Rule 1: Equality Network are a Scottish organisation, and the article makes several mentions of Scotland-specific issues

by Cold-Monitor3800

14 comments

  1. Rebecca Don Kennedy runs the Equality Network. She talks candidly to our Writer at Large about the attacks, abuse and hate she’s suffered campaigning for trans people

    WHEN Dr Rebecca Don Kennedy got married last year, a worrying notion was lurking in the back of her mind. “I was thinking,” she says, “it’s not far-fetched these days that somebody might turn around and say ‘that’s not a real marriage’.”

    Kennedy is a lesbian. As the head of Scotland’s Equality Network, which campaigns for LGBT rights, she believes the atmosphere in this country around equality issues has deteriorated so drastically that marriages like her own – to her wife who is a nurse – are now open to being questioned or seen by some as illegitimate.

    Kennedy, who became CEO of the Equality Network last year, joined as a volunteer in 2017 after finishing her PhD. It was a different time, she says. “Things were moving forward. People supported progress and LGBTI people. Scottish people wanted a world where people felt safer and more secure. We were continuing down a track of progress.”

    Then, in 2018, matters began changing, she says, with the issue of gender reform targeted initially online. “Twitter groups popped up. We started to see a real increase in hate, and the return of old, bigoted tropes around queer people being dangerous, being perverts, being groomers.”

    Kennedy says many of the voices raised against gender reform “weren’t concerned broadly with women’s rights”. Today, compared to 2017, “it feels like we’re living in a different world. The window has shifted”.

    Those who were “outliers” and seen as “irrational, anti-progress and anti-rights” moved from the “fringe” to dominate mainstream debate. “What’s alarmingly clear now is that they came as part of a package and part of a movement that’s a US import that’s anti-progress, anti-rights and anti-women’s rights.”

    It was around 2018 that Kennedy, by then a policy officer for the Equality Network, began raising her voice in defence of trans people. It resulted in the first of countless “horrific social media pile-ons” where she was attacked en masse. “It was just awful. I was referred to as a groomer. People were saying things like ‘check her hard drive’. It was such old-fashioned, homophobic rhetoric that was now being reapplied to anybody who supported the rights of trans people.”

    Kennedy, a feminist who has campaigned for women’s rights throughout her life, started to be called a “misogynist”.

    “As a woman, who has been harmed by men and suffered prejudice, discrimination and misogyny, why would I fight for trans rights if I thought it was impacting women’s rights in a negative way? I wouldn’t. It’s frustrating people don’t recognise that. It’s exhausting. I’ve had to become very strong and desensitise myself to the things people say about me and my organisation. I’ve developed a really thick skin.

  2. For other people possibly misreading the emphasis of the headline, she’s confirming that trans rights do not infact conflict with cis women’s rights.

  3. TERFs would do well to put their hate aside and listen to people like this woman.

    Every time they attack the rights of trans people they should know they are hurting rights for everyone, themselves included.

  5. Despite not being mentioned by name, the usual lot are already threatening to sue

  6. good thing trans rights impact don’t impact our rights as women in any way what so ever.

  8. Given the recent Press complaining about foreign influence in politics (Iran and Sottish Independence) – I wonder how much foreign influence there has been over this issue.

    It has attracted a huge amount of attention, press and attacks against the SNP.

  10. They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing

  11. The problem that trans people have is bad actors..

    These bad actors are in fact guys who identify as women to get into women’s only spaces to infact target women..

    And now you also have the ones who commit serious crimes, who all of a sudden identify as women to be put into women’s prisons.. like for example the recent case of the guy who violently raped 2 women..

    Also look into the Irish case of the thing.. Barbie and yes I say thing, this was someone who was a very high risk to women.. and this barbie was put in isolation not for its safety but for the other women prisoners safety..

  12. Good thing it doesn’t, except in the mind of the deranged lawfarers at Sex Matters.

  13. talk about hurting yourself for no reason.

    Yes this is implicit in all positions of authority when it comes to equality, the entire job is to balance the advocacy of civil rights for multiple different groups without allowing a civil rights push from one group to begin actively damaging any other.

    But why the hell would you say the quiet part out loud? the moment you do you frame the two groups as oppositional and depending on how you phrase the sentence frame yourself as the opposition to a given movement or group. All you do by putting a statement like this out is undermine your own position

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