It\u2019s an unfortunate side effect of running a trans organisation, that sometimes you will attract the wrong kind of attention. It\u2019s happened to us, we\u2019ve been the subject of a sustained online harassment campaign for clout from somebody within the trans community who became upset with us when we blocked her on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you might expect, to be at the centre of such an attack has inflicted damage on our organisation. It has cost us a huge amount of time and stress, it has had an impact on our fundraising, and it has inflicted reputational damage both immediate and lingering. This will affect our relationship with corporate donors in particular, which will have an immediate effect on our passengers. Further to that it\u2019s damaged our relations with other trans activists and groups, something which is particularly important for a small non-profit..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally and most importantly, it has endangered the lives of our passengers and our volunteers. The obsessive looking for so-called \u201cfacts\u201d about us has come uncomfortably close to people in danger who operate in dangerous parts of the world, and who may be on the run from hostile family members or state actors. To the people mounting the attacks it\u2019s a witch-hunt for the lolz and a bit of online clout, for the people on the ground it truly is a matter of life and death. People will die violently if this continues, it\u2019s as simple as that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus it\u2019s been really unpleasant and mentally exhausting for us to deal with, but we have to address it somehow because to let it slide is to let it stand. So here we are, let\u2019s go through some of the points one by one. Be warned, some of them stretch credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re a trauma aware organisation, and we have all been through very difficult experiences that have left us traumatised. If someone is consistently retweeting triggery stuff, it is not unreasonable to block them. Someone blocked you on the Internet, get over it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have published interim accounts<\/a> and we will be submitting all our yearly accounts as required by Dutch law. It should be clear from those that we are spending any money we receive wisely and in accordance with our aim. Meanwhile we\u2019re as we put it \u201cin our ramen phase\u201d, putting a lot of time into getting Trans Rescue off the ground that we could be spending working, and thus living pretty frugally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As part of our incorporation we defined our aim as moving trans and other people. This was because we\u2019re aware that sometimes we\u2019ll move a loved one who is cis. We currently have passengers in our system who fit that description. Our director moved a cis person with her own money, before Trans Rescue was even incorporated. His name is Maeen Aldahbali, and he\u2019s a Yemeni human rights defender on the run from the factions because he campaigned against child soldier recruitment. If you have a problem with our director helping him, then we suggest you take a long and hard look at your priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our trans haven in Kenya is called Eden House. The name was chosen by our first passengers who moved in, all of them Kenyans. We hope that the many pictures we and they who live there have posted about it should be enough to prove its existence. We will not reveal where it is in Kenya, to protect its security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier on in our work in Kenya we had a Kenyan volunteer working for us, a cis man. He became our agent there for a while, before revealing himself to be a chaser, sexually propositioning one of our passengers, and scamming us. Since then he\u2019s waged a low level harassment campaign against us. We think you\u2019ve found him (or more likely he\u2019s found you), and you\u2019re talking to a bunch of his sockpuppets. He\u2019s done it before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t be stupid. You\u2019ll be saying that all Kenyan buildings should be mud huts next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don’t be stupid. Setting up a trans haven from scratch, for a group of passengers who have absolutely nothing, costs money. We’ve had to equip an empty house with the normal things required for up to eight people to live with dignity, and we’ve had to ensure that it has proper security. Why yes, that also included setting up a chicken coop, which for some reason you’ve become obsessed with. It’s not a five grand chicken coop though, we’re not British Conservative MPs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s right, dismiss the existence and credibility of marginalised people of colour in a developing country. Wow, such activism!<\/p>\n\n\n\n See the paragraph above: “We’ve found some Kenyans who say you’re bad”. Did this accusation come from the source we mentioned there? Attacking the Trans Rescue directors is unpleasant enough, but attacking our manager, one of our Kenyan passengers who has come through some very bad experiences and who we are employing as the capable and efficient manager she is, is extremely shitty behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t be stupid. Eden House is a rented property that had been empty for a long time when we moved in. Our director worked with the first residents to make their home comfortable, just as anyone would when they move into a new house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eden House is a trans haven in which we are trying to establish a sustainable communal living space. Its residents are people who have been thrown to the edges of society because they are trans, are you seriously suggesting that it\u2019s wrong for them to have jobs or small businesses of their own or to participate equally in a commune? The only person working for us at Eden House is our manager, she\u2019s a Kenyan lady who\u2019s