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“Being Feminist” and Their Transphobia Problem

Published May 1, 2013 by Admin

*Disclaimer* This post is on a site exposing TERFs but we are not insinuating that Being Feminists are part of that group.

UPDATE: LA has apologized for and removed the inflammatory post on Being Feminist’s Facebook page! Thank you so much!

https://www.facebook.com/BeingFeminist/posts/459424844126762

Dear members,

I am the admin ~LA, and I’m writing to say sorry to all the people on the page who were hurt and marginalised either directly or indirectly as a result of my post from yesterday. The post has been deleted.

I am sorry that my post made some trans*people feel unsafe here. That was the opposite of my intent. I truly believe in the equality of everyone in the feminist movement, and in the rights of everyone to assert their identity. I believe that everyone has a place in the feminist movement, so long as we all believe in the equality of all PEOPLE, no matter what sex or gender or race or any other category to which we belong… That is what I tried to express in my post. Obviously I failed at expressing it, and perhaps it’s because of my privilege, which as I said, I am trying to work on. I never meant to cause anyone pain. I tried to include everyone, trans*people and radical feminists in a discussion to try and find common ground, and to remind everyone that we can work together in feminism.

I have a lot to learn, I admit. And I admit that I made a mistake in making my original post, and in allowing it to become a medium for others to express their hatred. It was not my intent, but it was still my fault, as a content creator for this page. I am very sorry.

Being Feminist as a page, and I as a person, are in accord. We believe wholeheartedly in the intersectionality of feminism, and that it can and should include everybody. We try hard to make this a safe space for everyone, and I am sorry that my post (however inadvertently) made this space less safe for trans*people and anyone else who felt hurt and marginalised by my post.

It won’t happen again.

Thank you for reading.

~LA

Being Feminist Facebook Page (Twitter @being_feminist) claims to be a safe place for all women yet earlier this week it has been the opposite. You can find some of the most vile and hateful transphobia on the Internet on THEIR facebook page! Either their page is or is not a safe place for trans women. Right now, it isn’t.

First, lets take a look at their About Page.

About

A site to promote feminism and women’s rights and share experiences of being feminists
Description

2. This page has a zero tolerance policy for misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia, racism, casteism, classism, victim blaming, slut shaming, bullying or, in general, disrespectful and hateful bullshit. A lot of our members might be victim-survivors of various forms of violence , and posting vicious comments/posts might trigger traumatic memories. We want to make this page a safe space for people to share their experiences without fear of backlash.

Sunday April 28th 2013 Being Feminist posted this on their Facebook Page

And neither does trans* blindness. No more excuses (even for our page!). We fight for the rights of ALL marginalized genders and more!- SS

“The Twitter hashtag #RadFem2013 is littered with a small but acerbically aggressive sect of online feminists who have hijacked radical strands of feminism, rooted in challenging patriarchal structures and oppression, as a means to belittle, condemn, and berate members of the trans community. They contend that because trans women were born male, that they are not women. They actively exclude trans women from feminist spaces. They demonize trans women as female impostors and violently libelously label them as supporters of “corrective rape.” They harass trans women online and often publish the full names and addresses of trans women in online spaces. And yet, while they are perhaps the most visible perpetrators of transphobia within feminism, they are not the only ones.”

Transphobia Has No Place in Feminism

www.policymic.com

Discrimination exists within feminist spaces, and nowhere is that clearer than in the vile bigotry aimed at trans women.

Lauren Rankin wrote an amazing article titled “Transphobia Has No Place in Feminism”.

It was awesome that they posted this on their Facebook page as it showed they do have a zero tolerance for transphobia and accept trans women into their space. A safe space, right? Wrong. The comment section quickly fills up with transphobia which is still sitting there unmoderated. Cathy Brennan had her say as well and we all know what that looks like. However, she disabled her Facebook page so those comments are not showing up. If anyone has screenshots please let us know.

    • Being Feminist This page does not tolerate trans* phobia. Cis women are not more or less oppressed than trans* people. The oppressions are different and the exploitations are different. If people are killed for being “born woman”, people are also killed for merely articulating a non conforming gender identity. Please educate yourselves about the issues of the trans* community before dismissing them so thoroughly. If you have an issue with the article or disagreements with its intents, it’s perfectly possible to put forward your discomforts in a respectful way and with an open mind. We truly believe that feminists need to work together with an intersectional approach and we love the discussions that take place on this page. But when something starts bordering on hostility it’s no longer okay. This is a SAFE SPACE for everyone, including (and in this case, especially) our trans* identified members. Anyone who threatens that will be banned. – SS
      • Hide 18 Replies
      • Megan Mackin Glad I don’t hafta worry — both “transphobia” and “cis” anything **don’t exist.** I’m fine with leaving now, sad to know that “feminists” don’t support women — but here to tell ya that we Radical Feminists do, in fact, give our loyalty to women and girls. Take care.
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Being Feminist, you rock, and you speak for most feminists today, unlike these fringe elements who do nothing but bring our movement to its knees. I’m cool with radical, but radical has to be self-reflective, up-to-date, wise, listening and empathic . . . great that we’re debating this stuff here
      • Ilyssa Silfen Take your boa and go, Megan.
      • Elizabeth Veldon yes rad feminism is not transphobic, that’s why rad feminists where passing round an article claiming that when trans* women kill themselves it’s all part of a conspiracy to oppress them

        rad feminists discredit feminism, their inhumanity sickens me.
      • Clare Phillipson @elizabeth..ive no idea what you are talking about..ive never seen that article…and accusing radfems of ‘sickening inhumanity’..?????…eh?bit over the top?extreme response to a group of wbw wanting to meet ,in safety,and talk
      • Lilithe Magdalene Cathy, your attitude of denying the existence of transgender women PERPETUATE the patriarchal hatred of them. Can’t imagine how you don;t see that.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Interesting that you would say trans women do not exist, then post an article and your own claim that patriarchy is the source of violence against them. So, make up your mind as to whether you think trans women exist or not.
      • Lilithe Magdalene If this page does not condone transphobia then why is this conversation being allowed to take place? I have yet to see one respectful comment from those who deny transgender, but merely hateful and mocking statements. “Lesbians Against Derpy, Derpy”? Comments like that from Cathy Brennan need to be moderated and called out.
      • Kylie Hudson “This is a SAFE SPACE for everyone, including (and in this case, especially) our trans* identified members. Anyone who threatens that will be banned. ” You are doing a shit job of enforcing this policy admins. You should be ashamed for letting such transphobic, oppressive bullshit on your page.
      • Stelzer Insertfirstnamehere I’ve got to chime in on being hugely disappointed with the moderation of this page. The fact is that you can either be a good trans* ally, and give trans* people safe spaces (as you claim to do) or you can give the TERF’ers a platform to spew their hate. But you can’t do both. And saying you support trans* people, saying you want this to be a safe space, rings hellishly hollow when this mess is going on.
      • Megan O’Brayton Yeah silence the lesbians… They need to learn that some lesbian women have penises. They need to accept that just because someone has a penis does not mean that they are a man. And they need to date women with penises and accept them in women only space… Basically the topsy turvy world of you lot is it not…..?
      • Megan Mackin Even if they do silence the lesbians, Megan, it won’t help them in the long run. I can’t tell you how many women friends who were adamantly pro-t-cult have come over to the other side after extensive dealing with them. The t-cultists’ arrogance, the entitlement, and the incessant fetishizing of femininity — and mistaking that for femaleness — wears women down. And they begin to see what we see, name it for what it is, and support women over men. Finally! But I’ve seen it so many times.

        And I’ll do anything in my power to prevent lesbians’ silencing!
      • Lilithe Magdalene Radical feminists (not all but many) are the ones trying to silence transgender folk. Nobody wants to force anybody to do anything – they merely want to be seen for who they are – not who you project onto them because you call the appendage between their legs “a penis”. It is not up to you to determine how a person needs to see their own anatomy to fit their sense of what their sex or gender is.
      • Stelzer Insertfirstnamehere Yes, women can have a penis. No one is suggesting that you have to sleep with them. But “I’m a lesbian” =/= “I don’t like penis”, and to treat it as equivalent is to not only erase the existence of transwomen but also defines women solely by their anatomy. And here I was thinking we’d moved past biological essentialism.
      • Isabelle Gundermann Oh my god what is this bullshit? If you don’t want to sleep with a trans woman, then don’t! It’s seriously that easy. Yeah you may be judged for your actions but you do not have to sleep with a trans woman if you don’t want to. Like. That’s it.
    • Clare Phillipson we fight for the rights of all marginalised genders’???….how about fighting for the rights then of wbw to meet and talk??
      • Lilithe Magdalene Perhaps, Cathy, in the blog posts you put here you could read and respond to a very important question:

        “When are you going to apologize for the mistakes you have made that have not only cost your fellow trans citizens of Maryland civil rights coverage that you have enjoyed since 2001, and some of them their lives, but have submitted an odious paper that could potentially deny to others the same civil rights coverage you and your co-author enjoy?”

        Though nobody deserves to receive some of the hateful comments you have garnered, you could look at the ways your own hatred that you have put forth and admit your inability to acknowledge trans women are women with their own very real experiences of misogyny may have brought this shit storm down upon you. Is it so strange that people respond to hate with hate? It’s a very human thing to do, and underneath the vitriol is the extreme pain of their lived experiences. Where is your compassion? There is no need for Oppression Olympics. When we fight for the rights of ALL women, we all win.
      • Clare Phillipson whats all this talk about radfems hating trans???….disagreeing is not hate…..hate is when trans threaten us with burning,rape,die ciscum etc…..
      • Lilithe Magdalene Erasure and claiming they don’t exist is hate.
      • Lilithe Magdalene When you deny the existence of transgender folk, you are condoning the continued violence against them. It’s not right to respond to hate with hate, but is still a very human thing to do. Perhaps you could reach through your fear and see where that return hatred (read ” their very real fear”) is coming from. When you perpetuate the erasure, you perpetuate the violence.
      • Isabelle Gundermann Clare Phillipson, would you agree that MRAs who attempt to discredit the oppression of women as hate? Because I would. In much the same way, radical feminism’s denial of trans women and men, and the oppression they face, contributes to fear, hatred, and violence that is directed towards to trans community, and reduces the possibility of them being able to access the resources they NEED to survive. Radical feminism preaches hate towards trans people, and as a cis feminist, I need to fight for the rights and wellbeing of ALL women, not just cis women.
    • Megan Mackin AND Radical Feminism is INHERENTLY trans-critical. Has been since the beginning; always will be.
      • Hide 27 Replies
      • An Nika this is why radical feminism is oppressive shit.
      • Huxley Morgan I don’t think we all agree that radical feminism is *inherently* trans-critical. And even if it were, the form that that criticism has taken is *deeply* shameful. As radical feminists, we don’t appreciate the use of “but men get raped, too” as a derailing tactic – but we also don’t say cruel things to or about the actual victims (if that happens, please nobody link to it, I’ll happily live in ignorance on this one). We may rage against the woman-hating mainstream porn machine, but we don’t say nasty things about the women involved. There are so many instances where we recognize, accurately, that the system that is patriarchy is harmful, that we all suffer for it, and that people who are hurting under it navigate and survive it the best that they can. No one here seems to be saying “cis women should never meet amongst one another” – but the backlash against the Radfem conference is a response to way more than that.
      • Sara Tee Yeah, the OP flat out lied in the bit that said “radical feminism has been hijacked” by the trans-critical.

        One of the core tenets of radical feminism is the critical analysis of gender and all it’s attendant harms. We analyse and criticise the construct of gender. This means we also analyse and criticise the transgender movement.

        This does not mean we hate trans.

        Do atheists hate religious people, FFS? Stop deliberately misrepresenting and demonising something you clearly don’t understand.
      • Sara Tee Pardon punctuation and grammar typos, my phone sucks.
      • Being Feminist I didn’t post this article, and I’ll admit I don’t know all that much about trans-issues. As a heterosexual woman, with obvious “straight” privilege I don’t like making assumptions about ANYONE’S sexuality or gender, because I don’t know what it’s like to be different to the sexual “norm”. I want for all PEOPLE to eventually be treated equally, and with respect. I can’t say that “transgender” does not exist because I’m not entirely sure myself about the science of “gender” and how gender and sex mix and overlap. But I do know that there are many people who are not “heteronormative” and that every one of their identities matters just as much as mine. When someone tells me that they identify as a woman, since I am not them, I cannot say for sure “you are a woman” or “you are not a woman”. You see, I do not know – is “woman” defined by sex or by gender? I know that many radical feminists believe that there is no such thing as gender. Therefore, by that logic there is no such thing as “transgender” because there is no “real” gender – there are simply men and women who do not conform to gender expectations. But I don’t know. These are the boundaries that I as a feminist struggle with. Essentially, I want to treat everyone equally. No matter whether you are woman or man, heterosexual or queer – you all matter as PEOPLE. As such I do not support people treating self-identified transpeople with disrespect. BUT at the same time I feel my heart to be very much a radical feminist. And much as I want to treat everyone “equally” I know that since we have different concerns and different problems, we do need these “identities”. “Woman” is an important identity for the feminist cause. I also know that many radical feminists have had experience with men trying to hijack the cause, to direct much of the drive that goes into “women’s” issues towards their own “issues”. I can see exactly why radical feminists resent that as belittling of feminism. And as such, I can see radical feminists’ logic in wanting “women only” spaces (remember that they believe gender does not exist) and so “transgender” women coming into these spaces, since they are SEXUALLY men, seems like an invasion. As I say, I have been struggling with this issue. I do also know that there have been insults and disrespect on both sides of the debate, and particularly that radical feminists have been threatened and harassed and subjected to death threats and rape threats by irate transactivists. I do not support such attacks against anyone. I believe that anyone, who believes in equality between men and women, can part of the feminist movement. Within that movement, why can’t we all respect one another, and work together? ~LA
      • Sara Tee Actually, we do know that gender is a “thing” – but we recognise that it is an entirely socially constructed “thing” – and that if there were no such thing as sets of behaviours/looks that are assigned to either the feminine or masculine gender box, then we would have a world where both biological males and females are able to look, dress, act however they want, without being labelled or placed inside a harmful and limiting gender box.

        All human beings would be free to act and look however they want, without having to label themselves as anything.

        We disagree with this labelling system in the first place, especially since gender is actually a hierarchy, with the male/masculine dominating the female/feminine.

        We can see that transgenderism actually validates this constructed hierarchy, and so we are obliged to disagree with the practice of it.

        In no way do we hate trans or deny their existence – we disagree with their interpretations of the world. We do not think their bodies or their minds are evil or wrong – we think SOCIETY and PATRIARCHY is evil and wrong.

        Hope that clarifies things.
      • Sara Tee I also deeply disagree with the medical industry taking advantage of their dysphoria, and the way children are being diagnosed as transgender for merely not conforming to their assigned gender box. I think this is child abuse.
      • Sara Tee Little boys should be allowed to wear dresses and have long hair and wear ribbons etc without being told they are actually a girl. If people can’t understand that this is conservative thinking, child abuse and brainwashing then I don’t know how to reach you.
      • Elizabeth Veldon the abusive ones here, sara tee, are the rad feminists ‘outing’ people, calling them ‘oppressors’ for campaigning and speaking out, calling their oppression a form of abuse against you and your ilk.
      • Sara Tee No, Elizabeth. Just because you want something to be true, doesn’t make it true. Sorry.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Sara Tee – None of the transgender folk I know see the expression of their gender as reduced to mere dressage. It is so much more than that. The hormones they receive change their bodies, their emotions, their sexuality – and all of the ones I know feel that this biological change is in alignment with who they really feel they are in their brains. It’s not just about frilly dresses and ribbons, it’s about biological alignment.
      • Megan Mackin Even author J. Boylan admitted that for the t-culters it WAS about the trappings — and he is one. And no one’s asking for a uterus — or a clitoris!, just the man-space inside (preferably with orgasm function in the hole, the male ideal, no fussy clit to mess with!). ‘Gender’ is artifice: masculinity or femininity. Sex is male or female. Changing an artifice doesn’t mean you get to appropriate MY oppression. Or, I’m really feeling I’m Native American … think I’ll go appropriate a sweat lodge! Oh, wait, whites already do that …. (And it IS seen by the ones they oppress as appropriation; wish feminists could routinely be this savvy.)
      • Lilithe Magdalene Biology of sex is not mere genitalia – it is a host of hormones. It’s not about the junk, but the FEELING of what being a particular sex is. Please stop using the specious argument of racial appropriation. It is NOT the same.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Sex is also not so essentialist. Sex is a spectrum – are you saying there is no such thing as intersex by saying sex is male or female? Why do you want to erase the experiences of a whole population? They do not desire to erase YOUR experiences.
      • Megan Mackin Yes, it is. And sex is not a ‘feeling,’ it’s a biological fact. Same as race — actually far more so! And yet we’d never really allow racial appropriation … OK, we do, but! Please stop pretending (see, I can get snotty, too!) that gender is real and is a feeling. Gender is a patriarchal construct (see what Sara T wrote), not a feeling, and my oppression is not available for those with f e e l i n g s that they should be able to appropriate it!
      • Megan Mackin Sex is not a spectrum — that is absurd non-science. Sex is male and female and a very, very few intersex individuals who are not on the t-cult side, anyway!
      • Megan Mackin Oh, yeah, the erasure is on the side of women, and women-only spaces, and funding for women now going to the rainbow of MEN, and Lesbians, especially losing out …. Yeah, erasure, right along with that real sweet “die cis scum” tat and photo op.
      • Lilithe Magdalene How is fighting for ones own rights, to be heard and not erased, erasure of you?
      • Lilithe Magdalene I’m not being snotty, either. These are sincere questions.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Also, I never said gender is a feeling. Sex has a feeling dictated by hormones. Every transgender person I know speaks of how their sexual desires, and emotions changed with the introduction of hormones into their system. These feelings fit with how they experienced themselves as a person, not just a gender.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Why do you leave the brain out as a mechanism of biological sex? Genitalia are NOT the only aspect of sex – the adrenals and the brain are just as involved in this as the genitalia and gonads are. Taking the brain out of the equation is what is “absurd non-science”.
      • Megan O’Brayton Seriously are you trying to say men and women have different brains now! How bloody anti feminist can you get !!!!
      • Megan O’Brayton I am not a woman because i feel like a woman i am a woman because I am a adult female of the sex.
      • Megan O’Brayton Female genocide is not done because someone feels like a female. The oppression rape and murder of women is done because we are female.
      • Megan O’Brayton by saying that clothing or feeling make someone a woman. You are only supporting gender roles not de constructing them….
      • Lilithe Magdalene No Megan, I am not saying that (had a feeling someone would misinterpret that). I am saying the brain speaks to the rest of the body – what hormones to create etc, based on your sex. It is involved in the process. That much should be obvious.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Hormones DO affect feelings, emotions and sexual responses. Hormones are created by the gonads and the adrenals, the adrenals and gonads are instructed by and have conversation with the brain. You cannot leave the brain out of the equation.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian When trans activist and male right extremist agree to sabotage a feminist event, (as this is what has happened for RF2012 and RF2013) I find it fascinating to see fellow feminist follow the trans/mre without question. I honestly do not understand that …See More
      • Hide 20 Replies
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia The statement from the venue says they independently investigated the beliefs of the attending radfems and found them to constitute hate speech against trans* people. MRAs are falsely claiming responsibility and for some reason the conference is backing up this fiction, but the facts speak for themselves and anyone can contact the venue independently and find out they cancelled because they would have been threatening their charitable status to allow the conference to proceed, given its stance on trans* women. Trans* activists and MRAs have nothing to do with one another as MRAs hold the same opinions of trans* women that trans exclusionary radfems do.

      • Angela Soudjoukdjian Actually, off to work the booking agent for LIC explained they cancelled the booking for safety reasons: “Our cancellation of the booking was a very difficult decision, but one that we have made to protect the safety of our venue staff” https://www.facebook.com/offtowork/posts/10151561719698958

        Off to Work
        In response to those posting about the Radfem conference, Off to Work apologises…See More
      • Angela Soudjoukdjian you seriously need to drop the transphobia label everytime a woman dares suggesting a theory of gender you disagree with.
      • Clare Phillipson disagreeing with transtheory is!not!hate speech…….hate speech is what radfems are receiving everyday for simply wanting to get together and talk…where is the support from other feminists for wbw wanting to get together to talk?…
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Funny how neither of you responded to anything I actually said above, like how the venue cancelled the conference because *they* independently decided the speakers were using hate speech.
      • Ilyssa Silfen They didn’t respond because they don’t have an argument.
      • Angela Soudjoukdjian I didn’t answer because my Internet connection is shit. please quote some hate speech? what hate speech?
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia I don’t dare say her name because you know she’ll come after me and how dangerous she is. You know the speaker I’m talking about. Even my radfem friends are terrified of getting on the wrong side of her. And you did reply, you just ignored what I said about the venue independently deciding to cancel. Perhaps you should ask them to state what they thought was hate speech, rather than asking me, it wasn’t me that made that decision, nor did I have any part in challenging the conference, my role on the internet is purely educative.
      • Angela Soudjoukdjian cathy brennan, name her, she is lovely
      • Clare Phillipson incidentally the irish centre have not cancelled the booking on the grounds of ‘hate speech’…their subcontractors are worried about the safety of their staff because of protests by m.r.a.s….
      • Druscilla Ryan disclusion of trans* women for not “being women” is bigotry. simple.
      • Sara Tee The booking agent for the venue denied what was written in that dodgy times article. They said they were approached by MRA London and as a result were fearful for the safety if their staff. They are currently helping radfem2013 find a new venue

        I didn’t realise that “being feminist” actually meant being biased and deliberately misrepresenting radical feminists and radical feminism.

        You just lost a fan, shit page. This is not feminism.
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia London Irish Centre: “We did some research into RadFem and discovered certain language was used and some statements were made about transgender people that would go against our equalities and diversity policy.”
      • SadieDave Hemmings Well ‘Lesbians Against Derpy Derpy’ is my winner for intelligent and mature put-down of the day. Behaving like a 3 year old has totally won me round to your argument…
      • Arkadia Getheren Moon You lost me at “When trans activist and male right extremist agree to sabotage”.

        I don’t know that the MRAs did anything at all; actually, given what I’ve seen of MRAs, I’d be surprised if they *did* stir themselves to do anything more than talk on the Web. The trans advocates, at most — if they even did that — committed the <sarcasm>unforgivable act of masculine aggression</sarcasm> of inviting the venue administration to take an independent look what the TERF people have actually said, in public fora that can be reviewed by anyone with a computer. Yea, verily, the Internet doth never forget. It’s kind of difficult to paint yourself as innocent, inoffensive, or unjustly persecuted when you’ve left an immortal trail of hateful spew behind you.

        But even if both trans advocates and MRAs *had* both done this, it doesn’t follow that two groups that do the same thing, tending toward the same immediate outcome, for very different reasons, are colluding. This about on the same level as equating gay rights activism with NAMBLA (a long-standing Stupid Homophobe Trick).
      • Rani Bakr Of course these Westboro Baptist Feminist bullies are going to derail a topic to talk about their little hatefest being denied a venue. Bullies gonna bully.
      • Isabelle Gundermann “Women are not obligated to lobby for agendas that run counter to our interests.” – ‘our’ interests? The less I have in common with you, Brennan, the happier I will be. And in any case, why are you so surprised that so many women are against your own hateful agenda? After all, they run counter to my interests in supporting a feminism and a world that inclusive of ALL women (and yes, trans women are women, no matter what you try to say to the contrary). I have no interest in a ‘feminism’ that espouses violence and exclusion as the best methods to ‘support’ women.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Cathy Brennan – “Lesbians and Feminists against Depry, Derpy” is oh so very adult of you. If you cannot conduct yourself in an adult manner I suggest you be blocked from this discussion.
    • Being Feminist While I do not condone transphobia – I must say that some radical feminists have received absolutely horrible death threats, rape threats and have been stalked and harassed for being transphobic. No one should be treated like that for any reason. That’…See More
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia I agree those behaviours would be unacceptable, but a moderator only talking about the behaviour on one side is also unacceptable. On my page I always challenge language that speaks against radical feminists in general or makes sweeping slurs. If some of the things being said on this page were being said about gay people half the people on this thread would have been booted off by now – I love radical feminism, I don’t love trans* exclusion because it breeds ignorance and hate, and the transphobia equivalent of “God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve”. Disappointed in your siding on this issue, BF
      • Arkadia Getheren Moon All people — no matter their gender or anything else — should be held responsible and accountable for what they do and say; what they are is a different story. People who say horrible things about radfems are no better than people who say horrible things about trans people. Self-righteousness is as ugly in trans people and their advocates as it is in anyone else. So is crying transphobia when there’s no genuine issue of transphobia in play (I’ve seen a few trans people doing that to dodge responsibility for their own behaviour, and I don’t respect it).

