Let's Get a Few Things Straight, Shall We?

[Shana A]

Let's Get a Few Things Straight, Shall We?

| posted by Guest Blogger | Monday, November 02, 2009
by Shaker KiriAmaya, an autistic trans woman who adores cats and plays way too many videogames.

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/11/lets-get-few-things-straight-shall-we.html

Julie Bindel is a feminist who has written some neat feminist stuff. Julie Bindel is also a transphobe. Sadly, the two are not mutually exclusive. My first exposure to her writing was this lovely bit of trans hatred, which ended with, "I don't have a problem with men disposing of their genitals, but it does not make them women, in the same way that shoving a bit of vacuum hose down your 501s does not make you a man."

...yeah. I love how anti-trans people will say stuff like this, and then turn around and say that we're the "essentialists" who "reify gender".

Anyway, she wrote and said a lot more things along those lines over the years, but it didn't stop her from being nominated for a Journalist of the Year award by the UK organization Stonewall (yet more evidence that the "T" in GLBT is for decorative purposes only). Trans people and allies protested that nomination, and she's been whining ever since that trans folks—who mostly just want to be themselves, go to the bathroom, not get murdered, etc.—are *gasp* being mean to her! Won't somebody please think of the poor, poor transphobes?

[YoungSoulRebel]

Stonewall UK is NOT a LGBT organisation -- they're "LGB only", even their website states this, and their spokespersons have gone on the record as saying they don't give a fig for TS/TG issues or rights.

Furthermore, not even all UK gays and lesbians like or even approve of Stonewall UK's efforts.  Film director and gay activist Derek Jarman openly criticised Stonewall UK for being assimilationist, classist, transphobic, and even implied that they were sexist and racialist (seriously -- I can't recall if he ever outright accused them of the latter two, but he implied it all over the place in his book At Your Own Risk, a memoir).