WHO ARE YOU REALLY ALIGNING WITH?

I remember my Year Eleven Modern History Textbook saying something that rang in my head like the first verse of Roxette’s Listen To Your Heart (Cascade covered it later). The line was, “But that love falls apart.” The line from my history textbook was about the tenuous alliance between the USA and Russia to defeat Nazism soon fell apart after the end of the war. The difference between the Yalta and Potsdam conferences saw Franklin D. Roosevelt deceased and succeeded by the less conciliatory Harry Truman, Winston Churchill defeated and replaced by Clement Attlee, but Josef Stalin still in place. This was the birth of the Cold War.

We have seen a great deal of anti-trans rhetoric in the past months, some of which has emanated from Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. Just like communism (or more accurately totalitarianism) and capitalism are diametrically opposed, feminism and extreme conservatism are chalk and cheese. Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists are lining up beside people who oppose abortion (never forget that the orange haired fool who was sued by E. Jean Carroll and is facing 34 indictments in New York wanted to see Roe vs. Wade abolished and wind back protections for transgender folk) and generally oppose feminism. They are forming a tenuous alliance.

Much of the anti-trans diatribe is based around falsehoods and extreme examples to make a political point. Yes, there have been a FEW cases of male sex offenders who have emerged as transgender and wanted to be placed in female prisons (there was one in my native Australia, who was denied the right) but the vast majority of transwomen who want access to women’s spaces want access to women’s spaces to be accepted as, well, women.

I remember from my own days at school, I wish I had been given a special pass to use the staff toilets as going to the toilet at school was hell! I was assigned male at birth and I had one boy tell me that I should have been in the girls’ toilet and after being sexually harassed by some boys, I would go into the cubicle to pee and I remember one day, a group of boys coming in and spitting water at me over the walls of the cubicle. Had I been able to identify as who I really am back then, and been accepted, I would have been far happier.

Aligning with fascists and extremists for feminists is an alliance of dental floss that will break and see them oppose each other. Instead of critical thought being considered opposing for the sake of opposing, people need to ask, if I take that position, and why, just who am I REALLY aligning myself with?