        For me, all women (cis or trans) should be judged on their individual merits, and the same is true of radfems. Reducing a woman to a deindividualised object because she identifies herself with a particular political label, or because she happens to have been born physically not female enough for you, is dehumanising and anti-feminist. (Is it really okay, in 2013, to reduce women to their genitalia? All my life, I’ve understood that’s was something feminism frowned upon heavily … did I misunderstand something, or do the bedrock ideals of feminism melt, run, and change according the the convenience of the moment?)
      • Lilithe Magdalene And nobody with real lived experiences of their gender should be violently erased by the attitudes many radical feminists espouse. There is violence in their denying of trans peoples’ lives and experiences.
      • Megan Mackin You can’t have “real lived experience” with a fake construct. And I can’t be a Black activist. Or a Native American. I can fool you and pretend real hard. But it still doesn’t make me One. And those who are real have every right to be furious at my appropriation. Now why is that not obvious? And why can’t you see the neat, side-by-side parallels with feminism which is for women and girls?
      • Lilithe Magdalene Megan – this was already discussed. There is no medical procedure, no hormones a person can take to become another race. That is fully determined in the womb based on genetic markers. Sex on the other hand, is not so cut and dry – different chemicals in the brain and in the body create change – did you not watch the video that was posted in this discussion? These changes can be easily accessed through medical intervention. Body characteristics can be changed through hormonal intervention so that what is happening in a persons body better lines up with what is happening in their brain. You just cannot compare race and sex.

        Now you CAN speak of different lived experiences. You can say someone MAAB has lived experiences with male privilege – and on some levels you may be right – except this person’s brain is knowing they are female, and that the misogyny this person can see in the world gets internalized – yes on the surface there in privilege but internally there is conflict from the messages received from culture. This forces hiding, and fear of being found out, and feeling ashamed, and feeling out of place with no support or community of understanding. This is where you would label someone as MAAB as appropriating the lived experiences of women and their oppression when they transition or come out – and one can definitely say the experiences are DIFFERENT, but you certainly cannot say that person “enjoyed” male privilege. To some degree, perhaps, but not really.

        Truthfully, I am not qualified to discuss too much on what the internal process is, as I am not transgender, but I have heard so often how painful it is when women like you accuse transgender women of appropriation – you have no idea the kind of fear, the level of threat to their existence for being a transgender woman in a misogynist society. Your experiences ARE different, as are theirs, but they do not suffer from misogyny any less than you do, and in some respects even more.

        If anyone transgender sees this and wishes to correct me, please do.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian Trans gather together without wbw all the time, we respect that and no one would call that hate speech, I honesty don’t understand why when women born women want their own space they get vilified and harassed and receive death threats.
      • Hide 12 Replies
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia This is disingenuous, Angela, because it implies that there is some women’s space that you would want trans* women to be included in, and I suspect that’s not the case. It’s also disingenuous because unlike radfems, trans* women are neither a political group nor a movement, they are a diverse group of people only in having a biological history that makes them trans* in common, and what one trans* person does is no more other trans* people’s responsibility than what you do being my responsibility.
      • Angela Soudjoukdjian first of all, most feminist places are inclusive to all men, women, trans… When we claim for once to get a place that is only for women doesn’t seem too much to ask… apparently it is. Secondly trans are individual people … like radfem. and some trans organise as political movement in order to lobby… just like any political movement. and i completely respect their right to do that. As trans people, they share an experience of oppression that i cannot know, and radfem respect that. but the reverse isn’t true. I wonder if you had a look at the hate speech radfem receive daily on twitter, this isn’t a case of one or two individual people, it is an organised campaign to silence us, it is constant, it is violent and it is totally unacceptable harassment. The fact that feminist witness that and choose to stay silent or worst try to silence us even further is appalling.
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Actually I’ve never personally witnessed any behaviour from trans* women online that equates to the behaviour I’ve seen from trans excluding radfems, but I’m not going to stick up for anyone who is bullying or abusive, cis or trans* and nobody gets away with stuff like that on my page. The problem is that trans* activists are being stuck in a box with MRAs and two more different groups of people you couldn’t find . . .but the fact remains, the problem here is simply that you don’t accept that trans* women are women, so when you talk about space that’s “only for women” you believe trans* women should not be in it, whereas I believe they should, and that their inclusion will enrich that space and put an end to this pointless, life-sucking debate.
      • Angela Soudjoukdjian well I am sure you have heard “DIE CIS SCUM” before? no? I suggest you get on twitter and have a look at the level of abuse radfems are getting. I for one have never heard or read a radfem say a similar thing to a trans person! what you equate to hate speech is what i am going to write now: I do not believe trans women are women, I believe in biology, penis is male, trans women are men. I do not say they do not exist, i do not wish they were dead, they have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. I also I have the right to not want to organise politically with men. and that is not hate speech. “One persons freedom ends where another persons freedom begins”
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia watch the TED lecture I posted and tell me once again about biology Angela – it’s so complicated, and you know darn well the human race doesn’t fit neatly into two discreet biological boxes, it’s infinitely more complicated than that. As for “Die cis scum” I did a lengthy investigation of that phrase and found little evidence for it other than trans* people saying among themselves how unhelpful it ever would be to say such a thing. But if there are rotten apples in the trans* barrel, that would be unsurprising given you get rotten apples in most barrels, it really is never acceptable to hold a minority responsible for the actions of one of its members.
      • Angela Soudjoukdjian i will watch the ted talk (please send the link again, i can’t find it with all these conversations) but i think you are being dishonest or misinformed about the level of hatred and the violence antiradfem online. stopping there for tonight, baby is crying

      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia I am most certainly not being dishonest – I keep hearing about these terrible trans* women but I’ve never seen them, and I’ve been involved with both trans* activism and radical feminism so I’ve definitely had a good insight into both sides. Please feel free to link me to information and I’ll challenge it myself, because abuse isn’t going to help the cause. Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYpDU040yzc

        TEDxJaffa — Daphna Joel — Are brains male or female?

        www.youtube.com

        Professor Daphna Joel explores the mistaken concept that brains can be either ma…See More
      • An Nika radscum complains about people saying “die cis scum” meanwhile, trans* women everywhere get raped and/or killed for being trans*.

        but whah whah someone said something mean on the internet. Go cry me a river.
      • Bhaswati Chattopadhyay You say you believe in biology but don’t realize how facile it is to reduce a human being into socially constructed genders based on their genitalia. *rolls eyes*
      • Clare Phillipson bhaswati….no!that isnt what we are saying…we are saying we want to abolish gender…transactivists are entrenching it….
      • Sarah Sparkle surely the concepts of lesbianism and of womanhood are also entrenching gender.
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia An Nika – “radscum” is so fricking unhelpful, I wish you could keep it civil. Not cool. Clare, there is no entrenching of gender in trans* activism, that’s a basic misunderstanding that if only more trans* women were included in our movement would be soon exploded. I just wish you’d open your hearts and ears to what’s real here

    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Not only do I know many trans* people being deeply hurt by views as set out by some people in this thread, but those “transcritical” views are also hurting the feminist movement as a whole. They’re leaving us stuck at a kindergarten level of understand…See More

      TEDxJaffa — Daphna Joel — Are brains male or female?

      www.youtube.com

      Professor Daphna Joel explores the mistaken concept that brains can be either ma…See More
      • 5 Replies
    • Clare Phillipson this article is grossly unfair…support and understanding has to cut both ways…if a group of women born women want to meet then so what??..i wouldnt object to black women,disabled women ,trans women meeting separately to discuss their unique experiences…i wouldnt be demonstrating against trans women meeting together…so why the vitriol directed at women born women
      • Hide 19 Replies
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Clare, the issue isn’t about WBW space in this article, it is about certain elements of our feminist community stating that trans* women are not really women at all, and should not be allowed into *any* women only space – that’s very different from setting up a group that has a valid reason to be WBW only. But in addition to that, I’d also like to point out that trans* women are an oppressed sub-group of women as a whole, so your analogy doesn’t really work – a more accurate analogy to WBW space would be able bodied space or white-only space. The arguments that trans* women have male privilege no matter how often repeated, do not bear up under any kind of scrutiny, they’re just an excuse for people to decide not to show any concern for the needs of this much oppressed and marginalised part of our community.
      • Clare Phillipson trans were born with male priviledge….were not aborted due to being a female foetus….were not killed for being a female baby….their experiences are very!different to wbw…and as such should respect the right of wbw to meet and organise seperately…i respect the right of trans to meet,to have group therapy,to have trans hair n make up sessions etc….radfems really are not asking for much…and other ‘feminists’should respect that
      • Clare Phillipson and as a feminist i can choose what my priorities are..i have limited time on this planet…violence against wbw and girls is my!!priority….that isnt ‘hate speech’or transphobia…or being an uncaring person..its me deciding to focus my energies to where i see the greatest need…i should be allowed to meet,and discuss that priority,with other wbw,without being called radscum,a bigot,threatened etc
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Nobody here is calling you a bigot or scum, just having a discussion. You also were not aborted due to being a female foetus….you also were not killed for being a female baby, so you have that in common with trans* women. Violence and rape against trans* women is also disproportionate compared to violence and rape against cis women (I work in rape and domestic violence services that support all women, and it’s never been any kind of a problem including trans women). There would be absolutely no problem in widening the circle to include trans* women in our care, it would not hurt anyone, it would not endanger anyone, and it would enlighten both trans* women and feminists. It’s a win win situation, but instead time and energy is wasted on fighting trans* women that could be better used smashing the patriarchy, just because you make this one little mistake and think that trans* women are not women at all.
      • Clare Phillipson the fact i was lucky enough to survive the womb/birth as a female foetus does not negate my argument that the female of the species faces greater oppression than the male,i wrongly assumed you.d recognise that basic feminist concept,and would understand,that as a female i dont just fight the oppressions i have personally experienced
      • Clare Phillipson many survivors(wbw)of rape and domestic violence would be deeply disturbed to share their wbw spaces with someone with a penis…or who has benefited from male priviledge..i do hope you have thoroughly consulted with your service users on this issue…and given them a choice before you impose your transtheory on them
      • Clare Phillipson and im not!fighting trans…quite the opposite…transactivists are denying wbw the right of assembly…id never do that to transactivists
      • Clare Phillipson and id be interested to know your view on the transperson who insisted on displaying their penis to girls in a changing room?
      • Ilyssa Silfen ^ Source?
      • Clare Phillipson ilyssa…its been all over the internet for months…i cant do links,im on a mobile…tryin googling girls swimming team and changing room trans..it should work..
      • Michelle King Cohen Clare if you cannot care for ALL women, you can’t fight for them either. I am reminded of a conversation I had with another feminist on another page who expressed disdain for anyone who thought that fighting for the rights of women in places other than her own backyard was a waste of her time and energy. The fact is that ALL women, need to fight for the rights of ALL women or else we will never be able to make the changes in the world that need to be made.
      • Ilyssa Silfen Ok, I’ll bite. And now that I’ve researched it, are you seriously saying that because ONE TRANS* WOMAN made a questionable decision, all trans* women should be punished for it?
      • Arkadia Getheren Moon You do it the same way people have to do it if they want to exclude black people, Jews, women, Muslims, straight people, white people, non-redheads, or left-handed Latvian lesbians with lupus.

        1. You get a privately-owned venue, preferably owned by someone who shares your views, that is not a public accommodation.
        2. You advertise the meeting wherever you like, specifying that it is a private meeting accessible by invitation only or members-and-guests only (i.e. it is closed to the general public). I personally think it’s better if you make your exclusion explicit (otherwise you look like you’re ashamed of it).
        3. You hold your meetings in that venue, on those terms.

        Do this, and I at least won’t object. (I don’t object to MWMF for exactly this reason.) Of course, some people will object — that is after all, how the Citadel and the Masters’ Golf Club and so many other places got opened to women. Fair play is fair play.
      • Clare Phillipson @arkadia…just incredible that so many so called ‘feminists’object to wbw meeting to talk about womens oppression……but you just keep right on supporting the patriarchy arkadia…
      • Clare Phillipson and ‘left handed latvian lesbians with lupus’…is really not funny…tho i imagine you thought you were being witty……
      • Clare Phillipson ilyssa…’a questionable decision’???they repeatedly committed a sex offence’indecent exposure’…under the guise of being ‘trans’not only have they not been prosecuted,but the girls swimming team have lost their changing room…so the needs and wishes of this sex offender can take primacy….
      • Arkadia Getheren Moon I *don’t* object to wbw meeting. I think I made that pretty clear, even before I said “this is why I don’t object to MWMF”, which should have been a clincher. It just can’t be in a public venue, because if *you* have the right to exclude an entire class of people from a public venue, then every group that wants to has the right to exclude some identified group of people from a public venue — including women, lesbians, feminists, radfems. You’d be legitimizing sexist exclusion, even by your definition of the term.

        Your right to access public venues rests on the fact that you are forbidden to exclude others from public venues. That’s called justice.

        If what you mean when you say should have the right to meet is that wbw should have the right to exclude trans women from a public venue, and without others having the right to object … why don’t you take a moment and think about what kind of rights and powers you’re asking for, and what others would do with such rights and powers (they wouldn’t be exclusive to you, after all).
      • Clare Phillipson @arkadia what you seem to forget in all this is that wbw are an oppressed!!group….not!a priviledged group…wbw are denied their own spaces..denied safety in public spaces….carving out a little time for wbw to get together and talk excludes no one……there are many other spaces trans can gather…im not objecting to that..why would i?you still have not given a convincing reason as to why wbw gathering is such a problem….so maybe i should educate you??the patriarchy doesnt want it
      • Arkadia Getheren Moon I don’t understand why you don’t see that I am quite okay with wbws gathering. I have affirmed that *repeatedly*. I’ve even affirmed that I have no objection to MWMF, which is quite the unpopular view in the circles I move in.

        But neither you, nor I, nor anyone else, has the right to exclude an entire group of people from any space that is open to the general public. Nobody has that privilege, for very good reasons that would curl your hair.

        But you claim that privilege. In fact, you regard not being granted that extraordinary privilege as a form of oppression. Rather telling, in my opinion.

        I get that you have a problem with the presence of trans women, just as some people have problems with the presence of Muslims, or lesbians. That’s fine. Your feelings are yours, and you’re entitled to them. I respect that, and would never tell you how to feel; your head and heart are not mine to command.

        But you must understand that just as your feelings are yours, your problem is yours, not someone else’s, and the responsibility for dealing with it appropriately is yours, not someone else’s. You have the responsibility to cope with your own problem in an appropriate way that doesn’t harm others, or intrude on their rights. That is how public spaces in a civil society work. Now, private spaces are another matter, which is why I have no objection to wbws meeting in private spaces. As I have said repeatedly.
    • Denise Nichols The radical feminists that I have known have all been trans-phobic. They view them as men… It’s sad, really. But, it shows me how I *don’t* want to think.
      • Huxley Morgan Not all, promise. There’s some good stuff out there.
      • Bev Jo They ARE men. Have you not talked with them, read them, watched how they hate women?
      • Lilithe Magdalene I have talked with many transgender women, Bev Jo, and find they are all avid feminists in the fight to equalize the status of women. I have NEVER hear them hating on women, though I have seen them respond to the hate many radical feminists espouse, and I find that a very human (thought I do not condone) response.
      • Isabelle Gundermann Bev Jo, that sounds a bit like you don’t want to acknowledge or own your own privilege, instead choosing to label it ‘hate’ when people point out that you, as a cis woman, are privileged in this society above trans women whose lives and experiences are denied, repressed, and shat on BY cis women like yourself.
    • Clare Phillipson and whoever wrote this o.p is seriously confused…and mixing up sex and gender……..radical feminists are opposed to gender….and see transtheory as a right wing conservative,very suburban,entrenchong of the gender binary
    • Clare Phillipson @druscilla…men cant ‘get abortions’…men cant get pregnant….females capacity to carry babies is at the root of much of our oppression…we cannot obliterate this simple fact
      • Hide 44 Replies
      • Ilyssa Silfen Uh, yes they can. If they identify as men and have an abortion, then they’re men having an abortion. Simple as that.
      • Clare Phillipson no,it really isnt that simple…apples are not oranges
      • Virginia Pele Damn, we should’ve thought about that. Everything is about how u feel right ? Simple as that.
      • Clare Phillipson i agree..biology is not destiny….gender is a social construct….
      • Clare Phillipson no…sex is a physical fact…born females have different biological bodies to born males..that is a fact
      • Clare Phillipson and born males have male priviledge,grow up with male priviledge..that is another fact…a basic tenet of feminism
      • Ilyssa Silfen They also grow up with the knowledge that they were born in the WRONG FUCKING BODY. The knowledge that if they reveal their true selves, it’s very likely that they will be bullied, harassed, raped, murdered, etc. Trans people do not have the same privileges as cis men, and for you to make that claim shows how little you actually know about what it means to be trans.
      • Sandy Hopton tenets of feminism? Feminism isn’t 10 commandments handed down from Moses, it evolves with our understanding. Our understanding about trans issues has evolved and we understand now that they are looking at the world through the eyes of their identified gender, and that they are receiving the messages and conditioning of their identified gender because neuroconstructivism means gender is a complex interaction of biology and social conditioning. Read Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender – she gets it.
      • Clare Phillipson so where does ‘this true self’come from??what is it?…all!male babies have male priviledge,all!male babies benefit from this(to greater degrees in different cultures)the behaviour,dominance,and sense of entitlement that male priviledge brings,is evidenced by the refusal to accept that wbw should be allowed to meet seperately…that is a very reasonable,non threatening request…and you still havent answered my question on transracial
      • Clare Phillipson @sandy…neuroconstructivism..is retrograde nonsense….the idea of ‘male’brains was used to deny wbw the right to train as doctors on the grounds their ‘female’brains would explode..transtheory is very!reactionary,very right wing….hence why you get places like iran supporting it….gender noncomformity is not!the same thing as physical sex
      • Ilyssa Silfen Nobody’s saying that wbw shouldn’t be allowed to meet separately. YOU’RE arguing that trans* women shouldn’t be included AT ALL, ANYWHERE. And as for your strawman “transracial” argument, it’s full of shit. A white person cannot transition to being a black person any more than a black person can transition to being a white person. And a white person has NO RIGHT to appropriate black oppression, same as ciswomen have NO RIGHT to appropriate trans* oppression.
      • Clare Phillipson but a male bodied person can transition to a female bodied???but no one can do this transracially???does your lack of logic not hurt your brain?and please dont throw insults at me…im not full of shit..
      • Clare Phillipson and transwomen by your logic really should not be appropriating wbw oppression then?oh good,we agree on something
      • Ilyssa Silfen Trans* women have their own oppression to deal with. They don’t need ours. If I told you that you’re the most oppressed and persecuted person on the planet, would you stop with the oppression olympics?
      • Clare Phillipson the only oppression olympics are coming from you…..my priority is fighting the oppression of wbw….yours seems to be prioritising born males who want to entrench gender stereotypes…we differon our priorities
      • Ilyssa Silfen Your priority should be fighting ALL oppression, not just the oppression that appeals to you most.
      • Clare Phillipson and if trans women dont ‘need our oppression’why should it bother them if wbw meet seperately to discuss it?….wouldnt that be a kindness?not to burden them with wbw problems that they dont experience?like menstruation?the menopause

      • Ilyssa Silfen IT DOESN’T. FUCKING. BOTHER THEM. The only person who’s BOTHERED about ANYTHING is you. Jesus fucking Christ.

        http://kiyokochan.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/dfs98df7sd1.gif

      • Clare Phillipson ilysa..thats very presumptive…to tell me i have to fight all!oppression…that i should personally take up the battles of everyone who claims to be oppressed?if that were so,id also be expected to champion the cause of mens rights activists,while also being a feminist…i think i.ll skip on that confusion thanks
      • Clare Phillipson oh ok…now you.re shouting and swearing at me…and insulting me….i remain underimpressed by your behaviour
      • Ilyssa Silfen If I’m shouting and swearing, it’s only because you’re so blissfully unaffected by the ravages of intelligence and common sense.
      • Sandy Hopton lol to your mistake about my neuroconstructivism comment, Cordelia Fine and neuroconstructivism challenge the male/female brain theories, and support the idea that gender is mainly socially constructed – you should really check out that TED lecture LFAT posted if you want to understand how it works. Most trans* folks understanding of gender construction goes way beyond radfem theories and certainly has nothing to do with right wing old hat stuff like the studies of Baron Cohen and others . . .
      • Clare Phillipson the thing is ilyssa you seem to have missed the fact that transactivists are!!very bothered by wbw meeting seperately…they threaten violence,post death threats,insult us for wanting to meet
      • Clare Phillipson @sandy..ive read cordelia fine..i even have a copy of it on my bookshelf…i was responding to what you!!had to say..
      • Ilyssa Silfen Putting exclamation points after your claims doesn’t make them any more true. Just thought you should know. And so far, the only insults I’m seeing are coming from you and the other transphobic people on this thread. I’d like to see some sources for your claim that trans* women are threatening violence and posting death threats.
      • Sandy Hopton then you didn’t listen to what I had to say
      • Ilyssa Silfen Gotta love how these people disappear once you ask them to verify their claims with documented sources.
      • Clare Phillipson @sandy…no,you just didnt express yourself clearly..maybe you need to read some radfem theory to understand the debate fully?
      • Clare Phillipson @ilyssa…are you capable of debate?or is being insulting and snide innuendo your stock in trade for anyone who disagrees with you….open your mind!escape the gender stereotyes of transactivists
      • Becky Eliot As always it’s only a matter of time before someone, in their haste to define who gets to call themselves a woman, defines me as not a woman because I can’t have children. If I was ever going to be on the side of those who claim to be dismantling gender from inside their womyn-born-womyn-only spaces, you lost me at I’m not a woman and I don’t face sexism.
      • Clare Phillipson @becky..im confused….yes some females cant have children(i cant)…but really dont understand where/what ive said resulting in your comment above….
      • Becky Eliot “females capacity to carry babies is at the root of much of our oppression”
      • Clare Phillipson but it is….its what makes wbw bodies totally different to male bodies(aside from chromosomes and hormones)so the majority of the female of the human species can grow babies and breastfeed them…..which is at the root of our being ‘othered’and designated as the ‘sex class’…likewise menstruation and menopause are major rites of passage…of course not all wbw experience this…
      • Clare Phillipson females,who for whatever reason,choice or physical issues..experience all sorts of gendernormative oppression…if they dont/cant make babies…these are a tiny bit of the issues that trans do not,and cannot comprehend,as they are not wbw
      • Becky Eliot Reproductive capacity isn’t what makes wbw bodies different to male bodies, because I’m one of your precious wbw and I can’t reproduce. And it’s not ‘at the root’ of being othered. Somewhere in the mists of time that difference is probably how we ended up with a patriarchal society. I can’t say I’ve ever actually tried informing anyone about my reproductive capacity while they’re being sexist to me but I’m confident it wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference. I’m entirely unclear where “if they don’t/cant make babies…these are a tiny bit of the issues” etc is going, but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t anywhere helpful. Perhaps you could do some reading on the experiences of women who can’t/don’t want to have children in relation to sexism and then come back to that.
      • Clare Phillipson you are deliberately misunderstanding what i am saying…..and you know you are…you are deliberately taking offence where you know perfectly well none was intended
      • Clare Phillipson and being sexist to you ??eh??do you even know what sexism means?it appears not
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia reducing women to their ability to reproduce seems pretty sexist to me . . .
      • Clare Phillipson rubbish…and you know it….patriarchy reduces women to the status of ‘sex class’…not me….not radfems….repeat after me’i will try not to be manipulative in debates,i will try to engage in an adult,non passive agressive manner’
      • Clare Phillipson and the fact that the female of the species can(if they choose to…tho many are forced to ,with the male penis being used as a raping,impregnating woweapon)….grow babies and breastfeed them is something to celebrate…it is one of the physical differences that make wbw gloriously wonderfully female…..and yes,sadly some wbw cannot have babies….and yes,many are very happy not to….we celebrate the penis,that male weapon of war…we should celebrate the womb,that powerful organ of creation
      • Lilithe Magdalene Clare says:

        “but a male bodied person can transition to a female bodied???but no one can do this transracially??”

        No, of course not. Race has a different set of biologically genetic markers and effects on a body in embryonic development that cannot be duplicated in an adult. But sex is run by a very specific set of hormones that CAN cause transition. There are no hormones that can make a white person black and vice versa. That’s obvious.
      • Isabelle Gundermann “no,it really isnt that simple…apples are not oranges” – um, Clare, hate to break it to you but people aren’t fruit. False equivalences aren’t helping your arguments.
    • Michelle King Cohen so sad. Really? When will people realize that belittling ANYONE is counterproductive? Even belittling and insulting those who insult us is counterproductive. The only way for change to really occur is to meet each other with love and openness and the only way to get that is to give it- even when we don’t want to or the receiver doesn’t deserve it.
      • Michelle King Cohen all of those things can be done without belittling and insulting. Personal attacks on people only make it seem like you are throwing a temper tantrum and not fighting for a cause. Yes, of course, be aggressive, be strong, be mighty, be direct – but do so without resorting to the same tired tactics of name calling and bullying that the opposition uses.
    • Deb Lah i have publicly called you out in all my internet spaces for allowing this commentary, Being Feminist, and am calling on others to unlike your page because of it. a women’s movement is worthless if it excludes some women. and trans* women are women. i don’t care what you shitcunts say.
      • Bev Jo That’s right. Men who demand we accept them as women are the most women-hating of men. “Transphobia” is no more real than “trans-paraplegia-phobia.” Giving us death and rape threats to make us accept men as women will not work. If you accept these men, why not also fight for the right of able-bodied men to be accepted as “trans-paraplegic Lesbians?”

