to be left the fuck alone. Do you know what they are not? 

Predators. They are not hanging around women's spaces waiting to pounce. That would be men. Men who have never ever had to pretend to be women to gain access to women's spaces for nefarious means. Also, though there are men who do like to abuse women, they generally have a specific woman to groom and abuse so don't need to go trawling women's shelters for them. 

Pretending to be women. They are women. How do we know? They told us. And that, my pedigree chums, should be enough. For if we don't believe that trans women are women, then how are we to believe that Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB) women are women? Or men? Or non binary? Honestly, there is no point to putting yourself up for this amount of shit unless you are sure of who you are. And even if you are not. 

I went by the name Dennis for three years when I was a teenager. Teachers, everyone called me Dennis. It was on all my school books and then, aged 15, I decided that actually, whereas I didn't feel like a girl, I didn't feel like a boy either so went back to my birth name. Years later, I changed all my names. I chose ones I liked and that I felt suited who I was and who I wanted to be. Only my horrible blood relatives still dead name me. People who have known me since I was a wee enby got it right straight away. No one was harmed, I expect few people remember. Everyone just went about their lives. As it should be. 

Oh, trans people are not trying to indoctrinate your kids either. We might be making sure they feel less alone and have the language to either describe their own situation with gender or support someone else who might be struggling but that is because trans people are obviously the Big Bad who want your children to feel valued. If you think talking to a drag queen is going to turn the frogs gay (and your children) then you are an idiot and it says more about your idiocy than it does their danger.

There is so much stupidity that occurs in the discourse around trans people that I wonder how they find their own asses with two hands and a map, and that would be fine if they weren't hurting anyone. But they are. They are hurting lots of people. 

The rise of people thinking Gay Panic (which is not a legal defence by the way) is ok if the trans person has not disclosed. Regardless of the videos of beaten people who did and got the shit kicked out of them.

The forcing people back into the closet. Which is harmful for mental and physical health and is actually just a really shitty thing to so to people.

The hounding from social media. Again, Shitty behaviour. 

Actual murder of 375 trans people in 2021. A number which keeps rising even though we are told things are getting better. And so many of us are lost to suicide. So many. Too many.

In the interim since writing this, two 15 year olds murdered a 16 year old girl called Brianna Ghey. She was marked for death for being trans.  She had her whole life ahead of her and because of shitty people like Joanne, will be laid to rest misgendered and mis named. It will literally be her dead name. 

So we are afraid, and despite that fear, we still walk the streets. I have a pronoun badge because even though I could 'pass' (ugh) as a woman, I bloody well am not one. Not completely. And that matters. 

So Joanne and her crew of hateful harpies can think what they want and say what they like, but if you don't mind, could you do it over... there somewhere. Where children can't hear you. Because, unlike trans people, the danger is real. The danger is you. 

IF YOU WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE, THERE IS ALWAYS SOMEONE TO TALK TO. 

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