Tagged: misgendering

Judge Duncan Harvey sanctions abuse of a trans woman

[Trigger warning:  transphobia in the judicial system]

Judge Duncan Harvey has decided that a trans woman will serve her prison sentence in a men’s prison.

The bit which just highlights how repugnant this is?

Her sentence is 2 years, 1 month.

If it were under 2 years, she could serve home detention.

But Judge Harvey decided to just “reduce” her sentence:

in recognition of the difficulties she would have in serving her sentence in a men’s prison.

So he recognises that she’ll have “difficulties” (vomit) in a male prison.  He’ll reduce her sentence a little bit because of that.  But he just can’t reduce it that 1 extra month which would mean she could serve home detention and not face “difficulties” like, oh, violent physical assault.

Fuck you, Judge Harvey.

Props however to the Northern Advocate for gendering her correctly.

Queer the Night: Can’t make this transphobic shit up

[Trigger warnings: transphobia, misgendering, tone argument, general shittiness and major Nice White Cis Feminist fail]

[On teh criticisms of pseudonymous posting and the big fucking issues with “real names” I recommend this post by Scarlet Sorceress.]

So.

Queer the Night was held this week in Wellington, and by all accounts was considered a success.

And I’m kinda glad that this means that my little rant right here is after the event and thus I can’t be accused of harshing nice baby activists’ squees with my meanie pseudonymous criticism.

Because … wow.  Gather round with some stiff damn drinks, kiddies, this is going to be rough, and in case you skipped the top, potentially very triggering.

The Hand Mirror hosted a guest post from the organisers.

Scarlet Sorceress pointed out in comments that there was a lot of talk about heterocentricity … but (shades of IDAHO, anyone?) ciscentricity wasn’t mentioned.

At which point a commenter claiming to be one of the QtN organisers decided to, um … well, fuck up as no up has ever previously been fucked:

Will you please give the organisers a break! Jesus…they are the least transphobic/homophobic/bigoted people on the planet,

Why am I reminded of Donald Trump?  Oh right, because “I’m the least” tops even “some of my best friends are” for massive incoming fail warning signs.

So they missed out an academic term for people’s views about binary gender, so frickin what??

I mean come on, they’re only organising a Queer the Night march!  They can’t be expected to have even the vaguest fucking understanding of pretty fucking basic terminology!!!  What do you mean, this is about people’s fucking identities, nah, it’s just about “views on binary gender”!  Not something people live every fucking day!

I’m pretty sure we all agree that gender binary is fake & stupid and hurts trans and non trans people alike.

Fake and stupid.  Fake.  And.  Stupid.  Yeah, when I think of the gender binary I definitely reach for “fake and stupid”, not “manufactured” or “coercive” or “harmful”.

heteronormativity implicitly includes a prejudice to 2 binary genders.

Um, if that sentence ended with “to 2 binary genders fucking” you might have a point.  But it doesn’t, so you don’t, George, and maybe the fact that you’re arguing with a heterosexual trans woman who just kinda stated that she felt excluded by your language might have provided a clue on that one.

So why make a fuss over a bunch of ordinary people with the best of intentions missing out a specialised academic term…and worse, accuse them of being transphobic.

TRI

-FUCKING-

FECTA!

You see, George et al are just normal people.  Unlike the trans woman George is arguing with, one presumes?  And their intent is magical.  And accusing a person of being transphobic is like nearly as terribly as calling a white person a racist, don’t you know?

But if you though George was already investigating genetic modification for the purposes of finding yet another foot to fit in her mouth …

You want a safe space? Then stop bullying people and being an “internet tough guy” online

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND ALL OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE, GEORGE HAS FOUND ANOTHER FOOT.

But it’s all totally okay because hey, George is a woman who just always uses “guy” as a gender neutral term and “tough guy” is just a phrase, dude and tee hee see she can play the “don’t misgender me man, lol” game too, bless, and anyway stop alienating your allies by being such Nazis.

I seriously wish I was making this shit up.

You might think this kind of shit is something that The Hand Mirror team would want to put a lid on,feminist blog and all, multiple trans women pitching in in the comments  … but LudditeJourno reckons that actually none of the criticism counts as long as other trans folk turn up at the march and here’s what Julie had to say in closing at time of writing:

Acid Queen, you have been asked to stop commenting on this thread, looks to me like you are deliberately trying to inflame things, as you have done here before. ANY further comments from you on this thread will be deleted. You’ve said you have nothing further to say anyway so that shouldn’t be hard.
George & Kassie, it’s really useful to have the perspective of the main organizers in this discussion. It can’t have been easy to contribute here and I appreciate the effort. I will now be closing comments on this thread.

Yeah, thanks George, for being plainly fucking abusive towards trans women on The Hand Mirror, and thanks, Kassie, for not actually engaging with George’s shit but instead basically implying that you can’t be bothered identifying and educating yourself about transphobia unless the trans women hold your hand.  It’s been a nice insight into everyone involved.

ETA:  Octavia has a badass post up calling on The Hand Mirror to actually become a safe space for trans* people.

What the fucking fuck, “Real Life”?

[Trigger warning: transphobia and misgendering]

I have just managed to get through the first … two minutes, maybe, of a “documentary” entitled “Real Life: Transgender Kids”. (Link to Part 1 of 6 on the ‘tube.*)

Interesting, I thought.  Some insight into the effects on kids and families and communities when young kids are allowed to choose which gender they will present as despite assumptions about biological sex.

Then.

The opening disclaimer, folks, … I’m seriously a bit speechless.  I, ranter of mighty rants, simply cannot fucking describe this fuckwittery.

In this film we will be referring to all the children by their biological sex,

Significant pause.

but this is not how their family and friends see them

Significant pause.

or how they see themselves.

Which seems to beg a pretty FUCKING OBVIOUS QUESTION, “documentary”-makers.

WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU DO THAT.

Oh, right.  Because screw the happiness on these kids’ faces and screw their wonderfully eloquent expressions of who they are and how they wish to be identified.  We must never be allowed to forget for one fucking second, even in a documentary that purports to treat these kids and their families sympathetically, that COCK means BOY and TRUCKS and VIDEO GAMES and VAGINA means GIRL and PIGTAILS and PINKPINKPINK.

These kids have the massive fucking good fortune to have parents who, sometimes eventually, have allowed them to be who the hell they want to be.  Have accepted their child’s identity and run with it.  But god fucking forbid that the invisible voice on the television screen let you think that that’s their decision to make.  Heaven forfend that this be viewed as some kind of personal issue not slave to the whims of a narrow-minded assumption-heavy society.

Even their own fucking sum-up, somewhat unfortunately reproduced verbatim at gaynz.com, should’ve clued someone in to the fact this was a phenomenally offensive fucking idea (misgendering pronouns edited; note Josie’s mother uses correct pronouns):

One of the children followed is Josie. At the age of just six, [her] determination to be a girl was causing [her] behaviour to become erratic.

“As soon as we’d even praise her using a male pronoun she would just lose it,” says Josie’s mother, Vanessa. “She would throw herself down, she would cry hysterically, I mean the biggest tantrum you could imagine. She ripped the paper off the walls of her bedroom.”

Vanessa goes on to describe some pretty fucking awful attempted self-harm.

So of course it seemed like a fucking spiffing idea to some fucking asshole on the production team to film Josie, and talk to Josie, and be informed by Josie that she is a girl … and then tell the entire fucking world not to believe her.

Fuck you, asshole.

~

*Silver lining:  it gives me great hope for the universe that the top-rated comment on that vid is “thumbs up if you cringe every time they use the wrong fucking pronouns”. Other comments … not so good.