        National Geographic’s “Taboo” : Fake paraplegic Chloe Jennings-White

        February 1, 2012
      • Lilithe Magdalene Cool! Bev Jo in the fray with utter nonsense!
    • Jessica Bryn ‘Asking for your own space’ is a funny way of refusing to acknowledge a persons identity and respect them as a human being
      • Clare Phillipson recognising the need for seperate spaces(at different times)is very much about respecting them…..and respecting different identies and oppressions….its at the core of ‘intersectionaloty’..the right to gather,learn,share,take action
      • Sandy Hopton except that also at the core of intersectionality is listening to others and accepting their identities, rather than campaigning against them . . .
    • Virginia Pele Ridiculous. Trans activists preventing womyn born that way from meeting is not unfair to you ? WTF ! Male approval is no feminism. And trans women are not women. No I am not afraid of trans people, but politics has nothing to do with state of minds.
      • 22 Replies
    • Jessica Bryn But you arent just asking to meet separately, you are constantly invalidating trans women’s identity, and reducing them to the sum of their parts
    • Sandy Hopton Actually, the thing that really upsets me about this whole issue is that most feminists don’t want trans exclusion, not even all radfems want it . . . so it’s not just that trans folks are having their fates decided, we’re all being dictated to. As a c…See More
    • Gloria Sorenson Reiss seriously?!?! who cares, should any group for any reason be treated in such a manner? NO! if it makes you uncomfortable that a child born to one sex can only relate to the other sex and their parents are wise enough to help them reassign, then they are…See More
      • Clare Phillipson any parent who puts their child on puberty blocking drugs,because the child wants to change their born sex,is abusing their child,physically harming them
      • Clare Phillipson and all the research is showing that men who have reassigned,are often not!more comfortable in their skin,sometimes deeply regret reassignment…i suggest you do some intensive research,i have
      • Sandy Hopton Clare there is no body of research that says that, just radfem blogs and sites quoting bogus stories and one very deranged and deeply homophobic Canadian researcher. in fact all the research says quite the opposite, that no psychological interventions help trans* people, only transitioning alleviates their distress. I’m cis myself but I know many trans* people, detransitioning is incredibly rare. Any residual psychological distress is due to the intense exclusion they experience from society. But also, hang on, I thought trans* women were all a bunch of privileged interlopers, and now you seem to be suggesting that actually trans* women are suffering considerable distress . . . so maybe it would be a good idea to be more accepting of them, then? Where’s your compassion? Could it not be the attitude of radfems is adding to the considerable social stigma of being trans*, and that is why some people do not find happiness, just as many gay people were unhappy in society 40 years ago?
      • Lilithe Magdalene Clare – some links would be helpful. Every trans person I know is gloriously happy with their transition and relieved to finally be who they feel they are. I have NEVER seen any documentation of folk who have transitioned and regret it. not saying it doesn’t exist, but for all my hours of reading trans peoples’ stories, I’ve never come across it. Oh wait. I’ve seen one. Just one – Annie Sprinkle’s friend who transitioned back. That’s it.
    • Megan Mackin Clare rocks; so does Virginia Pele. When this hit my wall (posted by a male friend) some hours ago, I responded with this:

      * Do you accept that some people are ‘transracial’? Do you let them appropriate others’ oppressions? Because I am not pleased      …See More
    • Lilithe Magdalene Being Feminist – if you say you are against transphobia on this page, I really cannot understand why you allow the commentary here to go on. Radical feminists who espouse the non existence of transgender folk have plenty of their own spaces to stew in …See More
    • Becky Eliot Being Feminist, you have no idea how many feminist spaces I’ve left because of the whole ‘women are people who have periods and can get pregnant’ stuff being the dominant perspective and people refusing to listen when it’s gently pointed out that those things are not even true of all ‘womyn-born-womyn’. Thank you for trying to create a place that isn’t like that.
    • Spider Redgold A clear analysis of TG polemic and tg activist – what they do and what they say is very much part of feminism. Discernment is a sensible skill, and having an opinion is not a phobia. Discerning B/S*** and speaking out is not a phobia.
      • Jim Pivonka Discernment? Last time I heard that term was in a sermon given by a fundamentalist preacher on flyover country radio. Interesting. Discernment, in the sense you use it, turns out on Google research to be pretty much restricted to conservative Christian preaching and theory.
    • Jane Green To the person that said women’s “capacity to carry babies” is the root of much oppression – I can’t, guess I’m not oppressed then. My life should be much easier now you’ve cleared that up for me.
    • Jeff W Hutchison This might be the most specific issue I’ve found on the internet… I suspect that the Venn diagram of people who are concerned with this, and have a dog in the fight looks like two tangential circles.
    • Bev Jo Again, “cis” is a slur against women, and the women who adopt it are allying with men who fetishize and caricaturize women. Believing that men who show absolute contempt for women are somehow real women is outrageous and deeply female-hating.
    • Druscilla Ryan recently starting saying women/vagina issues so as not to leave anyone out, like the men who get abortions.

    • Lilithe Magdalene I just feel like parking this here to see what transgender and genderqueer people are really about:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKW5Vpgl8R8&feature=em-subs_digest

      Pronouns

      www.youtube.com

      ritchandfamous.tumblr.com facebook.com/famousandritch twitter.com/ritchandfamous…See More
    • Brittany Newmark translation–“shitcunt” means women is penis lingo. Good to know what you think of women
    • Sophia Banks If you dont tolerate transphobia stop posting it!
    • Bev Jo That’s right. Men who demand we accept them as women are the most women-hating of men. “Transphobia” is no more real than “trans-paraplegia-phobia.” Giving us death and rape threats to make us accept men as women will not work. If you accept these me…See More
      • Hide 20 Replies
      • Isabelle Gundermann False equivalence much? Cis radical feminists who block their ears to trans women’s oppression are just like MRAs who block their ears to women’s oppression because they don’t want to have to face their own privilege. It’s boring, it’s stupid, and it’s hateful, and it’s long past time you should have stopped. Men are men, women are women, trans women are women, trans men are men, and sex is a spectrum. Those of you who continue to believe that XX and XY are the only two ‘sexes’ are ignoring fact in favour of ‘wbw’ fantasy.
      • Bev Jo As I said, “trans women” are as real as “trans-paraplegics.” Men who appropriate female identity and caricature and fetishize us are not oppressed: They are our oppressors. Women who support them are betraying all women. THAT is what is “hateful, stupid,” but the rape and death threats are certainly not boring. So do you also support able-bodied men who insist they are disabled Lesbians? Where does the farce and oppression end? Either you are one of these men or you have not looked to closely at them and how they act.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Such a specious argument of conflated non related identities.
      • Bev Jo No, it’s a rational continuum about appropriation of the identity of oppressed people by those in the power position. Lesbians are at the bottom of the heap, with nothing left, yet men still want access to our last tiny bit of female only space. You’re heard of “The Cotton Ceiling?” They even want sexual access to us.

        And men who have killed women are saying they are women in order to be put in women’s prisons. What part of this is not obvious or clear?

        GenderTrender

        Into the Mind of Kosilek: Grace’s Daughter – a Book Review

        April 9, 2013

      • Bev Jo Check the archives and tell me again how men are women… http://gendertrender.wordpress.com/

        GenderTrender

        gendertrender.wordpress.com

        (by GallusMag)
      • Isabelle Gundermann Bev Jo, nobody here is suggesting that men are women. We are saying that trans women are women.
      • Bev Jo “trans women” are a myth. Of course they are men.
      • Bev Jo They are also men who do not take no for an answer. And they are incredibly entitled. How can any woman accept a man as a Lesbian?
      • Isabelle Gundermann For the record, I am neither a man nor am I trans, I’m a cis woman.

      • Bev Jo Well, then you are a male-defined woman, to use a male term that is insulting and female-hating. “Cis” is as bad as “cunt.” It is also part of the con defining women out of existence.

        http://bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/bev-jo-radical-lesbian-writing/ DEFINING LESBIANS OUT OF EXISTENCE — “TRANSWOMEN” ARE STILL MERELY MEN (And over 80% don’t even have surgery)

        DEFINING LESBIANS OUT OF EXISTENCE — “TRANSWOMEN” ARE STILL MERELY MEN (And over 80% don’t even ha

        bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

            Chapter Two DEFINING LESBIANS OUT OF EXISTENCE    Bev Jo                    …See More
      • Isabelle Gundermann ‘cis’ is a neutral label, ‘trans’ is a neutral label. ‘cunt’ is a word I choose to reclaim to show my love for my body. I love my cunt, I love my girlfriend’s cunt. ‘Cunt’ does have a history of marginalisation behind it, doesn’t stop me from reclaiming it and using it as a positive in my life.
      • Isabelle Gundermann The prefixes ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ are neutral terms, just like heterosexual and homosexual. In fact, much like hetero/homo, they are both rooted in greco-latin origins (meaning ‘on the same side’ or ‘on the other side/across’ respectively). We talk about cis and trans isomers, we talk about the trans-siberian railway, transcontinental, etc. It’s not a perjorative, it’s not an insult, it’s a useful label when it comes to looking at gendered oppression.
      • Sarah Sparkle i thought that you would consider SRS insulting to cis women? shouldn’t you be happy that the majority haven’t had surgery?
      • Bev Jo Cis is nambing an oppessed people against our will. The only women who use it are women who are supporting female impersonators against women. At what point do you stop? I’m guessing you agree with their rape and death threats?

        Cis is no more neutral and any other insult the oppressor uses against the oppressed.
      • Bev Jo Trans is a cult. If you refuse to obey the cult rules, including using female-hating terms, you get slammed and threatened.

        Surgery does not make women out of men, but the fact they don’t even bother means that the potential for rape, as these men continue invading “women only” space, increases.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Actually, I just call all of us “women” – I only use cis and trans when it is required to make it clear in a conversation. I consider trans women to be women, so, no problem!
      • Isabelle Gundermann Bev Jo, I use the word ‘cis’ for guys as well. Cis men – as opposed to trans men. It’s not a term to label an oppressed group: in fact, just as ALL women and ALL men have varying privileges and oppressions according to their experiences (ethnicity, sexuality, disability, family circumstances, class, etc), being cis IS a privileged position, relative to being trans. Of course, that isn’t the whole story, because the vast majority of violence perpetrated against trans people is against trans women of colour – I am by no means trying to lessen the suffering and experiences manyn cis women go through, but ignoring statistics is ignorant, arrogant, and stupid.
      • Isabelle Gundermann It baffles me how you can choose, in the face of reason, community, and the possibility of opening your heart to great love and growth, to remain as nasty and small-minded as you are doing, but hey, takes all sorts – right?
      • Bev Jo You’re the nasty and small-minded one, to so betray women on behalf of obvious men. Most violence is committed by men against women, but of course violence men aim at other men is more important, isn’t it? And somehow it is our responsibility that men are attacking men?

        Bringing race into this is ironical since some of the strongest defenders of women only space against men claiming to be Lesbians are Lesbians of Color — while the majority of men claiming to be Lesbians are the most privileged of white men. But again, the men matter more than any woman.
      • Bev Jo Cis is still a term of insult and these men oppressing us use it against our will, as they also appropriate our identity and destroy our last spaces against our will.

        Of course you are trying to lessen the reality of women’s oppression, and you love using classism to do it. You can’t argue with respect or honesty to call us names, including classist names. What is “ignorant, arrogant, and stupid” is to deny that men fetishizing women are not women, and to support those female-hating men against other women. If you care about statistics you would know that statistic on women being violent is increasing dramatically as men are being included as women.

        No, being a Lesbian and a woman is not privileged in relation to a man playing a fantasy game based on fetishizing women and Lesbians. Are disabled women privileged in relation to the “trans-paraplegic?” Are white men who pretend they are Women of Color (another trans cult game) more oppressed than real Women of Color? Where is your common sense or is it lost in your loyalty to these men?
    • Simone Andrea cis is such an insult. The obsession with proscribed gender roles is frightening. As feminists aren’t we meant to be going beyond that? I didn’t even know i was female until it was pointed out that it was my biological sex, it was THEN i relaised it wa…See More
    • Bev Jo It is all a choice to be Lesbian, het, bisexual, etc. But people can’t change sex any more than they can change species. If you talk to and are around men claiming to be women, it becomes very clear. They are even more male in attitude and behavior th…See More
      • Isabelle Gundermann Sexuality is a choice? Oh maaaaaaaaaan. I can’t even begin with how wrong you are. You can choose who you fuck, sure, but it sure as hell doesn’t change your sexuality.
      • Bev Jo You are so male-identified I might as well be answering a man. Women don’t fuck. They ARE fucked if they choose to be with men. Of course we all choose. We’ve been watching the back and forth for decades, with the choice usually made about privilege. For Lesbians, it’s about who we choose to love. “Sexual orientation” came from the male gay and genderqueer community. No longer a choice of pride to love our own kind, it became, “We can help being pathetic queers, so please give us equal rights. We’d be het like you if we could.” Well, no, we choose and, as I said, it’s a choice of pride. So “maaaaaaaaan,” where did you lose your heart and common sense?
    • Donna Lawson Again I ask, what is a woman if not a physiological female? How can that definition not be sexist?
    • Donna Lawson Trans women are NOT women, unless you are changing the definition of the term woman, which is one of the things I am vehemently against, eroding our identity to a mere social construct.
      • Sarah Sparkle i don’t get it…i thought you people thought gender is a social construct? or are you talking about sex identity?
      • Megan Mackin Sex is not gender! Sex is male or female, gender is masculine or feminine. Sex is real, biological; gender is a patriarchal construct that benefits patriarchy — and which privileges men.
    • Donna Lawson No, being gay is a behaviour or a desire that originates as thoughts, electrical impulses in your brain, being female or male is physical organs and having these organs and the physiology of a woman (in general physically weaker due to less muscle mass…See More
    • Donna Lawson i looked up what cis means and i find it deeply offensive that no only am i defined by our culture, but there is now a term for me to accept that definition and appropriate it upon myself. oh joy. I don’t “identify” as a woman and more than I “identify” as human. In fact, maybe I should “identify” as an alien race that doesn’t put up with all this crap the way humans do.
      • Isabelle Gundermann Well, do you identify as straight, bi, pan, gay, lesbian? Do you find any problem with people identifying with any sort of sexuality?
      • Isabelle Gundermann And would you agree that ‘identifying as gay’ is the same as ‘being gay’? Because I would. I don’t merely identify as queer, I am queer. Much like sexuality, gender identity functions in that way: trans women ARE women, it’s not just a matter of identification. I don’t IDENTIFY as cis, I AM cis. Not that hard, and really not derogatory! It’s simply a useful prefix that is already widely used in many situations to describe something that is on the same side as something else – in this case, your gender and you gender identity are lining up, lucky you!
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia heterosexual people had exactly the same problem with that word as you do with cisgender – they preferred to call themselves “normal”.
    • Bev Jo Reply · 1 · Yesterday at 7:37pm..

      “Trans women” feel like men because they ARE men. To say otherwise is perpetuating the threats against women and woman-hating because everyone knows men are more important than women — including men who say they are      …See More
    • Bev Jo I think that says it all, Brittany.
    • Deb Lah being feminist you should not have hosted this hatefest. you should have shut it down and blocked the transphobic bigots. you have made this space unsafe for marginalised women and you owe them a huge apology.
    • Donna Lawson No. I don’t feel this has anything to do with sexuality. I have a problem with female stereotypes that oppress women and seek to categorise them based on social and cultural norms. What you are attracted to in terms if sexuality I think is partly natur…See More
      • Isabelle Gundermann Ummmmmmmm, men don’t feel like women. Trans women feel like women because they ARE women, and to say otherwise is perpetuating hatred, fear, and violence that plague the trans community. Organs are not inherently male or female, and in any case even CHROMOSOMES don’t determine it. Did you realise that XX and XY are not the only combinations of sex chromosomes in humans? I have no interest in this conversation anymore: it is clear that you value definitions and labels over actually helping the oppressed, so congratulations, go and have a little wank over your ‘yes i am female more oppressed than every1 else and sex is a binary’ thing and I will concentrate my energies on helping communities of marginalised people grow & learn without your bullshit radfem influence. hugs and kisses1
      • Bev Jo “Trans women” feel like men because they ARE men. To say otherwise is perpetuating the threats against women and woman-hating because everyone knows men are more important than women — including men who say they are women. The violence is aimed at women by men, so that’s another cult con. The few men who are attacked because they are transvestites are attacked by other men, but somehow women are held accountable. You support men who kill women and then claim to be women being put into women’s prisons?
    • Donna Lawson Can someone please explain to me, without being sexist, how you can “feel” you are a woman if you were not born as such?
      • Stelzer Insertfirstnamehere … How does a cis person feel they are a man/woman? In reality I have no idea what the experience of being a man/woman/human is like for anyone else, and that is true weather I (or they) am trans* or cis. There is also no universal understanding of what it means or feels like to be a woman, no singular experience that defines womanhood as I know it – there’s arguably patriarchy, but transwomen are hardly exempt from that and different people experience patriarchy in a million different ways anyway, even when cis (see the intersections of disability, race, socioeconomic status, etc).
      • Simone Andrea No-one is exempt from patriarchy. That would indeed be the point when arguing against stupid terminology which panders to it, like cis.
      • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Our bodies and brains develop at different times in utero. Because of variations in hormone levels, all brains develop with a mixture of gendered traits – there is such a thing as a typically male/female brain, most of us don’t have one though! And some people have a typically male brain and a typically female body. The words sex and gender are both imprecise so don’t get hung up on them. After birth, our gendered brains influence what social constructs around gender we absorb from our environment, so a baby born with a penis but a female brain will be influenced more by female social constructs than male ones and will grow up with whatever female patterning society has at that time. Everybody’s brain is different, basically, and it doesn’t correlate to what’s between our legs – you can now decide whether what’s between our ears or our legs should be considered more important
      • Megan Mackin Brains are not sexed. Gendered is a patriarchal construct benefiting men. So if our brains our gendered, then our brains have been framed and labeled to suit the dominants’ power. Convenient! But please don’t confuse it with science!
      • Megan Mackin Cordelia Fine wrote an excellent (and well-received) book on brains and their lack of sexual dichotomy. I think even she conflates sex and gender (it’s a middle-class polite thang), and so she, the scientist, is saying that brains aren’t even really gendered!
      • Sarah Sparkle You say that sex is real but that brains aren’t sexed? Brains are not sex organs but they are influenced by them.
      • Lilithe Magdalene Once again, Megan, go watch the video posted earlier on this page. Her conclusions – there are no “male brains and no female brains” – yet there ARE very different structural differences, some that can easily shift under stress – we are both sexes and neither and perhaps conditions can cause what was once a brain geared up to produce lots of testosterone, to create more female hormones and vice versa, while chromosomes and external anatomy remain the same. We know so little about the biology of sex, how can you claim to know what the fullness of it is?
      • Rachael Patterson-McGuire Dr. Fine’s book is actually quite good, and she does not pretend to know the fullness of biology. She’s a neuroscientist, after all.
      • Susanna Iris Astarte I identify as a genderqueer person and I really like Trans women- will always stand up for my T sisters’ rights! Just thought I would comment!
    • Bev Jo “Trans women” feel like men because they ARE men. To say otherwise is perpetuating the threats against women and woman-hating because everyone knows men are more important than women — including men who say they are women. The violence is aimed at wom…See More
      • Lilithe Magdalene You make lots of claims with little thread of direct provable connection. They are the ramblings of a fear-monger, Bev Jo.
  • Being Feminist This page does not tolerate trans* phobia. Cis women are not more or less oppressed than trans* people. The oppressions are different and the exploitations are different. If people are killed for being “born woman”, people are also killed for merely articulating a non conforming gender identity. Please educate yourselves about the issues of the trans* community before dismissing them so thoroughly. If you have an issue with the article or disagreements with its intents, it’s perfectly possible to put forward your discomforts in a respectful way and with an open mind. We truly believe that feminists need to work together with an intersectional approach and we love the discussions that take place on this page. But when something starts bordering on hostility it’s no longer okay. This is a SAFE SPACE for everyone, including (and in this case, especially) our trans* identified members. Anyone who threatens that will be banned. – SS
    • Hide 18 Replies
    • Megan Mackin Glad I don’t hafta worry — both “transphobia” and “cis” anything **don’t exist.** I’m fine with leaving now, sad to know that “feminists” don’t support women — but here to tell ya that we Radical Feminists do, in fact, give our loyalty to women and girls. Take care.
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Being Feminist, you rock, and you speak for most feminists today, unlike these fringe elements who do nothing but bring our movement to its knees. I’m cool with radical, but radical has to be self-reflective, up-to-date, wise, listening and empathic . . . great that we’re debating this stuff here
    • Ilyssa Silfen Take your boa and go, Megan.
    • Elizabeth Veldon yes rad feminism is not transphobic, that’s why rad feminists where passing round an article claiming that when trans* women kill themselves it’s all part of a conspiracy to oppress them

      rad feminists discredit feminism, their inhumanity sickens me.
    • Clare Phillipson @elizabeth..ive no idea what you are talking about..ive never seen that article…and accusing radfems of ‘sickening inhumanity’..?????…eh?bit over the top?extreme response to a group of wbw wanting to meet ,in safety,and talk
    • Lilithe Magdalene Cathy, your attitude of denying the existence of transgender women PERPETUATE the patriarchal hatred of them. Can’t imagine how you don;t see that.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Interesting that you would say trans women do not exist, then post an article and your own claim that patriarchy is the source of violence against them. So, make up your mind as to whether you think trans women exist or not.
    • Lilithe Magdalene If this page does not condone transphobia then why is this conversation being allowed to take place? I have yet to see one respectful comment from those who deny transgender, but merely hateful and mocking statements. “Lesbians Against Derpy, Derpy”? Comments like that from Cathy Brennan need to be moderated and called out.
    • Kylie Hudson “This is a SAFE SPACE for everyone, including (and in this case, especially) our trans* identified members. Anyone who threatens that will be banned. ” You are doing a shit job of enforcing this policy admins. You should be ashamed for letting such transphobic, oppressive bullshit on your page.
    • Stelzer Insertfirstnamehere I’ve got to chime in on being hugely disappointed with the moderation of this page. The fact is that you can either be a good trans* ally, and give trans* people safe spaces (as you claim to do) or you can give the TERF’ers a platform to spew their hate. But you can’t do both. And saying you support trans* people, saying you want this to be a safe space, rings hellishly hollow when this mess is going on.
    • Megan O’Brayton Yeah silence the lesbians… They need to learn that some lesbian women have penises. They need to accept that just because someone has a penis does not mean that they are a man. And they need to date women with penises and accept them in women only space… Basically the topsy turvy world of you lot is it not…..?
    • Megan Mackin Even if they do silence the lesbians, Megan, it won’t help them in the long run. I can’t tell you how many women friends who were adamantly pro-t-cult have come over to the other side after extensive dealing with them. The t-cultists’ arrogance, the entitlement, and the incessant fetishizing of femininity — and mistaking that for femaleness — wears women down. And they begin to see what we see, name it for what it is, and support women over men. Finally! But I’ve seen it so many times.

      And I’ll do anything in my power to prevent lesbians’ silencing!
    • Lilithe Magdalene Radical feminists (not all but many) are the ones trying to silence transgender folk. Nobody wants to force anybody to do anything – they merely want to be seen for who they are – not who you project onto them because you call the appendage between their legs “a penis”. It is not up to you to determine how a person needs to see their own anatomy to fit their sense of what their sex or gender is.
    • Stelzer Insertfirstnamehere Yes, women can have a penis. No one is suggesting that you have to sleep with them. But “I’m a lesbian” =/= “I don’t like penis”, and to treat it as equivalent is to not only erase the existence of transwomen but also defines women solely by their anatomy. And here I was thinking we’d moved past biological essentialism.
    • Isabelle Gundermann Oh my god what is this bullshit? If you don’t want to sleep with a trans woman, then don’t! It’s seriously that easy. Yeah you may be judged for your actions but you do not have to sleep with a trans woman if you don’t want to. Like. That’s it.
  • Clare Phillipson we fight for the rights of all marginalised genders’???….how about fighting for the rights then of wbw to meet and talk??
    • Lilithe Magdalene Perhaps, Cathy, in the blog posts you put here you could read and respond to a very important question:

      “When are you going to apologize for the mistakes you have made that have not only cost your fellow trans citizens of Maryland civil rights coverage that you have enjoyed since 2001, and some of them their lives, but have submitted an odious paper that could potentially deny to others the same civil rights coverage you and your co-author enjoy?”

