Thread by @RobertBohan

Thread: I was explaining how trans people are being attacked online & in person to a solid financial supporter of minority rights. They sighed that most people just don’t care.

Maybe that’s true? But then again what started out as attacks on Jews, Roma & Queers in the 1930s…

In fact, in a startling example of historical déjà vu, the initial Nazi book burning was of the world’s first research institute studying sex & gender.

Trans people are the unwilling canaries in the far right coal mine: teenvogue.com/story/lgbtq-in…

Here’s just 4 headlines from UK media. First one is the classic ‘think of the children*’, 2nd implies kids are being experimented on (they’re not), 3rd is pure Fascism & 4th shows how a UK govt ‘equality’ body is working to make toilets inaccessible to trans people.

A feature of the two recent Irish referenda [same sex marriage & abortion] was a realisation that until everyone had equality no one had equality. Recognising human rights for everyone lifts everyone up [except the far right, which is why they protest so much]

*The ‘children’ trope is a mod version of anti-Semitic blood libel where Jews were claimed to abuse/kill kids. The same was claimed of Roma & LGB+ when decriminalisation was ‘debated’. IRL criminalised homosexuality for a century & it didn’t help gay kids: encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/art…

#TransRightsAreHumanRights

*The Simpson’s lampoon the ‘think of the children’ trope brilliantly with Helen Lovejoy. It was used in myriad ways during the SSMarriage ref in Ireland [eg. ‘a child deserves a mother & a father’; ‘who’s the father’ etc were used when the ref had nothing to do with kids].

The idea of the blood libel is always to suggest a minority is stealing or abusing kids. There’s even a nursery rhyme about Roma stealing kids. The vast majority of Queer & nomadic people can see what’s going on. People should care.

The British & Irish media have constantly platformed the far right & are running virulent campaigns against Travellers, Gypsies & Queer people. You can support LGBTQI people by boycotting the .@IrishTimes

https://twitter.com/transwritersu/status/1430496259044003840