Anti-gay activist group admits trans school “harassment” is fake

[~RoadToTrista~]

I know that you mean well, but that just sounds like FUD. Just because it could happen doesn't mean that it will. What are the chances that any trans girl would have an irresistible urge to sexually harass other women in restrooms? In addition to HRT's well-known effects on libido, I would think that as a trans person, one would tend to be hyper-vigilant and self-conscious (for better or worse) about poor behavior that would only result in bad consequences for oneself based primarily on being trans, to say nothing of other trans people. It's just like how people of color have historically had to worry about whether they reflect poorly on their race: e.g., as the first black President, Obama's performance will influence how receptive voters will be toward future black candidates.

FUD is not reality; it's a distortion of reality for the sake of fear-mongering and hate-mongering. Let's please not be a part of it.

I wasn't referring to trans girls, I was thinking more along the lines of, as LearnedHand pointed out, some kind of person who would pretend to be trans in order to abuse the rule/intentionally hurt our community/etc. I'm a bit curious of how strict they've made it. And also I don't agree with what you said. Anything that can happen within a population as huge as ours WILL happen, sooner or later and if allowed enough time.

[Jamie D]

Don't want to belabor the point, but I'm still a little bit uncomfortable about this.

No. Her picture is not a refutation. Her looks and passability has nothing to do with her femininity. Even if she hadn't blended seemlessly, she would have the right not to be referred to as a boy.

The cis world insists that we blend invisibly into their world in order to have recognition as our new gender. Not only is this ignorant, but it also is impossible for some of us who will never pass for any one of a ton of reasons. I'm worried we're buying into their stuff, we're perpetuating discrimination against non-passing trans women.

Sorry about being on my soapbox, but I have a lot of non-passing friends, and I really feel strongly about this.

We, within the community, understand the larger point.  However, as long as an organization like "Pacific Justice (sic) Institute" can propagandize, humiliate, and destroy a child, like they have done, then we are losing the battle.

As sad as it is to say, the onus is on us to continue to make the case in the court of public opinion.  I agree in theory that it should not matter whether she passes; however, that she does and has been embraced by so many of her classmates adds credibility to the correctness of her (and our) position, and the rationality of the law.

I have been trying the last couple of weeks, to make the case that it is wrong to torment this young girl by making a monster out of her.  The PJI plan was obvious - demonize and fearmonger.  The response is to show the face of a sweet young transgirl who harmed nobody.

Furthermore, the people at PJI are lawyers.  Their letter to the school attempted to make the case that harassment occurred.  They know the legal definition of harassment.  They know they could not meet the burden of proving that.  Their tactics, along with fellow hater Cathy Brennan, have backfired.  But at what cost?  This teen is now suicidal.

[Silvermist]

I wasn't referring to trans girls, I was thinking more along the lines of, as LearnedHand pointed out, some kind of person who would pretend to be trans in order to abuse the rule/intentionally hurt our community/etc. I'm a bit curious of how strict they've made it.

That still seems extremely unrealistic. If some predatory man were trying to harass and/or assault women in a restroom, there's no need to masquerade as a woman. Anyone who's not plain stupid would realize that in order to have a chance of being successful, the crime would have to occur when no one else is present, or when there is confidence/assurance that bystanders would not interfere. In a public restroom, that is almost impossible to guarantee. Pretending to be a woman would not make a difference. The public discourse so far has clearly demonstrated that women in restrooms are presumed to be vulnerable and need protection, so bystanders would be unlikely to remain uninvolved. On the other hand, the persistent demonization of trans people allows actual violence to be perpetrated against them in restrooms because so many bystanders would have no qualms about turning a blind eye, perhaps thinking that the victims are only getting what they brought upon themselves.

And if, instead of that, some guy were just trying to harm the trans community by committing harassment or assault for the sake of generating negative publicity, then we have all the more reason to be pushing for non-discriminatory restroom policies. You see, implementing such policies legitimizes and engenders respect for who and what we are, which would cast, in sharp relief, the pretenders who attempt to give us a bad name. In other words, if the public can recognize genuine trans people as real women and real men, then the phonies would be easier for the public to spot. For better or worse, information technology is so advanced and so widespread in our society, discovering that the pretender is not really trans would be a piece of cake. Thus, the damage that such a person could do to our community would be minimal or negligible.

And also I don't agree with what you said. Anything that can happen within a population as huge as ours WILL happen, sooner or later and if allowed enough time.

That an asteroid would hit the Earth someday and cause another mass extinction also seems inevitable. Recently, I read about an newly-discovered large asteroid that is on a collision course and due to make impact within just a few years. But do any of us (who do not have paranoid delusions) live our lives worrying about such an event? Of course not. All of this talk about how bad behavior will happen as a result of these "bathroom bills" is really a huge red herring. This is not a debate in which we should be participating, because our opponents are controlling the conversation. That virtually means that they've already won. Just by talking about it, they manage to smear our community by setting the terms of the debate to associate negative things with trans people in a topic that most people (i.e., cis people) take for granted as a "no-brainer." We are forced to be defensive against opinions held by the rest of society; we cannot win this way.

