241 Comments
Apr 21, 2023Liked by David Farrier

Thanks for talking about this. I live in Scotland where the far right tested trans folks as a wedge issue they can use and unfortunately it took off very well. I'm non-binary transmasc but I'm too scared to be out beyond my close friends and online pals. It hurts my soul, but I just don't feel safe. I can't access trans healthcare anyway so it feels pointless. Trans people are a breath away from having all of our rights taken away with amendments put forward to the equality act which currently keeps us safe

The US is absolutely in the throes of creeping trans genocide and it's heartbreaking and angering and so horrific to witness from the outside, I cannot imagine how awful it must be to be living it

Sorry that was a big outpouring but there's not really many places where people can talk about this stuff and not get waves of harassment, like your twitter mentions that weekend

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"If you want to host a summit for every misogynist in the country at short notice, tweet something nice about trans people. Upon hitting send, every man who spent the last six years posting sexist memes of Jacinda Ardern will materialise in your mentions blathering about how you’re a woman hater."

omg too real.

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One of the many irrationalities in anti Trans discource is the conflation of so called single sex spaces ie public toilets, with places for conversations between women about women's lived experiences. The only time I've heard those conversations happen in public toilets is very drunk and very late at night.

And any time I've talked with a trans or non binary person about my life as a Cis woman, we've shared far more empathy and common experience than I do with Cis men.

Anyway Natalie Wynn's new contrapoints video critiquing the witch trials of j k Rowling breaks the so called debate down exceptionally clearly. One part, with reference to Andrea dworkins book 'Right wing women' unpacks how for anti Trans women, Trans people are the safe outsiders to attack, because to acknowledge that the greater threat to womens safety is most likely their Cis het husbands, boyfriends, fathers or bosses is unbearable.

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Apr 21, 2023Liked by David Farrier

Reality check radio? What utter bullshit. Although, if they mean reality check in the way of a coat check, then yeh, they left reality at the doorstep of the radio station. It's all horrific and it makes me so angry. I wish people would just fuck off out of other people's business, fuck off with projecting their own judgement onto other people, fuck off thinking they are better than other people and just generally fuck off with the notion of "other". It also terrifies me that the rise of fascism is what we are actually seeing, and our general apathy towards voting will allow it through the gates into political power.

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This whole thing is such nonsense. I just find myself quoting that huffpo headline over and over again: I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People.

This all reminds me of my terrible experience this past Saturday. I'm a big horror movie fan and I usually go see any movie that comes out, regardless of supposed quality, with my father if he's free and Saturday I took him to see WHAT I THOUGHT was a new horror flick, Nefarious. Watch the trailer, it looks run of the mill psychological horror. And it was definitely scary, just not in the way I imagined. The premise is that a man on death row claims he's a demon and a psychiatrist has to evaluate him to prove he's not insane. The man says the psychiatrist will perform three murders before he leaves that day. Cool, I'm in. There WAS a weird trailer beforehand that was about people taking "our" guns and I was ready to complain after the film but I should have just left then. So, the first "murder" was that the psychiatrist's mom died via physician assisted suicide. I live in Oregon and someone I know was passing via that literally as I sat in the theater so that felt really bad but people can be weird about it so I let it pass. The second "murder" was that the psychiatrist's girlfriend was getting an abortion that day. And then he just started spouting untrue "facts" about abortions, "facts" I recognized from right wing Christian talking points. He then started going on about the liberal media and I turned to my dad and went "This movie is making me very uncomfortable and I would like to leave." So we did (my dad, in true dad fashion, was fine with leaving because 'it was very boring and I was falling asleep.') Googled it on the way home and it's by Christian filmmakers and we apparently walked out before the Glen Beck cameo. I'm still mad I spent money on this film and how the marketing felt like a trick. But that's how it all works, isn't it? They dress it up like it's normal, like it's a thing you know, and then they get under your skin.

