PJI – GenderTerror

Recently a petition was posted online on Change.org asking for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to list Gender Identity Watch as a hate group. For those who are unfamiliar, the SPLC lists active hate groups across the United States as well as tracks hate movements. Gender Identity Watch is a website owned and run by Cathy Brennan, and other notorious TERFs. This site, along with several others, posts trans women along side rapists and murders. Writer note: I do not link to GIW and so on because they IP log in order to harass and stalk.

The SPLC responded to the petition, signed by over 7,000 people, saying they were unable to list Gender Identity Watch as a hate group because it fails to match their definition of a group. While a shaky response, it is the response that was suspected, considering that the owner of the group, Cathy Brennan, has been used as a source for the SPLC before. This response falls a part under critical evaluation for several reasons, one including the fact that Gender Identity Watch is a part of a much larger group of websites (such as Pretendbians) that actively attack trans* people, especially trans women. Also, the website is also just a poster child for an even bigger problem within the community, something that creates these websites and vicious trans*phobia, transmisogyny, and cissexism, Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs).

Continue reading “Southern Poverty Law Center: TERFs are a hate group”

This piece is going to be relatively short. I am tired of the trope that trans women are harassing or a potential danger to cis women in washrooms, locker rooms, and other semi-private spaces. This piece on TransAdvocate by Zinnia Jones goes into wonderful detail about how the idea of trans women being a threat to cis women is an entirely imaginary harm. I want to slightly expand on her example, and make it more broad, encompassing how some cis women believe trans women are inherently a threat to them.

Chrissy Lee Polis was beaten to the point of having a seizure at a McDonald’s in Maryland. Her assailants were cis women. Polis’s crime? Trying to use the bathroom.

This teen girl was videotaped being beaten by a group of cis women at her school. Her crime? Being trans*.

Then there is the young girl who is currently being singled out by the Pacific Justice Institute. She has been pushed to the brink of suicide due to the lies being pushed by the organization. In fact, PJI went as far as to manufacture complaints about her harassing cis women in the locker room, which has been proven to be untrue.

These are just a few examples. However, I know the argument of “they should just use the men’s room instead” if cis women are under such a threat. Well… Let’s talk about that, shall we?

Continue reading “Bathrooms and Prejudice”