Anti-Trans Extremists Livestreamed Themselves Harassing Trans Activist Sarah McBride

By Prachi Gupta | February 1, 2019 | 5:58pm

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Two women prominent within an extremist, anti-trans group of feminists filmed themselves taunting and harassing a transgender activist.

The livestream is no longer available on Facebook, but according to HuffPost, British trans-exclusionary radical feminists Posie Parker and Julia Long repeatedly mocked and misgendered trans activist Sarah McBride, who is the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, during a meeting in Washington D.C.

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“Why are you championing the rights of men to access women in women’s prisons? And rape and sexually assault them as recently happened in the United Kingdom?” Long asked, referring to the false notion that all trans women sexually assault cisgender women in prisons.

Parker interjected at one point, asking McBride: “Why don’t you care about lesbian girls at 14 having double mastectomies? Why don’t you care about that, Sarah?”

Parker runs anti-trans group Standing For Women, which opposes the U.K.’s proposed reforms for the Gender Recognition Act 2004. The Act would remove barriers that to self-identifying gender. Last fall, supporters of Standing For Women posted anti-trans stickers and billboards in Liverpool to protest a citywide motion that would support trans people (the motion passed).

Trans people experience higher rates of bullying and harassment than cis people, and nearly half of nonbinary youth have attempted suicide, according to a recent study by the Human Rights Campaign. As the National Center for Transgender Equality reports, “more than one in four trans people has faced a bias-driven assault, and rates are higher for trans women and trans people of color.”

In 2016, McBride delivered a groundbreaking speech at the Democratic National Convention, becoming the first transgender person to speak at a major party convention. On Wednesday morning, she led a meeting with with the Congressional Transgender Equality Task Force to discuss transgender equality. McBride tweeted about the incident, writing, “We had just concluded a really powerful meeting with parents of transgender youth and members of Congress and I won’t let this incident diminish the love, pride and solidarity that filled that room just moments before.”

“Throughout the incident, I thought about the trans youth who have to experience their hostility and bullying day-in and day-out in the United Kingdom,” she wrote. “The sad truth is that this kind of harassment is the reality for far too many transgender people, particularly trans women of color, across the country and around the world.”