There was a local byelection in Hackney yesterday, necessary because one of the existing Labour councillors had been elected as mayor there earlier. And that election had been necessary because the existing mayor turned out to be shacking up with a convicted pedo. A bit of a mess already therefore, which makes it weirder that Hackney Labour decided to double down on the weird sex pest angle by putting forth a transphobe as candidate who compared trans women to actors doing blackface. When that surfaces, she got suspended, then unsuspended again just the day before the election. How that worked out? About as well as you could expect.
It shows once again how transphobia plays on the doorstep: badly. Ordinary voters just do not care for the sort of obsessive weirdo who likes ‘womanface’ memes. It’s the hight of Labour arrogance to think that they could stand this canidate when the Tories had as theirs a well respected ex-LibDem councillor with actual ties to the local community. And with Labour nationally also seemingly embracing transphobia, this may be a sign that the parliamentary elections next year may be a lot closer than they expect…
Christian music doesn’t have to be hateful or suck, as Flamy Grant here proves:
It’s sent her to the top of the charts which means there are a lot of Christians out there not afraid of inclusion. As she puts it:
“I think one of the reasons my song resonated with people is because people are tired of all the religious gatekeeping, and ‘Good Day’ is an anthem of inclusion,” she said.
She continued: “I’m so grateful to everyone who is sharing my music, and I hope it does a small part to drown out the message of exclusion and disgust for queer people that has come to be a defining marker of conservative American Christianity.”
In a world where it often seems Christianity is just a synonym for bigotry, it’s good to see inclusion win.
A hymn written by Jay Hulme for the Transgender Day of Remembrance (today, 20th November), music by Yshani Perinpanayagam, performed by St. Wulfram’s Church Choir. It was written to “provide a traditionally-written and classically-composed hymn to enable Anglican (and other) choirs to make a musical contribution to that day within a traditional idiom” as churches increasingly hold services on this day. Jay Hulme, himself a trans man has also written on Twitter on the purpose of holding a Transgender Day of Remembrance service as a Christian church:
That’s the core of a TDoR service. Trans people are dying, often because of a social climate that has been ignored or approved by Christians.
The job of a Church is to create a safe space for people to mourn and rage and lament, not to justify our religion and their place in it.
An atheist myself, but there’s a deep comfort in seeing at least some people within the Christian faith to make these attempts to be inclusive. Seeing how their faith gives people like Hulme the strength to fight for a better world gives me joy and hope.
Them: Hello, I’m sorry, this is going to sound weird but please give me a chance. When you were eighteen, did you have a childhood friend named Carli that you lost contact with after you left to go to college?
Scrum is a short documentary directed by Isabelle Alan about trans people playing rugby and the attempts to bar them from doing so.
I like the attitude of one of the woman players when told about the possibility of playing with a trans team mate. That at first she was like, no, no way but shortly realised that it’s the twentyfirst century and just had to get herself over it. That’s how most normal people respond; it may all seem a bit scary or weird in the abstract, but when confronted with the reality of it most people soon just accept it? Not everybody of course, there is a loud minority of assholes who want nothing more than to drive every trans person from sports and public life in general, but they are a minority.
The whole issue of how the transes are invading our sacred womens sport is such transparant bollocks, isn’t it? Whenever you see some crybaby cis woman whinging that her place was stolen, it’s always some grade a loser who never stood a chance in the first place. Best example was the skateboarder who as it turned out came in 34th out of 36 in the competition she complained about, with even eight year olds beating her. When the only way you came claim second place or higher is if there’s only two riders, it’s hilarious to blame it on trans women. Stop whining, git gud.
The truth is that there very few trans people competing on a level that matters, that the very very few elite trans athletes are not noticably or at all better than their cis competitors and that all of this is just another moral panic to pave the way for trans genocide. Even if being a trans woman gave you an advantage over cis competitors, so fucking what? Nobody is going to transition just to medal and so like with the bathroom panic, you’re left with the idea that some cis bloke will just pretend to be a trans woman. As if any cis male athlete good enough to compete with top female athletes isn’t better off just joining the regular mens competitions.
As with a lot of transphobes’ obsessions, the thin veneer of ‘feminism’ painted over it barely hides the reactionary core behind it. Ultimately transphobes seem to believe men are so much better at everything than women, that any random bloke can just waltz into an elite female competition and win. That core belief that women are frail, vulnerable creators which need to be protected and sheltered in their own spaces from the violent male world is at the heart of what we call terfdom, the fear that men are so much better than women that they would even make for better women. You can call it many things, but you cannot call it feminism.
