Protest and advocacy indeed - but a big part of self-advocacy is teaching people how to advocate effectively. Often this means targeting the right people at the right time and in the right way. There are many different ways to protest from pissing your own bed to issuing a legal challenge and they have different levels of efficacy. Advocating effectively means being very clear in what you're trying to achieve, what the expected outcome is having an accountability mechanism based in systemic process if it doesn't happen. There is a difference between the two and if you want people to be effective in their self-advocacy you have to give them the skills to do this and feelings and rage are not part of the arsenal of an effective advocate.
The purpose of showcasing disagreement is so that someone can find their own voice in the mix. The sort of person inclined to block me will not block you, the sort of person inclined to never read anything you right might choose to read me. We're essentially modelling the approach we want others to have. Effective, safe and confined self-advocacy and group advocacy.
And this is what I mean about letting those people with feelings and rage lead the agenda. If there's an upsurge in violence against trans-folks then it is very contained. This week I bought a set of books from a charity shop run by a lady called Marianne, she absolutely would not pass, yet a whole bunch of elderly volunteers bustled around without being transphobic. I went onto a ward for women and met a trans-man for whom the staff and other patients haven't batted an eyelid, and Friday I'm doing a workshop in an all girls catholic school with a young man in the sixth form. If you simply read the unfettered rage of a minority vocal group, you'd have no idea this sort of thing is happening all over the country. There are still people being attacked and there's still some way to go - but huge progress is being made in a relatively short space of time.
As for rape and abuse in the police force - we've been flagging it for years. I've trained them and I find them to be about 50/50 unpleasant. That's the men, the women, all the officers. Theres' something about the uniform that makes them think they're untouchable and yes - this report is long overdue and more of them will be going to jail (I hope). That's the systemic change you want.
I don't think 50% of the men in the UK are anti-feminist; but I suspect that a full 50% have rejected feminism. That is because there is a misandrist element within feminism that has made the overall brand toxic. I suspect most young men support gender equality and fairness when it is phrased like that but will reject the label - I have spoken about how Penguins have done the same. Not because I don't agree with the aims of feminism but because I think it strayed away from its stated goals in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
And yeah... the US is entirely hostile to LGBTQ+ in certain places. It gives more of an urgency to the polemic discourse in your country than mine and we're a far more tolerant place (despite what may have happened to your friends). Your country's rhetoric is dangerous and it needs cool logical and cool heads to resolve - that's why I was delighted to see Jon Stewart rip apart Nathan Dahm's with absolute logical precision. It was a masterclass in argument.
