To all of you trans ladies out there

pennyheax · 2020-07-21T02:13:35+00:00

Is this really necessary? Not all transwomen are TRAs.

pennyheax · 2020-07-10T19:06:10+00:00

Detrans hits the hardest. I feel so bad for them. And GCDebatesQT wasn't even strictly GC.

Open dialog is like kryptonite to these narcissistic science deniers because they know inside that they are really men.

pennyheax · 2020-07-10T18:59:49+00:00

This is so fucked up to remove their support group.

pennyheax · 2020-07-10T18:56:18+00:00

I feel so bad for detrans. That is fucked up as hell.

pennyheax · 2020-07-09T06:53:08+00:00

The sad thing is that I didn't realize this was satire until almost the bottom of the list. It sounded like real TRA talking points.

pennyheax · 2020-07-09T06:45:13+00:00

Yeah, I think so. I know transphobia gets thrown around so much that it's lost all meaning, but this is actually transphobic. It's a bad look and only affirms what TRAs say about us. I'm only here because i'm concerned about women's rights and safety, not because I want to dunk on trans people.

pennyheax · 2020-07-09T05:49:08+00:00

This just feels hateful and like the sort of thing I'd expect on an alt-right site. If I came here looking to learn more about GC ideology and I came across pics like this, I'd think this was a hate community and leave.

pennyheax · 2020-07-08T15:56:38+00:00

ment is still a little too dismissive of the problem. It's basically summarizing the problem as "Outsiders with bad intentions. Nothing to see here." instead of addressing the fact that there are in fact white supremacist and racist women who identify as feminist (particularly radical feminist) and feel the need to constantly share their racist thoughts in diverse radical feminist spaces. I did see quite a lot of anti-BLM content on the Spinster side of the website when I was there but that seems to have calmed down now. Anti-BLM sentiment is often a result of racism in the same way how anti-feminism is often a result of misogyny. Spinster isn't a very searchable platform so it's hard to recall these posts now.

If it really is a non-issue, we shouldn't see it transfer over to the new app where we are in full control.

I'd hoped that the second part of my explanation, about seeing racially tinged things in GC, would show that I see more nuance to it than just "outsiders with bad intentions." I've also felt disenfranchised by white feminism in the past, so I get where you're coming from, but it's hard to have a discussion without concrete examples.

For spinster and the fediverse, it's an important distinction to make in terms of accountability. Spinster can only be accountable for racist or white supremacist things on it's own server, so when you see those things from @spinster.xyz accounts, it's important to report and document those things. While not everyone here might be open to hearing about racism in radfeminism, I think that there's a fair number of people here who have shown interest in seeing whatever it is that you're seeing. And I agree that spinster is hard to search, so I don't expect you to whip out examples on the spot, but it's something to think about moving forward.

pennyheax · 2020-07-08T06:34:47+00:00

I'm glad you came back and explained.

The anti-semite post is fucking YIKES but it looks like it's not actually from Spinster but from the Fediverse feed? I'm new to spinster so I'm not that familiar with it, but if you look at the @gab.com part at the end of that guy's name, I believe that's the server they're on. Try sticking to just the "Spinster" tab instead of the Fediverse one, and you should get exclusively radfem stuff.

Personally, I've only been here for a little while (most of it lurking) but I do occasionally get moments where it's extremely clear that I'm in a majority-white space. A post here and there will give me those sorts of vibes (I think that I felt them previously when BLM came up and also in the response to your post, where a number of responders blithely dismissed your concerns or jumped to thinking you were a troll rather than trying to engage you). What I did notice in some of the more blatantly racially problematic posts I saw in the past was that the mods ended up removing them, so I wonder if maybe you saw shit like that before the mods had a chance to take it down.

pennyheax · 2020-07-07T20:31:15+00:00

It's because you painted a rosy picture of solidarity while simultaneously dismissing the OP's concerns. They may be a troll or they may be genuine, I don't know. But I do know that as a WOC myself, if my concerns were reacted to this way, I would leave the community. I've been disenfranchised in the past by how white dominated feminism is, and I would take it as a sign that things haven't really changed.

pennyheax · 2020-07-07T01:56:39+00:00

This has "I don't see color" vibes.

I'd personally like to hear more from the OP before assuming she's a troll.

pennyheax · 2020-07-06T05:01:43+00:00

I used the 1 in 2600 number because it represents a claim that I commonly see made by TRAs. I think it's significant that, even when using their own (likely inflated) number, the homicide victim rate is still equal to that of black men. There are two implications of this. One is that the murder of black trans women isn't more of an "epidemic" than the murder of black males. The second is that perhaps their engagement in risky behaviors is more similar to males than females. Though to be fair, the causes of their murders are somewhat different from black males overall. If you look at a breakdown of what each black trans woman died of, then you tend to see one chunk involved in violent criminal activity, one chunk involved in sex work, and another chunk are victims of domestic violence.

