IN any other time, and I suspect to many even now, the poster that has been banned on Edinburgh buses would have seemed unremarkable, if not baffling. For the words it carried were nothing other than a dictionary definition of woman. “Woman. Noun. Adult human female.” What made it worth banning, though, is where it came from and the part it performed in a wider online message – which was anti-trans. This is often the case with contentious speech now. It’s not about the words themselves, but the context.
The poster, in other words, was just the tip of an iceberg, floating in a sea of identity politics. Under that ocean's surface was the larger mass of the politics of its creator, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who has campaigned against gender-neutral toilets and trans access to women’s spaces and said that trans women are not women. She had chosen Edinburgh buses for their display as a reaction to the recent Scottish Government bus poster: “Dear transphobes, Do you think it’s right to harass people in the street? Right to push transgender people around in clubs? ... Well we don’t.”
The fight over who counts as a woman and where they may count as such – few, as yet, are really all that bothered about who counts as a man – is not one that is going to go away soon. There are good reasons for this, and I’m not going to deny they exist. Among them is the fact that cases have emerged of trans women sexually assaulting cis women, the most infamous of these being that of Karen White, who entered a female prison as transgender, though still legally male, and sexually assaulted two other inmates.
But awful as these stories are, the increasing ferocity of the feminist fight against trans people doesn’t seem, to me, to reflect the degree of risk. We can find shocking individual stories around all contentious issues. Women are in danger of fixating on trans women as if they were their chief threat – when really the biggest threat to women is, quite simply, men, who don’t need to wangle their way into toilets or prisons to find ways to abuse or assault.
How to counter that wider problem is the far bigger issue to tackle. It should also be added that the biggest physical threat to trans women is men.
That feminists and trans activists have got caught up in a dirty war over gender identity is not really a reflection on the degree of threat trans women cause to women, but the intensity of the tribal culture that has emerged over recent years in identity politics. It’s the way our heated culture now operates. As shocking as attacks by feminists on trans activists are, equally, if not more, shocking is the misogyny sometimes emitted by the trans community.
Take a step back and it’s possible to see that this as just one of many current tribal disputes in the world of identity politics – whether over race, gender or class. Women, here, are defending their safe spaces.
Many do feel a real threat from trans women – and one that relates to their own experience of abuse or violence from men. But while we fixate on the threat, there is frequently insufficient empathy for the struggle of trans people – just as sometimes the trans community shows too little for the lived experience of those born and raised woman.
Do any of us really want to argue against the sentiments of that "Dear Transphobes" poster? And, couldn't we equally create a version that begins: “Dear Misogynists?”
It seems to me we need a wider, empathetic, "We don't", that reaches beyond the pain of our own tribe. What worries me is that this trans panic is triggered mostly by a tribalist fear of those who are different.
We need to hold many things in our head as we search for answers – the need to protect girls, support for the women who feel or are unsafe, and empathy for the trans person whose journey I believe remains far harder than those of most gender-conforming women.
Sadly that’s not happening – for these are days of tribal rule.
A BIG, FAT INSULT
ONE of the things I’ve long railed against is the way many people, who are otherwise politically correct, talk about fat people. I say that as someone who comes from a family inclined to a certain corporeal largesse. I say it as someone who occasionally looks down at my own layers of fat and senses the way those cultural attitudes are channelling through me.
So it’s no surprise to read that, according to a World Obesity Forum survey, weight is the most common form of discrimination in the UK, above race and gender. This only shows how much we hate our own uncontrolled flesh. If you’re not ripped or skinny, you haven’t fought today’s good, but ultimately amoral, fight.
No wonder this is impacting on the mental health of many, especially girls. But fat is just human cells. Too much of it may not be that great for our health, but many things are not.
I’m not going to say fat is beautiful, any more than skinny is beautiful. My point is, more, that it’s clearly wrong to demonise people for having bodies that are mostly an expression of our calorie-laden culture or the biology they’ve been bequeathed.
My point is that when you hear fat phobic comments you should call them out.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel