I was shocked to find out that trans acceptance is actually much more common in the UK than thr US. Their ruling and media classes are just absolutely insane about trans people.
I think it just comes down to the difference in how transphobia is delivered and manifested in the respective countries.
In the US the transphobia is being delivered more on social media and interpersonal relationships local religious communities ect. Not only are these people not article heads they also don't need to couch their transphobia is pseudo feminist rhetoric so really all it takes is a 30 second clip of charlie Kirk or a meme generator image of homer Simpson.
The weird thing about the UK is that the liberals are much more transphobic.
In the US it's mostly just conservatives who obsessively hate trans people, with most US liberals falling somewhere between apathy/cowardice and being genuinely supportive. Thus the name "TERF island"
I'm told the reason that TERF Island is like that is that there was never an equivalent to the Combahee River Collective and other black feminists that forced American feminism to reckon with it's class position and become more intersectional. British feminism stayed mostly confined to the middle class and reflects the interests of the middle class.
I don't know to what extent, if any, that's true, but that's the explanation I've heard for why some strands of American feminism are relatively more inclusive and intersectional compared to British feminism.
Transphobia's main drivers are always fundamentalist campaign groups utilizing reactionaries in journalism and academia. The latter feel threatened by their boomer brains not being able to keep up with the progressives any longer, who then gladly latch on to the fundie campaigns as they are the only milieu that will listen to them. The fundies then use these intellectuals and pundits like Jordan Peterson, Abigail Shrier, Kathleen Stock, Alice Schwarzer or Alexander Korte as their public face to lend their insane demands an air of secular rationality. You can observe that anywhere in the imperial core, the US just happens to be home to some of the biggest and most well-funded anti-LGBT and anti-feminist campaigners and has a vast network of multipliers thanks to the world's biggest PR ecosystem of cryptofash fundraisers, megachurches preaching reactionary ideology, astroturfed online communities, rightwing think tanks and the accompanying media outlets. They have the entire consent manufacturing apparatus of the GOP behind them.
So the purely elitist project of transphobia has an easier time actually reaching the masses in the US than in materially comparable regions like Canada, the UK or in continental western Europe, simply because Amerikans are the most propagandized people on Earth. Of course they show more people falling for an artificial movement like this, as was also the case with the Tea Party etc. Without a sufficient amount of propaganda exposure, most people may be unaware of and indifferent to trans issues and not know how to deal with us respectfully, but they are usually not actively resentful, they're just uninformed. You have to misinform them to hate us. Just as you actively have to misinform people to create the culture of homophobia that was slowly eroding before the recent reactionary backlash. People do not feel this resentful naturally, they are made to feel like it. They are groomed.
Of course, transphobes do the usual right wing trick and completely invert this reality by inventing a powerful trans lobby that wants to make children unnaturaly tolerant of LGBT people, when in reality the normal reaction of children when they learn there's trans people or gays or w/e is to just shrug and go on with their lives.
I thought there was a divide in Big Feminism between the UK and US, US being pro personal freedom and the UK being gender totalitarian.
But you're saying that in the general population, there's something like a higher rate of pro-personal freedom per GDP in the UK than in the US?
It's a relatively loose metric (would you accept a transgender family member), but the difference in affirmative responses is like 15 points. Around 57% in the US versus 71% in the UK.
https://www.lgbtqandall.com/recent-poll-determines-americans-are-less-likely-to-support-lgbtq-family-than-other-countries/
Mormonism, Evangelical Christian Fascism, and various other religious movements exert extreme control over society at all levels in some regions.
you can also go private in the uk if you have the means, at which point it's just like america, but cheaper
i haven't actually met anyone who went private for trans stuff either, but an e-celeb i like did with the help of a kickstarter
not sure if she was with BUPA, but she definitely went private
Yeah, this is wrong. I know people in the US who've done full medical transitions, including bottom surgery, on medicaid. It's probably different depending on what state you live in.
No, it's wrong, the implication is that any trans person in the US that has access to a medical transition isn't working class is kind of fucked up.
Wealthy people have an easier time of everything everywhere in the world. And it's not bad faith, I'm someone who works with an organization that devotes a great deal of time and effort to ensure that working-class trans people have access to medical care, both transition-related and not, and I feel like your comment puts a wall between those who have access to care and those who do not. This isn't twitter or reddit, I'm not looking for clout or to dunk on you, just to help you realize that comments like that can be alienating to some.
Holding me accountable for my TERF views:geordi-no:
Sex trafficking women:geordi-yes:
Terfs will at this point approve of any amount of mysogyny as long as it comes from somebody as transphobic as them. And by any, i mean any. She's defending somebody who openly bragged about SA on camera.
I swear TERFs entire lives are devoted to hating trans people, like they literally have no other personality, aspirations or hobby.
I strongly suspect a lot of the current push from the UK is astroturfed. The "LGB Alliance" seems to be a completely astroturfed group backed by US Christian Fascists and Tories. It seems to have few if any actual queer people, and shares offices with a lot of horrid right wing Tory associated organizations. Twitter TERFs rely on very similar talking points that are almost certainly part of coordinated campaigns, assuming they're not sockpuppet accounts.
Apparently the specific instance cited was a guy suggesting an elected politican should listen to her constituents more than chatting with JK Rowling 24/7.
wow such anti-sem- uhh misogyny yeah.
like labour is already just red tories, what more do these people want?
Strongest argument in favor of a strongly regulated government press I've ever seen.
This is a big reason why intersectionality, specifically among feminists in this scenario, is really important. If no cis women stand up for trans-women or women of color, then who is going to be left to stand up for cis women when their day in the court of fascism comes?
This is almost certainly Bennett saying that it's misogynist to fight TERFs. The UK TERFs are leaning really, really hard on things like "having an umbrella term like queer is homophobic (I do not know what the logic is, if any) and that defending Trans women is misogynistic.
I hate watch Real Time Bill Maher and Bari Weiss was on saying she is Gay, not Queer, and decrying in her glib and smug way the use of queer as straights stealing valor. Even Bill was like, uh, what about bisexuals and the Kinsey scale.
The leader of the SNP is also a woman, and look who's dismissing her.
Someone please use that TERF algorithm that analyses facial bone structure on this demon. There needs to be a campaign against her.
