Burning Words

I generally take a pretty open stance towards comments on my blog - I welcome a diversity of opinion, and will generally allow most stuff to be posted.

However, I will draw the line at some things, as I’ve had to do with this post. I’ll even argue with the concern trolls, but I will not allow glaringly transphobic, misogynist, racist or ablist crap - as with one particular commenter there who has tried to post long screeds about how the victim in that case was a liar and deserved to be outed and bashed.

I find the response to that post quite interesting - it’s perhaps my popular post, and it’s the one where I get most hits from Google, by people searching for the names of the two police officers concerned, Tyrone Stacey and Brendan Ritson. I mightn’t be surprised at that, as it’s one of the few recent incidents in this country at least of transwomen being targeted for violence. However, in light of the comments I keep getting (some which I’ve moderated) - “but she was a well-known transgender!” (as if this is somehow an excuse) or “but you don’t know these nice boys!” (as if their actions didn’t speak for themselves), I start to wonder about the interest of cissexual folks in this case. Why would - a couple of months after this case dropped out of the news cycle - people be searching blogs to tell this little transwoman that outing and bashing people like me is perfectly justifiable, that we’re not really human?