Support From High Places

We have a prince on our side, how cool is that!

Prince Harry throws support behind transgender youth charity
The Duke of Sussex's mental health charity invited Mermaids, an organization for trans and gender variant children, to join its wellness efforts.
NBC Out News
By Tim Fitzsimons
April 24, 2019

Prince Harry’s mental health charity, Heads Together, has invited a U.K.-based transgender youth charity to join its wellness efforts, according to The Telegraph.

The charity, Mermaids, participated in a roundtable this month at a YMCA outside of London that was organized by the Royal Foundation, Prince William and Prince Harry's umbrella charity. A Royal Foundation spokesperson told the newspaper that Heads Together meets with groups like Mermaids "to best understand the issues young people are dealing with today, and gain a clear understanding of what support is being made available."

Mermaids tweeted its thanks Tuesday to the Duke of Sussex “for his unwavering support of young people and promotion of positive mental health and well-being.”

The conservatives on the other side of the pond have taken a lesson from their compadre here in the U.S.

"While the U.K. has made significant progress in expanding and protecting the rights of transgender people, they are currently engaged in a fierce debate about improving policies for transgender people to have their gender identities affirmed on government documents," said Sarah McBride, a transgender activist and national press secretary at Human Rights Campaign.

McBride said a "small, but vocal" group of anti-trans activists have targeted Mermaids for their work.

"To have Prince Harry so publicly and clearly embrace the lifesaving work of Mermaids sends a powerful message to trans youth across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth that they are seen and valued," she added.

This is really fantastic; right now trans people in England need all the help they can get. The conservative press there have been hounding trans children and they been supported by TERF.

How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans
A surprisingly mainstream movement of feminists known as TERFs oppose transgender rights as a symptom of “female erasure.”
The New York Times
By Sophie Lewis, Dr. Lewis is a feminist theorist and geographer.
Feb. 7, 2019

Last week, two British women stormed onto Capitol Hill in Washington for the purposes of ambushing Sarah McBride, the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign.

Ms. McBride, a trans woman, had just been part of a meeting between the Parents for Transgender Equality National Council and members of Congress when the Britons — Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who goes by the name Posie Parker, and Julia Long — barged in. Heckling and misgendering Ms. McBride, the two inveighed against her supposed “hatred of lesbians” and accused her of championing “the rights of men to access women in women’s prison.”
[…]
If the idea that transphobic harassment could be “feminist” bewilders you, you are not alone. In the United States, my adoptive home, the most visible contemporary opponents of transgender rights are right-wing evangelicals, who have little good to say about feminism. In Britain, where I used to live, the situation is different.
[…]
The split between the American and British center-left on this issue was thrown into sharp relief last year, when The Guardian published an editorial on potential changes to a law called the Gender Recognition Act, which would allow people in Britain to self-define their gender. The editorial was headlined “Where Rights Collide,” and argued that “women’s concerns about sharing dormitories or changing rooms with ‘male-bodied’ people must be taken seriously.” Some of The Guardian’s United States-based journalists published a disavowal, arguing that the editorial’s points “echo the position of anti-trans legislators who have pushed overtly transphobic bathroom bills.”

So with this background you can understand why it was so important that Prince Harry spoke up in our defense. So how did Prince Harry and his brother Prince William become supporter of trans rights?

Well it might have started when the princes attended Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and one of their instructors was a trans woman.

According to Earn the Necklace…

The American-born historian has reportedly taught Prince William and Prince Harry at the prestigious Sandhurst. Sources say it was while she was there that she made the change from man to woman.

At the time, the top order had reportedly demanded that everybody treat her with full respect and call her “Ma’am” from that point forward.

And Sandhurst’s Major General, Peter Pearson, had also reportedly declared that any snide comments or remarks on Lynette Nusbacher would be treated with severe punishment.

So it could very well be because of an out and proud trans woman that Prince Harry came out in support of trans children.