A very interesting column from Rachel Stewart in relation to the anger the trans argument manages to spark off.
My guess is that those screaming for the crucifixion of Rachel Stewart also want David Beckham arrested for child abuse after kissing his son on the lips, and accusing people of anti-semitism is such a Wellington Twitteratti thing to do.
I’ve detailed my own experience of those threats here, and it seems to me that there is a desperate need to change the debate within the rainbow community.
This debate seems to need less anger and venom on social media and shitloads more kindness and empathy.
Older GLB Rainbow community members who fought and struggled for inclusion feel slapped in the face by younger activists who are bitter at their exclusion while those younger QTAi Rainbow community members feel rage at the blindspot of their lack of civil rights.
I can’t see a solution without a lot more kindness.
How a person identifies is one of the most important journeys of the human experience, I believe to refuse to accept someone how they wish to identify is a needless cruelty. The idea that within the spectrum of us as a species that there are women who identify as men, men who identify as women , people who identify as both and people who identify as neither is as uncontroversial to me as the range of eye, skin and hair colour amongst humans.
To make those lives more difficult in any way is spiteful and beneath us.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuut
I also appreciate that as a white heteronormative cis male that I can’t demand women accept people into their own spaces without their acceptance and agreement. If a trans person wishes to share space with me in a men only space, all power to you, and I will always refer to them as the pronoun and name and identity they want, but I can’t enforce that in women spaces because telling women who they must accept into those spaces would completely rob them of the agency of those spaces.
I’m apparently not much of a fourth wave feminist ally, but I get that you can’t tell women who they must and mustn’t accept in their women only spaces. That said, we are talking about people’s ignored civil rights and we must appreciate the justified anger that denial generates.
This entire debate seems terribly damaged and farcical at times. The hate, the spite, the anger, the vicious screaming over issues that impact 2% when the 100% face extinction from climate change – it all comes across as middle class woke identity politics at its most alienating.
I feel that we are on the Titanic speeding towards the iceberg while the focus is on who is allowed to eat their dinner in specific dining areas.
We have bigger issues confronting us and this debate needs far more kindness.
ACTION STATION UPDATE: I admit I was being facetious when I asked if woke twitter or the Greens had crucified Rachel, but in this age of professional outrage and virtue signalling there is no satire, Action Station have decided something must be done…
…when censoring others is considered progress. This is who we are now, this is where we are now.
Weep comrades, weep.
Martyn – maybe you should read “Pride and police” on the Standard written on 26/11 by Joel Walsham – oh no you can’t because its no longer up! It gave a reasoned approach about what was asked for – the same as a large number of cities in US pride marches but the police demanded the right to march in uniform. This was a self exclusion wrapped up as an exclusion for political purposes. To continue to try and escalate the internal division between two parts of a community that is not accepted by the mainstream by the media is total crap! This is not their fight but it is in their interest to ensure that the LGBT community is fragmented and not standing together.
Lucy, it seems to me that by the ‘Pride’ board demanding Police not wear their uniforms, any charges of a “fragmented LGBT community” cannot be laid at their (Police) feet. The “compromise” of allowing Police to attend in mufti, fancy clothes, or a t-shirt (with “police” emblazoned on it) sends a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” signal.
I heard similar arguments in 1986 during the homosexual law reform debate when a sizeable number of people complained that gay men “were ok, as long as they’re not visible”. I’m old enough to remember those arguments.
I am too Frank – but I also remember going into gay bars where all my friends had to be careful as there were undercover police waiting to be propositioned so they could make an arrest. I don’t think the request was “don’t ask, don’t tell” more of a “your uniforms make some of our people uncomfortable” Would you expect priests to match in cassocks to support victims of clerical abuse? They could be part of the same community, they could be priests who feel revolted by what happened but you would expect them to have enough EQ to understand it’s not the best way to show support. I am not equating police interacting with the rainbow community with sexual abuse but in general this community is not served well by our police force, even by their own admission, so a request, even if it is from a section and not the whole community, should be listened to and not seen as a challenge to their authority
Hmm, ok so in my mid teens my best mates older brother came out as gay. This was early 1980’s, I remember going to bars (under age) and nightclubs back in ’80/81, with by mates brother and his very gay friends.
The only concerns they had about the police, were that we were in a bar or nightclub under age. However I do remember people getting arrested for having sex in public, but this applied to straight as well as gay (in fact a guy I worked with got arrested for having sex, with a girl, in a flower bed, in a traffic island, in Wellington at about 4am on a Friday morning!).