      Though nobody deserves to receive some of the hateful comments you have garnered, you could look at the ways your own hatred that you have put forth and admit your inability to acknowledge trans women are women with their own very real experiences of misogyny may have brought this shit storm down upon you. Is it so strange that people respond to hate with hate? It’s a very human thing to do, and underneath the vitriol is the extreme pain of their lived experiences. Where is your compassion? There is no need for Oppression Olympics. When we fight for the rights of ALL women, we all win.
    • Clare Phillipson whats all this talk about radfems hating trans???….disagreeing is not hate…..hate is when trans threaten us with burning,rape,die ciscum etc…..
    • Lilithe Magdalene Erasure and claiming they don’t exist is hate.
    • Lilithe Magdalene When you deny the existence of transgender folk, you are condoning the continued violence against them. It’s not right to respond to hate with hate, but is still a very human thing to do. Perhaps you could reach through your fear and see where that return hatred (read ” their very real fear”) is coming from. When you perpetuate the erasure, you perpetuate the violence.
    • Isabelle Gundermann Clare Phillipson, would you agree that MRAs who attempt to discredit the oppression of women as hate? Because I would. In much the same way, radical feminism’s denial of trans women and men, and the oppression they face, contributes to fear, hatred, and violence that is directed towards to trans community, and reduces the possibility of them being able to access the resources they NEED to survive. Radical feminism preaches hate towards trans people, and as a cis feminist, I need to fight for the rights and wellbeing of ALL women, not just cis women.
  • Megan Mackin AND Radical Feminism is INHERENTLY trans-critical. Has been since the beginning; always will be.
    • Hide 27 Replies
    • An Nika this is why radical feminism is oppressive shit.
    • Huxley Morgan I don’t think we all agree that radical feminism is *inherently* trans-critical. And even if it were, the form that that criticism has taken is *deeply* shameful. As radical feminists, we don’t appreciate the use of “but men get raped, too” as a derailing tactic – but we also don’t say cruel things to or about the actual victims (if that happens, please nobody link to it, I’ll happily live in ignorance on this one). We may rage against the woman-hating mainstream porn machine, but we don’t say nasty things about the women involved. There are so many instances where we recognize, accurately, that the system that is patriarchy is harmful, that we all suffer for it, and that people who are hurting under it navigate and survive it the best that they can. No one here seems to be saying “cis women should never meet amongst one another” – but the backlash against the Radfem conference is a response to way more than that.
    • Sara Tee Yeah, the OP flat out lied in the bit that said “radical feminism has been hijacked” by the trans-critical.

      One of the core tenets of radical feminism is the critical analysis of gender and all it’s attendant harms. We analyse and criticise the construct of gender. This means we also analyse and criticise the transgender movement.

      This does not mean we hate trans.

      Do atheists hate religious people, FFS? Stop deliberately misrepresenting and demonising something you clearly don’t understand.
    • Sara Tee Pardon punctuation and grammar typos, my phone sucks.
    • Being Feminist I didn’t post this article, and I’ll admit I don’t know all that much about trans-issues. As a heterosexual woman, with obvious “straight” privilege I don’t like making assumptions about ANYONE’S sexuality or gender, because I don’t know what it’s like to be different to the sexual “norm”. I want for all PEOPLE to eventually be treated equally, and with respect. I can’t say that “transgender” does not exist because I’m not entirely sure myself about the science of “gender” and how gender and sex mix and overlap. But I do know that there are many people who are not “heteronormative” and that every one of their identities matters just as much as mine. When someone tells me that they identify as a woman, since I am not them, I cannot say for sure “you are a woman” or “you are not a woman”. You see, I do not know – is “woman” defined by sex or by gender? I know that many radical feminists believe that there is no such thing as gender. Therefore, by that logic there is no such thing as “transgender” because there is no “real” gender – there are simply men and women who do not conform to gender expectations. But I don’t know. These are the boundaries that I as a feminist struggle with. Essentially, I want to treat everyone equally. No matter whether you are woman or man, heterosexual or queer – you all matter as PEOPLE. As such I do not support people treating self-identified transpeople with disrespect. BUT at the same time I feel my heart to be very much a radical feminist. And much as I want to treat everyone “equally” I know that since we have different concerns and different problems, we do need these “identities”. “Woman” is an important identity for the feminist cause. I also know that many radical feminists have had experience with men trying to hijack the cause, to direct much of the drive that goes into “women’s” issues towards their own “issues”. I can see exactly why radical feminists resent that as belittling of feminism. And as such, I can see radical feminists’ logic in wanting “women only” spaces (remember that they believe gender does not exist) and so “transgender” women coming into these spaces, since they are SEXUALLY men, seems like an invasion. As I say, I have been struggling with this issue. I do also know that there have been insults and disrespect on both sides of the debate, and particularly that radical feminists have been threatened and harassed and subjected to death threats and rape threats by irate transactivists. I do not support such attacks against anyone. I believe that anyone, who believes in equality between men and women, can part of the feminist movement. Within that movement, why can’t we all respect one another, and work together? ~LA
    • Sara Tee Actually, we do know that gender is a “thing” – but we recognise that it is an entirely socially constructed “thing” – and that if there were no such thing as sets of behaviours/looks that are assigned to either the feminine or masculine gender box, then we would have a world where both biological males and females are able to look, dress, act however they want, without being labelled or placed inside a harmful and limiting gender box.

      All human beings would be free to act and look however they want, without having to label themselves as anything.

      We disagree with this labelling system in the first place, especially since gender is actually a hierarchy, with the male/masculine dominating the female/feminine.

      We can see that transgenderism actually validates this constructed hierarchy, and so we are obliged to disagree with the practice of it.

      In no way do we hate trans or deny their existence – we disagree with their interpretations of the world. We do not think their bodies or their minds are evil or wrong – we think SOCIETY and PATRIARCHY is evil and wrong.

      Hope that clarifies things.
    • Sara Tee I also deeply disagree with the medical industry taking advantage of their dysphoria, and the way children are being diagnosed as transgender for merely not conforming to their assigned gender box. I think this is child abuse.
    • Sara Tee Little boys should be allowed to wear dresses and have long hair and wear ribbons etc without being told they are actually a girl. If people can’t understand that this is conservative thinking, child abuse and brainwashing then I don’t know how to reach you.
    • Elizabeth Veldon the abusive ones here, sara tee, are the rad feminists ‘outing’ people, calling them ‘oppressors’ for campaigning and speaking out, calling their oppression a form of abuse against you and your ilk.
    • Sara Tee No, Elizabeth. Just because you want something to be true, doesn’t make it true. Sorry.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Sara Tee – None of the transgender folk I know see the expression of their gender as reduced to mere dressage. It is so much more than that. The hormones they receive change their bodies, their emotions, their sexuality – and all of the ones I know feel that this biological change is in alignment with who they really feel they are in their brains. It’s not just about frilly dresses and ribbons, it’s about biological alignment.
    • Megan Mackin Even author J. Boylan admitted that for the t-culters it WAS about the trappings — and he is one. And no one’s asking for a uterus — or a clitoris!, just the man-space inside (preferably with orgasm function in the hole, the male ideal, no fussy clit to mess with!). ‘Gender’ is artifice: masculinity or femininity. Sex is male or female. Changing an artifice doesn’t mean you get to appropriate MY oppression. Or, I’m really feeling I’m Native American … think I’ll go appropriate a sweat lodge! Oh, wait, whites already do that …. (And it IS seen by the ones they oppress as appropriation; wish feminists could routinely be this savvy.)
    • Lilithe Magdalene Biology of sex is not mere genitalia – it is a host of hormones. It’s not about the junk, but the FEELING of what being a particular sex is. Please stop using the specious argument of racial appropriation. It is NOT the same.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Sex is also not so essentialist. Sex is a spectrum – are you saying there is no such thing as intersex by saying sex is male or female? Why do you want to erase the experiences of a whole population? They do not desire to erase YOUR experiences.
    • Megan Mackin Yes, it is. And sex is not a ‘feeling,’ it’s a biological fact. Same as race — actually far more so! And yet we’d never really allow racial appropriation … OK, we do, but! Please stop pretending (see, I can get snotty, too!) that gender is real and is a feeling. Gender is a patriarchal construct (see what Sara T wrote), not a feeling, and my oppression is not available for those with f e e l i n g s that they should be able to appropriate it!
    • Megan Mackin Sex is not a spectrum — that is absurd non-science. Sex is male and female and a very, very few intersex individuals who are not on the t-cult side, anyway!
    • Megan Mackin Oh, yeah, the erasure is on the side of women, and women-only spaces, and funding for women now going to the rainbow of MEN, and Lesbians, especially losing out …. Yeah, erasure, right along with that real sweet “die cis scum” tat and photo op.
    • Lilithe Magdalene How is fighting for ones own rights, to be heard and not erased, erasure of you?
    • Lilithe Magdalene I’m not being snotty, either. These are sincere questions.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Also, I never said gender is a feeling. Sex has a feeling dictated by hormones. Every transgender person I know speaks of how their sexual desires, and emotions changed with the introduction of hormones into their system. These feelings fit with how they experienced themselves as a person, not just a gender.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Why do you leave the brain out as a mechanism of biological sex? Genitalia are NOT the only aspect of sex – the adrenals and the brain are just as involved in this as the genitalia and gonads are. Taking the brain out of the equation is what is “absurd non-science”.
    • Megan O’Brayton Seriously are you trying to say men and women have different brains now! How bloody anti feminist can you get !!!!
    • Megan O’Brayton I am not a woman because i feel like a woman i am a woman because I am a adult female of the sex.
    • Megan O’Brayton Female genocide is not done because someone feels like a female. The oppression rape and murder of women is done because we are female.
    • Megan O’Brayton by saying that clothing or feeling make someone a woman. You are only supporting gender roles not de constructing them….
    • Lilithe Magdalene No Megan, I am not saying that (had a feeling someone would misinterpret that). I am saying the brain speaks to the rest of the body – what hormones to create etc, based on your sex. It is involved in the process. That much should be obvious.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Hormones DO affect feelings, emotions and sexual responses. Hormones are created by the gonads and the adrenals, the adrenals and gonads are instructed by and have conversation with the brain. You cannot leave the brain out of the equation.
  • Angela Soudjoukdjian When trans activist and male right extremist agree to sabotage a feminist event, (as this is what has happened for RF2012 and RF2013) I find it fascinating to see fellow feminist follow the trans/mre without question. I honestly do not understand that …See More
    • Hide 20 Replies
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia The statement from the venue says they independently investigated the beliefs of the attending radfems and found them to constitute hate speech against trans* people. MRAs are falsely claiming responsibility and for some reason the conference is backing up this fiction, but the facts speak for themselves and anyone can contact the venue independently and find out they cancelled because they would have been threatening their charitable status to allow the conference to proceed, given its stance on trans* women. Trans* activists and MRAs have nothing to do with one another as MRAs hold the same opinions of trans* women that trans exclusionary radfems do.

    • Angela Soudjoukdjian Actually, off to work the booking agent for LIC explained they cancelled the booking for safety reasons: “Our cancellation of the booking was a very difficult decision, but one that we have made to protect the safety of our venue staff” https://www.facebook.com/offtowork/posts/10151561719698958

      Off to Work
      In response to those posting about the Radfem conference, Off to Work apologises…See More
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian you seriously need to drop the transphobia label everytime a woman dares suggesting a theory of gender you disagree with.
    • Clare Phillipson disagreeing with transtheory is!not!hate speech…….hate speech is what radfems are receiving everyday for simply wanting to get together and talk…where is the support from other feminists for wbw wanting to get together to talk?…
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Funny how neither of you responded to anything I actually said above, like how the venue cancelled the conference because *they* independently decided the speakers were using hate speech.
    • Ilyssa Silfen They didn’t respond because they don’t have an argument.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian I didn’t answer because my Internet connection is shit. please quote some hate speech? what hate speech?
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia I don’t dare say her name because you know she’ll come after me and how dangerous she is. You know the speaker I’m talking about. Even my radfem friends are terrified of getting on the wrong side of her. And you did reply, you just ignored what I said about the venue independently deciding to cancel. Perhaps you should ask them to state what they thought was hate speech, rather than asking me, it wasn’t me that made that decision, nor did I have any part in challenging the conference, my role on the internet is purely educative.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian cathy brennan, name her, she is lovely
    • Clare Phillipson incidentally the irish centre have not cancelled the booking on the grounds of ‘hate speech’…their subcontractors are worried about the safety of their staff because of protests by m.r.a.s….
    • Druscilla Ryan disclusion of trans* women for not “being women” is bigotry. simple.
    • Sara Tee The booking agent for the venue denied what was written in that dodgy times article. They said they were approached by MRA London and as a result were fearful for the safety if their staff. They are currently helping radfem2013 find a new venue

      I didn’t realise that “being feminist” actually meant being biased and deliberately misrepresenting radical feminists and radical feminism.

      You just lost a fan, shit page. This is not feminism.
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia London Irish Centre: “We did some research into RadFem and discovered certain language was used and some statements were made about transgender people that would go against our equalities and diversity policy.”
    • SadieDave Hemmings Well ‘Lesbians Against Derpy Derpy’ is my winner for intelligent and mature put-down of the day. Behaving like a 3 year old has totally won me round to your argument…
    • Arkadia Getheren Moon You lost me at “When trans activist and male right extremist agree to sabotage”.

      I don’t know that the MRAs did anything at all; actually, given what I’ve seen of MRAs, I’d be surprised if they *did* stir themselves to do anything more than talk on the Web. The trans advocates, at most — if they even did that — committed the <sarcasm>unforgivable act of masculine aggression</sarcasm> of inviting the venue administration to take an independent look what the TERF people have actually said, in public fora that can be reviewed by anyone with a computer. Yea, verily, the Internet doth never forget. It’s kind of difficult to paint yourself as innocent, inoffensive, or unjustly persecuted when you’ve left an immortal trail of hateful spew behind you.

      But even if both trans advocates and MRAs *had* both done this, it doesn’t follow that two groups that do the same thing, tending toward the same immediate outcome, for very different reasons, are colluding. This about on the same level as equating gay rights activism with NAMBLA (a long-standing Stupid Homophobe Trick).
    • Rani Bakr Of course these Westboro Baptist Feminist bullies are going to derail a topic to talk about their little hatefest being denied a venue. Bullies gonna bully.
    • Isabelle Gundermann “Women are not obligated to lobby for agendas that run counter to our interests.” – ‘our’ interests? The less I have in common with you, Brennan, the happier I will be. And in any case, why are you so surprised that so many women are against your own hateful agenda? After all, they run counter to my interests in supporting a feminism and a world that inclusive of ALL women (and yes, trans women are women, no matter what you try to say to the contrary). I have no interest in a ‘feminism’ that espouses violence and exclusion as the best methods to ‘support’ women.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Cathy Brennan – “Lesbians and Feminists against Depry, Derpy” is oh so very adult of you. If you cannot conduct yourself in an adult manner I suggest you be blocked from this discussion.
  • Being Feminist While I do not condone transphobia – I must say that some radical feminists have received absolutely horrible death threats, rape threats and have been stalked and harassed for being transphobic. No one should be treated like that for any reason. That’…See More
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia I agree those behaviours would be unacceptable, but a moderator only talking about the behaviour on one side is also unacceptable. On my page I always challenge language that speaks against radical feminists in general or makes sweeping slurs. If some of the things being said on this page were being said about gay people half the people on this thread would have been booted off by now – I love radical feminism, I don’t love trans* exclusion because it breeds ignorance and hate, and the transphobia equivalent of “God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve”. Disappointed in your siding on this issue, BF
    • Arkadia Getheren Moon All people — no matter their gender or anything else — should be held responsible and accountable for what they do and say; what they are is a different story. People who say horrible things about radfems are no better than people who say horrible things about trans people. Self-righteousness is as ugly in trans people and their advocates as it is in anyone else. So is crying transphobia when there’s no genuine issue of transphobia in play (I’ve seen a few trans people doing that to dodge responsibility for their own behaviour, and I don’t respect it).

      For me, all women (cis or trans) should be judged on their individual merits, and the same is true of radfems. Reducing a woman to a deindividualised object because she identifies herself with a particular political label, or because she happens to have been born physically not female enough for you, is dehumanising and anti-feminist. (Is it really okay, in 2013, to reduce women to their genitalia? All my life, I’ve understood that’s was something feminism frowned upon heavily … did I misunderstand something, or do the bedrock ideals of feminism melt, run, and change according the the convenience of the moment?)
    • Lilithe Magdalene And nobody with real lived experiences of their gender should be violently erased by the attitudes many radical feminists espouse. There is violence in their denying of trans peoples’ lives and experiences.
    • Megan Mackin You can’t have “real lived experience” with a fake construct. And I can’t be a Black activist. Or a Native American. I can fool you and pretend real hard. But it still doesn’t make me One. And those who are real have every right to be furious at my appropriation. Now why is that not obvious? And why can’t you see the neat, side-by-side parallels with feminism which is for women and girls?
    • Lilithe Magdalene Megan – this was already discussed. There is no medical procedure, no hormones a person can take to become another race. That is fully determined in the womb based on genetic markers. Sex on the other hand, is not so cut and dry – different chemicals in the brain and in the body create change – did you not watch the video that was posted in this discussion? These changes can be easily accessed through medical intervention. Body characteristics can be changed through hormonal intervention so that what is happening in a persons body better lines up with what is happening in their brain. You just cannot compare race and sex.

      Now you CAN speak of different lived experiences. You can say someone MAAB has lived experiences with male privilege – and on some levels you may be right – except this person’s brain is knowing they are female, and that the misogyny this person can see in the world gets internalized – yes on the surface there in privilege but internally there is conflict from the messages received from culture. This forces hiding, and fear of being found out, and feeling ashamed, and feeling out of place with no support or community of understanding. This is where you would label someone as MAAB as appropriating the lived experiences of women and their oppression when they transition or come out – and one can definitely say the experiences are DIFFERENT, but you certainly cannot say that person “enjoyed” male privilege. To some degree, perhaps, but not really.

      Truthfully, I am not qualified to discuss too much on what the internal process is, as I am not transgender, but I have heard so often how painful it is when women like you accuse transgender women of appropriation – you have no idea the kind of fear, the level of threat to their existence for being a transgender woman in a misogynist society. Your experiences ARE different, as are theirs, but they do not suffer from misogyny any less than you do, and in some respects even more.

      If anyone transgender sees this and wishes to correct me, please do.
  • Angela Soudjoukdjian Trans gather together without wbw all the time, we respect that and no one would call that hate speech, I honesty don’t understand why when women born women want their own space they get vilified and harassed and receive death threats.
    • Hide 12 Replies
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia This is disingenuous, Angela, because it implies that there is some women’s space that you would want trans* women to be included in, and I suspect that’s not the case. It’s also disingenuous because unlike radfems, trans* women are neither a political group nor a movement, they are a diverse group of people only in having a biological history that makes them trans* in common, and what one trans* person does is no more other trans* people’s responsibility than what you do being my responsibility.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian first of all, most feminist places are inclusive to all men, women, trans… When we claim for once to get a place that is only for women doesn’t seem too much to ask… apparently it is. Secondly trans are individual people … like radfem. and some trans organise as political movement in order to lobby… just like any political movement. and i completely respect their right to do that. As trans people, they share an experience of oppression that i cannot know, and radfem respect that. but the reverse isn’t true. I wonder if you had a look at the hate speech radfem receive daily on twitter, this isn’t a case of one or two individual people, it is an organised campaign to silence us, it is constant, it is violent and it is totally unacceptable harassment. The fact that feminist witness that and choose to stay silent or worst try to silence us even further is appalling.
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Actually I’ve never personally witnessed any behaviour from trans* women online that equates to the behaviour I’ve seen from trans excluding radfems, but I’m not going to stick up for anyone who is bullying or abusive, cis or trans* and nobody gets away with stuff like that on my page. The problem is that trans* activists are being stuck in a box with MRAs and two more different groups of people you couldn’t find . . .but the fact remains, the problem here is simply that you don’t accept that trans* women are women, so when you talk about space that’s “only for women” you believe trans* women should not be in it, whereas I believe they should, and that their inclusion will enrich that space and put an end to this pointless, life-sucking debate.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian well I am sure you have heard “DIE CIS SCUM” before? no? I suggest you get on twitter and have a look at the level of abuse radfems are getting. I for one have never heard or read a radfem say a similar thing to a trans person! what you equate to hate speech is what i am going to write now: I do not believe trans women are women, I believe in biology, penis is male, trans women are men. I do not say they do not exist, i do not wish they were dead, they have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. I also I have the right to not want to organise politically with men. and that is not hate speech. “One persons freedom ends where another persons freedom begins”
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia watch the TED lecture I posted and tell me once again about biology Angela – it’s so complicated, and you know darn well the human race doesn’t fit neatly into two discreet biological boxes, it’s infinitely more complicated than that. As for “Die cis scum” I did a lengthy investigation of that phrase and found little evidence for it other than trans* people saying among themselves how unhelpful it ever would be to say such a thing. But if there are rotten apples in the trans* barrel, that would be unsurprising given you get rotten apples in most barrels, it really is never acceptable to hold a minority responsible for the actions of one of its members.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian i will watch the ted talk (please send the link again, i can’t find it with all these conversations) but i think you are being dishonest or misinformed about the level of hatred and the violence antiradfem online. stopping there for tonight, baby is crying

    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia I am most certainly not being dishonest – I keep hearing about these terrible trans* women but I’ve never seen them, and I’ve been involved with both trans* activism and radical feminism so I’ve definitely had a good insight into both sides. Please feel free to link me to information and I’ll challenge it myself, because abuse isn’t going to help the cause. Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYpDU040yzc

      TEDxJaffa — Daphna Joel — Are brains male or female?

      www.youtube.com

      Professor Daphna Joel explores the mistaken concept that brains can be either ma…See More
    • An Nika radscum complains about people saying “die cis scum” meanwhile, trans* women everywhere get raped and/or killed for being trans*.

      but whah whah someone said something mean on the internet. Go cry me a river.
    • Bhaswati Chattopadhyay You say you believe in biology but don’t realize how facile it is to reduce a human being into socially constructed genders based on their genitalia. *rolls eyes*
    • Clare Phillipson bhaswati….no!that isnt what we are saying…we are saying we want to abolish gender…transactivists are entrenching it….
    • Sarah Sparkle surely the concepts of lesbianism and of womanhood are also entrenching gender.
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia An Nika – “radscum” is so fricking unhelpful, I wish you could keep it civil. Not cool. Clare, there is no entrenching of gender in trans* activism, that’s a basic misunderstanding that if only more trans* women were included in our movement would be soon exploded. I just wish you’d open your hearts and ears to what’s real here

  • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Not only do I know many trans* people being deeply hurt by views as set out by some people in this thread, but those “transcritical” views are also hurting the feminist movement as a whole. They’re leaving us stuck at a kindergarten level of understand…See More

    TEDxJaffa — Daphna Joel — Are brains male or female?

    www.youtube.com

    Professor Daphna Joel explores the mistaken concept that brains can be either ma…See More
    • 5 Replies
  • Clare Phillipson this article is grossly unfair…support and understanding has to cut both ways…if a group of women born women want to meet then so what??..i wouldnt object to black women,disabled women ,trans women meeting separately to discuss their unique experiences…i wouldnt be demonstrating against trans women meeting together…so why the vitriol directed at women born women
    • Hide 19 Replies
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Clare, the issue isn’t about WBW space in this article, it is about certain elements of our feminist community stating that trans* women are not really women at all, and should not be allowed into *any* women only space – that’s very different from setting up a group that has a valid reason to be WBW only. But in addition to that, I’d also like to point out that trans* women are an oppressed sub-group of women as a whole, so your analogy doesn’t really work – a more accurate analogy to WBW space would be able bodied space or white-only space. The arguments that trans* women have male privilege no matter how often repeated, do not bear up under any kind of scrutiny, they’re just an excuse for people to decide not to show any concern for the needs of this much oppressed and marginalised part of our community.
    • Clare Phillipson trans were born with male priviledge….were not aborted due to being a female foetus….were not killed for being a female baby….their experiences are very!different to wbw…and as such should respect the right of wbw to meet and organise seperately…i respect the right of trans to meet,to have group therapy,to have trans hair n make up sessions etc….radfems really are not asking for much…and other ‘feminists’should respect that
    • Clare Phillipson and as a feminist i can choose what my priorities are..i have limited time on this planet…violence against wbw and girls is my!!priority….that isnt ‘hate speech’or transphobia…or being an uncaring person..its me deciding to focus my energies to where i see the greatest need…i should be allowed to meet,and discuss that priority,with other wbw,without being called radscum,a bigot,threatened etc
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Nobody here is calling you a bigot or scum, just having a discussion. You also were not aborted due to being a female foetus….you also were not killed for being a female baby, so you have that in common with trans* women. Violence and rape against trans* women is also disproportionate compared to violence and rape against cis women (I work in rape and domestic violence services that support all women, and it’s never been any kind of a problem including trans women). There would be absolutely no problem in widening the circle to include trans* women in our care, it would not hurt anyone, it would not endanger anyone, and it would enlighten both trans* women and feminists. It’s a win win situation, but instead time and energy is wasted on fighting trans* women that could be better used smashing the patriarchy, just because you make this one little mistake and think that trans* women are not women at all.
    • Clare Phillipson the fact i was lucky enough to survive the womb/birth as a female foetus does not negate my argument that the female of the species faces greater oppression than the male,i wrongly assumed you.d recognise that basic feminist concept,and would understand,that as a female i dont just fight the oppressions i have personally experienced
    • Clare Phillipson many survivors(wbw)of rape and domestic violence would be deeply disturbed to share their wbw spaces with someone with a penis…or who has benefited from male priviledge..i do hope you have thoroughly consulted with your service users on this issue…and given them a choice before you impose your transtheory on them
    • Clare Phillipson and im not!fighting trans…quite the opposite…transactivists are denying wbw the right of assembly…id never do that to transactivists
    • Clare Phillipson and id be interested to know your view on the transperson who insisted on displaying their penis to girls in a changing room?
    • Ilyssa Silfen ^ Source?
    • Clare Phillipson ilyssa…its been all over the internet for months…i cant do links,im on a mobile…tryin googling girls swimming team and changing room trans..it should work..
    • Michelle King Cohen Clare if you cannot care for ALL women, you can’t fight for them either. I am reminded of a conversation I had with another feminist on another page who expressed disdain for anyone who thought that fighting for the rights of women in places other than her own backyard was a waste of her time and energy. The fact is that ALL women, need to fight for the rights of ALL women or else we will never be able to make the changes in the world that need to be made.
    • Ilyssa Silfen Ok, I’ll bite. And now that I’ve researched it, are you seriously saying that because ONE TRANS* WOMAN made a questionable decision, all trans* women should be punished for it?
    • Arkadia Getheren Moon You do it the same way people have to do it if they want to exclude black people, Jews, women, Muslims, straight people, white people, non-redheads, or left-handed Latvian lesbians with lupus.

