“I shouted at you but no assault”
More on the Manchester Pride bullying via JL at the Glinner Update:
Alexander Braham was at Manchester Pride, wearing a hat and t-shirt bearing the LGB Alliance logo. While he was attending a march to protest cuts to LGB+ charities, his hat was stolen and he was abused and attacked to such an extent that police had to remove him for his own safety.
All over Twitter, people were congratulating themselves that a gay man was subjected to this violent and abusive behaviour and forced to leave a Pride event.
It seems that April Preston was one of the ringleaders. She is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Withington in the forthcoming local council elections and a member of the Lib Dem Federal Board.
Preston’s Twitter is currently locked.
Earlier this year she authored an open letter about trans rights in which she stated, “Any suggestion that trans women be segregated or restricted on the basis of their trans identity is a transphobic one… Trans women have the same right to exist in women’s spaces as any other woman.”
Her concern for ‘marginalised women’ clearly doesn’t extend to the women in prison, the women in domestic violence refuges or the women in rape crisis centres who desperately need single-sex spaces. Nor does it extend to the women whose faith or culture makes it impossible for them to share intimate spaces with males.
Not to mention the women who just don’t fucking want to, which I think is probably around 99% of us.
Preston is a coward and should be voted out of office.
** AM I THE ASSHOLE? HERE’S ONE NEAT TRICK TO FIND OUT!**
Reverse the situation. Imagine it’s a LGB parade and the person being “shouted at” and hounded out of the parade is transgender.
Pretty cool, huh?
Domino, I wouldn’t consider cowardice to be disqualifying, if it were frank. Perhaps it could reduce the number of idiotic wars.
But Preston is a bully, a liar, and a homophobe, and those qualities should be disqualifying.
One has to wonder if the women shouting that Trans women have the same right to exist in women’s spaces as any other woman” have ever been forced to share an intimate space with a strange man (and my money would be on no, they most likely have not.)
And to that point, I don’t know of anyone who _enjoys_ disrobing around strangers, even those of the same sex, and even those people who have not suffered the trauma of rape or abuse. It’s been an unavoidable part of life to a large degree so far, but it’s always been awkward and uncomfortable (particularly in high school: I was incredibly embarrassed showering with other boys after gym, and cannot even begin to imagine how the girls would have felt if we boys had been required to shower with them; that age and self-confidence are not two things that go together). My point being that normal people don’t loudly argue to get naked around others sort of in general, and normal people certainly don’t shout and scream that it’s some fundamental right to be around me or anyone else when we are undressed.
Sort of gives the game away, right?
The Urban Dictionary entry for “Drop Me Out” is from 2005 so I wonder if the meaning is the same. The definition is that it is a response either to a lie, or to something that someone else has said which is not credible.
However, “The definition of assault varies by jurisdiction, but is generally defined as intentionally putting another person in reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact. Physical injury is not required.” So, he didn’t need to be physicall attacked, and Ms. Preston is incorrect. There was an assualt (at least by U.S. definition.)
One purpose of Pride festivals was originally so that gays and lesbians could be out in public in defiance of assault, and we’ve come full circle. Not only are straight people claiming the word Queer, it’s no longer safe to be gay at Pride.
God, what a nasty circle that turns out to be.
Same nasty circle as with women: men claiming the word woman (and in this case, not allowing women to use it in any unapproved manner!). No longer safe to be a woman at women’s prisons or women’s shelters.
Some days I just wish the world would go away.
I think we’re already working on that.