A Hatch Job

I am not going to link to the video because it is disgusting and I don’t want to popularize their video. There is a horrendous video making the rounds on conservative websites that is full of half-truths and innuendos.

The Most Extreme Attempt Yet To Demonize Transgender People And Deny Them Rights
ThinkProgress
By Zack Ford
March 18, 2016

Fear has been the primary strategy employed by conservatives opposed to transgender equality, such as in the fight against the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO). A new video circulating among various advocacy groups takes this tactic to a new extreme by not only conflating transgender women with male predators, but actually attempting to portray all transgender women as having malicious intent.

The video, called “Women: Decide For Yourselves,” was published to YouTube last weekend by an apparently pseudonymous “Jane Williams,” but has since been shared by several anti-LGBT organizations, including the Illinois Family Institute and the “Just Want Privacy” campaign to overturn Washington’s state-level transgender protections. Over the course of the 23-minute video, a female narrator graphically describes sexual assaults and murders committed by men who tried to disguise themselves in dresses or who later actually came out as transgender (like Michelle Norsworthy and Michelle Kosilek) alongside stories of perfectly harmless transgender girls simply seeking access to facilities that match their gender.
[…]
The video seems to target Washington specifically. Following one example about a Seattle man charged with voyeurism, it claims, “According to Washington state law, men dressed as women now have the right to use women’s bathrooms, so he will be allowed access to vulnerable women and girls.”

Not so, says Danni Askini, executive director of Gender Justice League, a transgender advocacy group in Washington. “The reality is that the law that we have here in Washington state — the state nondiscrimination law — it does nothing to legitimize illegal conduct or behavior,” she told ThinkProgress. “So if people enter a bathroom and commit illegal conduct, they absolutely will be arrested and prosecuted, as were the people in that video. The reason why we know about these examples is because they were arrested and prosecuted.”

Askini rejected conservatives’ claims that the law somehow prevents people from being asked about their identity if other people suspect they might be in the restroom for nefarious purposes, noting that the Human Rights Commission has specifically issued guidance clarifying just that. “Inquiring if someone’s in the illegitimate bathroom is absolutely permissible under law, however harassing someone for using the bathroom for its intended purposes is not permissible.” The law, she said, only protects trans people from intimidation, not basic questions to make sure people are where they are supposed to be.

I couldn't stand watching the while video, but around 6:48 or so I am in the video. It is a still photo of the “Jane Doe” protest in front of the Department of Children and Families office. In the video they describe the actions of Jane Doe making her into some kind of monster. The New York Times wrote this about her,

LAST month a 16-year-old child was placed in solitary confinement at the York Correctional Institution for Women in Niantic, Conn. She has never been charged, tried or convicted. What is her crime? That she has survived.

With her father incarcerated and her mother addicted to heroin, crack cocaine and alcohol, the girl — who is referred to simply as Jane Doe, to protect her identity as a minor — had been passed among family members since she was 5 years old. They repeatedly raped, tortured and even prostituted her.

At last rescued by Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families, she was placed in a foster care facility, where she was raped by a fellow resident and forced to have sex with a staff member. When she fought back, she was punished. When caught involuntarily performing sex acts, she was punished. Jane was then placed at a residential facility in Massachusetts, but the sexual assaults continued at the hand of a worker entrusted with her care.

The video makes no mention of any of these mitigating circumstance; instead they just mention the results of years of abuse at the hands of her families and the state agency that was supposed to protect her.

The article goes on to say,

“We will be accused of cherry-picking the worst of the worst, but we did not,” the video claims. “This film could have been hours long. For each offender here, there are dozens more we could have chosen, and for each offender there are victims. There are women and children who have been terrorized, violated, and even murdered, yet these men and their advocates keep telling us that this never happens — that men who wear women’s clothing never commit sexual crimes and that women have no right to privacy, no right to safety, and no right to fear. Decide for yourself.”

“We will be accused of cherry-picking the worst of the worst, but we did not,” the video claims. “This film could have been hours long. For each offender here, there are dozens more we could have chosen, and for each offender there are victims. There are women and children who have been terrorized, violated, and even murdered, yet these men and their advocates keep telling us that this never happens — that men who wear women’s clothing never commit sexual crimes and that women have no right to privacy, no right to safety, and no right to fear. Decide for yourself.”
[…]
Askini notes that it’s a “common tactic” of hate groups to engage in this sort of conflation to try to smear transgender people as criminals and propagate violence against them. “Transgender people are in all parts of our society. They’re our teachers, our doctors, our neighbors, our elected officials,” she said. “Unfortunately, some transgender people commit crimes, and that is deplorable, and they should be punished in the same way all people should be punished.”

Based on the bias in the Jane Doe segment I have discount the whole video as a hatch job on the same level of the doctored video about Planned Parenthood.