      1. You get a privately-owned venue, preferably owned by someone who shares your views, that is not a public accommodation.
      2. You advertise the meeting wherever you like, specifying that it is a private meeting accessible by invitation only or members-and-guests only (i.e. it is closed to the general public). I personally think it’s better if you make your exclusion explicit (otherwise you look like you’re ashamed of it).
      3. You hold your meetings in that venue, on those terms.

      Do this, and I at least won’t object. (I don’t object to MWMF for exactly this reason.) Of course, some people will object — that is after all, how the Citadel and the Masters’ Golf Club and so many other places got opened to women. Fair play is fair play.
    • Clare Phillipson @arkadia…just incredible that so many so called ‘feminists’object to wbw meeting to talk about womens oppression……but you just keep right on supporting the patriarchy arkadia…
    • Clare Phillipson and ‘left handed latvian lesbians with lupus’…is really not funny…tho i imagine you thought you were being witty……
    • Clare Phillipson ilyssa…’a questionable decision’???they repeatedly committed a sex offence’indecent exposure’…under the guise of being ‘trans’not only have they not been prosecuted,but the girls swimming team have lost their changing room…so the needs and wishes of this sex offender can take primacy….
    • Arkadia Getheren Moon I *don’t* object to wbw meeting. I think I made that pretty clear, even before I said “this is why I don’t object to MWMF”, which should have been a clincher. It just can’t be in a public venue, because if *you* have the right to exclude an entire class of people from a public venue, then every group that wants to has the right to exclude some identified group of people from a public venue — including women, lesbians, feminists, radfems. You’d be legitimizing sexist exclusion, even by your definition of the term.

      Your right to access public venues rests on the fact that you are forbidden to exclude others from public venues. That’s called justice.

      If what you mean when you say should have the right to meet is that wbw should have the right to exclude trans women from a public venue, and without others having the right to object … why don’t you take a moment and think about what kind of rights and powers you’re asking for, and what others would do with such rights and powers (they wouldn’t be exclusive to you, after all).
    • Clare Phillipson @arkadia what you seem to forget in all this is that wbw are an oppressed!!group….not!a priviledged group…wbw are denied their own spaces..denied safety in public spaces….carving out a little time for wbw to get together and talk excludes no one……there are many other spaces trans can gather…im not objecting to that..why would i?you still have not given a convincing reason as to why wbw gathering is such a problem….so maybe i should educate you??the patriarchy doesnt want it
    • Arkadia Getheren Moon I don’t understand why you don’t see that I am quite okay with wbws gathering. I have affirmed that *repeatedly*. I’ve even affirmed that I have no objection to MWMF, which is quite the unpopular view in the circles I move in.

      But neither you, nor I, nor anyone else, has the right to exclude an entire group of people from any space that is open to the general public. Nobody has that privilege, for very good reasons that would curl your hair.

      But you claim that privilege. In fact, you regard not being granted that extraordinary privilege as a form of oppression. Rather telling, in my opinion.

      I get that you have a problem with the presence of trans women, just as some people have problems with the presence of Muslims, or lesbians. That’s fine. Your feelings are yours, and you’re entitled to them. I respect that, and would never tell you how to feel; your head and heart are not mine to command.

      But you must understand that just as your feelings are yours, your problem is yours, not someone else’s, and the responsibility for dealing with it appropriately is yours, not someone else’s. You have the responsibility to cope with your own problem in an appropriate way that doesn’t harm others, or intrude on their rights. That is how public spaces in a civil society work. Now, private spaces are another matter, which is why I have no objection to wbws meeting in private spaces. As I have said repeatedly.
  • Denise Nichols The radical feminists that I have known have all been trans-phobic. They view them as men… It’s sad, really. But, it shows me how I *don’t* want to think.
    • Huxley Morgan Not all, promise. There’s some good stuff out there.
    • Bev Jo They ARE men. Have you not talked with them, read them, watched how they hate women?
    • Lilithe Magdalene I have talked with many transgender women, Bev Jo, and find they are all avid feminists in the fight to equalize the status of women. I have NEVER hear them hating on women, though I have seen them respond to the hate many radical feminists espouse, and I find that a very human (thought I do not condone) response.
    • Isabelle Gundermann Bev Jo, that sounds a bit like you don’t want to acknowledge or own your own privilege, instead choosing to label it ‘hate’ when people point out that you, as a cis woman, are privileged in this society above trans women whose lives and experiences are denied, repressed, and shat on BY cis women like yourself.
  • Clare Phillipson and whoever wrote this o.p is seriously confused…and mixing up sex and gender……..radical feminists are opposed to gender….and see transtheory as a right wing conservative,very suburban,entrenchong of the gender binary
  • Clare Phillipson @druscilla…men cant ‘get abortions’…men cant get pregnant….females capacity to carry babies is at the root of much of our oppression…we cannot obliterate this simple fact
    • Hide 44 Replies
    • Ilyssa Silfen Uh, yes they can. If they identify as men and have an abortion, then they’re men having an abortion. Simple as that.
    • Clare Phillipson no,it really isnt that simple…apples are not oranges
    • Virginia Pele Damn, we should’ve thought about that. Everything is about how u feel right ? Simple as that.
    • Clare Phillipson i agree..biology is not destiny….gender is a social construct….
    • Clare Phillipson no…sex is a physical fact…born females have different biological bodies to born males..that is a fact
    • Clare Phillipson and born males have male priviledge,grow up with male priviledge..that is another fact…a basic tenet of feminism
    • Ilyssa Silfen They also grow up with the knowledge that they were born in the WRONG FUCKING BODY. The knowledge that if they reveal their true selves, it’s very likely that they will be bullied, harassed, raped, murdered, etc. Trans people do not have the same privileges as cis men, and for you to make that claim shows how little you actually know about what it means to be trans.
    • Sandy Hopton tenets of feminism? Feminism isn’t 10 commandments handed down from Moses, it evolves with our understanding. Our understanding about trans issues has evolved and we understand now that they are looking at the world through the eyes of their identified gender, and that they are receiving the messages and conditioning of their identified gender because neuroconstructivism means gender is a complex interaction of biology and social conditioning. Read Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender – she gets it.
    • Clare Phillipson so where does ‘this true self’come from??what is it?…all!male babies have male priviledge,all!male babies benefit from this(to greater degrees in different cultures)the behaviour,dominance,and sense of entitlement that male priviledge brings,is evidenced by the refusal to accept that wbw should be allowed to meet seperately…that is a very reasonable,non threatening request…and you still havent answered my question on transracial
    • Clare Phillipson @sandy…neuroconstructivism..is retrograde nonsense….the idea of ‘male’brains was used to deny wbw the right to train as doctors on the grounds their ‘female’brains would explode..transtheory is very!reactionary,very right wing….hence why you get places like iran supporting it….gender noncomformity is not!the same thing as physical sex
    • Ilyssa Silfen Nobody’s saying that wbw shouldn’t be allowed to meet separately. YOU’RE arguing that trans* women shouldn’t be included AT ALL, ANYWHERE. And as for your strawman “transracial” argument, it’s full of shit. A white person cannot transition to being a black person any more than a black person can transition to being a white person. And a white person has NO RIGHT to appropriate black oppression, same as ciswomen have NO RIGHT to appropriate trans* oppression.
    • Clare Phillipson but a male bodied person can transition to a female bodied???but no one can do this transracially???does your lack of logic not hurt your brain?and please dont throw insults at me…im not full of shit..
    • Clare Phillipson and transwomen by your logic really should not be appropriating wbw oppression then?oh good,we agree on something
    • Ilyssa Silfen Trans* women have their own oppression to deal with. They don’t need ours. If I told you that you’re the most oppressed and persecuted person on the planet, would you stop with the oppression olympics?
    • Clare Phillipson the only oppression olympics are coming from you…..my priority is fighting the oppression of wbw….yours seems to be prioritising born males who want to entrench gender stereotypes…we differon our priorities
    • Ilyssa Silfen Your priority should be fighting ALL oppression, not just the oppression that appeals to you most.
    • Clare Phillipson and if trans women dont ‘need our oppression’why should it bother them if wbw meet seperately to discuss it?….wouldnt that be a kindness?not to burden them with wbw problems that they dont experience?like menstruation?the menopause

    • Ilyssa Silfen IT DOESN’T. FUCKING. BOTHER THEM. The only person who’s BOTHERED about ANYTHING is you. Jesus fucking Christ.

      http://kiyokochan.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/dfs98df7sd1.gif

    • Clare Phillipson ilysa..thats very presumptive…to tell me i have to fight all!oppression…that i should personally take up the battles of everyone who claims to be oppressed?if that were so,id also be expected to champion the cause of mens rights activists,while also being a feminist…i think i.ll skip on that confusion thanks
    • Clare Phillipson oh ok…now you.re shouting and swearing at me…and insulting me….i remain underimpressed by your behaviour
    • Ilyssa Silfen If I’m shouting and swearing, it’s only because you’re so blissfully unaffected by the ravages of intelligence and common sense.
    • Sandy Hopton lol to your mistake about my neuroconstructivism comment, Cordelia Fine and neuroconstructivism challenge the male/female brain theories, and support the idea that gender is mainly socially constructed – you should really check out that TED lecture LFAT posted if you want to understand how it works. Most trans* folks understanding of gender construction goes way beyond radfem theories and certainly has nothing to do with right wing old hat stuff like the studies of Baron Cohen and others . . .
    • Clare Phillipson the thing is ilyssa you seem to have missed the fact that transactivists are!!very bothered by wbw meeting seperately…they threaten violence,post death threats,insult us for wanting to meet
    • Clare Phillipson @sandy..ive read cordelia fine..i even have a copy of it on my bookshelf…i was responding to what you!!had to say..
    • Ilyssa Silfen Putting exclamation points after your claims doesn’t make them any more true. Just thought you should know. And so far, the only insults I’m seeing are coming from you and the other transphobic people on this thread. I’d like to see some sources for your claim that trans* women are threatening violence and posting death threats.
    • Sandy Hopton then you didn’t listen to what I had to say
    • Ilyssa Silfen Gotta love how these people disappear once you ask them to verify their claims with documented sources.
    • Clare Phillipson @sandy…no,you just didnt express yourself clearly..maybe you need to read some radfem theory to understand the debate fully?
    • Clare Phillipson @ilyssa…are you capable of debate?or is being insulting and snide innuendo your stock in trade for anyone who disagrees with you….open your mind!escape the gender stereotyes of transactivists
    • Becky Eliot As always it’s only a matter of time before someone, in their haste to define who gets to call themselves a woman, defines me as not a woman because I can’t have children. If I was ever going to be on the side of those who claim to be dismantling gender from inside their womyn-born-womyn-only spaces, you lost me at I’m not a woman and I don’t face sexism.
    • Clare Phillipson @becky..im confused….yes some females cant have children(i cant)…but really dont understand where/what ive said resulting in your comment above….
    • Becky Eliot “females capacity to carry babies is at the root of much of our oppression”
    • Clare Phillipson but it is….its what makes wbw bodies totally different to male bodies(aside from chromosomes and hormones)so the majority of the female of the human species can grow babies and breastfeed them…..which is at the root of our being ‘othered’and designated as the ‘sex class’…likewise menstruation and menopause are major rites of passage…of course not all wbw experience this…
    • Clare Phillipson females,who for whatever reason,choice or physical issues..experience all sorts of gendernormative oppression…if they dont/cant make babies…these are a tiny bit of the issues that trans do not,and cannot comprehend,as they are not wbw
    • Becky Eliot Reproductive capacity isn’t what makes wbw bodies different to male bodies, because I’m one of your precious wbw and I can’t reproduce. And it’s not ‘at the root’ of being othered. Somewhere in the mists of time that difference is probably how we ended up with a patriarchal society. I can’t say I’ve ever actually tried informing anyone about my reproductive capacity while they’re being sexist to me but I’m confident it wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference. I’m entirely unclear where “if they don’t/cant make babies…these are a tiny bit of the issues” etc is going, but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t anywhere helpful. Perhaps you could do some reading on the experiences of women who can’t/don’t want to have children in relation to sexism and then come back to that.
    • Clare Phillipson you are deliberately misunderstanding what i am saying…..and you know you are…you are deliberately taking offence where you know perfectly well none was intended
    • Clare Phillipson and being sexist to you ??eh??do you even know what sexism means?it appears not
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia reducing women to their ability to reproduce seems pretty sexist to me . . .
    • Clare Phillipson rubbish…and you know it….patriarchy reduces women to the status of ‘sex class’…not me….not radfems….repeat after me’i will try not to be manipulative in debates,i will try to engage in an adult,non passive agressive manner’
    • Clare Phillipson and the fact that the female of the species can(if they choose to…tho many are forced to ,with the male penis being used as a raping,impregnating woweapon)….grow babies and breastfeed them is something to celebrate…it is one of the physical differences that make wbw gloriously wonderfully female…..and yes,sadly some wbw cannot have babies….and yes,many are very happy not to….we celebrate the penis,that male weapon of war…we should celebrate the womb,that powerful organ of creation
    • Lilithe Magdalene Clare says:

      “but a male bodied person can transition to a female bodied???but no one can do this transracially??”

      No, of course not. Race has a different set of biologically genetic markers and effects on a body in embryonic development that cannot be duplicated in an adult. But sex is run by a very specific set of hormones that CAN cause transition. There are no hormones that can make a white person black and vice versa. That’s obvious.
    • Isabelle Gundermann “no,it really isnt that simple…apples are not oranges” – um, Clare, hate to break it to you but people aren’t fruit. False equivalences aren’t helping your arguments.
  • Michelle King Cohen so sad. Really? When will people realize that belittling ANYONE is counterproductive? Even belittling and insulting those who insult us is counterproductive. The only way for change to really occur is to meet each other with love and openness and the only way to get that is to give it- even when we don’t want to or the receiver doesn’t deserve it.
    • Michelle King Cohen all of those things can be done without belittling and insulting. Personal attacks on people only make it seem like you are throwing a temper tantrum and not fighting for a cause. Yes, of course, be aggressive, be strong, be mighty, be direct – but do so without resorting to the same tired tactics of name calling and bullying that the opposition uses.
  • Deb Lah i have publicly called you out in all my internet spaces for allowing this commentary, Being Feminist, and am calling on others to unlike your page because of it. a women’s movement is worthless if it excludes some women. and trans* women are women. i don’t care what you shitcunts say.
    • Bev Jo That’s right. Men who demand we accept them as women are the most women-hating of men. “Transphobia” is no more real than “trans-paraplegia-phobia.” Giving us death and rape threats to make us accept men as women will not work. If you accept these men, why not also fight for the right of able-bodied men to be accepted as “trans-paraplegic Lesbians?”

      National Geographic’s “Taboo” : Fake paraplegic Chloe Jennings-White

      February 1, 2012
    • Lilithe Magdalene Cool! Bev Jo in the fray with utter nonsense!
  • Jessica Bryn ‘Asking for your own space’ is a funny way of refusing to acknowledge a persons identity and respect them as a human being
    • Clare Phillipson recognising the need for seperate spaces(at different times)is very much about respecting them…..and respecting different identies and oppressions….its at the core of ‘intersectionaloty’..the right to gather,learn,share,take action
    • Sandy Hopton except that also at the core of intersectionality is listening to others and accepting their identities, rather than campaigning against them . . .
  • Virginia Pele Ridiculous. Trans activists preventing womyn born that way from meeting is not unfair to you ? WTF ! Male approval is no feminism. And trans women are not women. No I am not afraid of trans people, but politics has nothing to do with state of minds.
    • 22 Replies
  • Jessica Bryn But you arent just asking to meet separately, you are constantly invalidating trans women’s identity, and reducing them to the sum of their parts
  • Sandy Hopton Actually, the thing that really upsets me about this whole issue is that most feminists don’t want trans exclusion, not even all radfems want it . . . so it’s not just that trans folks are having their fates decided, we’re all being dictated to. As a c…See More
  • Gloria Sorenson Reiss seriously?!?! who cares, should any group for any reason be treated in such a manner? NO! if it makes you uncomfortable that a child born to one sex can only relate to the other sex and their parents are wise enough to help them reassign, then they are…See More
    • Clare Phillipson any parent who puts their child on puberty blocking drugs,because the child wants to change their born sex,is abusing their child,physically harming them
    • Clare Phillipson and all the research is showing that men who have reassigned,are often not!more comfortable in their skin,sometimes deeply regret reassignment…i suggest you do some intensive research,i have
    • Sandy Hopton Clare there is no body of research that says that, just radfem blogs and sites quoting bogus stories and one very deranged and deeply homophobic Canadian researcher. in fact all the research says quite the opposite, that no psychological interventions help trans* people, only transitioning alleviates their distress. I’m cis myself but I know many trans* people, detransitioning is incredibly rare. Any residual psychological distress is due to the intense exclusion they experience from society. But also, hang on, I thought trans* women were all a bunch of privileged interlopers, and now you seem to be suggesting that actually trans* women are suffering considerable distress . . . so maybe it would be a good idea to be more accepting of them, then? Where’s your compassion? Could it not be the attitude of radfems is adding to the considerable social stigma of being trans*, and that is why some people do not find happiness, just as many gay people were unhappy in society 40 years ago?
    • Lilithe Magdalene Clare – some links would be helpful. Every trans person I know is gloriously happy with their transition and relieved to finally be who they feel they are. I have NEVER seen any documentation of folk who have transitioned and regret it. not saying it doesn’t exist, but for all my hours of reading trans peoples’ stories, I’ve never come across it. Oh wait. I’ve seen one. Just one – Annie Sprinkle’s friend who transitioned back. That’s it.
  • Megan Mackin Clare rocks; so does Virginia Pele. When this hit my wall (posted by a male friend) some hours ago, I responded with this:

    * Do you accept that some people are ‘transracial’? Do you let them appropriate others’ oppressions? Because I am not pleased    …See More
  • Lilithe Magdalene Being Feminist – if you say you are against transphobia on this page, I really cannot understand why you allow the commentary here to go on. Radical feminists who espouse the non existence of transgender folk have plenty of their own spaces to stew in …See More
  • Becky Eliot Being Feminist, you have no idea how many feminist spaces I’ve left because of the whole ‘women are people who have periods and can get pregnant’ stuff being the dominant perspective and people refusing to listen when it’s gently pointed out that those things are not even true of all ‘womyn-born-womyn’. Thank you for trying to create a place that isn’t like that.
  • Spider Redgold A clear analysis of TG polemic and tg activist – what they do and what they say is very much part of feminism. Discernment is a sensible skill, and having an opinion is not a phobia. Discerning B/S*** and speaking out is not a phobia.
    • Jim Pivonka Discernment? Last time I heard that term was in a sermon given by a fundamentalist preacher on flyover country radio. Interesting. Discernment, in the sense you use it, turns out on Google research to be pretty much restricted to conservative Christian preaching and theory.
  • Jane Green To the person that said women’s “capacity to carry babies” is the root of much oppression – I can’t, guess I’m not oppressed then. My life should be much easier now you’ve cleared that up for me.
  • Jeff W Hutchison This might be the most specific issue I’ve found on the internet… I suspect that the Venn diagram of people who are concerned with this, and have a dog in the fight looks like two tangential circles.
  • Bev Jo Again, “cis” is a slur against women, and the women who adopt it are allying with men who fetishize and caricaturize women. Believing that men who show absolute contempt for women are somehow real women is outrageous and deeply female-hating.
  • Druscilla Ryan recently starting saying women/vagina issues so as not to leave anyone out, like the men who get abortions.

  • Lilithe Magdalene I just feel like parking this here to see what transgender and genderqueer people are really about:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKW5Vpgl8R8&feature=em-subs_digest

    Pronouns

    www.youtube.com

    ritchandfamous.tumblr.com facebook.com/famousandritch twitter.com/ritchandfamous…See More
  • Brittany Newmark translation–“shitcunt” means women is penis lingo. Good to know what you think of women
  • Sophia Banks If you dont tolerate transphobia stop posting it!
  • Bev Jo That’s right. Men who demand we accept them as women are the most women-hating of men. “Transphobia” is no more real than “trans-paraplegia-phobia.” Giving us death and rape threats to make us accept men as women will not work. If you accept these me…See More
    • Hide 20 Replies
    • Isabelle Gundermann False equivalence much? Cis radical feminists who block their ears to trans women’s oppression are just like MRAs who block their ears to women’s oppression because they don’t want to have to face their own privilege. It’s boring, it’s stupid, and it’s hateful, and it’s long past time you should have stopped. Men are men, women are women, trans women are women, trans men are men, and sex is a spectrum. Those of you who continue to believe that XX and XY are the only two ‘sexes’ are ignoring fact in favour of ‘wbw’ fantasy.
    • Bev Jo As I said, “trans women” are as real as “trans-paraplegics.” Men who appropriate female identity and caricature and fetishize us are not oppressed: They are our oppressors. Women who support them are betraying all women. THAT is what is “hateful, stupid,” but the rape and death threats are certainly not boring. So do you also support able-bodied men who insist they are disabled Lesbians? Where does the farce and oppression end? Either you are one of these men or you have not looked to closely at them and how they act.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Such a specious argument of conflated non related identities.
    • Bev Jo No, it’s a rational continuum about appropriation of the identity of oppressed people by those in the power position. Lesbians are at the bottom of the heap, with nothing left, yet men still want access to our last tiny bit of female only space. You’re heard of “The Cotton Ceiling?” They even want sexual access to us.

      And men who have killed women are saying they are women in order to be put in women’s prisons. What part of this is not obvious or clear?

      GenderTrender

      Into the Mind of Kosilek: Grace’s Daughter – a Book Review

      April 9, 2013

    • Bev Jo Check the archives and tell me again how men are women… http://gendertrender.wordpress.com/

      GenderTrender

      gendertrender.wordpress.com

      (by GallusMag)
    • Isabelle Gundermann Bev Jo, nobody here is suggesting that men are women. We are saying that trans women are women.
    • Bev Jo “trans women” are a myth. Of course they are men.
    • Bev Jo They are also men who do not take no for an answer. And they are incredibly entitled. How can any woman accept a man as a Lesbian?
    • Isabelle Gundermann For the record, I am neither a man nor am I trans, I’m a cis woman.

    • Bev Jo Well, then you are a male-defined woman, to use a male term that is insulting and female-hating. “Cis” is as bad as “cunt.” It is also part of the con defining women out of existence.

      http://bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/bev-jo-radical-lesbian-writing/ DEFINING LESBIANS OUT OF EXISTENCE — “TRANSWOMEN” ARE STILL MERELY MEN (And over 80% don’t even have surgery)

      DEFINING LESBIANS OUT OF EXISTENCE — “TRANSWOMEN” ARE STILL MERELY MEN (And over 80% don’t even ha

      bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com

          Chapter Two DEFINING LESBIANS OUT OF EXISTENCE    Bev Jo                    …See More
    • Isabelle Gundermann ‘cis’ is a neutral label, ‘trans’ is a neutral label. ‘cunt’ is a word I choose to reclaim to show my love for my body. I love my cunt, I love my girlfriend’s cunt. ‘Cunt’ does have a history of marginalisation behind it, doesn’t stop me from reclaiming it and using it as a positive in my life.
    • Isabelle Gundermann The prefixes ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ are neutral terms, just like heterosexual and homosexual. In fact, much like hetero/homo, they are both rooted in greco-latin origins (meaning ‘on the same side’ or ‘on the other side/across’ respectively). We talk about cis and trans isomers, we talk about the trans-siberian railway, transcontinental, etc. It’s not a perjorative, it’s not an insult, it’s a useful label when it comes to looking at gendered oppression.
    • Sarah Sparkle i thought that you would consider SRS insulting to cis women? shouldn’t you be happy that the majority haven’t had surgery?
    • Bev Jo Cis is nambing an oppessed people against our will. The only women who use it are women who are supporting female impersonators against women. At what point do you stop? I’m guessing you agree with their rape and death threats?