I took my dad to see The Pope's Exorcist two days later to make up for it and Russell Crowe rode a Vespa from Rome to Castille so at least there was that.

Sorry for the ridiculously long comment. I'm so sorry about the strep. I had a horrible case back in 2010 and it is the worst. I hope you feel better soon!

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Apr 22, 2023Liked by David Farrier

16 odd years ago, I met the love of my life. We were engaged within 15 days and married a couple of years later. 5 years ago we had a conversation while doing our workday lunchtime walk. That day, which was pink shirt day btw, she told me that she is a transgender woman. My response was "cool, we'd better go clothes shopping then!" In what was possibly the fastest transition in history, she socially transitioned within 72 hours of that conversation 🤣

I didn't care then and still don't now; I love her with all of my being. She's now 60 and I'm 55. We're just 2 old biddies wanting to live our lives. The only 'grooming' we do is on our little toy poodle Dougal FFS. She is absolutely no danger to anyone at all and just wants to be able to live her life in the way that she wants, without hurting a single other person. How is that so fucking terrible?

The rhetoric that is now in place is so bloody scary; seeing the insanity shipped verbatim from UK/US is mind blowing. The only conclusion to their trajectory IS genocide. I despair at the likes of Plonkit, AOB et al; do they see where their words are leading? Do they care?

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Apr 21, 2023Liked by David Farrier

I'm grateful to live in New Zealand. While the far right is scary in its transphobia, so far I'm fortunate that my experience of transphobia has largely been subtle not direct and violent. I feel for trans women who are the target of violence more often than trans men like myself are. I can slip into the background with the majority of people not realising I'm trans. Most people don't look past the beard. I felt sad when I saw a flyer for Reality Check Radio in my letterbox (conveniently ignoring the no advertising sign). Peter Williams and Paul Brennan are talented broadcasters. It's so sad they went down the rabbit hole.

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Apr 21, 2023Liked by David Farrier

Thanks for this, Hayden hits the nail on the head. I was raging, absolutely raging, during the whole Posey Parker fiasco. The ludicrous statements made by the antitrans brigade claiming to want to protect women, to be working in women's best interests, made me yell at the television on several occasions. Where are these people when a teenage girl gets stalked and seriously sexually assaulted by a man who followed her to her home and chased her into a park? Where are these people when a man rapes and murders a woman with Down syndrome going for her daily walk? Where are these people when a mother is raped and murdered on her way home from work at the hospital? I was born in 1972 and spent my teenage years in the 80s in Auckland. I was sexually harrassed on numerous occasions in numerous settings - in cafes, on public transport, outside art galleries, just standing at a fucking pedestrian crossing - I was sexually assaulted twice, once aged 16 and again aged 18. Guess who the perpetrators were? Hint: not trans men, not trans women. I have only ever been attacked and made to feel unsafe by hetero cisgender men. I remember the days of Alfies nightclub in Auckland and the feeling of safety therein, with the drag queens on the door effectively seeing off any drunken harassers who might try to follow you inside. As a cisgender woman I can only say thank you to the whole rainbow community for always making me feel loved and cared for and safe and for giving me some of the best friendships of my life. To my transgender neice I just want to say, be your beautiful, authentic self and fuck the naysayers, they know nothing. Let them choke on their own ignorance and prejudice

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Apr 21, 2023Liked by David Farrier

I'm trans non-binary, AFAB, and my parents are anti trans. They won't talk to me now. And they refused to even engage with me on the topic, so I don't even understand where they're coming from. They are religious, but I'm not sure exactly what they've been listening to or watching to pick up this idea. It breaks my heart and leaves me fearful. I do fear that one day I'll walk into the women's public toilets which I've used all my life, and get challenged because I don't look feminine enough. It's a scary future for those of us who just want to be our authentic selves.