The real debate should have nothing to do with expecting trans people to conform to standards of appearance and behavior for what "real women" and "real men" are supposed to be. Instead, it should be about the tyranny of gender segregation in the first place. Within the anti-transgender rhetoric is also a lot of pure sexism to unpack, in terms of both misandry and misogyny. It's not just the "mis-genderings." When people have a problem with a "man" using a women's restroom alongside women, they are actually revealing their nasty, problematic notions of gender relations. They want to cling onto a worldview in which, by nature, men are lustful predators and women are weak, would-be victims. (I'm sure that almost none of us share that worldview, and trans guys be especially against it.) If you take that away, then there would be no argument about restroom accessibility for LGBT people. Passability would be rendered irrelevant. In fact, there would no longer be much of an argument for segregated restrooms at all...

[~RoadToTrista~]

Tbh I don't really see what we're arguing about. I'm just a bit worried that an event like this could happen and give fuel to those who are opposed to the idea to push us back. It doesn't sound unrealistic at all to me, it sounds like something that someone could easily try to do. And sometimes people and circumstances are too unpredictable for someone to say "This is very unrealistic because this person just wouldn't do this"

[Silvermist]

Tbh I don't really see what we're arguing about. I'm just a bit worried that an event like this could happen and give fuel to those who are opposed to the idea to push us back. It doesn't sound unrealistic at all to me, it sounds like something that someone could easily try to do. And sometimes people and circumstances are too unpredictable for someone to say "This is very unrealistic because this person just wouldn't do this"

I hate to be cliche or melodramatic by using the following analogy, but I can't think of anything more apt. I presume that you're aware of the discussions about terrorism and homeland security in the United States for the past decade. When 9/11 happened, people suddenly starting perceiving terrorists and acts of terrorism everywhere on a regular basis. Could your brown-skinned neighbor be a terrorist? "It doesn't sound unrealistic at all to me," someone might've said. And then came all of the bogus security measures that didn't really make the country safer at all. At some point, the conversation shifted from encouraging witch hunts to declaring that the terrorists had won because they succeeded in making everyone suspicious of each other. And now, people aren't so paranoid anymore, even though the level of terrorist threats hasn't fundamentally changed.

Being merely worried about how someone's hypothetical misbehavior would hurt our cause just isn't productive. They want us to be worried. When their fear-mongering takes hold of not only the ignorant public but our community as well, the intended effect is that our own suspicions about our peers encourage us to back off and shut up. That's how they control us through fear.

As Jamie said, the onus is unfortunately on us. But that doesn't mean that we start giving into their rhetoric. Thus, our responsibility is to stand up and show the public what we are and what we are not. Then when someone does do something bad, it will reflect poorly on the individual person but not on our entire community.

I know that it sucks, but every civil rights movement has gone through this process. When racial desegregation happened, the doomsayers were watching for any incidents to prove their point and thereby undo the desegregation. So did any incidents happen? Of course they did. Interracial crime happens all the time. But even so, the public at large came to understand that individuals were responsible, not entire races or the mingling of races.

Are you familiar with To Kill a Mockingbird? The fictional court case was all about convicting a black man because the notion that he could assault a white woman was considered not unrealistic (and even likely) by virtue of his being black. The power of the story was in laying bare the injustice of prejudicial attitudes that condemn individuals simply for being members of oppressed groups. This high school harassment hoax is like a real-life To Kill a Mockingbird case (with gender identity in place of race). People are latching onto it because they want so badly to have their fears confirmed, despite the obvious bogusness of the story.

Earlier this year, we saw solidarity among the African American community in response to the outcome of the Trayvon Martin case; what we didn't see were African Americans coming out and saying that George Zimmerman's claim (that an unfamiliar black man walking around a white neighborhood at night was prima facie threatening) didn't "sound unrealistic at all." Perhaps it's an example that we should follow.

[Bardoux]

Linda Harvey promotes fraudulent transgender harassment story
October 30th,

A week ago, this column reported that Gordon Klingenschmitt had accused a transgender teen in Colorado of rape by harassing other girls in the lady's room, even though the original allegations against her by the anti-gay Pacific Justice League had already been confirmed by then to be completely false.

The student in question has reportedly since been placed on suicide watch as a result of these allegations. But in spite of all the accusations already being known to be a complete hoax, members of the authoritarian infotainment industry continue to promote them as fact anyway.

Following Klingenschmitt's lead, Linda Harvey of Mission America also played up the discredited harassment charges, which she derided as a sign that liberals are "using our children as guinea pigs" for their "diabolical experiments."

http://www.examiner.com/article/linda-harvey-promotes-fraudulent-transgender-harassment-story?cid=rss

[LordKAT]

I find it sad that many people will believe this because they don't follow it back to the source. I find it sadder that I have been guilty of the same lack of checking the facts.