Cardiff Has a Problem

The brand of trans activism propagated in Cardiff is quite often nasty, aggressive and counter-productive and it needs to stop, for everyone's sake.

Cardiff, Wales, is a fairly young capital city, in more way than one. Qualifying as a capital in 1955, it is also home to three universities and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, meaning during term time, the city is full of young students, who we know, are among those leading the charge for trans rights.

While being home to such a youthful population gives the city a vibrant feel, it also brings with it some issues. The classic tensions between old and young are evident and while many older residents are not so fussed with the student population, they don’t appear to be fully informed about the prevailing attitudes which emanate from the aspiring academic ‘progressives’.

I’m not sure what percentage of the cohort in question hold the views and attitudes I’m about to take you through, and of course, some of them may not be students at all - some may be lifelong residents of Cardiff - but however small (or large) this group is, their activism is causing friction which can’t be ignored.

---

Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of their activities, which mostly involves graffiti and stickering:

The activists local to Cardiff appear to think nothing of daubing death wishes about people - nearly all women - who believe in sex-based rights. Thankfully, this was reported and swiftly cleaned off, but the sentiment and thought process is clear; the people who commit to communicating such messages would like women dead.

Next up, more aggression. This time, the death wishes continue with gun imagery alongside the phrase, “shut the fuck up, TERF”. Then, intriguingly, on the bottom right image with the “fuck off terf scum” message, it appeared to have been written over the top of a sticker for the ‘Young Women’s Trust’. On researching the YWT, it was clear from their website that they are inclusive of males who ‘identify’ as women. So, whoever wrote that message was presumably triggered by the word woman.

Below, is another set of images showing activists’ love of the transgender/anarchy symbol, which they take the opportunity to spray on private properties all over town.

Yet more messages on some small businesses. The ‘queer antifa’ message in the bottom left image below, is the second time (at least) that specific small business has been targeted. It’s not clear if the business has done something wrong or if it’s just a favourite spot for the activists. Nevertheless, it can’t be easy for businesses in such an economic climate to be cleaning stuff off their walls all the time.

In the bottom right image, this message appeared at the same time as the “be gay do crime” writing and transgender symbols. The message, in Welsh, translates into, “fuck the police”

It really is odd that the police force should be such huge supporters of the LGBTQ+ community, who seemingly hate them. Funnily enough, just a 100 yards down the road from that same graffiti message, the local police station has this sticker (see below) in its window.

Moving on, here are some territorial stickers. Not satisfied with just threats, they make it clear they believe women should not be frequenting their own areas. All this makes you wonder what they would do if they saw a woman wearing suffragette ribbons, or, god forbid, an ‘adult human female’ T-shirt. None of this bodes well for women who speak up about sex-based rights. They are being threatened and made to feel afraid, in their own neighbourhood, yet despite all their hate for the police, they would be the first to call them when a sticker with a dictionary definition on it, appears nearby.

There are, of course, many more examples I could share, of writing on walls and stickers on lampposts etc, but you get the message and the message seems to be, that they want to “smash transphobia”. I’m just not sure being so aggressive, threatening and indiscriminate towards properties and small businesses is the way to go about it. I imagine it would arouse more opposition than anything else.

---

What about the Universities? What are they doing to manage such activism perpetrated by their own students? Not a lot, it appears. Back in June, last year, some activists organised a last minute protest outside the University of Cardiff (UC). Their target was a group of university lecturers who had dared to send a letter to UC, asking them to withdraw from the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme. On learning about the letter, the reaction from activists had been swift and aggressive. Demands were made for UC to pledge to remain with Stonewall and to demonstrate to their students that they could feel safe while studying there. However, the protest outside UC produced this little gem (see images below), from a local ‘anarchist-identifying’ group, called ‘ACT Now’ Cardiff.

I blanked out the faces to mitigate the impact on the lecturers. This was a clear attempt to intimidate. A call to harass. Such groups put themselves across as being anti-establishment and anti-fascist, yet they are the ones who indulge in fascist tactics, of producing blacklists and publishing images of those they wish to target.

More concerning however, was the inflammatory language they used in their pamphlet, placed alongside yet more gun imagery.

As can be seen at the bottom of the third paragraph, they state,

“The Maya Forstater case does not allow you to be a transphobic prick without repercussions.”

Understandably, this caused some alarm among the staff and it is unclear whether the university intend to take action against any of the students concerned.

In the meantime, knowing that they had caused some upset, some activists set about producing more stickers in order to maintain the level of intimidation. See what they did there? The students slam the university and its staff for failing to make them feel “safe”, but in turn, felt entitled enough to make the staff feel unsafe with no fear of recrimination.

Moving forward, (our “friendly neighbourhood anarchists” will appear yet again), a few months after the protest, a group of (mostly) women arranged an official rally which was given the all clear by security at the Welsh Senedd. The rally was to voice opposition to the Welsh Government’s new RSE curriculum and LGBTQ+ Action Plan, which have both seen significant changes made to previous documents to include gender ideology. In a bid to assert their sex-based rights, these women gathered outside the Senedd building, where they spoke of their reasons for objecting. It was a fabulous day, despite a gaggle of counter-protesters being present and doing their best to drown out the women by whistling and shouting through a loudspeaker. But, with the police and security being present, all went well and the rally passed with no apparent issues.