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Apr 21, 2023Liked by David Farrier

Thanks for this. One of the main issues I have with the terfs is their hypocrisy. I am a former sex worker, which means I grew up with Queens (trans sex workers), all working to get money to be able to transition. The Queens would all talk about the married cis men clients. These men would say things like what a good Christian they are (I used to tease some of my clients about that). I believe that it will be these same men who were clients of Queens who will do all the ranting and raging about terf stuff.

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'Now mainly preoccupied with making sure all the doodles and vaginas are in their preferred locations ahead of the apocalypse.'

Best line. It really is bizarre that post pandemic, heading for extinction level event with climate change or the possibility of nuclear war, all they want is to check ya vag is in the right place before we all die anyway.

How will they police it if trans women can't use a public toilet? Will they have the gestapo waiting outside the toilet asking people to lift their skirts or drop their pants to check genital status? Where does it end? Will they not let me in if I haven't tidied up down there for a while? Will there be a 'clean' area and a 'dirty' area where women who haven't been 'ruined' by childbirth are separated from the rest of us?

Who's the pedophile now, fuckers?

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Apr 21, 2023Liked by David Farrier

David, I'm so sorry you have Strep, I hope those antibiotics are doing a proper job of fixing you up.

I have been watching the trans-phobia rachet up th last few years, and it's becoming ridiculous. I don't know why some people can't just let others be who they are. Even in our own family (my nephew is trans) people can't get their heads around it. I say "there's nothing to get your head around! it's not your life, just be happy they are happy" but it's like banging your head against a brick wall, because they believe it's fundamentally wrong. Haters always look to cast blame on parents, on 'misguided' society, on not being able to 'council your own children' (but they really mean conversion therapy) on wokeness, like being kind and accepting to and of each other is a bad thing. I was beguinning to think the world was going to move foward, but if course that won't happen until we get dragged backwards again through all of the shit. I really hope we can move past this. Big love to all my Trans webworm fam out there, I hope you are safe❤️

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One of the narratives I've been hearing from the anti-vaxx, anti-trans mob (what IS the collective noun for them btw?) is around the 'pure body' theory. They believe by not having been vaccinated, they've become a special class of what they call 'pure bloods'. The whole reason for the lunacy surrounding Baby Will and his need for a life-saving blood transfusion... but only if that blood came from an anti-vaxxer's veins.

Now the focus is on being a 'pure' or 'real' woman. Trans men don't seem to feature as much as trans women in their world, and nor do intersex people. Go figure. And it goes further. They believe the purpose of The Great Reset is to turn human beings into machines and they can this Trans Humanism. It started with the chips we had inserted into us via the Covid vaccination, next is changing our gender and the final stage is to have machines surgically transplanted into us. And all of it is funded by Big Pharma, left-wing governments and reptilian overlords.

But the thing that disturbs this feminist the most is that awful ideology of the pure or perfect woman. It denies the reality of the diversity of all women, non-binary, and intersex folks. It sets a standard by which women must adhere to in order to be defined as a woman. It's body shaming, patriarchal bullshit at best and eugenics at its worst.

I wonder where this will land and I feel so deeply for trans and non-binary communities who just want to live a quiet life.

I'm just glad to know I'm on the right (left?) side of history in this and I so appreciate this platform and your work, David to know there are many of us.

Kia kaha

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Apr 21, 2023Liked by David Farrier

I firmly believe that there is a high level management of these discourses going on by people with access to serious concentrations of political power. There is a lot to be gained and lost in an election year and the centre-right and right here in NZ have form.

An equal and opposite conspiracy orientation, if you like.

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Nothing makes my day worse than reading a Webworm guest post on a vital issue that’s intelligent, funny and timely. I wince at every well-made point, and laugh at the jokes through gritted teeth.

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Apr 21, 2023Liked by David Farrier

This is my colleague’s sister - massively into conspiracy theories during covid lockdown and now suddenly abandoning all of that to focus with a similar intensity on genitals.

In the words of my colleague: “She’s really fucking gullible”.

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