James Kirchick knows everything about the secret, spooky, saucy, seedy side of Washington DC. Hear him hold forth on the secret history of gay spies, trans activists and, of course, the never-not-impending arrest of Donald J Trump.
Women across Australia have faced violent screaming, threatening mobs in the last weeks, while trying to speak of male rapists in women’s prisons, lesbians forced to include men in their events, sexual assault survivors being told to ‘reframe their trauma’ when requesting single sex support and of course opening up the discussion on gender care in this country. Several of these women who have spoken up are survivors of male violence, many are old and disabled, many are fearful mothers. I am part of a growing number of parents in Victoria who are facing these questions in an environment where any kind of question raises questions about you. I myself attended, the now infamous event in Melbourne. I was with a group of mothers, all parents of children who are or were identifying as transgender. We were surrounded the entire time by a screaming group fighting the police to get to us, we’d already watched one woman be knocked unconscious during a scuffle by activists trying to stop us speaking, I’ve never attended a rally like this before. Towards the end a group of black clad men were marched past us by several police, we saw them making a Nazi salute, we wondered what was going on. We didn’t know who these men were, was it a performance piece by the groups opposing us? I mean they had after all been calling us Nazis for weeks. We now know that we were supposed to jump up and immediately denounce them, perhaps try to physically attack them. I feel especially bad for the Jewish mother in our group who is being told that she should have rushed over to attack these men the second she saw them, although we only saw them for seconds as they were marched past us. Almost every politician has now linked us to this Nazi group and now those questions we wanted to ask, ‘what’s going on with our children?’. ‘why are so many autistic girls entering puberty now claiming a trans identity?’ ‘why can’t we look into gender care in Australia?’, ‘why no therapy for young people before medication?’ ‘why aren’t we allowed to ask questions about a medical process which permanently damages the health of our children when even experts can’t agree?’ With what has now happened I fear these questions will become even harder to ask. Women are not the only ones facing extreme opposition, detransitioners in the US face violent crowds when trying to speak of the harms they’ve experienced. This is what happens in a climate of fear. More people need to speak up, to say this is not ok. Why do we have to accept without question this destruction of our children’s bodies, when it seems even the experts have doubts?
Nobody could love trans people more than we do, they are our children.
I actually quite liked Nanette...
Women across Australia have faced violent screaming, threatening mobs in the last weeks, while trying to speak of male rapists in women’s prisons, lesbians forced to include men in their events, sexual assault survivors being told to ‘reframe their trauma’ when requesting single sex support and of course opening up the discussion on gender care in this country. Several of these women who have spoken up are survivors of male violence, many are old and disabled, many are fearful mothers. I am part of a growing number of parents in Victoria who are facing these questions in an environment where any kind of question raises questions about you. I myself attended, the now infamous event in Melbourne. I was with a group of mothers, all parents of children who are or were identifying as transgender. We were surrounded the entire time by a screaming group fighting the police to get to us, we’d already watched one woman be knocked unconscious during a scuffle by activists trying to stop us speaking, I’ve never attended a rally like this before. Towards the end a group of black clad men were marched past us by several police, we saw them making a Nazi salute, we wondered what was going on. We didn’t know who these men were, was it a performance piece by the groups opposing us? I mean they had after all been calling us Nazis for weeks. We now know that we were supposed to jump up and immediately denounce them, perhaps try to physically attack them. I feel especially bad for the Jewish mother in our group who is being told that she should have rushed over to attack these men the second she saw them, although we only saw them for seconds as they were marched past us. Almost every politician has now linked us to this Nazi group and now those questions we wanted to ask, ‘what’s going on with our children?’. ‘why are so many autistic girls entering puberty now claiming a trans identity?’ ‘why can’t we look into gender care in Australia?’, ‘why no therapy for young people before medication?’ ‘why aren’t we allowed to ask questions about a medical process which permanently damages the health of our children when even experts can’t agree?’ With what has now happened I fear these questions will become even harder to ask. Women are not the only ones facing extreme opposition, detransitioners in the US face violent crowds when trying to speak of the harms they’ve experienced. This is what happens in a climate of fear. More people need to speak up, to say this is not ok. Why do we have to accept without question this destruction of our children’s bodies, when it seems even the experts have doubts?
Nobody could love trans people more than we do, they are our children.