      Cis is no more neutral and any other insult the oppressor uses against the oppressed.
    • Bev Jo Trans is a cult. If you refuse to obey the cult rules, including using female-hating terms, you get slammed and threatened.

      Surgery does not make women out of men, but the fact they don’t even bother means that the potential for rape, as these men continue invading “women only” space, increases.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Actually, I just call all of us “women” – I only use cis and trans when it is required to make it clear in a conversation. I consider trans women to be women, so, no problem!
    • Isabelle Gundermann Bev Jo, I use the word ‘cis’ for guys as well. Cis men – as opposed to trans men. It’s not a term to label an oppressed group: in fact, just as ALL women and ALL men have varying privileges and oppressions according to their experiences (ethnicity, sexuality, disability, family circumstances, class, etc), being cis IS a privileged position, relative to being trans. Of course, that isn’t the whole story, because the vast majority of violence perpetrated against trans people is against trans women of colour – I am by no means trying to lessen the suffering and experiences manyn cis women go through, but ignoring statistics is ignorant, arrogant, and stupid.
    • Isabelle Gundermann It baffles me how you can choose, in the face of reason, community, and the possibility of opening your heart to great love and growth, to remain as nasty and small-minded as you are doing, but hey, takes all sorts – right?
    • Bev Jo You’re the nasty and small-minded one, to so betray women on behalf of obvious men. Most violence is committed by men against women, but of course violence men aim at other men is more important, isn’t it? And somehow it is our responsibility that men are attacking men?

      Bringing race into this is ironical since some of the strongest defenders of women only space against men claiming to be Lesbians are Lesbians of Color — while the majority of men claiming to be Lesbians are the most privileged of white men. But again, the men matter more than any woman.
    • Bev Jo Cis is still a term of insult and these men oppressing us use it against our will, as they also appropriate our identity and destroy our last spaces against our will.

      Of course you are trying to lessen the reality of women’s oppression, and you love using classism to do it. You can’t argue with respect or honesty to call us names, including classist names. What is “ignorant, arrogant, and stupid” is to deny that men fetishizing women are not women, and to support those female-hating men against other women. If you care about statistics you would know that statistic on women being violent is increasing dramatically as men are being included as women.

      No, being a Lesbian and a woman is not privileged in relation to a man playing a fantasy game based on fetishizing women and Lesbians. Are disabled women privileged in relation to the “trans-paraplegic?” Are white men who pretend they are Women of Color (another trans cult game) more oppressed than real Women of Color? Where is your common sense or is it lost in your loyalty to these men?
  • Simone Andrea cis is such an insult. The obsession with proscribed gender roles is frightening. As feminists aren’t we meant to be going beyond that? I didn’t even know i was female until it was pointed out that it was my biological sex, it was THEN i relaised it wa…See More
  • Bev Jo It is all a choice to be Lesbian, het, bisexual, etc. But people can’t change sex any more than they can change species. If you talk to and are around men claiming to be women, it becomes very clear. They are even more male in attitude and behavior th…See More
    • Isabelle Gundermann Sexuality is a choice? Oh maaaaaaaaaan. I can’t even begin with how wrong you are. You can choose who you fuck, sure, but it sure as hell doesn’t change your sexuality.
    • Bev Jo You are so male-identified I might as well be answering a man. Women don’t fuck. They ARE fucked if they choose to be with men. Of course we all choose. We’ve been watching the back and forth for decades, with the choice usually made about privilege. For Lesbians, it’s about who we choose to love. “Sexual orientation” came from the male gay and genderqueer community. No longer a choice of pride to love our own kind, it became, “We can help being pathetic queers, so please give us equal rights. We’d be het like you if we could.” Well, no, we choose and, as I said, it’s a choice of pride. So “maaaaaaaaan,” where did you lose your heart and common sense?
  • Donna Lawson Again I ask, what is a woman if not a physiological female? How can that definition not be sexist?
  • Donna Lawson Trans women are NOT women, unless you are changing the definition of the term woman, which is one of the things I am vehemently against, eroding our identity to a mere social construct.
    • Sarah Sparkle i don’t get it…i thought you people thought gender is a social construct? or are you talking about sex identity?
    • Megan Mackin Sex is not gender! Sex is male or female, gender is masculine or feminine. Sex is real, biological; gender is a patriarchal construct that benefits patriarchy — and which privileges men.
  • Donna Lawson No, being gay is a behaviour or a desire that originates as thoughts, electrical impulses in your brain, being female or male is physical organs and having these organs and the physiology of a woman (in general physically weaker due to less muscle mass…See More
  • Donna Lawson i looked up what cis means and i find it deeply offensive that no only am i defined by our culture, but there is now a term for me to accept that definition and appropriate it upon myself. oh joy. I don’t “identify” as a woman and more than I “identify” as human. In fact, maybe I should “identify” as an alien race that doesn’t put up with all this crap the way humans do.
    • Isabelle Gundermann Well, do you identify as straight, bi, pan, gay, lesbian? Do you find any problem with people identifying with any sort of sexuality?
    • Isabelle Gundermann And would you agree that ‘identifying as gay’ is the same as ‘being gay’? Because I would. I don’t merely identify as queer, I am queer. Much like sexuality, gender identity functions in that way: trans women ARE women, it’s not just a matter of identification. I don’t IDENTIFY as cis, I AM cis. Not that hard, and really not derogatory! It’s simply a useful prefix that is already widely used in many situations to describe something that is on the same side as something else – in this case, your gender and you gender identity are lining up, lucky you!
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia heterosexual people had exactly the same problem with that word as you do with cisgender – they preferred to call themselves “normal”.
  • Bev Jo Reply · 1 · Yesterday at 7:37pm..

    “Trans women” feel like men because they ARE men. To say otherwise is perpetuating the threats against women and woman-hating because everyone knows men are more important than women — including men who say they are    …See More
  • Bev Jo I think that says it all, Brittany.
  • Deb Lah being feminist you should not have hosted this hatefest. you should have shut it down and blocked the transphobic bigots. you have made this space unsafe for marginalised women and you owe them a huge apology.
  • Donna Lawson No. I don’t feel this has anything to do with sexuality. I have a problem with female stereotypes that oppress women and seek to categorise them based on social and cultural norms. What you are attracted to in terms if sexuality I think is partly natur…See More
    • Isabelle Gundermann Ummmmmmmm, men don’t feel like women. Trans women feel like women because they ARE women, and to say otherwise is perpetuating hatred, fear, and violence that plague the trans community. Organs are not inherently male or female, and in any case even CHROMOSOMES don’t determine it. Did you realise that XX and XY are not the only combinations of sex chromosomes in humans? I have no interest in this conversation anymore: it is clear that you value definitions and labels over actually helping the oppressed, so congratulations, go and have a little wank over your ‘yes i am female more oppressed than every1 else and sex is a binary’ thing and I will concentrate my energies on helping communities of marginalised people grow & learn without your bullshit radfem influence. hugs and kisses1
    • Bev Jo “Trans women” feel like men because they ARE men. To say otherwise is perpetuating the threats against women and woman-hating because everyone knows men are more important than women — including men who say they are women. The violence is aimed at women by men, so that’s another cult con. The few men who are attacked because they are transvestites are attacked by other men, but somehow women are held accountable. You support men who kill women and then claim to be women being put into women’s prisons?
  • Donna Lawson Can someone please explain to me, without being sexist, how you can “feel” you are a woman if you were not born as such?
    • Stelzer Insertfirstnamehere … How does a cis person feel they are a man/woman? In reality I have no idea what the experience of being a man/woman/human is like for anyone else, and that is true weather I (or they) am trans* or cis. There is also no universal understanding of what it means or feels like to be a woman, no singular experience that defines womanhood as I know it – there’s arguably patriarchy, but transwomen are hardly exempt from that and different people experience patriarchy in a million different ways anyway, even when cis (see the intersections of disability, race, socioeconomic status, etc).
    • Simone Andrea No-one is exempt from patriarchy. That would indeed be the point when arguing against stupid terminology which panders to it, like cis.
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Our bodies and brains develop at different times in utero. Because of variations in hormone levels, all brains develop with a mixture of gendered traits – there is such a thing as a typically male/female brain, most of us don’t have one though! And some people have a typically male brain and a typically female body. The words sex and gender are both imprecise so don’t get hung up on them. After birth, our gendered brains influence what social constructs around gender we absorb from our environment, so a baby born with a penis but a female brain will be influenced more by female social constructs than male ones and will grow up with whatever female patterning society has at that time. Everybody’s brain is different, basically, and it doesn’t correlate to what’s between our legs – you can now decide whether what’s between our ears or our legs should be considered more important
    • Megan Mackin Brains are not sexed. Gendered is a patriarchal construct benefiting men. So if our brains our gendered, then our brains have been framed and labeled to suit the dominants’ power. Convenient! But please don’t confuse it with science!
    • Megan Mackin Cordelia Fine wrote an excellent (and well-received) book on brains and their lack of sexual dichotomy. I think even she conflates sex and gender (it’s a middle-class polite thang), and so she, the scientist, is saying that brains aren’t even really gendered!
    • Sarah Sparkle You say that sex is real but that brains aren’t sexed? Brains are not sex organs but they are influenced by them.
    • Lilithe Magdalene Once again, Megan, go watch the video posted earlier on this page. Her conclusions – there are no “male brains and no female brains” – yet there ARE very different structural differences, some that can easily shift under stress – we are both sexes and neither and perhaps conditions can cause what was once a brain geared up to produce lots of testosterone, to create more female hormones and vice versa, while chromosomes and external anatomy remain the same. We know so little about the biology of sex, how can you claim to know what the fullness of it is?
    • Rachael Patterson-McGuire Dr. Fine’s book is actually quite good, and she does not pretend to know the fullness of biology. She’s a neuroscientist, after all.
    • Susanna Iris Astarte I identify as a genderqueer person and I really like Trans women- will always stand up for my T sisters’ rights! Just thought I would comment!
  • Bev Jo“Trans women” feel like men because they ARE men. To say otherwise is perpetuating the threats against women and woman-hating because everyone knows men are more important than women — including men who say they are women. The violence is aimed at wom…See More
  • 6 hours ago
  • Lilithe MagdaleneYou make lots of claims with little thread of direct provable connection. They are the ramblings of a fear-monger, Bev Jo.
  • 51 minutes ago

Was this article posted sincerely or was it a deliberate attempt to draw anti-trans feminists to the article? Lets take a look at an article they published on the following Monday by Being Feminist admin LA. This post looks like it is inciting transphobia and if you read the comments you will see it was very successful. Again, Cathy Brennan’s comments are not showing up due to her Facebook page being disabled.

Being Feminist · 25,064 like this

Monday at 2:22am ·

The admin LA’s *PERSONAL* grapplings in trying to understand her privilege, trans*issues and radical feminism, while trying her hardest to remain fair and open minded, and to show appropriate respect to everyone.Note this is NOT the opinion of “Being Feminist” – these are my PERSONAL thoughts on this topic, written in response to some of the recent posts made on this page about trans* issues and the heated debate in the comments. I am the first to admit I do not know all the answers, in fact I do not know ANY answer “for sure” on this topic. I would appreciate your thoughts, and I would ask that you all PLEASE be respectful to each-other, because we are all feminist here.

I’ll admit I don’t know all that much about trans-issues. As a heterosexual woman, with obvious “straight” privilege I don’t like making assumptions about ANYONE’S sexuality or gender, because I don’t know what it’s like to be different to the sexual “norm”. I want for all PEOPLE to eventually be treated equally, and with respect.

I can’t feel myself able to say that “transgender” does or does not exist because I’m not entirely sure myself about the science of “gender” and how gender and sex mix and overlap. But I do know that there are many people who are not “heteronormative” and that every one of their identities matters just as much as mine. When someone tells me that they identify as a woman, since I am not them, I cannot say for sure “you are a woman” or “you are not a woman”. You see, I do not know – is “woman” defined by sex or by gender?

I know that many radical feminists believe that there is no such thing as gender. Therefore, by that logic there is no such thing as “transgender” because there is no “real” gender – there are simply men and women who do not conform to heteronormative expectations – and that’s fine. But according to this belief, trans*women are not women, because sexually they are men. They are nonconformist men (and I would hope, as such just as worthy of respect as any other human being on this earth). That’s the belief of most (all?) transcritical radical feminists. But I don’t know really where I stand because I don’t know where I stand on the gender/sex issue. These are the boundaries that I as a feminist struggle with.

Essentially, I want to treat everyone equally. No matter whether you are woman or man, heterosexual or queer – you all matter as PEOPLE. As such I do not support people treating self-identified transpeople with disrespect. BUT at the same time I feel my heart to be very much a radical feminist. And much as I want to treat everyone “equally” I know that since we have different concerns and different problems, we do need these “identities”. “Woman” is an important identity for the feminist cause. I also know that many radical feminists have had experience with MRAs trying to hijack the cause, to direct much of the drive that goes into “women’s” issues towards their own issues. I can see exactly why radical feminists resent that. And as such, I can see radical feminists’ logic in wanting “women only” spaces (remember that they believe gender does not exist) and so “transgender” women coming into these spaces, since they are SEXUALLY men, feels like an invasion. I do not believe such a feeling is “transphobic”.

As I say, I have been struggling with this issue. I do also know that there have been insults and disrespect on both sides of the debate, and particularly that radical feminists have been threatened and harassed and subjected to death threats and rape threats by irate transactivists.

I DO NOT SUPPORT SUCH ATTACKS AGAINST ANYONE.

I believe that anyone, who believes in equality between men and women, can part of the feminist movement. Within that movement, why can’t we all respect one another, and work together?

Thank you for reading.

~LA

  • Daniel Patrick I’d suggest using the term “cisgender” as what you’re talking about has to do with gender and not sexual orientation (e.g. heteronormative, straight)
    • Hide 16 Replies
    • Being Feminist But as you will have read, I hope, I don’t know where I stand on the “gender vs sex” issue. ~LA
    • Talara Nicholas You don’t need to know where you stand on ‘gender vs sex’ to know that gender/sex and sexual orientation are not at all the same thing.
    • Lesley Smith Cisgender is an inaccurate term to use. Most women, including myself, are not happy with the gender identities assigned to us. That is why feminism exists, to fight back against this stuff. I am non trans.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian I reject the term cis, it implies women have a privilege, well big news, under patriarchy, women have no privilege.
    • Talara Nicholas Rather than meaning that you’re totally fine with the gender roles society has pressed upon you, cisgender means that you feel compatible with your biology, that you don’t experience dysphoria regarding your phsyical sex.
      People who are very conscious of this difference actually tend to use the word ‘cissexual’.
    • Jamie Fenton That kind of goes against the whole concept of intersectional feminism, though, doesn’t it Angela and Lesley? Asking someone who is not trans to call themselves cis is not a ‘gotcha’ way of invalidating cis people’s concerns with their own gender or the concept of gender per se. Nor does it imply they are happy with gender roles assigned to them or the gender ‘performance’ required. You can identify as a cis woman without implying you accept patriarchy, femininity, the gender binary, or anything like that – it’s just a description of someone who is not trans* , just like being ‘straight’ doesn’t imply you accept heterosexism or patriarchal partnership models or traditional femininity. It doesn’t invalidate any concerns a cis person has with the way gender is constructed or their particular gender is treated. There’s a big difference between gender ‘identity’ and ‘expression’ – a woman can feel like a woman while kickboxing, applying makeup, raising children, running a company, or do all those things without really thinking much about her gender at all.
    • Jen Hanna I personally accept the term Cis as I feel both physically and and mentally female; My biology and my metality are both female. This has nothing to do with gender roles in society.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian Jamie there is already a word for woman who isn’t trans, that word is woman, i don’t need no relabeling thank you
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian but female mentality IS gender role! this is how you are forced daily to behave a certain way, to think a certain way.
    • Lesley Smith Neither do I Jen. How I feel and think is about me as an individual. My body is female.
    • Hayley E L Johnson women have had to deal with being labelled by men and as the offset of men forever – ‘cis’ is just another example of that assumption that other people get to name us in relation to what we are not. we are women. just women. people can label themselves what they wish but they don’t get to label others.
    • Christine Faith Spencer If you want to drop the label…that’s fine with me because I am happy to be considered just a woman also. Now, please don’t exclude me from spaces meant for women. It’s where I belong. By the way, I believe I was born female and mislabeled at birth. So woman born woman works for me too. I am not defined by my anatomy. I am defined by my character and my heart. Being defined by your genitals is a core part of patriarchy.
    • Sylvia Fanelli Well I am a Transgender Woman 100% im not a CIS gender!
    • Clare Phillipson @christine…im puzzled…if you werent born with a female body how do you know you were born female but mislabelled at birth??…where is this inner femaleness located ?….
  • Clare Phillipson calling wbw who disagree with you ‘radscum’@juno is typically abusive male behaviour
    • Hide 53 Replies
    • Talara Nicholas Saying that name-calling is male behaviour is something of a ludicrous claim.
    • Izel Terronez intentionally misgendering people is one way
    • Izel Terronez do i actually need to go find examples of that? because theyre happening in this thread
    • Izel Terronez oh my god please tell me exactly what “level” the “rape and death threats” are currently at on a scale from 1 to bullshit
    • Talara Nicholas I am lost for words at how stupid that is, Cathy Brennan. 1) Citation needed 2) Individuals being jerks does not mean you have free rein to treat everybody who shares a completely unrelated identity with those people like they are the original offenders.
      Being trans* =/= being the kind of person that issues death threats, I can’t believe I am even having to say this right now, what the hell.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian on one side we have the typical “die cis scum” from trans-extremists, on the other side we have radfem saying penis is male. you tell me which one is hate speech
    • Izel Terronez That’s it? theres a surgery that fixes that
    • Izel Terronez The surgery is a tad more complicated than that, but in what way is it meaningfully different?
    • Talara Nicholas ‘dis cis scum’ as a quote stems from a group of ridiculous online teenagers who were constantly trying to win a game of “No, I’m the special-est snowflake!”. As in, 15-year-olds who also claimed to be ‘otherkin’ and have ‘headmates’ and some of whom eventually owned up to the fact that they were not trans* and were in fact just lying their asses off for attention.

    • Being Feminist Talara and Izel this is what I think Cathy is talking about: TRIGGER WARNING http://feministninja.tumblr.com/day/2013/04/24

      feministninja.tumblr.com

      an e-battle cry
    • Izel Terronez this is said “regularly?” proof plz
    • Juno Cremonini Oh, look, it’s a bunch of copy-pastes from the internet. PLEASE, Being Feminist, come on!
    • Izel Terronez And you need to segregate yourself from all transgender people because of that? And you’re going to assume that transphobic comments and actions from some radical feminists might not play a part in that? I’m not going to get into actual numbers or frequency because I don’t care when what you’re talking about is just bald bigotry.
    • Being Feminist Hey guys – let’s stay respectful here please. I said that there has been insult and disrespect on both sides, and that I do not support this from anyone. If you start insulting each-other here then I am afraid I will have to ban you. ~LA
    • Izel Terronez At what point was I disrespectful?
    • Talara Nicholas There’s plenty of evidence that women ‘born women’ have used horrendous language towards other ‘women born women’, and transwomen, and transmen, and cismen, and lesbians, and heterosexuals! There is a lot of frustration, anger, irrationality and hatred in the world! Acting like trans* people are the same person or all part of the same root organization and thus all guilty of is the exact same mindset that has so many people saying that feminism is just about hating men and refusing to shave! How do you not see the problem with this mindset?
    • Being Feminist I agree Talara – but I would also point out that calling all radical feminists “radscum” is part of the same problem! Which is the point I tried to make in my post! ~LA
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian completely agree with Cathy, do Trans get hate speech, death treat, rape threats, etc yes they do, but not from radfems, they get it from men.
    • Talara Nicholas Because… your experience is the only one that matters, Cathy? Good to know.

    • Juno Cremonini I am NOT calling radfems radscum. That would be extremely bigoted. “radscum” is not another word, a slur, for “radfem”.

      http://thatfeministdyke.tumblr.com/post/22963394979/anonymous-asked-what-are-radscum

      thatfeministdyke.tumblr.com

      lettherebecramp: “Radscum are a particularly nasty breed of radical feminist (i….See More
    • Izel Terronez If latina women were found to commit lesbian rape at a frequency disproportionately large to white women, should white women segregate themselves from latina women in the way you want to segregate cisgender women from transgender women?
    • Han Chi Radfem I know a lot of radfems and none of us has set out to breach trans spaces and prevent them from gathering. Nor have we ever threatened to rape them or told them to die in a fire, stalked their families or held workshops in how to get them to have more sex with us. We have enough shit to deal with in our fucking lives to look for more trouble.
    • Izel Terronez no transgender people ive ever known have done that either. huh
    • Han Chi Radfem Transwomen are overwhelmingly beat, raped and murdered by MEN. Take it up with the perps.
    • Izel Terronez You’ll note that the “if” makes it a conditional statement. I didn’t even look it up so I wouldn’t know. Are you going to answer the question?
    • Izel Terronez Nope, instead I’m going to ask you why you want to exclude women from spaces meant to be safe from male violence.
    • Izel Terronez you actually dont want to work with me and want to segregate yourself and your group of women who think like you from me. how in the fuck are we supposed to “work together?”
    • Arkadia Getheren Moon If name-calling is typically abusive male behaviour, what does that say about cis women who namecall on trans women?
  • Thea Winde “I’ll admit I don’t know all that much about trans-issues.”

    LA, if you don’t know all that much about trans issues, I think the best thing to do before posting is research the subject before throwing your hat in the ring. This is an incredibly privil…See More
    • Scrawny Voluntaryist Mahoney she was asking for opinions and trying to get others information…..
    • Being Feminist I wish people would actually read what I wrote instead of assuming that I wrote something that I did not. Scrawny Voluntaryist is right. I said I was struggling to understand the issue, and that I was trying to reconcile my privilege (which I “checked” before I wrote thank you) with my belief that EVERYONE deserve equal rights and respect as PEOPLE, and with my knowledge that everyone has an identuty that is valuable as mine, and ALSO with my knowledge and appreciation of the many good things that radical feminists have done for the feminist cause (which means I am extremely loth to write them all off as “radscum” and “unfeminist”). Also, I did not “comment” or make a judgement on trans* oppression, I said freely that I could have no valid opinion right now as I wasn’t sure what the whole issue of “womanhood” should be based on, since it’s still a very contentious issue, and I have studied the “gender” and “sex” side. And unlike what some people have been saying, I NEVER said to anyone that “you are a woman” or “you are not a woman” – I said the opposite. I said that I could NOT say such a thing. This whole thing was meant in good faith, to hear from both transpeople and radical feminists, so I could clarify their positions, and hopefully (naive thought) help them to understand each-other better and realise that neither side are evil anti-feminists, but actually we are all people deserving of respect, and that we all have a place in the feminist movement. I am disappointed – profoundly disappointed – that I have been so misunderstood, and that my post has become a medium for hate. That was NOT the intent. I do not support hate. And I have said this AGAIN AND AGAIN. It’s making me angry, all this divisiveness in the feminist movement. We need to work together. Transfeminists and radical feminists both do vital and valuable work. Cutting one or the other out of the movement would rob the movement of a passionate, intelligent and dedicated group of activists, both of which have achieved great things for feminism, albeit in different spheres. Why can’t we all respect each-other? I ask again. ~LA
    • Thea Winde No, I read what you wrote, thought about it, and then wrote my comment. You’re still using your privilege. You’re completely allowed to sort out your feelings and understand the issue, ON YOUR OWN. If you had posted the comment as yourself on say the wall of Being Feminist, that would be more understandable to me. You didn’t do that, you basically just decided to use a megaphone to “struggle to understand the issue”.

      You know there’s a term for Radical Feminists that hate trans people right? Generally we call them TERF’s “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists”. Trans people are also not a monolith that hate all radical feminists ever because of TERF’s. So you should probably stop insinuating that what’s going on here. No one said Trans people didn’t appreciate all the good things Radical Feminists have done for the feminist cause, FFS.

      You should read this little tidbit again:

      “I can see exactly why radical feminists resent that. And as such, I can see radical feminists’ logic in wanting “women only” spaces (remember that they believe gender does not exist) and so “transgender” women coming into these spaces, since they are SEXUALLY men, feels like an invasion. I do not believe such a feeling is “transphobic”.”

      Guess what. You don’t get to define what is transphobic and what isn’t. That you did this in particular is a *privileged position to take.* Saying “I have privilege” is not the same thing as actually checking your privilege.

      There is always going to be divisiveness and infighting in the feminist movement because we are above all a group of individuals. We’re messy and complicated and the movement will reflect that. Stop framing this as a “Trans vs. Radical Feminism” issue. As I pointed out before, it is specifically TERF’s with their particular brand of hate that are oppressive and part of the problem.

      Again, I reiterate. There are a bunch of resources out there that you could have used and researched and learned from. Instead you chose to “start a discussion” you really weren’t prepared to moderate properly because you don’t even understand transphobic hate when you see it.

