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~being trans has nothing to do with it~ is a weak argument against confirmation bias

The breaking story over the past few days is the case of Shauna Smith, the trans woman arrested on felony voyeurism a few days ago. The facts of case are these: the 18yo girl/woman she was filming in a unisex dressing room at a target noticed the action. The victim called for help. Eventually Shuana was caught and has been arrested. Early reports erroneously said she was in the women’s dressing room and, thus, this is exactly where most transmisogynists are going with this. They are, of course, filled with glee that the exact thing they’ve been ‘warning’ us about has come to pass. At long last, they have their ‘trans women are all sexual predators’ poster child! But this post isn’t about them, its about the gay/trans MSM and their responses thus far.

This is something I’ve been talking about for around two years, this issue of freeloaders and bad actors. While the case I originally discussed was an instance of a cis man putting on a trans identity in order to gain access to vulnerable women, I mention in that post that this detail is irrelevant. To the people who well and truly hate us, those who’d see us all dead, we all are just ‘men in dresses’. We are all deluded males who need serious psychological help and not having our delusions humoured by the rest of the world. In a very real sense, to our haters, there is no such thing as a ‘trans woman’. There are just men who are crazy enough to think we are women1. A man so mentally ill he thinks he’s a woman is clearly capable of anything and can’t be trusted.

Back then, I mentioned that since ‘trans women are not women’ according to our oppressors, we ought to spend some time finding an adequate responses to the trans predator myth. Unfortunately, pretty much all of the mainstream response to this disgusting myth has take the form of, “Well, this hasn’t happened yet so clearly it’ll never happen in the future”. A pointless move since people who hate us already think it has happened. Even more pointless now that it has happened.

So now what? Huh?

Now the strategy appears to be diminishing and downplaying her transness. The response apparently is, “this has nothing to do with being trans, anyone could’ve done this”. My prediction: conservatives and radical feminists alike will fail to be convinced by this argument. And the reason why is the same for both: confirmation bias. An incident like this simply confirms what they already believe to be true, which was the shitty predator myth we started out with.

One article I read pointed out that, yes, this was a felony and doing this sort of thing regardless of your identity remains a felony. Great. But on the same breathe, only one story I’ve read has mentioned that she’s being kept in a men’s jail. Worse yet, the TransAdvocate outright said that it supports ‘prosecution’ in cases like this. But the same article not only doesn’t mention that she’s being kept in a men’s jail but doesn’t, um, you know stand up for her rights.

In other words: the community response thus far is that she’s a criminal who transness is incidental and in support of the carceral state. I’m not too surprised that it was a white trans woman who said that prosecution is the ‘right’ thing to do. The idea, here, is to play up respectability and to diminish her transness as a way to distance the community from her.

The carceral language around this, of course, isn’t welcome. Simply because supporting the carceral state and ‘justice’ system simply means supporting the criminalization and surveillance of Black trans women and/or of trans sex workers. But hey, that’s okay because Black trans women, twoc in general, and sex workers are exactly the kind of disreputable element that the ~trans community~ doesn’t need. Within a growing movement of trans*nationalism, we should expect to see more and more mainstream media and privileged trans people align themselves in this exact manner.

Because although calling itself the ‘transadvocate’ that particular article did absolutely nothing to advocate on Smith’s behalf.

  1. The use of ‘crazy’ and ‘deluded’ here is intentional since this is the language many transmisogynists use to deny our womanhood. Yes, its super ableist. But. That’s what we get, I guess, eh?