been one of our passengers, and we have made certain that we pay her a proper wage. Imagining that all Africans should be charity dependent is simply racist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These attacks follow a colonial-era and racist view of Africa that still holds sway in the developed world; namely that Africa is a continent of hell-hole countries in which nobody is safe. The reality is very different indeed. While it remains sadly true that some African countries may be experiencing instability and some may be less safe than others, the continent is home to a great many countries that are going places. One of them is Kenya, a democratic country with a vibrant economy and a rule of law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a valid criticism to level at Kenya, that it has anti-LGBT laws on its books, and that there are places in Kenya where it is dangerous to be trans. Our Kenyan passengers know this, they come from those places. So let us address this in terms accessible to people from the developed world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we were to describe a large country with anti-LGBT laws on its books in which it is safer to be trans in some parts than others, then most of you would recognise pretty quickly that we are talking about the USA. We think it\u2019s safe to say that a trans person would be safer in New York than they would be in rural Oklahoma, don\u2019t you agree? So if we said that we would move an in-danger trans person from Oklahoma to New York, we don\u2019t think that anyone would raise any objections. Thus moving back to Kenya, it\u2019s a large country with anti-LGBT laws on its books, and in regions such as the north and along the coast it can be extremely dangerous to be trans. But just as with the USA, there are plenty of places in the rest of the country where trans people are safer, and just as with the USA, it makes sense to move them to one of those places if we can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We operate a trans haven in Kenya. Unsurprisingly, it is full of Kenyans. We are not expecting Americans to move to Kenya, how would it possibly be appropriate to move them to a culture they know almost nothing about and in which there is no community to receive them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The international air transport system is hugely racist, meaning that people from places like Kenya can be difficult to get visas for and difficult to get on a plane when they have a visa. Should we not try to help them because we can\u2019t get them on a plane out of Kenya? Of course not! So we\u2019ve set up our first trans haven somewhere they can get to, in Kenya. It\u2019s likely that Eden House will at times play host to non-Kenyans for the same reasons as it hosts Kenyans, that we can\u2019t get them on a flight to another country safer than where they are. Would you expect us to turn a Ugandan away? We hope not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No we\u2019re not, don\u2019t be stupid. Throwing around accusations of racism as a tactic to smear people you don\u2019t like is shitty behaviour, stop it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How to say you\u2019ve never been to Germany without saying you\u2019ve never been to Germany. It\u2019s not 1937 any more, don\u2019t be stupid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wow. This one shows how far over the edge you’ve descended into fantasy. We wish we could work with governments, it would make our job much easier. But as you might expect, they’re not great fans of people who help asylum seekers get into their countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the record, we don’t work in Canada. We never have. We mentioned it in our piece on how to get out of the USA as it slides into fascism<\/a>, because it will be the easiest destination for Americans to run to should the far-right succeed in their coup. Given the choice between running to Canada or being gunned down by some fascist militia, we think most people would take Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That you’ve tried to turn our advice for such an emergency into an opportunity to smear us shows how desperate you are to take us down, and what kind of people you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re sure you have, but we\u2019d like to respectfully suggest that you\u2019re not very good researchers. Read the Wikipedia entry on confirmation bias<\/a>. Better still, just stop it. And no, we wont engage with you, you’ve established yourself as the bad actors in all this. This has become personal for you, and at each stage when you come up with another implausible conspiracy theory and we debunk it, you get ever more desperate and come up with more. The reality that you’re the kind of people who get off on trying to take out a non-profit working to help trans people in developing countries doesn’t put you in a good light. When are you going to have your “Are we the baddies” moment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good luck with that. It’ll contain a load of outright lies, some half-truths twisted from things you’ve read on this website, and your star witnesses will be the guy who scammed us and a load of his online sockpuppets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So there it is.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Those are the accusations levelled against us and there\u2019s the truth behind them, so make up your own mind. This all began as a personal gripe from one person with a history of attacking for clout, and we\u2019re sure it will peter out over time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s an unfortunate side effect of running a trans organisation, that sometimes you will attract the wrong kind of attention. It\u2019s happened to us, we\u2019ve been the subject of a sustained online harassment campaign for clout from somebody within the trans community who became upset with us when we blocked her on Twitter. As you … Continue reading Responding To Our Attackers<\/span>