In your OP, you said further that the homicides of men who ID as women or trans are "linked to poverty and race rather than their trans identity." Perhaps I misunderstand, but I took that to mean you think that these men are being killed by socioeconomic forces, not by other men in acts of male-on-male lethal violence. If you do see these homicides as being committed by other men in (more) acts of male-on-male violence, are you suggesting that black men who identify as trans are being killed primarily by men of other races and different economic strata than their own?

You misunderstood. Poverty and race simply means that growing up in the hood and doing hood shit is dangerous. Being killed by "socioeconomic forces" as it seems you're describing here wouldn't be recorded as murder.

pennyheax · 2020-07-05T02:42:22+00:00

Nevermind! I just found a relevant portion of the text, but it only counts for ages 15-34 years old and it's couched in so much uncertainty regarding how transfeminine deaths were recorded and whether or not they were underreported or not:

The 2010 to 2014 homicide rate per 100 000 for Black female US residents aged 15 to 34 years was 40.9 (95% CI = 39.3, 42.5) and for Black male US residents aged 15 to 34 years was 367 (95% CI = 363, 372).

Estimates of the Black transfeminine aged 15 to 34 years homicide rate per 100 000 during this period, assuming their deaths were recorded as male, ranged from 97.2, when assuming no undercount and a large transgender population, to 2920, when assuming 4 of 5 transgender deaths went unreported and a smaller transgender population. For Black transfeminine residents aged 15 to 34 years, assuming transfeminine deaths recorded female, no estimate gives a lower homicide rate than does that for all Black female residents aged 15 to 34 years, and 6 of 12 estimates give a lower homicide rate than does that for all Black male residents aged 15 to 34 years.

The 2010 to 2014 RR of homicide for Black transfeminine residents aged 15 to 34 years versus Black cisfeminine residents aged 15 to 34 years, assuming transfeminine deaths recorded female, ranged from 2.35, when assuming no undercount and a large transgender population, to 74.8, when assuming 4 of 5 transgender deaths went unreported and a smaller transgender population, with 0 of 12 estimates below 1.0.

pennyheax · 2020-07-05T02:28:27+00:00

Thanks, I saw this paper too, but I noticed that it compares their deaths against cisfemales and not cismales, which is what I was looking for.

pennyheax · 2020-07-05T02:27:12+00:00

The links I provided both state in the first paragraph that their statistics are for the USA.

You have provided the murder rate of ALL transgender people, not the murder rate of BLACK transwomen, which is the population I'm interested in because it is often trotted out as evidence of an "epidemic" of violence. I checked through the twitter thread that you linked, and I could not find a specific quote that addressed the murder rate of black transwomen. If I missed something or if you have another source, please share it.

pennyheax · 2020-07-05T00:02:48+00:00

Will you please provide your sources? I had trouble finding good ones about the rate of murder for black transwomen.

pennyheax · 2020-07-04T15:26:19+00:00

Nice to see more sane people in the comments for a change before the TRAs come in with their bot armies.

pennyheax · 2020-07-03T22:21:14+00:00

A list of different articles & studies:

20% of transgender prisoners in male prisons in CA are listed as sex offenders (versus 15% of the cismale population)

http://ucicorrections.seweb.uci.edu/files/2013/06/A-Demographic-Assessment-of-Transgender-Inmates-in-Mens-Prisons.pdf

"Second, regarding any crime, male-to-females had a significantly increased risk for crime compared to female controls (aHR 6.6; 95% CI 4.1–10.8) but not compared to males (aHR 0.8; 95% CI 0.5–1.2). This indicates that they retained a male pattern regarding criminality. The same was true regarding violent crime."

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885

"Overall, 19.3% of transgender women respondents reported having ever been in jail/prison in their lifetime"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5441521/

In the UK "We submitted Freedom of Information requests to the Ministry of Justice.

It said that 60 of the 125 transgender inmates it counted in England and Wales were serving time for a sexual offence."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42221629

Ever since the UK started allowing male prisoners to switch prisons based on gender identity, the number of "trans" prisoners has surged 10x. If all of these people are really trans, then they are overrepresented 4x in the prison population:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/07/09/one-50-prisoners-identify-transsexual-first-figures-show-amid/

If she's familiar with the arguments for "Schrodinger's Rapist," then you could make the same arguments for transwomen too.

pennyheax · 2020-07-03T04:56:34+00:00

This was fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

pennyheax · 2020-07-01T14:24:16+00:00

I'm not the OP but I reckon it has to do with black women being one of the most marginalized groups, silenced in the media, and more likely to be victims of male violence. So when TRAs whip out their oppression card, it's met with a collective "so?" I can't recall a single mainstream movement centered exclusively on the issues that black women face, but now we got black trans lives matter.

