Discomfort is not Danger
and other rebuttals to anti-trans rhetoric
I read a Substack essay that pissed me off and that distracted me from the other post I was writing! Oh well.
I love discovering new writers on Substack, but boy, I hate it when I read an essay I love, subscribe to a Substack, and then I read a new post and get a face full of Surprise TERF. It’s like the worst Jack-in-the-Box ever invented. It makes me feel stupid and I hate it.
The post in question was about a famous author1 who allegedly was “cancelled” for her comments on trans people, which were….not great! Insisting that transgender women must be siloed because they automatically had “male privilege” is… flawed, to say the least.
She is Very Much Not Cancelled, though! She has a new book coming out! However, she declined to further opine on the topic in an interview, and apparently that means she is being “silenced”.
I can tell you what being “silenced” or “cancelled” 2 is not - being a still very successful author who has decided to STFU about one thing.
The people linking to this essay were bringing out Ye Olde Chestnuts such as ”WOMEN SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH BIOLOGICAL MALES IN BATHROOMS AND DRESSING ROOMS”,3 and I keep saying things like “it is extremely unlikely that a trans woman is going to rape you in a bathroom”. There are, indeed, statistics.
I posted this Note a while back, and I am re-posting for posterity:
To review:
A cisgender man does not need to dress up like a woman to attack or rape anyone. 4
Despite inconvenient things like facts and statistics, some women are still compelled to bang on about trans people in bathrooms and changing rooms while our rights are quite literally being taken away, piece by piece. It is also not lost on me that the main ire of TERFs is focused on trans women. Wonder why.
It is also a huge problem that personal comfort levels are being conflated with actual threats to safety.
The perception of safety and actual safety are not the same thing. So yeah, it may make you uncomfortable if a person you have decided is trans is using the bathroom with you. That discomfort has absolutely fuck all to do with your actual safety. I am uncomfortable in lots of situations, but that doesn’t mean I am necessarily in danger. When in doubt you can always just….leave the restroom? There are things called doors!
You do not have the right to throw other people under the bus for your own personal comfort. Your “feminism” isn’t a free pass to discriminate and spread falsehoods about trans people. Free speech means you cannot be jailed for expressing yourself. It does not mean that people can’t think you are an asshole.
Here in the US, the GOP is trying to literally erase trans people. You should care even if you don’t know a single trans person, but I understand it’s hard to get people to care about things that don’t affect them. And so, I will repeat what I have been saying for years - if you think that because you’re a cis woman this doesn’t apply to you, you are dead wrong. And if you don’t live in the US and think this doesn’t apply to you, you are also dead wrong.
Our fight for bodily autonomy and to be treated like human beings with dignity and respect is the SAME FIGHT as the one being fought by our trans siblings. All of this is a sneak preview of what they want to do to cis women, gay people, etc. It’s all right there in Project 2025, which apparently no one read. And they’re doing it by the book.
They may not be coming for you first, but they are coming.
Maybe use your precious speech to fight the cisgendered white men who are trying to kill us all. Just a thought.
I personally have enjoyed this author’s work and knew nothing about these comments until recently. Disappointing.
If I see one more idiot claim JK Rowling was “cancelled” I am going to fucking scream. She could wipe her butt with $100 bills every day and never run out of money. I mean, she is cancelled TO ME, but I didn’t like her shitty wizard books anyway.
Can we please stop using the word Male and Female as nouns because they are fucking adjectives when you are talking about human beings grrrrr.
I blame The Silence of the Lambs for some of this. REMINDER: Buffalo Bill was not a bad person because he wore women’s clothing and makeup. Buffalo Bill was a bad person BECAUSE HE MURDERED WOMEN SO HE COULD MAKE SKIN SUITS OUT OF THEM.
10/10 no notes
I cannot CANNOT understand this “dressing room and bathroom” carry on. You have NO FUCKING CLUE who you’re sharing a bathroom with! IT ALREADY DOESN’T MATTER!! Dressing rooms, who the fuck cares!! Again, IT ALREADY DOESN’T MATTER. I bet a zillion dollars these people have shared bathrooms and dressing rooms, they just didn’t know. Nothing fucking happens when you share space with trans people. Everyone just keeps living their lives. It’s not like trans people suddenly cropped up like mushrooms, they were already there before these idiots decided to have a flock of canaries over them. Go jump in cold water and settle the fuck down, anti trans globs.