Originally a comment by latsot on Trans activism as progressive credential.

Well there’s not even a passion about trans rights, is there? If there were passion, there’d be a constant emotional outpouring describing those rights and the injurious effects of their supposed lack. If there were passion, there’d be powerfully reasoned argument, studded with heart warming and heart breaking examples.

The passion is not for ‘trans rights’, it’s for shouting the slogan, signalling the virtue, siding with the side, as you say, Arty.

One of the most interesting parts of any #LetWomenSpeak event is watching the behaviour of the ‘protesters’ (when they’re not being violent). They’re passionless, for the most part. They stand, slackly and without expression, blandly repeating the mantras. Every so often, someone with a megaphone will whip up 30 seconds of enthusiasm, but it quickly dies out. They put on music, for goodness’ sake, to stop everyone getting bored and wandering off!

The comparison to the passion expressed by our side, in the form of detailed explanations of injustice and calls for specific action rather than vague appeals to phobia, tells you everything you need to know about trans activism.

Then, in my experience (I’ve only been to three), when the trans activists sense that the event is about to finish, they attempt to surge forward. At Newcastle, Glasgow and Belfast, this thrust was decidedly half-hearted and the antagonists seemed relieved, more than anything, that the police did such a good job of holding them back.

What they’d have done had the police not been there is anyone’s guess, of course, but my point is that this is the part they get behind. This is why they’re there. The part that requires no words, reason or even responsibility. That’s the only thing they can really muster passion for: the part about stopping women speaking. Because they know what they’re saying and they know who they’re saying it about.

This is borne out by those events that have been less well-policed, where the protesters have been allowed so close to the speakers that their noise really did drown out women’s voices. There’s no passionless shuffling and half-hearted chanting there! It’s almost as though the entire point of these ‘protests’ is to stop women telling the truth about trans activism and its ‘activists’!

I’ve often said how interesting I find it that the TAs never copy our format. They never have similar open mic events where trans people and their allies can speak passionately about the many injustices they feel plagued by. Instead of protesting about *checks notes* women being allowed to speak, they could let trans people speak, right! The optics would be great! The news channels would be falling over themselves to compare and contrast in a light most favourable to their side!

There’s only one reason I can think of why they don’t do this. They know how stupid it all sounds. They know how pathetic it will seem if they whine about getting funny looks when they barge into women’s spaces. They know how monstrous it will look when they demand that disabled women accept intimate care from men against their wishes. They know they have no logical, legal or moral arguments. They know there is no human right they don’t already have. They know their demands are neither feasible nor sustainable and they know they have nowhere near the support among the general public that they have within their social media and, as you put it, media-media bubbles.

You’re right, Arty. The ‘passion’ is all in the side-picking and purity-signalling, not in any deeply-held belief in ‘trans rights’. I have no doubt that many believe in or even feel a deep sense of injustice. We all did, at that age, and sometimes it turned out that the perceived injustice wasn’t really there. This is about the rebellion, not the cause, and it’s the dullest, most tedious, most regressive, least passionate rebellion in history.