There is no such thing as respectful debate on trans rights

As a trans person on social media, you can barely move for people endlessly attempting to debate transgender rights and calling specifically for “respectful debate”. Everyone has been in on the act, Baronesses, MPs, BBC editors, even the equalities minister has played into this idea of having a “respectful debate” around trans people’s basic equalities. So as a trans person you have to ask, but what do they mean by that when their whole position is one born out of disrespect for transgender people?

When Edwina Wolstencroft an editor for BBC Radio 3 said she was “just trying to encourage debate” in her apology for having comparedtransgender health care to torturing of children in Nazi death camps during the holocaust, were we supposed to take that seriously? To argue back with that point in good faith? How do you have a respectful debate with someone who views your body as a Nazi torture experiment?

When Julie Bindel wrote on Twitter recently; “How on god’s earth can there be a ‘respectful debate’ when one side is so battered and bullied that the enforced apologies only comes from them?” Is she saying we’re not being respectful enough for being intolerant of her having compared trans people and allies to ISIS and The Taliban on Russian state-affiliated media? The same Russia which just battered, bullied and arrested…