Thread by Morrigan Whittler - Writing and Politics

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Here's some words on #BriannaGhey from a trans woman living in the UK.

For those of you who don't know, I have a background in politics. And I am so very deeply appalled by it, and the behaviour of #GenderCritical activists, following, that it is important to speak up.
I grew up intersex. I didn't hit puberty until fifteen and, when I did, I had more oestrogen than testosterone. This caused me to grow small breasts and a butt, and I was inappropriately touched a lot. I mention this because, living as a man at the time, it did not effect me much
When I eventually transitioned, and was more outed than came out, it took all of five minutes in public before I was harassed by multiple cis men on bikes, shouting inappropriate comments about my body.

Day-to-day, I pass. And, living as a woman, I've come to realise a lot.
Nothing can truly capture the rage of the oppressed. This I have come to know. It is not anger at specific incidents. It is not anger at emotions. It is anger at the entire weight of the system ever pressing on your neck and the neck of everyone like you.
And when the weight of being a woman pressed on my neck for the first time, when that rage first entered my heart, and only blossomed with age, I came to understand what I had not understood as an ally when I lived as a man.
Mansplaining is constant. Ogling is daily. I am taken less seriously than I was when I lived as a man, doing far superior work. Whether they know I'm trans or not.

I understand I have the gap of not knowing what it's like growing up as a girl, but I know the rage. It's real.
This is how I know that you need to #SayHerName.

Brianna. I am not angry at this one incident. It has ignited the anger in me. It's the same rage, that weight of a system pressing on your neck. Weighing you down, telling you you are less and you know you aren't.
The lack of dignity afforded to Brianna is the same lack of dignity afforded to women of all kinds - that their opinions, their lives, their inner worlds, their reality, their hopes, their potential and their dreams, doesn't matter because the system wasn't made for them. For us.
And so when another useful idiot talks about how 'gender critical' feminists are fighting against that system, recognise that they are pressing their bloody hands on the necks of trans people. And their hands are joining and pushing alongside the other denizens of Tufton Street
What needs to be recognised is that the patriarchal system in which we live only survives because we press down with it. TERFs continue to be the rot at the heart of #feminism and #feminist thought, because they will join hands with fascists and chauvanists to push.
And along the way, they must come to realise that this is all they do - their hands, in pressing on our necks, turn idle. Their hearts and minds, in being so passionate in their hatred, forget the thing pressing on them. Because it feels good to be angry. It feels good to fight.
And unfortunately, we continue to dignify this instinct - that simply being in an oppressed group gives you the right to be hateful in turn. Because at that point, they stop fighting the system, but join in its methods and ultimately, join its side.
And just as it is sexist to use your hands in pushing down women, it is transphobic to do the same for trans people, and homophobic to do the same for gay people.

We ARE the #LGBT community. And we cannot allow ourselves to be astroturfed by the likes of the #LGBA. And if you...
... are cis or straight in any form, realise that the LGBT community is not divided. Recognise that TERFs are the minority. That the majority of transphobes are MEN.

And anyone who has the fucking gall to use Brianna's death doesn't bring out the fury over her... but over...
... the many, many crimes committed against our community. And Brianna is the heartbreaking, cruel victim of the extension of that abuse. Not just in violence, but in words. In the cruelty we are constantly subjected to.

Rest in power, Brianna.
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