      So I say again, check your privilege. I believe this post should be taken down and an apology given, with the understanding that you will take this opportunity to do your own research and learn.
    • Clare Phillipson dear me thea…..demanding apologies…for what exactly??…a thoughtful post…covering a complex subject…and the ‘guess what you dont get to define whats transphobic’is just so!entitled……so who appointed you as the what is transphobic expert?
  • Julian Vigo In reading many of these comments, I am taken aback by the self-righteousness that some feel they have to speak while denigrating disagreement as ‘transphobic’. I read this person’s posting and can very much understand her/his queries and confusion. I …See More
    • Emma Maskell Yes, I have always found that whole ‘cis’ thing strange, and rather object to being told I am ‘cis-gender’ because whatever I might look like on the outside and however my life may appear to the outsider, what I feel on the inside is a struggle I have reckoning my physical biology with societies view of what that means and the expectations placed on me that I do not wish to embrace. And I fit the ‘cis-woman’ label, but feel as a feminist that we are all gender queer. I find it sad really that we act so defensively with each other trans and non-trans feminists. But you touch on that here, women have had to fight hard for their spaces and so naturally feel threatened and want to protect them, trans-women are fighting hard for acceptance and still fighting for spaces and naturally feel rejected when others wish to exclude them. I just hope that people on both sides can empathise with each other and imagine the reality of peoples lives and see through the fantasies and stereo-types in order to come to a better understanding.
    • Julian Vigo Of course the empathy is there, but the reality of sharing spaces is more complex. On the one hand there is the huge space of childhood from which feminism draws and many feminists feel that this is something trans women can simply not ‘know’. It is in fact something that is the root of the sociology of girlhood that later forms part of women’s experiences and for many women, their oppression as women. For all women it forms a huge basis of their psychology as women. I don’t think it is possible for trans women to share in this particular experience. When you come from a family where your brothers were allowed to play football while you had to ritually clean house and do the dishes, where expectations placed on you were always minimalised to reflect your ‘lesser nature’, this is an indelible part of women’s psychology, albeit differently from social structure to social structure, family to family. What I see is that there are issues that the rad fem people have with both the psychological privilege and somatic differences from birth that do mark us. It is rather reflected by the fact that many rad fem women have told me they are expected to allow into their group trans women while trans women’s groups do not allow non trans women into theirs. By admission trans women would then be saying the same very thing: that our experiences are vastly different from yours and as such we need a space for discussion our issues. This paradigm also reminds me of certain lesbian and gay groups that do not see why the T should be added to their mission, such as Stonewall. There are completely different issues that gay men and women face than transsexual and other transgender individuals and of course the obvious part being that many trans individuals are simply not gay or bisexual. One could easily argue that the oppression of homosexuals today in certain societies is miniscule compared to that of trans people.

      One of the central problems is that there seems to be a lot of emotional blackmail that offends my sensibilities: yes, trans people do suffer, so do many women, disabled, obese people, etc. I don’t like that these discussions come to resemble what I call “comparative Holocausts,” who suffers more. In these cases, the use of the word ‘transphobic’ to limit discussion is nothing more than a thinly veiled form of censorship that seeks to reduce anyone else with thoughts or feelings on this subject to silence. You see the irony I am sure. Furthermore, these are silly discussions to have in my own opinion. I think that both sides on this issue need to understand that there is suffering and difference. I also think that it is imperative that trans individuals cannot simply expect that all women erase their trauma and include them as co-survivors. I, personally, have no problem including trans women in my groups, but then were I to go to a group that focused on women who cannot have children or on rape survivors I am pretty sure I would not want trans women there, just as they would not appreciate my presence in their specific groups. Again, nobody will argue that trans women cannot be raped or that some trans women cannot have children (indeed many had in their prior lives) but there is an entirely different social structure which allows for the rape of women today, unfortunately.

      Another problem is the conflation of sex with gender–when de Beauvoir wrote ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ she was referring to the sex of females being made/becoming women. There is a huge difference between the violent socialisation of women from girls from birth as females to that of people who claim to ‘be born in the wrong body.’ Not only do I have problems with the Christian implications of this mind/body need to reflect the other, but there is an inherent problem in this presumption of the mind of gender as having a power over the body. The latter would then speak to psychological pathology. This need to address the ‘wrong gender’ speaks to me as a body dysmorphic disorder or a body integrity identity disorder into which many pathologies of the late 20th century seem to fit–from bulimia and anorexia to apotemnophilia–wherein the subject is not comfortable or even psychologically well in her/his body. Hence, the obvious skepticism on the part of not just some feminists, but a variety of humans who worry about the cultural and psychological repercussions of living in a world where people can claim to be another sex. The claim itself, notwithstanding that the subject feels this, I do not deny. The underlying ‘science’ to sustain such premises, however, tends toward a reading of social constructions of gender and not a medical pathology (except in very rare cases). Hence questions remain and I do believe these questions affect everyone and affect everyone equally since we live in a world where we are aware of the ethical implications of bad science: the horrid protocols of shock therapy, the institutionalization of those who are socially different, etc.

      There is also great concern by many in the lesbian and gay community that trans women are attempting to take over feminist discourse and gay identification which is a problem for many, and again, a great irony. Ultimately, what I observe is a group that wishes to include itself with women’s groups but still wants to have its own set of groups as privilege. It seems quite clear that there is this notion of absolute difference admitted by both sides. So why the pressure to force conformity? Why can there not be certain women’s groups that are more inclusive than others? This is not only the history of women’s realities, but the reality of political activism. The other side to this argument that I could easily make is that all people be allowed into all these groups, men born men included. But to many here, that would be patently absurd.
    • Being Feminist Thank you for your insights Julian. You seem to be one of the few who actually read and understood my original post. This is the kind of discussion I wanted us to have, instead of making it all about hatred. ~LA
  • Danielle Sammy Why should feminism be a “women-only” cause if it is about gender equality? Or is it really about female superiority? I don’t think so… if it was about female superiority I would not be supporting it. Is this page a “women-only” space?
    • Being Feminist That’s not what I said. I said (if you read my post) that I believe EVERYONE can be part of the feminist cause, and that I believe that EVERYONE should be treated equally and with respect. ~LA
    • Yasemin Demir The women-only spaces radical feminists usually refer to are literal and figurative spaces to protect women from triggers. A woman who has been raped and suffers from ptsd might feel unsafe or uncomfortable with anyone who is male (sexually, as I don’t think I have a right to say anything about transwomen’s identities).
    • Virginia Pele Right the Black Panthers should have included white dudes too. That will be a great step when you and your likes pal will understand politics, especially feminist politics, is not about freaking consensus.
    • Virginia Pele That’s funny you all advocate plurality and yet u can’t stand womyn’s autonomous organising ? Hun.
    • Elizabeth Veldon i am completely in favour of woman only space (i’ve organised a few in my time) but not trans* exclusion.
    • Angela Soudjoukdjian most feminist spaces are inclusive to all anyway. why is claiming one conference to be women only so threatening to you?
    • Nicolas Jacques-Morel I really feel the world is a better place when there are spaces for people where they can be safe from whatever triggers their ptsd. I can understand that, in these spaces, trans people may have a difficult time to move around without triggering ptsd in others.

      We all should understand that.
      We all should understand that, outside of that narrow acceptance of *group*only spaces, then it makes no sense to reject somebody who comes to you to understand your perspective on the world.
    • Danielle Sammy Ah okay. Thanks for informing me! I didn’t understand what a “women-only” space was, but now I see that it is incredibly important. Great to have this discussion.
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Women only space is very important. And trans* women are women, and most women want trans* women to be included in their space.
  • Lissa Willason Transphobia wrapped in Feminism is still Transphobia. I can get very heated on this subject, so I’m going to try and say what I have to say without coming across as mean. It is inherently *anti-feminist*, to me, to exclude anyone from anything based on…See More
    • Being Feminist I didn’t question whether they had a place in feminism. I said EVERYONE has a place in feminism. And I specifically said that I could not define anyone as woman or otherwise. ~LA
  • Elizabeth Veldon i have to ask: are you condoning the bulling, harassment and outings trans*women face from ‘radical feminists’?
    • Being Feminist replied · 36 Replies
  • Angela Soudjoukdjian Thank you for that post. I have appreciated debating here. W can disagree without insulting each other. Those places are rare in feminist circles those days. I respect that
  • Sandra Thumper Sasvári I will never understand so-called feminists that judge the trans community, there is simply no justification for it. They’re not disliking them based off being feminist, they’re disliking them because they’re bigoted, and it’s women like that that give…See More
  • Clare Phillipson @juno….’radscum’?????….so you think its ok to call wbw ‘scum’..on a feminist page….never mind telling radfems to ‘check their priviledge’..you need to look at your own
    • Hide 20 Replies
    • Izel Terronez Without at all getting into what you think causes people to want to transition, whether or not you think that’s an okay or good thing to do, etc. do you not think that people who aren’t transgender are in any position of privilege over people that are?
    • Izel Terronez thats cool and totally irrelevant and i didnt ask you
    • Juno Cremonini I’m not calling women scum. I’m calling radscum scum. I’m calling transphobic people scum. Just like one could call a sexist man scum. Which I gladly would.

      Also, fuck your “wbw” bullshit.
    • Izel Terronez the title says its about autogynephilia which is a fucking stupid term i dont even have time for so id ask that you find something more direct or just make your arguments for youself instead of bombarding people with links to shitty wordpress blogs in every other comment
    • Clare Phillipson @juno….your behaviour on here is dominant and agressive…..wbw exist….do not call that ‘bullshit’…do not call the oppression of wbw ‘bullshit’…in doing so you are showing your complete lack of understanding of oppression that females experience…..and continuing to call radical feminists ‘scum’simply evidences what an abusive individual you are
    • Clare Phillipson @izel…so you have closed your mind to learning?i suggest you read the blog..it has some fascinating and thoughtful insights
    • Clare Phillipson @juno…i expect men to be sexist..its what happens when you have male priviledge from birth,and grow up in a patriarchy…so no,i dont call sexist men ‘scum’…i just call them men
    • Izel Terronez im not going to waste my time on something that starts off on such an ignorant and clueless foot
    • Clare Phillipson you havent read it…so you cannot know if it is ‘ignorant and clueless’…
    • Izel Terronez the beginning of it is
    • Izel Terronez How would you respond to me directing you to a post on a wordpress blog you had never heard of that started off talking about how women just play hard to get and therefore deserve rape if I promised you that something I myself was never clear or specific about twenty paragraphs down was relevant, and refused to just make the argument for myself in order to disconnect it from the bluntly ignorant and hurtful portion of the article?
    • Clare Phillipson i dont see the analogy between autognynophilia and rape…..how is finding yourself erotic offensive?…how is men,finding the idea of having a pair of breasts erotic offensive?
    • Izel Terronez allow me to direct you to a bunch of shitty blog posts about it
    • Octavia Dahl Male privilege is powerful. I can see it in every man who says he’s a woman and screams at me to die in a fire or how I should be raped to know what it’s like to be trans.
    • Izel Terronez uhhhhhh what the fuck. that is not what is going through the head of any transgender person ive ever known
    • Clare Phillipson sometimes it requires insight and external analyisis to fully know whats going on’i feel like a woman’and ‘trapped in the wrong body’dont quite cut it for me as explanations
  • Moo Moo Friesen don’t fall into the trap of thinking science can solve this for you. science is not a perfect tool, and is still conducted by scientists, many who use a heteronormative lens. i don’t understand what purpose it serves for feminists to debate this issue….See More
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia I agree BF is facilitating transphobia and I’m really disappointed. Every time this happens, what moderators on pages like this don’t understand is that my inbox gets filled with tearful trans* women saying “I don’t feel safe on that page anymore”. For…See More
  • Jenneth Mills Honestly I hate the categories. I hate being labeled as one thing or another. Why do I have to say I’m bi or queer or straight , or gay or asexual? I’m never straight enough or gay enough or feminine enough or manly. I am who I am and if someone comes …See More
  • Chikituh Burrituh Sex doesn’t exist because I told you so. Disagreeing with post modernist queer theory is transphobic because I told you so. I have the right to call you a bigot and scum because I told you so. Yawn.
  • Juno Cremonini I am sorry to say this, because I can tell you are being sincere to some extent here, but as a trans* person, you simply sound strongly privileged and attached to “radical feminism”, and you seem to want to explain to me, as a trans* person, the transp…See More
    • Hide 15 Replies
    • Juno Cremonini Yeah, my intersectional feminism is bullshit. We are better off with your radscum bigoted transmisoginistic feminism, right? Right.
    • Juno Cremonini The use of transphobia has been what you radfems call this debate. There is no debate. You have created a load of bullshit to justify your transphobic bullshit and you are god damn denying the label of transphobes ever since.

      Feminism will endure, intersectionality will prove itself NECESSARY and you radscums WILL NOT PASS.
    • Juno Cremonini This website is bullshit, this letter is bullshit and it’s naive in how it interprets legislation to work. There are no “legal problems” because there is no set-in-stone legal system.

      We know how to ensure our rights and WE CAN DO IT OURSELVES. I don’t need your cissexist bullshit website to tell me how.
    • Juno Cremonini You don’t need to trust my facebook postings. Or notice the anger that stems from your bigoted feminism. I am indeed not putting an argument forward, Cathy. I am simply saying this: I am not interested, in the least, in your radfem literature, to the same extent I am not interested in white feminist analysis, or liberal feminist analysis. I have no time to not handwave such nonsense.
    • Juno Cremonini Anatomies exist as a material reality, gender is in a hierarchy that subordinates women and trans* people, and bigoted radical feminism feels the need to remove the later from the sentence.
    • Emma Maskell Hi Juno and Cathy. Wanted to share my thoughts with you. I felt attracted to rad fem because it has an aim over equality within a patriarchal system, it’s aim is to defeat the system. I like that. But I will never forget being told that I was not a rad fem simply because I said that as a mother with a son there was no way I would be prepared to abandon him for this woman’s vision of a women only island away from the rest of the world, and because I asked what would she say to those of us who love men? And surly we want them on our side don’t we? Apparently this makes me not rad fem. So who cares, its just a label like trans is a label or anything else. So I decided to be a fabulous feminist instead. I have been decidedly un-fabulous in working through my confusion over trans gender. (Something I needed to grasp because I know what its like to feel you don’t fit, and actually desperately did want to understand). But you know just cause trans people are asking to be accepted doesn’t in any way take away the other issues that feminism is dealing with. We do have to unite. Yes as Juno said, otherwise it is BS.
  • Clare Phillipson @daniel…and i suggest using the term ‘cis’is deeply offensive…wbw have been re.named for millenia by men..i dont need a new label…
  • Chikituh Burrituh Smashing, you have just brilliantly worded why queer theory is deeply essentialist. It is infuriating how rad gems continue to be accused of essentialism when they are in fact completely the opposite, and those that accuse them don’t seen to have a full understanding of what essentialism means.
  • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia Really disappointed to read this. In my extensive campaigning on this issue I’ve never come across the kind of threats from trans activists mentioned here, although I do believe they exist because radicalised people don’t always behave brilliantly. Whi…See More
  • Montana Fillius Except that excluding trans women in women-only spaces is in fact transphobic. That’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a fact.
  • Olivia Bee It’s really simple. If a trans woman says she’s a woman then she’s a damn woman. FFS what is the test for “woman-ness”?
    • Talara Nicholas It’s almost funny how you think that you just disagreeing somehow actually changes the truth.
    • Olivia Bee Talara are you talking to me or Cathy? Hey, Cathy, do I pass the test for “female-ness”? Do you? “No, sorry” is not a response. TERF logic makes no sense to me: “Gender roles are socially defined, not biologically… except those people’s gender over there.” A trans woman is just as “woman” as me. Or you.
    • Gabrielle Patterson Hush. Just let Cathy make her “arguments”. It’s not like she’s contributing to the patriarchy by denying MAB basic rights because they weren’t born with the appropriate credentials. When we make our clubhouses we’ll just be sure to have a sign that says “No Cathy Breannans: They Are Triggering to Inclusive/Intersectional Feminists”.
  • Virginia Pele Thank you for this post, but many aspects are quite inaccurate. Transgenderism is a political problem, because gender IS ACTUALLY REAL, it is an oppressive system that maintains womyn subordinated to men, and every political instance relies on that. Ge…See More
    • Janette Ocon Gender is a social construct. It is only real if you believe in it and HOW you believe in it. Being a man or woman means different things to different people.
  • Smashing Mądra I think one thing that the gender abolitionist/ “trans critical” feminists don’t take into account is that transness is much more than just gender-non conformity. Given the restrictive nature of gender roles, many people who are not trans may experien…See More
    • Talara Nicholas That’s something I was thinking is often apparently ignored in these online arguments – it’s not just about the constructed parts of gender, it’s also about the physical differences. Pretty much every trans* person I’ve seen sharing their story has expressed their discomfort with the body they were born in. Almost everything I’ve heard indicates that one of the major divides between being gender-nonconforming and being trans* is the desire to be biologically different. Am I wrong? And doesn’t it render the whole ‘gender is a contstruct’ argument knid of moot when being trans* is about a hell of a lot more than the socially-created aspects of gender?
  • Clare Phillipson thank you for your thoughtful,honest ,contribution…i can identify with much of what you.ve written…
  • Michelle Zimmerman Oh, so many memories about “debates” centering around this in other feminist spaces.

    There are horrible, abusive, oppressive shits in every groups and movement, it’s important not to define everyone within the movement by these shitty people. So tel…See More
  • Chikituh Burrituh Recognising biological/physiological characteristics is not essentialist! Why at people so determined to misconstrue thus very basic idea? My kidneys exist; that idea is not essentialist. My ovaries also exist. That is not essentialist. Suggesting that I behave a certain way because I have kidneys, or ovaries, that is essentialist. Please stop reinventing definitions of very basic concepts.
  • Talara Nicholas Saying gender doesn’t exist and then wanting exclusive space based on phsyical sex seems somehow off, to me. It seems counter-productive. What good is breaking down gender constructs if we then reinforce separation and stigma based on the possesion of certain genitals and particular behaviors?
    • Scrawny Voluntaryist Mahoney it’s the big conundrum of trangender/feminism.
  • Clare Phillipson so does everyone on here supporting transgender theory also support transracial theory?…as a white woman can i declare ive always ‘felt black’?can i then insist on access to black experiences?and insist on telling black people they should now be called ‘cisblack’so i dont feel excluded?can i think appropriate the long history of racism and slavery?
    • Izel Terronez take that to some psychiatrists and other licensed medical professionals and if you can get some research done on it, we’ll talk about “transracialism” after youve done that, until then you should probably stop using such an idiotic argument
    • Jamie Fenton It’s not the same thing. Race is in fact a socially constructed concept, sex and gender are socially constructed concepts which arise around biological differences. Just as some people seem to be attracted to one gender/sex , some people identify as a gender/sex that is deemed ‘wrong’ by some. Heternormativity dictates people should be dictated to the ‘opposite’ sex and cissexism dictates that people ought to identify with the characteristics and identity associated with their assigned sex. I guess to refer to your example of a white woman feeling ‘black’ as saying that if you were, for example, raised by a racially oppressed family, of course you would culturally identify as part of that family – but as a white person you will always be privy to white privilege in some form or another which might make it inappropriate to speak as a member of that community yourself in some contexts. Trans*women give up male privilege when they transition. That is the major difference. A white person adopted by a racially oppressed group might experience racism due to their association with their family but not on their own behalf, so they remained privileged within their family’s group. A trans*woman, however, not only experiences misogyny but trans*misogyny, which tends to be more deadly.
    • Han Chi Radfem But they have been raised with male privilege, they have benefited from male privilege, and as is quite abundant here and elsewhere, they still expect emotional support from women. And women have been trained to give it to them. Also, how is transmisogyny more deadly?
    • Izel Terronez in what way do they benefit from male privilege after transitioning?
    • Emma Maskell It can be difficult to reject the privilege that you have in order to follow your soul. It can tear you up trying to tread the strait and narrow just to benefit from that privilege.
    • Janette Ocon lmao, sorry Jamie Fenton, couldn’t get past your first two sentences. Seriously, you are trying to say that race isn’t a biological difference? How do you think our skin colors get their pigmentation? Ethnicity is the social construct that has no biology basis. And while sex IS a biological difference, gender is NOT. Gender is a social construct PERIOD.
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia there isn’t a widespread consistently researched phenomenon called transracialism, or transableism. If these phenomena do exist, not doubt like homosexuality and transgender they will be studied and initially treated as psychiatric illnesses unless/until decades of understanding prove that not to be the case. It is reasonable to assume that if someone walks around with an apparent delusion that they are deluded, but there comes a point when there’s enough evidence to show that they’re not. We’re way past that point with trans* issues.
    • Scrawny Voluntaryist Mahoney I was wondering about that too, it could very well be many people have what is considered “transpeciesism” What if a human feels they are truly a dolphin? is it a mental disorder?
    • Jamie Fenton Janette Ocon, yeah I know I phrased that awkwardly, don’t worry I do understand genetics, I guess ‘ethnicity’ is what I was aiming for. Those sentences got away from me. But race seems to be a biological difference in the same way that family groups or eye colour is a biological difference – unlike sex, which allows us to predict a person’s physical characteristics, especially reproductive etc, quite well whereas ‘race’ does not. Socially constructed concepts of gender arise around sex differences – and don’t necessarily have to be patriarchal. Socially constructed concepts or ‘race’ arise through racism, war, and colonialism, generally.
  • Sandra Thumper Sasvári What a waste of time and energy this is. Love one another, people. I’m out.
  • Sandra Thumper Sasvári I honestly can’t believe this is even an issue, what discussion is there to be had? Just fucking accept people for who they are, period. What fucking difference does it make to anything what gender they assign to, if any? It’s an utterly pointless disc…See More
  • Chikituh Burrituh You can’t feel race, or disability (unwanted limbs?) but you can feel gender? Is that a ‘Because I told you so’? How does one measure feelings and translate into a robust scientific study? I mean, it may just be me but I am certain that there are a billion zillion trillion feelings floating around in the world, and should we be implementing policy based on feelings? Respectfully?
    • Talara Nicholas Did you just define disability as unwanted limbs?
    • Izel Terronez well doctors have studied “feeling gender” in a way that, to my knowledge, they haven’t with race or ability. i would suggest waiting on what they find before blindly speculating on what it would mean for an unrelated group of people
    • Izel Terronez lol, with surgery
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia actually there’s plenty of scientific evidence – transgender animals, brain similarities between trans women and cis women, proof of the effects of hormones in utero gendering our brains [and note I’m not talking about discredited brain sex theory here but newer research], proof that children assigned the wrong gender like David Reimer knew what gender he should be despite his female socialisation and transitioned at a very young age. But most importantly, when gay people say they know they are gay we accept this, so why not with trans* people? Despite the fact that we know no psychological intervention works, and all the research proves that transition is the only successful “cure” for the distress of living as the wrong gender, why do we still try and suggest people are incapable of knowing who they are? Would you tell a gay person “it’s a choice” or “you’re deluded – you defy my model of gender so you can’t be real” or would you go away and think maybe your model is wrong, and you need to update yourself. The notion “sex is entirely biological, gender is entirely a construct” is deeply flawed and simplistic, the truth is far more complicated than this.
    • Chikituh Burrituh Scientific evidence: transgender animals?? What?
    • Chikituh Burrituh Would love to see that, can you provide some links?
  • Chikituh Burrituh I have never heard rad fems saying gender doesn’t exist. Where are you getting this stuff from? Rad fems know gender is a social construct (apparently this is the initial stance of queer too, though the further you delve into it the woolier it becomes …See More
  • Sandra Thumper Sasvári People have to understand that transsexuality is not about society’s indoctrinated genderroles. Most trans people remember feeling very early, sometimes as early as three or four, that there is something “wrong” with the body they’re inhabitating. Like…See More
    • Izel Terronez “While many transexuals (particularly those that are born male but transition into females) do turn to a “stereotypically” frmale way of dressing, that STILL does not define the new (“right”) gender because as we know, not all women wear pink and dresses and heels.”

      hey whats up im a transgender woman reading this post and wearing a backwards baseball cap, a hoody with grindcore patches, jeans and toms shoes
    • Izel Terronez ”LOL?” Is that not woman enough for you? sounds a little sexist
  • Sarah Bercot I feel like you HAVE to subscribe to the essentialist notion of a sex binary to start drawing lines between “women” and “men” from a biological point of view, and honestly I can’t for the life of me understand how that’s remotely radical or feminist, a…See More
  • Katie Leach Feminism is SUPPOSED to be about liberating people from the restrictive, degrading, and inhumane confines imposed, often by means of emotional, physical, and structural violence, by an imbalanced and unjust society. You simply cannot call yourself a fe…See More
    • Sandy Hopton well said
    • Katie Leach Thank you! I just had to say something. Reading this thread has given me a headache. The fact that so many cisgendered people feel compelled to tell trans* people who they are and what their experiences are like *should* be testament enough to the degree of privilege cisgenders have worldwide–but it won’t be, sadly, because those sorts of people don’t care and don’t want to. Don’t get me wrong – I understand (I think) how the original point that the OP made arises in discussing the experiences of trans* individuals. But all this baseless hate and unadulterated bigotry is appalling and desperately needs to be called out as exactly what it is.

