I can’t even begin to articulate my despair and disappointment in women posting on this thread who believe they are feminists. The bile, vitriol and, yes, bigotry in almost every single one of these posts makes me ashamed, as a cis woman, of "feminism".
Have any of you even looked at Anna’s manifesto?
She wants to campaign against Tory cuts which affect women the hardest, including mothers.
She wants to demand a review of Abortion Law and make sure that the UK isn’t complacent in ensuring free access to all women.
Yes, allow trans women on Sports teams but also push the wonderful This Girl Can programme to encourage all women to participate in sports.
Fight the tampon tax and ensure Student Unions sell tampons etc at fair prices.
Fight the male dominated leadership of NUS.
She wants to decolonise our curriculum and fight for representation.
Make sure sexual harrassmet research extends to post-grads as well
“DEVELOP PARENT FRIENDLY CAMPUS ASSESSMENT” (in caps since so many people wilfully claimed she said nothing about student parents)
Loads of stuff around sex ed and consent training in schools and universities.
And yes, in some of these statements she explicitly references trans people’s experiences. But as a kind of menstruating (thanks Mirena coil), queer, cis woman student – these demands speak to me and for me. I feel included and supported in each of them – which of these are problematic for you all?! And why does including space for trans women in some of these negate the rights of cis women? I want more women in leadership in the NUS and I want those women to be black and queer and working class and gay and disabled and YES, trans.
I know I’m not going to convince you all that Anna is as much of a woman as I am. I am so saddened by the second wave’s attitude to trans women. Accepting trans women as women does not negate my lived experience as a cis woman, it doesn’t harm my womanhood, it doesn’t undo the lived experience of my sexed bodies, it just accepts there are more experiences. Just as the experiences of lesbian women are different from mine or women who can’t menstruate or women with physical disabilities. Our womanhood presents in different ways and has different problems and Anna knows this, Anna isn’t denying cis women’s bodies, she’s fighting for us to.
To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll vote for her. Simply because I personally know Hareem Ghani who is an outstanding candidate also. The idea that there isn’t a feminist standing for this positition is laughable. I don’t know Anna but from a cursory reading of her manifesto and track record, she seems like a brilliant intersectional feminist and Hareem is brilliant too. She also fights for intersectionality and has helped co-ordinate events which centre trans voices.
I’m glad the next generation of feminists is leaving your bigotry behind and I am proud to be one of them. I wish, desperately for inter-generational feminism – as I saw a friend quote the other day, I want to think back through my mothers. But if my mothers are the women posting on here – full of hatred, denying trans women, talking violently about them, mocking them in the most misogynistic way that wouldn’t be out of place on Return of Kings or the Daily Mail – then I will be motherless and I will find my sisters instead. My sisters will be Muslim women like Hareem, who fight tooth and nail for equality despite rampant islamophobia and misogyny and they will be women like Anna with all her integrity and brilliant activism who I have never met but would embrace as a sister with all the love I can manage.
Whichever one of these women I vote for, whoever ends up representing my needs a student, I will be proud of for their commitment to liberation for all women. You could all learn something from both of them.