lgbqti+ and JK Rowling

Not to take anything away from Marsha P Johnson but by their own admission, they weren't present at the start of the riots (apparently turning up about 2hrs after).

Stormé DeLarverie was a mixed race butch lesbian, her arrest is what essentially kicked everything off. There were accounts of many butch lesbians who fought the police.

They're going to put a monument up for Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera up outside the Stonewall Inn, but not of Stormé DeLarverie.

Not to be that guy.... but how can you support someone when you don’t know their views? It’s like saying you support a politician but don’t know which party they belong to.

The mythologisation of Stonewall and the competition to rewrite what happened is reminiscent of the way in which the execution of a troublesome (to the authorities) rabbi c. 33AD got embodied in a world religion its gospels.

I think there is a strong case to be made for splitting up the LGBT+ coalition into individual campaign and support groups - who work on their own where it is appropriate and who work together when the situation demands.

There is no such thing as the LGBT+ community. There is no uniformity of approach or concern - nor should there be. We should celebrate diversity - not enforce compliance to a new set of 'norms'

What exists is a whole series of different communities with different needs, concerns, agenda, history - sometimes they overlap but more often than not, they don't. And occasionally they conflict.

Working as smaller groups might not have as much 'impact' in the eyes of some - but actually we could provide far better support for the individual communities this way rather than having far too broad a focus.

The focus, for me, should be on diversity - and that includes diversity of opinion. Not freedom to spread hate - but a freedom of expression of ideas, open discourse and discussion. That doesn't exist in the modern LGBT+ world. And we are all poorer as a result.

Ive heard plenty of unprintable stories about him.

REPLY  (I seem to have screwed up the replying mechanism).  You may well be right that women have been at the forefront of setting up the LGBA and that as women they BOTH perceive threats to women as women AND are particularly aware of what appear to be threats to lesbians (apparently, some lesbians have got abuse for refusing to date trans women, and the LGBA thinks young lesbians are particularly liable to persuasion that they are 'really' boys).  But, as I said, to be convincing as a gay rights organisation, the LGBA needs to locate its position on T within a much broader conception of gay rights and gay campaigning.  That would help to defuse the common charge that it's 'just' an anti-trans group.

I think, too, that the emphasis on women's sensibilities ignores men's (though I realise that women are more likely to be victims of violence from men than vice-versa).  Sometimes the idea seems afloat that whereas women are rightly disturbed at male-bodied people in their changing rooms, men are insensitive clods who don't mind female-bodied persons in male changing-rooms.  That idea needs questioning.

My own concerns have two sources.  First, as a gay man, I find it increasingly odd that i should be perpetually glued to trans people as a "LGBT person".  The House of Commons recently went so far as to issue a report on "LGBT health needs", whereas I don't think I share any healthy needs with T that I don't have with the rest of the population.  Moreover, I thought we were getting away from the old stereotype according to which gay men were women on the inside and lesbians thought of themselves as men, but the relentless use of the "LGBT" initialism suggests that gay and trans are fundamentally the same.  I have seen a number of comments outwith the activist bubble which suggest just that misunderstanding.  In the Wolfenden Report of 1957, homosexuals were treated in common with prostitutes; in the 1970s, paedophile groups tried to cloak themselves in the gay movement; then gay people were told that they were to be termed "LGBT people".  Can't we ever just be ourselves?  Some LGBA posts have talked of it as defending the interests of gay people, women and girls, and I worry that "LGBT" is going to be replaced by "LGBW".

Second, as an ex-academic I do find myself seriously doubtful about many of things asserted by trans theorists.  With me, the question, "Is there any reason to think that that is true?" usually bubbles up when I see claims like "Trans women are women" or "A woman is someone who dientifies as a woman."  Some of us do care about truth simpliciter.

I think there was a time when people were much less clear on the crucial difference between gay and trans.  Many gay men seemed to have thought they had to act girly (see, for instance, a mid-century novel like City of Night); perhaps T people somehow felt that they had to think of themselves as basically gay, but with a sort of add-on.  The differences are now clearer.

On issues like shared bathrooms and changing-rooms, I have no fixed views.  In any case, I think the idea that people are happy to strip off in front of their own sex needs to be looked at critically.  Certainly, I loathed communal showers at my all-boy school.  A bigger emphasis on cubicles for all might defuse some of the issues.

On some boards I come across as a defender of T people.  For instance, there is a Roman Catholic poster in The Herald (Glasgow) who repeatedly dismisses T people as mentally ill; I routinely tell him that since he believes that what is empirically bread and wine has the substance of flesh and blood, what was the problem about adapting that metaphysics to accommodate the idea that what is empircally a man might be in substance a woman?

It's a very telling piece - I think for many kids this is the fall-out from the pink and blue aisles toyshops started bringing in about 20 years ago, to the horror of many women, especially feminists (I remember writing to a middle class catalogue I'd been sent for listing nature kits and building toys on pages designated 'for boys' and endless manicure, glitter and beautification crap on the pages 'for girls'.). And I really think the role of fanfiction and fansites hasn't been properly looked into for its role in shaping these teenagers' thinking. I noticed a few years ago that many at the younger end were starting to call themselves 'trans' - my initial thought was, are these particular fandoms very appealing to that group, in the way that Doctor Who had a very gay fandom, but there were so very many that it was clear there was something else going on. And I do think it has a similar pattern to the surge then clampdown on 'pro-ana' sites: chest-binding has come in to fill that space for teenage girls uncomfortable with their changing bodies and the attention and expectations they bring.

Good point.  Someone whose son is now in his thirties told me that when he was a toddler, things like dungarees for kids were unsexed and she and other mothers passed them around to each other as the kids grew.  Then it came to be that there were dungarees with glittery butterflies attached, for girls, and dungarees with racing cars and footballs attached, for boys.  (Patches fceaturing those things, obviously...)

And I can sort of glimpse that, if you were a boy that didn't have much time for conventional boy stuff like footballs and racing cars, you might feel it a bit alien to present yourself in that garb, posing as what you're not, and if you don't distinguish between mere conventions and reality, that could segue into "I'm not a boy."

I'm old enough to remember boys wearing long hair in the 1970s and the number of cries there were of "Looks like a girl."