Hello everyone, I am a 22 years old girl from Italy.
Little premise: being bisexual, I've been part of LGBT organizations since I was a teen, I've always fully supported trans people and I've seen my country becoming more and more open minded towards LGBT issues. Anyway, we still have a lot of bigotry and prejudiced people, especially very dreadful politicians. (The good part is that Italians don't usually express extremist views or obsess about politically correctness and we tend to make fun of the SJW fenomenon.)
That's why, at first, JK Rowling tweets left me a bit stranded because I thought "Of course trans people, left alone a couple of extremist SJW on Twitter, are not denying that biological sex is real or trying to erease same sex orientation, what is she talking about?"
I didn't believe her to be transphobic, homophobic and all of this bullshit. I was like "Ok I can't expect a middle aged woman to be totally open minded about trans issues, maybe she holds some prejudices but I see no big deal, she's still somehow supportive and I don't care if she wants to be a LGBT ally". (Honestly, if you're older than 13 and you cry because "JK Rowling is not my ally and her transphobia ruined my childhood!" you fucking need therapy and to be lectured about parasocial relationships)
Then I've read her essay and things started making a bit more sense. Then I did some researches about the TRA movement in other countries and gender critical views.
I've found out about cotton ceiling. I've read stories about people who detransitioned because their dysphoria was influenced by social constructs and blogs on Tumblr, about assaults in female spaces, about words such as "vagina" and "female" being abolished in the name of progressivism, about kids who are ELEVEN years old put on puberty's blockers, about "you don't need dysphoria to be trans, you should start taking hormones even if you haven't figured out your gender yet! Here's a list of clinics in America who will give you hormones without needing a certification from a therapist!"
Then I've started noticing the same views here, in my country. People saying "kids should be put on puberty blockers as soon as possible!" and denying the influence that peers and social media can have on dysphoric kids. LGBT activists in my city who are triggered by the use of words such as vagina or dick to talk about sexual orientation: because if you ironically say "Hey I like vagina!" to intend you like women you are a straight cis transphobic and biphobic man and you are excluding and discriminating trans women who don't have a vagina. ("And what about trans men who still have one? Would you date them? Would you?")
People complaining because fantasy novels don't include enough LGBT characters and when they do... Well, of course the writer was just trying to be politically correct and that makes him/her a straight cis privileged hypocrite.
The worse part was that: an Italian lesbian organization decided to exclude transfeminism from its politics. These women ended up receiving some threats such as "die of cancer, TERFs and sluts, you are just envious of my femininity/You don't accept the female penis but you look so masculine, how can you say you are women?/I will kill a TERF who says she doesn't like dick".
It was the first time that I've heard the expression "girl dick/female penis" in my country. And that makes me fucking worried.
Now I've fully understood why JK Rowling took a stance against TRA activism. I've fully understood every point of her essay. I'm already sick of this mentality so I can't imagine how it's like for her and for all the women on this forum who experience this on a daily basis.
I want to believe that almost no man here will put on a dress and pretend to identify as a woman to access a female space because he will highly risk harassment (Here it's not the norm to see men wearing dresses and make up, puberty blockers are not thrown like candies, coming out as trans can still be pretty though) but this HAPPENS in other countries/settings with a different cultural and social backgrounds and it's a problem that JK Rowling has the right to address.
I've tried to talk about this to some girls on Facebook who were criticising Rowling. I've told them to look up on issues such as cotton ceiling, man pretending to be trans women, censorship of language and art. I've told them we can't judge JK Rowling's opinions through the mentality that comes from a different social background.
Of course all they could talk about was "JK Rowling doesn't believe trans women are real women, she doesn't believe that trans people are being discriminated, the extremist people you are talking about are just a minority, the fact that people told her to die and suck their girl dick doesn't mean that she's in the right because MISGENDERING PEOPLE IS WORSE. We should say people who menstruate because that includes trans men/guys, agender, genderfluid, questioning and genderfuck people. Not everyone who menstruate is a woman because ALSO TEEN GIRLS HAVE PERIODS".
I stopped replying. I can't take seriously a person who wants me to believe in the oppression of "genderfuck" people. (What's next? Genderseagulls?)
I'm sick of hearing "gender is innate and is not based on stereotypes at all" or "trans women are women because feeling like a woman is enough to make you one". I've realized I'm too much of a gender critical person to believe this shit and that my opinions are not based on internalised transphobia but on sociocultural, scientific, linguistic and philoshopic arguments.
I still want to support trans people and their right to identify however they choose and live in peace and security, like JK Rowling said, even if I don't think they are the sex they THINK they belong to.
But I'm sick. I can't support the fact that so many kids are being put on puberty blockers. I can't support the erasure of detransitioned people. I can't stand the victimizations of idiots who find the word vagina not inclusive. Even hearing the word "gender" makes me angry and sick. I don't think I will ever hate something more than the concept of "gender identity".
I've decided that I will stop taking part in LGBT organizations' activities. I will stop going to Prides. I've already stopped following a lot of LGBT pages. There are so many things that I need to focus on in my life right now and for a long while activism can't be a part of it. It makes my blood boil to see people lacking critical sense and believing in TWAW the same way people will blindly believe in religion.
For them it's okay to call JK Rowling a TERF and an horrible person but they don't give a fuck about showing her support for her past traumas, for the threats she's receiving, or when a man accused her of speaking about her trauma just to raise compassion.
That's not the feminism or the LGBT activism I want to be a part of. These people don't represent me and never will. When I was a teen it was good to think "The LGBT community will always be welcoming, warm and open minded towards everyone!" but I've realized it's lie. Yes, this community allowed me to meet wonderful people but I've seen so much biphobia, hate, victimization and misogyny as well.
What makes me worried is the fear that this extremist mentality will slowly become more and more spread in my country while we become more "open minded".
That we will start experiencing assaults by TIMs, censorships of art and radical feminism books, more of the cotton ceiling phenomenon.
But you know what? If this happens I will have so much fun when people will finally understand what JK Rowling was taking about and when they will try to express their concerns the same way she did just to end up being labeled as TERF and transphobic.
(Of course, I hope this won't really happen)
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