Looking back, the funny thing was everyone knew we were under age, but as long as us “boys” behaved and only drank beer, it was no problem, nod nod wink wink.
It sounds like your experience with the cops was different to mine. I’ve been going out to all sorts of bars from 1980 to to now. As long as you are not underage, drunk, being stupid, dealing drugs, etc the cops are not interested in you. Start being stupid, especially drunk stupid then you might come to their attention.
So Lucy, that was pre 1986. How long do you nurse a grievance? By gay and lesbian police marching in uniform, the police have left behind that dark past and embraced tolerance and inclusion.
When does the Pride committee do the same?
When does Pride embrace inclusion, without exclusionary “fine print”??
Frank,
Why do you think it sends a “don’t ask don’t tell signal” ? Everyone will know it is the police marching as police in a contingent of police with POLICE on their TShirts. That seems to be about as “tell” as you can get!
In which case, Chris, what’s the point of denying them the right to march in uniform?
I’d like to know precisely which group is calling for this exclusion.
Indeed, I can remember that too…
Why did the Standard take Joel’s post down ?
It is still up, just pushed a bit further down the page as new posts go up: https://thestandard.org.nz/pride-and-police/
Ever notice how these situations tend to arise when a centre-left government is in power?
Like Trump enables white nationalism, a centre-left government seems to enable the more extreme of extreme identity politics.
As a blogger since 2011, it was easir when National was in power. (Though much harder on homeless families living in mouldy houses, garages, and cars, so maybe I should STFU and be thankful for small mercies…)
Also, I heard recently from one individual that CIS White Men (that be me) should not comment on LGBTQI issues.
More fool me for wearing a HUG badge in 1986 and espousing equal right for our gay brothers.
yes I was a HUG badge wearer and marcher for “Homosexual Law Reform” too, “so you support poofters do you mate” and so on…
Post Modernism and Neo Liberalism have both contributed to a certain psychology since those days–“every phenomenon has equal meaning” and “me me me, mine mine mine” respectively
there are obviously multiple levels and layers of oppression for many, beyond the basic age old Labour/Capital relationships, and that is where the sharp end is felt–Polynesians profiled and assaulted by Police, Women subject to less pay than men for similar work and so on
the instinct of committed leftists is to support anyone under attack, and that is the tricky part of this issue–determining the attackers from the attacked!
I agree Martyn that more thought, dialogue, and discussion are needed and that shouting down and excluding good people who have a point of view we may not agree with, is not helpful but in fact a roadblock to progresss on this issue.
My big picture view of this debate is that we are struggling (all of us) to try to fit non-binary sex and gender classifications back into binary boxes, which obviously will not work.
For example, I think it is better to have private one person unisex toilets rather than try to fit everyone into public male/female toilets, which simply won’t work. That’s the position of the Catholic church which recently released an interesting set of guidelines to our Catholic schools.
http://www.catholic.org.nz/news/media-releases/guidance-for-catholic-schools-on-gender-diversity-in-schools
What does “woke” mean by the way ? (shows how far behind the times I am 🙂 )
Once upon a time to be woke you’d have to be hip to change. Now it seems any type of offensive behaviour or grievance and the whole tribe is suddenly waking up fantastically.
So same problem as Martin Luther King bumped up against. Say every one has free flow of agency and every one mixes and mingles in each other’s safe place like it ain’t nothing. Now what if one lot of LGBT are like the 50% of the rest of the population – working poor – then what? They can’t even afford fruit let alone explore what ever communities are out there and that’s a problem but you’d need special accounting glasses to really see it.
If the LGBT community presented a budget it would capture 100% of all cis income behind a pay wall with zero expenditure because no one really looks at what gays spend their dollars on.
What’s woke Bill Maher explains
https://youtu.be/ugLbotr1RuQ
– I’m apparently not much of a fourth wave feminist ally, but I get that you can’t tell women who they must and mustn’t accept in their women only spaces. –
Why not?
I remember lots of strident comments from woke feminists directed at men’s choice of leaders, teachers and thinkers at the beginning of the men’s movement.
There didn’t seem to be too much concern for whose space it was then…
Goose, gander, etc etc.
The so called woke left have run organized campaigns to accuse people of rape in the past and to get them fired so I am sure the CIB are watching this little group with interest.
Come to think of it it is quite odd that these people claim to be leftists when their targets seem remarkably similar to the ones aimed at by paid-up right wing blogs!
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