“LOOK FOR A GIRL”: How the Marshall Fowler case shows lethal danger in transphobic “concerns”
It was the missing person’s case that briefly galvanised social media for many of the right, but also quite a few of the wrong, reasons. On Tuesday last week, 13-year-old Marshall Fowler disappeared; he was supposed to be meeting friends in a local park, but never showed up. The next day, his mother Gill Neil wrote a Facebook post with a detailed physical description and some of the reasons her son might have for running away- including struggles with his mental health and gender identity. She also noted that he was likely to end up in Scotland, the south coast or the Yorkshire coast.
As is presumably customary with a missing person, the South Yorkshire Police had also posted an alert on Twitter, with Marshall’s age and two pictures from different angles. The tweet also used a male pronoun- ONCE- when describing him. And it was at this point, unfortunately for everyone involved plus the rest of humanity at large, that We Are Fair Cop got involved.
For context, We Are Fair Cop are one of several small fringe “charities” that have sprung up in the wake of rising hostility towards trans people in the UK. Their website describes them as ‘a group of individuals who have come together over shared concerns’ about, as a quick google search of their “case studies” will show you, people being reported to the police for expressing transphobic opinions. And yes, although they claim to be concerned with protecting freedom of speech, all they seem to actually care about is the freedom to openly mock, misgender and otherwise harass trans people. Those “case studies” include Caroline Farrow, against whom the founder of charity Mermaids filed a police complaint after Farrow wrote a pretty nasty tweet accusing Green of ‘mutilating’ her ‘son’, i.e. Green’s trans daughter, Jackie. There’s also Posie Parker, whose Twitter avatar is a Barbie in an SS uniform, and Graham Lineham, who among his many anti-trans tweets accused university professor Grace Lavery of “grooming” for being concerned for the privacy and safety of students in her queer theory classes. What an inspiring bunch…
For unknown reasons, the group decided that this case simply couldn’t function without their input, and that the biggest issue was… the police’s use of a male pronoun to describe Marshall. They quote-tweeted the alert with the words, ‘A 13 year old GIRL has gone missing […] You cannot and must not recklessly pander to gender identity when a young life is at stake’, described the police’s alert as ‘idiotic’, and ordered them to ‘Get out there and LOOK FOR A GIRL. Someone who, when they are not posing, looks like a girl.’ Reportedly, the ensuing backlash prompted the police to take their original post down, although I haven’t been able to confirm that that was the reason for the tweet being deleted.
Thankfully, on September 10th- two days after Marshall’s disappearance- the police announced that he’d been found ‘safe and well in the West Yorkshire area’. And no, I can’t imagine that this was any thanks whatsoever to the idiots who tried to tell anyone who’d listen that he’s actually a girl.
As it happens, this isn’t the first time that transphobes’ claims to be “protecting children” (any suggestion to kids that being trans is ok equals a “safeguarding issue” to these people) have been contradicted by the self-proclaimed child protectors’ own actions. For example, when trans ally and writer Amanda Jetté Knox announced her child’s coming out as non-binary, said child found themselves being viciously attacked online by adults who’d never even met them. Then there’s Baroness Emma Nicholson, who co-founded charity Lumos with J.K. Rowling. Her Twitter is a hotbed of anti-trans nonsensicalness in general, but she really pushed the boat out when she told a mother that her trans daughter, Emily, was a ‘would-be assailant’ i.e. rapist.
For context, Emily is 12 years old.
This, however, really was a new low in every conceivable way.
For one thing, in hindsight their close-mindedness was laughable. Firstly, here were people who, having described the police as “draconian” and “Orwellian” for doing their jobs, were now turning around and trying to tell the police how they could or couldn’t describe a missing person. The irony is almost painful. Secondly, even a cursory glance at his photos shows Marshall “passing” as male perfectly well- for my part, I’ve seen trans men who looked way more stereotypically masculine and cis ones who looked way more “feminine”. And thirdly- serious question here- is Marshall, in reality, even a trans boy (i.e. a boy who was assigned female at birth but identifies as male)? Because I haven’t seen any conclusive proof that he is. Neill’s Facebook post does say that he was ‘struggling with his identity’, but Marshall’s being an AFAB binary trans boy isn’t the only possible meaning there.
Once you stop and think about it, however, the implications of WAFC’s tweet for Marshall’s case become truly chilling. Firstly, if Marshall is transgender then outing him as such to your 14.3k followers could be hugely detrimental to his mental health, for obvious reasons. Secondly, as I’ve already mentioned, Marshall genuinely looks like a boy. Saying he looks like a girl is as blatantly incorrect as saying that Laverne Cox looks like a man. With that in mind, critics of WAFC were quite right in pointing out that (to quote one Twitter user), ‘Telling people to look for a girl is dishonest and could have impeded efforts to find him’ or, to put it even more succinctly, ‘If people were told to look for a girl, they would be significantly less likely to find him’.
They would be significantly less likely to find him.
Just take a few moments to let that sink in. And then, when you’ve done that, add in the fact that the first 72 hours are the most crucial when searching for a missing person. Meaning that, if Marshall had been in more danger than he was the results of WAFC’s interference could be far more damaging. Even the fact that he made himself disappear voluntarily won’t have stopped the police from doing a “safe and well check” upon finding him- this is customary with all recovered missing people under the age of 18, in order to double-check where they went, who they were with, and whether they were a victim of crime. (Let’s not forget that, as a runaway and therefore temporarily homeless teenager, Marshall would have already been in a highly vulnerable state and likely to be targeted by the kind of low-lifes who prey on vulnerable young people.) Now, take all of that information, especially the “72 hours” part, and imagine that Marshall or any other trans/gender non-conforming child had been abducted. The possibilities of what could have happened- while people wasted their time basing their search on said child’s genitals and chromosomes instead of, you know, what they actually look like — are truly horrific.
Ironically, one result of this whole mess was that WAFC actually found themselves on the receiving end of a kind of offshoot of the Streisand Effect. (AKA, that thing that happened when J.K. Rowling tried to sue a children’s news site into silence after they published an article critical of her anti-trans views.) Just like Rowling wanted to suppress that article, WAFC presumably intended to bury the police’s appeal for information on Marshall underneath a barrage of “gender-critical” outrage, garnering further support for the belief that legitimising trans people’s existence in any way presents a danger to children. At least, that’s the goal anyone with half a brain can see; WAFC had probably fooled themselves into thinking that they were acting in Marshall’s best interests, all the better to legitimise their “WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!” mindset. What actually happened, of course, is that their replies filled up with more open-minded Twitter users calling out their bigotry, with these and furious quote-tweets alerting a wider audience to the case, thereby spreading awareness of it and attracting further support and concern for both Marshall and his family. (I’m not saying this was a direct cause of his being found quickly or at all, but it’s still nice.)
Still, in spite of that small consolation, plus the fact that this particular story had a happy ending, it has gone a long way towards highlighting the dangerous hypocrisy embedded within the so-called “gender critical” crowd’s rhetoric. For all their talk of “safeguarding”, it shows how little they actually care about the wellbeing of trans and gender-diverse young people (or any young people, for matter). Because if they actually stopped and thought about it, maybe they’d realise how damaging their refusal to respect anyone’s gender ID, or even do something as basic as use their right pronouns, can be. It’s demeaning and seriously bad for their mental health and, as this case has demonstrated, it risks prolonging situations where they could be in serious danger.
Originally published at http://emmamcurzon.wordpress.com on September 19, 2020.