      Actual feminists–humanists with a focus on the experiences and issues facing women–have to identify these trends and weed them out. Bigotry, no matter how sincerely-felt, is not welcome here.
  • Pantl ess’Armenian I mean, I am not trying to be a jerk, but maybe you need to use google rather than risk sincerely hurting members of your community.
  • Pantl ess’Armenian Maybe your personal facebook would have been a better idea. This is very alienating and strange to discuss people like they aren’t even here.
  • Talara Nicholas Ok, time for me to walk away for tonight before the sheer amount of confirmation bias, incorrectly used jargon and pointless, baseless vitriol gives me a splitting headache.
    Concluding notes – there is more to being trans* than how gender-conforming o…See More
    • Katie Leach “[Y]our personal experiences do not actually count as staistically sound facts that should be applied as a generalization, and your personal feelings do not actually have the power to invalidate somebody else’s existence.”

      THANK YOU. Not that you need…See More
  • Chikituh Burrituh And again, I have never heard any rad Fem saying that Trans people don’t exist! Or that the lived experiences of trans people don’t matter. This is deliberate misinformation. Rad fems simply do not agree with queer theory. And apparently, unlike any other theory in the democratic world, we just shut up and suck up. If we do not blindly accept this one theory, and let’s be clear, it is a theory, then we are bigots.
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia you’ve led a sheltered life – I have seen those beliefs expressed, and even some extremists who campaign against trans* women being given rights.
    • Katie Leach Chikituh: Just because you haven’t experienced something personally, that means it isn’t happening? If you haven’t heard about a war on the other side of the globe, people aren’t being killed? Just because you aren’t involved in the conversation on trans* rights and experience, it isn’t something others are privy to? “And let’s be clear:” It is not just a “theory;” it is a daily reality for millions of people. Fortunately, your uninformed, self-appointed authority has no real bearing on that whatsoever.
    • Chikituh Burrituh Post modernist queer theory is an academic theory, that is what I said. “you have lived a sheltered life….” lol, do I know you?
  • Chikituh Burrituh The thing that amuses me the most about the conference is how glaringly obvious it is that there is an alternate agenda. The conference is clearly defined on the website a being for rad fems and holding a critique of queer post modernism. That is the i…See More
    • Talara Nicholas I’ve seen several people referencing a conference. What conference? This disucssion is not about a particular, isolated issue.
  • Izel Terronez How would you propose trans exclusionary radical feminists keep transgender women out of “women only spaces?” By this logic should transgender men still be allowed in? My head just spins when I hear people talk about stuff like this. Are we talking abo…See More
    • Hide 24 Replies
    • Talara Nicholas I have actually seen people say that FtM trans* indiduals are allowed in women-only spaces while MtF are not.
    • Izel Terronez Most of what I’ve seen is an attempt to exclude any transgender people, which to me seems to point more in the direction of blunt intolerance than anything else.
    • Han Chi Radfem Are you joking, Izel, or is that a real question?
    • Izel Terronez real question, lets hear a real answer
    • Han Chi Radfem Do you really think there’s little material difference between a vagina and a surgically constructed fuckhole??? I’m speechless
    • Izel Terronez Did I say that? I’m asking you to tell me why you think it’s meaningfully different. I’m very interested in what your answer would be, and I think knowing what it was would make this discussion more expedient and constructive. An answer I’m still waiting on.
    • Izel Terronez This is actually a thread where I asked a different question but whatever.
    • Talara Nicholas The question asked here by Izel is incredibly valid. Exactly you intend to verify if somebody is trans*? Seriously, if you e.g. create a womens’ music festival and then say transwomen aren’t welcome, how are you going to enforce that?
    • Izel Terronez I think this is in reference to me asking someone else, in replies to a different comment, what was meaningfully different about a cisgender woman’s vagina and a transgender woman’s vagina. Not that I think they’re identical on a molecular level, but what that person thought were IMPORTANT differences between them. Because, again, it would make the conversation easier for both sides. So far I haven’t gotten an answer out of anyone.
    • Han Chi Radfem Were you born a girl? Raised a girl? Do you have a vagina? These things do actually mean something, you know!
    • Emma Maskell All you need is empathy. That is ALL you need. I do not agree with gender binary BS, I do not think that the role ascribed to me fits my sex, (I am lucky in that I feel the body I was born with is right), lots of trans people do not accept gender constraints either. Just imagine, just imagine for a moment that you didn’t feel right about your body, imagine being you in the body of someone of the opposite sex. Then you’ll get it. Forget the arguments, forget politics, forget imaginary threats from TV presentation of what a trans-woman might look or act like and just imagine the shoe on the other foot. That’s all that’s needed.
    • Izel Terronez What do they mean? I’m trying to have a conversation with you about this but it’s incredibly difficult when you point to any specific thing for us to even discuss.
    • Izel Terronez Why is such a boundary necessary?
    • Izel Terronez Transgender women don’t suffer under patriarchy from male violence?
    • Izel Terronez If latina women statistically committed lesbian rape at a frequency disproportionately large to white women, should white women exclude them from their “womens spaces?”
    • Gabrielle Patterson “surgically constructed fuckhole”. I think I’ve heard and read everything I need to to decide what side of the issue I’m on. Cheers for the first-class education, scum.
    • Izel Terronez It’s an “if,” and I actually am Nahua, are you? So kindly shut up and stop replying to the comment if you’re not going to answer the question. You already didn’t respond to what I said to your last comment when you posted pretty much the exact same thing in a separate thread.
    • Scrawny Voluntaryist Mahoney I was wondering about that myself: exactly what does it take for a transwoman to be considered woman enough to go into a girls bathroom? Does she actually have to wear a dress/makeup? What if a man claims to be trans while maintaining his original mannish appearance? Can a regular man claim to be a “butch” trans female and gain access to womens spaces?
    • Izel Terronez unisex restroom, problem solved
  • Nicolas Jacques-Morel I can’t talk about everyone, but for someone I know and love very much, not being recongnised as a «true woman» just because she does not have the right sort of « lower abdominal plumbing » is felt like a rejection.

    She always liked cars and large ha…See More
    • Emma Maskell Beautifully put. Beautiful.
    • Virginia Pele Good phallocratic lord. Please, those are stories that precisely shows the damages cause by the patriarchy and its twisted values around femininity and masculinity. It also shows that trans politics does not intend to eradicate the Patriarchy since it identifies with the system, to its principles and values to such an extent that it advocates surgery to conform to its standarts. But the thing is men have priviledges, and transitioning from male to female is a way to control women’s bodies.
  • Juno Cremonini Moreover, if you are “undecided” about the “gender vs. sex” debate, let me give you a hint: there is no debate. Sociology takes gender as an observable fact, it’s been overly described and studied. There are entire fields dedicated to it. The “sex” dis…See More
    • Emma Maskell While I like your passion I don’t think pans-sexual people would see things like this. And as someone who has all the weight of gender expectation on my shoulders and yet feels very differently about how things should be (which is what sparked feminism in the first place) I don’t see it that way either. Gender is the role a culture prescribes to the sex’s. That is how I see it. But that doesn’t mean I have to be transphobic either. Trans and people like myself want the same thing at the end of the day, to live in a society where people put aside expectations, stop telling us what to do and respect each other.
    • Juno Cremonini I am pansexual and trans* myself, Emma, and I don’t see why you specifically mention pan people here. What I am saying here is that the debate over “sex” being an innate, anatomy-defined thing which is pre-discoursive is something dated and instrumentalized by radical feminism to justify transmisoginy that has become prevalent in radfem discourse.

      Gender is the role a culture prescribes to people, yeah. I don’t see anything problematic about that. Gender is a kind of performance used to regulate bodies.
    • Emma Maskell Riiiight! I totally didn’t get that from what you wrote. Must have missed something. I thought you were saying the opposite. I really should know better then to start getting involved in these things when I’ve had very little sleep. lol.
  • Juno Cremonini “When someone tells me that they identify as a woman, since I am not them, I cannot say for sure “you are a woman” or “you are not a woman”. You see, I do not know – is “woman” defined by sex or by gender? “

    Why do you feel the need to determine wheth…See More
    • Scrawny Voluntaryist Mahoney If being a man/woman is something that is subjective/malleable then it will be subjective to other people too.
  • Indigo McMath The amount of ignorant cis-privilege I see in the comments here is ridiculous. Unless you’re trans* yourself, you will never be able to understand fully how difficult it is and how much hate and violence there is in the world that’s directed at trans* …See More
  • Harmony Glenn People are who they say they are. Self determination is important. When in doubt, use non gendered descriptions.
  • Gabrielle Patterson Why would you post this discussion here? It’s incredibly painful for me to see a loser like Brennan wander around with her magic wand distributing gender/sex rights to people as SHE sees fit based on the way SHE sees sex/gender. Like @Pantl said: use G…See More
  • Emma Maskell Yep, I struggled with these issues too. I KNOW that gender is a construct. Sex is the difference between men and women. I did also struggle because I felt that when trans-women asked to be accepted as women their ideas of what ‘woman’ is and how that f…See More
    • Deanna Roop “And yes, they might have been brain bashed by societies expectations of gender and sex, some people might be terribly confused in ways I can’t even imagine. But it’s not up to me. That’s their life, their journey, their struggle. They have done all their thinking about it. They know how they feel and what makes them comfortable etc. And it’s our job, as feminists, as humanists, as people who are concerned about equality, and changing the system, to just accept it. Listen, learn, don’t even have an opinion other than ‘judge not’. People are people are people.”

      Perfect. Thanks.
    • Izel Terronez Not really perfect as it’s incredibly condescending towards transgender people.
    • Emma Maskell I certainly didn’t mean to be condescending. We have ALL had notions of gender beaten into our brains. Anyway, its a starting point for me to cross the bridge to understanding while contenting with my own issues.
  • Sandy Hopton Solidarity with my trans* sisters. There’s some very upsetting comments in this thread and I don’t think some folks realise how dehumanising and objectifying they’re being – I know it’s not intentional, but this language is too ingrained, and like sexism, it needs to be reflected on and changed. The OP is speaking unthinkingly from a certain paradigm and needs to learn to think outside it
  • Ram Bhaskar I don’t know, I disagree with the necessity for women only spaces. I believe they damage the goal of equality and equal treatment.
    • Jenneth Mills Why? Men have men only clubs? I’m not against groups wanting to distinguish by gender as long as their gender (chosen or assigned) is one that they’d like. I enjoy having no boys time. I enjoy going to gym where there’s not men (they tend to be meat markets) I’m disagreeing with really I’m just saying they’re not always BAD, nor destructive. It’s a matter of perspective.
    • Emma Maskell Yes, we should have women only spaces. E.g changing rooms, like you say gym time and swimming etc. Men have plenty of men only spaces. Trans-women could come into women only spaces too.
  • Chikituh Burrituh Except of course that rad fems are scum…. I guess scum lacks value….
  • Chikituh Burrituh Shutting down discussion is fascism. Nobody here has said that anybody is more valuable than anybody else. I am really tired of this deliberate misrepresentation and misconstruing of arguments.
  • Susan Sant No means no. Men do not respect “No” coming from women. Trans*women don’t respect “No” coming from women. That’s one reason why radfem exists: Because to those born male, “No” from a woman has no meaning to them.
    • 2 Replies
  • Sandra Thumper Sasvári Clare: no, because you can’t “feel” skin color. But you can feel gender identity, it’s been proven.
    • 3 Replies
  • Tania Alison I too struggle with this labelling thing. I see people, not women, not men. But to call people ‘people’ is to ignore the struggles of those who are not hetronormative. To be born with the wrong reproductive organs must be horrific for the person to live with, and to feel that you don’t conform to societal standards is incredibly isolating. I often wonder if we will only need these labels whilst there is inequality and prejudice. Once that stops, and it must, will we no longer have female friends, male friends, trans* friends and just instead have friends?
  • Daniel Grijalva So much for “zero tolerance” for transphobia.
  • Donna Lawson I believe you are whatever sex you are born. Most people behave in a manner that their culture associates with that sex, while some do not. For a physiological man say they are really a woman I feel is sexist because that is said on the premise that women act/feel/dress/behave a certain way.
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia What you believe and what is actually true are different things entirely. Some people believe “God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve” – and some people don’t feel they have the right to formulate theories on behalf of others but that people should be entitled to undergo their own meaningful self-exploration without a hierarchy of opinions presuming to know better than them.
  • Andreea Barbu Can someone explain to me how transitioning from male to female is a way of controlling women’s bodies?
  • Andreea Barbu These radical feminists are annoying to me. They don’t want transgenders included because sexually they are male? Feminism needs men so even if they don’t see transgenders as females or women, they still fall under the category of feminists if they stand with us for equality between the sexes. I don’t see a problem with transgender men and women being part of feminism. And honestly, I don’t see what’s there to grapple with. Not wanting transgender women in their “women-only” spaces because sexually they are male is honestly sexist to me.
  • Gabrielle Shaw LA you have my views. I feel I identify with radical feminism more than regular feminism but I’m torn on that issue because I have trans friends. If I see a radical feminist saying bad stuff about trans people I will speak up. Same as if I see someone being homophobic (I nearly got into a punch on with a 6 foot guy for calling my friend a “fag” when I was 16 and drunk and had my fake I.D on a night out)
    I will absolutely stand up for my friends.
    But I like the idea of no gender. EVERYONE could be who they want to be.
    I thought trans people could have a sex change still and they’d be a woman even without gender?
    I don’t know and I’m afraid of not including anyone, especially my friends.
    At the moment I only learnt what CISgender meant a few months ago and I think a lot of people don’t know what that is.
  • Lissa Willason I just want to clarify after re-reading that when I say “biologically male” I mean born male in sex, because as some have noted it is possible that they, as sexual males that identify as women, have a predominantly female hormone balance. That being said, I would also like to pose a question. If it is acceptable to exclude trans women from feminism/feminist events/”female only spaces”, is it also acceptable to exclude hermaphroditic persons who identify as female because they are sexually both male and female biologically? Where exactly is the line drawn? Also, CISgender is not a question of accepting gender roles and biases, it simply means you identify as the sex you were born with. As someone said above, I prefer the term CISsexual, but in gist I am CISgender/CISsexual. I am female in sex, I identify as a female, but that doesn’t mean I accept patriarchal society or that I conform to gender constructs.
  • Samantha Woods That is a good point Julien, and I was about to attempt a reiteration of it myself in regards to the “women only spaces” argument which I read as a misunderstanding between sides. And I think its a real shame that Radfem got cancelled (and Im reacting to it being said that trans activists got it cancelled due to inequality.) Creation, as opposed to destruction is sometimes a useful discernment to make when choosing your battles. The conference was cancelled but if it was for this reason I believe it was disingenuous because creation of an all women feminist conference might have been a better way to use their energy. Cancelling the conference meant that the women who were due to attend were robbed of discussion learning sisterhood networking and any opportunity their would have been to share experience knowledge of trans experience and education, not to mention the transwomen who might have passed and benefitted from the day and those who would have benefitted from them. This point I am making I ask that people hear it whilst letting go of opinion of whether it should be allowed or not, otherwise u may not hear what im trying to say. There are womens spaces, trans spaces, and mixed spaces, and to ask for a womens only space is not transphobic. to ask for a mixed space is also totally acceptable. its context. its about disernment. discerning what things have value and requirement to do so. If u read all the posts here some of them from both sides can be construed as telling the other that they can label the other’s experience. Not everyone but some. Its important when talkig to someone to stay in the moment and read what someone says, and try not to respond from past experiences with other people and presume that the person you are talking to now is thinking or feeling or saying something from that past. Its important to respect each others beliefs and try to find a common language common ground and peace where you dont agree. How about a sea change here? Instead of trying to prove who is the most horrible or highlight who diasagrees with you most and make that a point of contention to a point of non resolution, why not ask who is the most peace making? out of all the posters Cathy Brennan was the only person to say “lets work together” and the only person to clearly highlight that these are but differences of opinion. and she is the one who has been most vilified! Ask instead, how can I be a peacemaker in this? In what ways can I take responsibility to communicate, to walk in the others shoes. Complaining and being negative about people as a habit without attempting peace is just complaining and a negative force. We must always object and refuse to accept violence and have safe spaces, but we must remember that creation is as positive a tool as destruction can be and indeed should be encouraged alot more. like cathy brennan said why dont we work together.
  • The Gender Transcender This is my take on it.

    1. Recognize that sex and gender are two different things.

    2. Gender is a social construction. It is not something you are born with. BUT this does NOT mean it is something we CHOOSE. It is something we feel. Some people might consciously choose their gender identity, others might not. However only an individual themself can say which gender identity label (if any) they wish to label themselves with. This should be purely optional, and unrelated to sex. So anyone, with any body, can identify as any gender identity. And these can change of time. Examples of gender identity labels: “bigender”, “man”, “woman”, “genderqueer”, “agender” These are not mutually exclusive; you can be as many as you feel, including none at all. Some people assigned to “woman” by society at birth who identify as “men” refer to themselves as “men” only. Others will use the term “transgender man”. “Transgender” alone can be a gender identity. IT IS UP TO THE INDIVIDUAL WHICH LABEL THEY WANT TO USE AND WHAT MEANING IS HELD BY THAT LABEL. AND WE SHOULD ALWAYS RESPECT THAT DECISION.

    3. Sex is biologically-based, but also socially constructed. Examples include “female”, “male” and “intersex”. They are biological, because they relate to physiology, but they are defined differently by different people – is it in the chromosomes? particular body parts? reproductive function? etc, etc. There is some grey area. AGAIN IT IS UP TO THE INDIVIDUAL HOW THEY LABEL THEIR SEX ANS DEFINE THIS LABEL, AND WHAT THEY DO TO THEIR BODY TO MEET THEIR SEX/GENDER NEEDS (i,e, whether they modify their body or not)E.

    4. Both gender AND sex are used as the basis of discrimination and other mistreatment in the world. Often because people often conflate the two. This can happen to anyone (including males and men), but it especially occurs towards women, and towards anyone falling outside the mythical concrete gender binary.

    5. Feminism is vitally important for standing up for ANYONE mistreated on the basis of gender or sex. Historically this has been about women, but as we break down cisnormativity, and break down the idea that you can only be one of only two genders, we can see that those suffering because of gender are not only women.

    6. However, sadly feminism has a long way to go. This means there are times where certain groups want safe places exclusive to one particular gender for support, protection, etc. In these situations, GENDER IDENTITY, not SEX, should be the basis of deciding whether a person is allowed. Remember SEX is basically just a person’s body. It has no relation whatsoever to a person’s behaviour. GENDER also doesn’t necessarily have a connection to a person’s behaviour, but usually people who identify with a gender do so because of an affinity they feel with certain stereotypes and expectations associated with that gender identity. IF A PERSON IDENTIFIES AS THE REQUISITE GENDER NECESSARY TO BE ALLOWED ACCESS TO A [Gender X]-only SPACE, then let them in! Their body, or what gender was assigned to them at birth without their input is IRRELEVANT. If they have what you personally call a “male” body but identify as “woman”, let them in to your women-only space, if they want to be there. Chances are if they feel like a woman, and want access to a women-only space, but don’t conform with society’s views of women because of their body, or their birth-assigned-gender, THEN THEY ARE EQUALLY IN NEED OF A WELCOMING SAFE PLACE FREE FROM MISTREATMENT.

    In conclusion, it is not up to YOU what another person is labelled as. It is up to them. Don’t assume you know their sex or gender until they have told you. If you manage a women-only space, then I think it would be more than reasonable to confirm a person’s gender before allowing them access. How do you do it? Ask them.
  • Elise van der Pol can someone give me an explanation of gender identity that isnt based on feels and stereotypes?
    • 2 Replies
  • Chikituh Burrituh No, disability is not just unwanted limbs, obviously. I used that example as I have heard that the there are actually ‘transable’ people that intentionally cut off limbs. Please don’t try to misrepresent me.
    • Talara Nicholas I’m not trying to misrepresent you, you’re communicating unclearly and I’m asking what you’re acutally trying to say.
  • Sandra Thumper Sasvári Izel Terronez: Good! That makes me happy.
  • Ecil Haisty “Women-only” spaces should include both ciswomen and transwomen. They’re all women. To argue that only ciswomen belong in a women-only space is ridiculous because transwomen do not present any harm towards ciswomen– it’s usually the opposite. Trans* women, especially TWoC, are beaten and murdered at alarmingly high rates. Simply existing is dangerous for many transwomen, and it’s because femininity is undervalued. The treatment of transwomen is a feminist issue, and excluding them from women’s spaces is transphobic.
    • 2 Replies
  • Gabrielle Patterson Calling you out on your bullshit does not = “didn’t read what I wrote.” You didn’t “check” your privilege, do you even understand the idea? You noted it, but that doesn’t get you brownie points.
    Radscum=radical feminists who deny the right of women to define themselves based on more than their genitals. Women who say that men can’t be allies or worse, victims of rape. Women who sound like neo-nazis due to their strict views on what is and isn’t acceptable to feminism.

    I have seen as much if not more Trans* hate here than I’ve EVER come across in a Feminist space. Brought about by YOUR ignorance and your ridiculous belief that you have the right to ask these questions without getting challenged the same way we would challenge anyone else for being an “accidental” bigot. This clearly should have been a personal post and this should serve as a reminder that there is no such thing as benign ignorance. DO YOUR OWN HOMEWORK.

    You didn’t mean to, but you hurt a lot of people. Say you’re sorry, you made a mistake. Have the humility not to excuse your behaviour and own up.
  • Andreea Barbu And another thing. Are these radical feminists saying that we’re only to look at sex because gender doesn’t exist? Because that seems very divisive. Look, sex, gender, sexual attractions, health, mental health, emotions etc are fluid and on a continuum. They are not cut and dry. You can’t draw a line in the sand and say “I’m a woman and if you don’t look like me or act like me or do things that I would consider womanly or part of my experience as a woman, then you’re not a woman!” All women are different just like all men are different. Deal with it.
  • Elizabeth Veldon my post seems to have disappeared?
  • Lissa Willason Creating “female only” spaces that exclude trans women because they identify as women but are not physically female is not only denying them their identity but denying them a real place in feminism because, hey, it doesn’t matter that you in no way identify as a male! Genetically speaking you are one so you have no place in a female only space!
  • Julian Vigo I love it when people claiming to have the only right answers accuse others of privilege. It shows how little some people want to create community. As in any dialogue disagreement is part of that process. It is also interesting to note that anyone who disagrees or has a different opinion is a ‘neo-nazi’. I don’t see anything wrong with questioning a discourse that many women feel imposed upon them. To ask questions and discussing these issues is part of that process. Attitudes that resort to name calling and aggressive wavings of a feminist flag only demonstrate a subject who has little idea that there exist many types of feminisms and theories of gender. The plurality of thought is part of the human process in understanding our collective humanity.
  • Jack Napier i wish feminism be of bringing women upto where men have been, and also wish it be’s about transfeminity and malefeminity too.
  • Laura Church wat
  • Donna Lawson You people are spiteful, sexist and rude. I am a woman. in a lot of ways, I think and behave like a stereotypical man, does that make me trans on some level? no. thinking that makes you sexist. Women can be more logical rather than emotional, women can be different from the traditional or stereotypical norm, does that make us less womanlike? no, it makes social perceptions of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ incorrect. I don’t even understand half the jargon in these comments. There are two sexes, male and female, if you have both at birth that is not a normal condition, but that’s a whole different issue and i think people should be accepting of all types. But I am sick of hearing how “transgender women” “feel” they are women, that their brains are wired differently. What a load of crap. This is just sexism disguised as something else. If you want to dress in a way that makes other people think you are a woman, fine, but that doesn’t give you a uterus, or natural female genitals, that os what makes a woman, to say its anything else is just sexist.
    • The Gender Transcender It is thought that 1 in every hundred births don’t match a clear male/female sex binary. Intersex is just a normal as any other sex.

      I personally agree with the idea that regardless of our body, and regardless of our gender identity, we should be able to act and dress however we want.

      BUT, there are a couple of reasons why you need to distinguish gender and sex.

      Gender is a social construction. In the west it has traditionally been though of as the same as sex, and that there are only 2 options and you must be one, based on your body. BUT…

      *the very common phenomenon of ‘intersex’ means not everyone nicely matches one of two sexes.

      *many societies around the world have more than two gender identities, proving that gender is not something you are born with, it’s something given to you by society.

      But sometimes people are given a gender that they don’t personally identify with. These people have every right to identify with any other gender identity they want. If you or I think we’d rather just be the gender that “corresponds” to our sex and bahave however we want regardless, that is up to us, but we have no right to deny someone their right to identify as a gender not matching the sex binary (which isn’t actually binary). Just like religious identification, or club membership, people should have freedom to choose their own identity. NO ONE IS FORCING ANYONE TO BE TRANS* BECAUSE THEY ACT WITH CERTAIN NON-STEREOTYPE-CONFORMING BEHAVIORS. That WOULD be sexist. Instead it is a PERSONAL CHOICE.
    • The Gender Transcender (and not always a “choice” but a personal realisation. either way, only the individual can say what label they are)
    • Lesbians and Feminists Against Transphobia ” I don’t even understand half the jargon in these comments.” you say, but feel entitled to have an opinion about something you don’t fully understand, even though that opinion marginalises vulnerable people . . .

I would love to hear your thoughts on what their motivation might be.

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