Transgender was known to anyone who watched Britain’s longest running soap opera over the last 20 years. That would be around 15 million people, or roughly a quarter of the population of Britain.
Hayley Cropper first appeared on Coronation Street in January 1998, and became a regular character a few months later. I have commented before that the rise of the TERFs happened around the time when she was killed off, and how I don’t think it was a coincidence.
That’s great but not everyone watches every show there is, even if it’s the longest running soap opera on TV; and also even if someone watches it, that doesn’t automatically mean that they’re getting the correct idea from it (be it the show’s fault or not). Again, speaking from experience, to many people “transgender” can be a very difficult concept to understand, if it wasn’t then we wouldn’t be having so much trouble with bigots and assholes. It’s not like those people have a correct understanding of what transgender means and just decide to ignore it, they don’t understand and don’t want to understand.
Again, I’m not trying to make excuses so please don’t make it sound like I am. I’m just trying to point out that to someone who’s coming from an angle of “I had to claw my way up, fighting men every step of the way” the idea of “why should us women accept it when men decide they want to be women and encroach on our territory” can sound reasonable if they have a flawed understanding of what being transgender means, that it’s not someone pretending, or being delusional, and so on and so forth. Which is why education is important, but also individuals having an open mind and willingness to learn is also incredibly important. Clearly, JKR doesn’t have that, she doesn’t have the willingness to understand why her comments are being criticized as harmful, and she’s not willing to gain a better understanding of what exactly being transgender means. There is no excuse for that.
I have to say as a trans person who’s watched this argument played out over decades- it’s always been said that “before now, no one knew about trans people”. It’s been said every decade- when trans stories have been some of the biggest stories in the news in just about all of the last 67 years since Christine Jorgensen was the biggest news story of of the year for 1951-52.
It’s a false narrative that only serves to excuse bad behavior.
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=award
Most people’s grandparents grew up knowing about trans people- the excuse is rejected.
Can you at least accept that in my experience of having transitioned in Britain nearly 20 years ago, just 100 miles away from where JKR was writing the Harry Potter books, that life for trans people in Britain is far more hostile than it used to be? We have the same arseholes as then, with people who claimed they were allies at the time joining them.
The Gender Recognition Act 2004 became law in 2005, if it were being debated in Parliament today I can’t see it passing, and I remember the attempts to derail it by bigots in the Conservative party (a lot of them have switched to the Brexit Party now). People believe that Britain has anti-trans toilet laws, for fucks sake. The only law I can think of is the one saying that trans people are the gender they say they are, and denying them access to the toilet is breaking the law under the Equality Act 2010.
Something has changed in the last 5-10 years for the worse. I could write a paper on the subject, but I do not have the energy.
For the third time, I am NOT trying to find excuses. I am NOT claiming that people didn’t know about trans people. Seriously, where did I say this? I’m agreeing with both of you, for chrissakes.
The point I’m trying to make is that knowing about something doesn’t mean understanding it; but even if you’re just genuinely ignorant, if you’re called out for saying transphobic shit and you don’t listen and try to understand why but continue saying transphobic shit, there is no excuse for that.
Yes, of course? I honestly don’t understand what I’m doing wrong here. I’m not trying to invalidate your experiences, I’m not trying to argue that JKR is not transphobic, I’m not trying to argue that she’s not a TERF.
Sorry that I wasn’t being clear, or phrased things the wrong way.
Blue Labour are dogwhistling transphobes and effectively blaming trans people and allies for Labour losing the election. Class reductionism is still bullshit.
And people wonder why I am a borderline anarcho-communist who doesn’t trust the Labour Party.
Trust me. British people watch Coronation Street. Even if an individual didn’t watch, it would be damn near impossible to avoid the Corrie Conversation. I am not anywhere near GB, and I know Corrie addicts. Calling it a “long running TV show” is a severe understatement.
And the answer, so far, is encouraging: 91.8 per cent of those surveyed in a mid-summer poll commissioned by the Privy Council Office said they would be “comfortable” if a next-door neighbour was gay, lesbian or bisexual and that 87.6 per cent said they would be “comfortable” if a neighbour was a transgender person.
I’d probably have to think about that question. It’s like being asked “If your neighbour was left-handed, would you be comfortable with that?” “Um, what?”
“Where are you going with this? Are you aiming to make LGBTQ people’s lives more difficult? If you want to know what makes me uncomfortable, it’s people questioning how “comfortable” I am around a segment of the population, especially given the current political climate. Especially phrased in ways that make them seem less human or undesirable.”
No, this is not me projecting. There is a long history of questions like this being used to enable discrimination. It does make me uncomfortable if someone is testing the waters. And we do have a largd swath of people in this country who would gleefully dismantle LGBTQ protections if they got the chance, many of them regularly running for Federal office.
Re-reading the questions jogged my memory. I think I did do this survey (rare for me), and the robo questions did throw me. (“Comfortable? What the hell is that a code word for, and why does my ‘comfort’ matter??”)
Two weeks notice for a sick day? Nice to know illness can be conveniently scheduled.
The whole thing stinks to high heaven if that’s what they’re claiming for a defense.
It took 2 whole days. Fuck.
Hope nobody loved Altered Carbon too much:
The guys work is about people being transferred to different bodies - but he’s a “materialist” who thinks you are only what your body is which is never changing and only has two genders.
Funny how people contort themselves so they can feel comfortable in their transphobia. Just not ha ha funny.
That’s what’s so surprising about this.
But I didn’t particularly like Altered Carbon. As a noir novel it was good if a bit overwrought, but as sci-fi it was total shit. It would have been better if it were condensed to about half its current length. It wasn’t awful, but I wouldn’t say I liked it.
Never watched it.
So I’m feeling better about missing it now!
I didn’t even know it was a movie or TV show. I just recognized it as the title of a book someone gave me last year.
Poor baby.
