It is striking that, throughout history, without exception, oppressed groups fighting for their rights have always been portrayed as abusive, silencing, aggressive and violent.
Their powerful opponents always portray themselves as courageous truth telling martyrs.
Their powerful opponents always portray themselves as courageous truth telling martyrs.
Black people, suffragettes ("terrorists! anarchists!"), feminists ("feminazis"), and of course gay people: all were portrayed as dangerous aggressors. To express entirely mainstream bigoted views about them was portrayed as brave, speaking truth to power, even.
Gay people were presented as sexual predators, brainwashers of children, defying biological reality, as being defined by mental illness, as amounting to a fetish, and as forming an all powerful "gay lobby" (see the screenshot as an example). 
As anti-gay activist Anita Bryant put it, "As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children."
Anti-gay activists would deny bigotry against gay people, often claiming they were just trying to protect children.
Anti-gay activists would deny bigotry against gay people, often claiming they were just trying to protect children.
If there'd been twitter during the gay rights' movements of the 1970s onwards, our opponents would have spent all their time scouring through twitter trying to find any problematic tweets by random gay accounts and extrapolating it to prove how dangerous the gays really were.
This brings me to the anti-trans backlash. Trans people are one of the most oppressed minorities in Britain. Their lives are very hard indeed. Almost the entire British media is ranged against them. They have few prominent allies, whose jobs are constantly imperilled.
History has repeated itself. Trans people, like every oppressed minority trying to fight for the right to live a happy life, are portrayed as aggressive bullies by powerful media outlets and multi-millionaires. To punch down on them is portrayed as an act of bravery.
Just like with gay people, opponents of trans rights often claim they really just care about children, even though the evidence shows transitioning drastically reduces mental distress and suicidal ideations, and post-transitioning regret is statistically tiny.
That a multimillionaire celebrity decided to start a war with the most oppressed LGBTQ group during Pride month, when all too many young LGBTQ people are locked up with anti-LGBTQ parents, is grotesque and will undoubtedly cause horrendous distress to vulnerable youngsters.
The relentless portrayal of trans people as would-be sexual predators is just a vicious as the once dominant, and still entrenched, portrayal of gay men as would-be child abusers, which partly led the likes of Anita Bryant to back banning gay teachers.
Trans people just want to live a happy life, just like the rest of us. They're prevented from doing so because they face the face constant risk of verbal abuse and physical violence, of discrimination at work, of being vilified relentlessly by the media.
It's standing by trans people that requires courage, sadly, not punching down on them. But to trans people who currently feel scared, distressed, isolated: you're not alone, your allies are never going to abandon you, and, in time, you are going to win.
🏳️🌈🌈🥳