All that, and highly tuned sensors for white bullshit.

pennyheax · 2020-07-01T01:38:32+00:00

Y'all smell a troll in here?

pennyheax · 2020-06-30T22:31:53+00:00

Like many here, I started off fully TWAW. I felt sympathetic to the plight of trans people and the stories of high school students being harassed in bathrooms. Making laws to forbid them from the bathrooms where they "passed" seemed needlessly intrusive and cruel. The explanation of protecting women seemed like a smokescreen for transphobia given the incredibly low rate of assault in bathrooms. It seemed like any other excuse that right wing bigots used to keep out Latinos, Muslims, or Black people. I feel absolutely awful for trans people in the prison system and have read many gutwrenching stories from them. Many of them describe lives where they must either act as sex slaves the entire time or go mad from solitary confinement.

The first crack in my ideology was when I saw transwomen competing and winning in women's sports years ago. This just seemed to fundamentally unfair and akin to steroid use that I couldn't believe it was actually allowed. Not everyone can compete in high level sports. All kinds of people for whatever reason aren't able to compete in high level sports, whether it's allergies or asthma or disability, and maybe it's best to lump trans people in with them and that's okay.

Every time I heard about a transwoman winning at sports, I would get a little flare up of unease, and then outrage when I heard about Fallon Fox fracturing a woman's skull in MMA. I don't understand how anyone can't look at that as male-on-female violence right there.

However, I wasn't passionate about this issue, so it fell off my radar for a while until I heard about the Vancouver Rape Relief Shelter being vandalized. I was so shocked at the vandalization that I wondered whether it was an actual trans person who did it or some alt-right asshole who was just trying to spread hate and further polarize these groups. That was the first time I ever heard the term "TERF," and when I googled it, I wasn't entirely clear why it was supposed to be offensive. I read the descriptions, but I didn't understand what it was about "TERF" beliefs that deserved so much vitriol.

Then, I read that the Vancouver Rape Relief Shelter was defunded due to a trans activist. I read trans people celebrating this, saying shit like "fuck all TERFs," and I realized just how toxic trans activism had become.

These thoughts were only amplified when JKR made her tweet about Maya Forstater, and I saw all the abuse she got for basically telling people to live how they wanted but don't deny biology. Like, WTF? How did trans activism get filled with extremists and science deniers? I read through all of their refutations too, the articles that they thought supported them containing the most specious arguments about clownfish and intersex people somehow supporting their cases. (Also, I saw a picture of Gregor Murray and W T F that is a full-ass man. I have some background in biology, and I've always been skeptical of "nonbinary" as a legit gender dysphoria category anyway.)

The latest tweets from JKR, the essay, and the "woke" response to them are what sealed the deal for me. When the fuck did it become okay for woke left to dismiss the concerns of women who are rape and domestic abuse survivors? What ever happened to being respectful of triggers for traumatized women? It used to only be butthurt men who frothed at the mouth at the suggestion of treating interactions with men as dealing with Schrodinger's Rapist, but now it's the left that's telling women to shut up and #NotAllMen. THIS IS NOT OKAY.

But, I was still open to the idea that maybe I was wrong. Maybe transwomen really weren't as big of a threat as cismen. So I did a deep dive into a bunch of the research.

I found out that one study found that transwomen retained a male pattern in regards to violent crime. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885

I found out that 20% of the trans population in male prisons in CA are incarcerated for sex offenses. This is actually higher than the cismale rate of ~15%. http://ucicorrections.seweb.uci.edu/files/2013/06/A-Demographic-Assessment-of-Transgender-Inmates-in-Mens-Prisons.pdf

I found out the 40% of the trans population in UK prisons are there for sex offenses. (Though this "only includes people who have had a prison case conference. It won't include transgender people who haven't identified themselves to the prison service or who already have a gender recognition certificate." Although the actual percentage is probably lower, it's still an alarming number) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42221629

I found out that since the UK's new laws allowing trans people to be housed with their identified gender, the number of trans-identifying people skyrocketed 10x. If all of these are actual trans people and not just opportunistic cismales, then they are overrepresented in prison populations by a factor of 4. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/07/09/one-50-prisoners-identify-transsexual-first-figures-show-amid/

From there, I've just been reading more and more outrageous things. Like crunching the numbers on the "epidemic" of trans people murdered reveals that overall they are statistically safer from homicide than the general population. This suggests that the high murder rate for transwomen of color has more to do with race, poverty, and sex work than anything else. And on that note, Black women are over twice as likely to be murdered compared to trans people--where is the outrage?

All that said, I still feel that most trans people are fine in the same way that I feel most men are fine. I don't hate men, I'm just wary of them and I won't stand for my legitimate concerns being dismissed. They're just trying to live their lives and they face a lot of discrimination and harassment. They deserve support and safe spaces, but those safe places shouldn't come at the expense of women's safety.

pennyheax