Except, minutes after the rally had finished, an activist tweeted this (below):

Then, in the days following the rally, ACT Now reared their ugly heads once again, producing a blog post about the gathering at the Senedd. In the post, they made a handful of ridiculous claims (bear in mind, the police and Senedd security were present and standing between the rally and the counter-protesters). More so, they went on to make yet more threats against those they perceived as ‘TERFs’.

They show their plans to harass women by saying they will ‘doxx’ and disrupt meetings by preventing them from meeting, stating they, “can’t just bash back…[they] must strike first.”

Then, if that wasn’t clear enough, they further illustrate their plans by saying, “the only path now is to destroy the TERF menace”.

Despite this being reported to them, South Wales Police did not feel this was enough for them to do anything about.

When the local police force are wilfully ignorant to the emerging threats made towards women in their area, especially at a time when we are still reeling from the Sarah Everard murder (by one of the MET’s own officers) and now the Ashling Murphy murder in Offaly, Ireland, you would think the police would take extra care to treat such threats seriously. But when you look at the history of the police force and its record on dealing with issues like racism and sexism, within its own ranks, I sadly don’t hold out much hope.

For reference, this (see images below) Cardiff Police’s reasoning for not acting on my complaints about the above (this is specifically to do with the ‘anarchist group’ however, I have complained about stickers and graffiti before, informing the police about who was doing it and my complaint was rejected).

Coincidentally, just yesterday, Gwent Police arrested a woman for posting stickers around Newport (UK) as an be seen in the image below. I reference this because Newport is very close to Cardiff and while it is under the jurisdiction of a different police force, you would imagine the police force of England and Wales were abiding by the same standards across the board. That said, why then would Cardiff police fail to see any actionable issues with the above threats made in the form of stickers, graffiti, tweets and blog posts and say, Newport police readily arrest a disabled woman, push her arm (which was in a splint) up against her back, place her in a police van, make her lie on her back, interview her at about 1.30am, then leave her to travel home, on her mobility scooter, through town at about 3.30am on a freezing night? Seems inconsistent, does it not? Of course, the woman in question has also been charged for other things, but as we have seen from previous arrests, Kate Scottow, Marion Millar and Ceri Black, the police seem to react quite strongly to complaints about women, but not so strongly to complaints about trans activists.

Just to drill my point home, here is a further selection of images which demonstrate the seriousness of the issue for Cardiff:

In the image below, this profile is encouraging people to dox women and to have them sacked from their jobs, citing that it’s “the funniest shit”. ‘OSINT, stands for ‘Open Source Intelligence’ and involves people collecting any publicly available information on a person and then using that information to pursue them and damage their ability to earn, have a job and to have a visible presence online. When you consider that it’s only been the last 70+ years that women have just begun to be represented more equally in the general workforce and to gain access to the same roles that men have enjoyed for thousands of years, it’s clearly counter-productive for this kind of activism to be pushed. No-one should be celebrating women being sacked and pushed out of society for standing up for their sex-based rights. What makes this tweet below, particularly sad, is that it’s being promoted by a female.

In this next screenshot, the profile in question is a local Liberal Democrat Councillor. Rodney Berman uses the abusive slur, ‘TERF’ to describe women objecting to his promotion of gender ideology. Not exactly a vote winner. Nevertheless, his tweet, among others, is indicative of how far reaching the the anti-women rhetoric is, in Welsh politics and especially the Cardiff area.

Not content to be dismissing women as “TERFs”, Berman espouses a view which suggests, he has no idea what the difference is between ‘public’ and ‘private’. this is a serious problem. If a local councillor, who was once the leader of Cardiff Council, doesn’t understand why toilets are segregated by sex, then I don’t think he should be in any position to oversee such spaces. Very worrying.

I won’t go into detail here about the state of politics in Wales regarding the gender issue, as this would become an unwieldy piece. However, you can delve into the cronyism and the corruption that seems apparent in Welsh Government by looking over my previous thread about their proposed LGBTQ+ Action Plan.

To finish with, local activists are very keen to make their mark. Like a territorial male, they quite literally want women to know where they have “pissed” (see below) as if to make sure they know, they are never able to have their own, male free spaces. this is the paradox that is trans activism: they say they ‘just want to pee’, but they also want women to know, that they will be threatened, intimidated and possibly even assaulted, if it is clear they are a ‘known TERF’ and are spotted in public. This violent rhetoric is enabled by the lack of care from local councillors, who uphold terms like, "‘TERF’ and remain silent when university lecturers are threatened.

Does Cardiff have a problem? It definitely does. And what’s more, is it is not going away anytime soon. As long as there is inaction from the police, councillors and local politicians, these activists will continue to extend their reach and begin, as the local anarchist group ACT Now suggested, to take action and ‘strike back’ and to ‘dox’ and to ‘destroy the TERF menace’. How long do we have to wait before a woman is assaulted in the street, because she was wearing the ‘wrong’ T-shirt? How long before someone’s address becomes publicly broadcast and suddenly open to attack by opportunist activists? I’m not willing to wait. This dirty, unscrupulous form of activism needs to stop. Now. It isn’t acceptable for women to be intimidated in this way. The police need to act. Politicians need to act. This is what they are in place for and to fail to act is a dereliction of duty to the people whose taxes have paid their wages and those who voted them in.