Posting from America, Glinner
I have long led creativity and sexuality workshops for mixed--sex and women-only groups. I have observed over and over again how a group of women change when one man enters the space. I am well aware of the sudden self-checking, self-censorship and subtle masking that women engage in as soon as what was female space becomes mixed space. I'm also well aware of the concept of the "male gaze" first written about in the context of film direction.
I became concerned and explored more about what transactivists were pushing when I realized that if they achieve their goals, there will be no space none where women can gather in public free from male presence and male gaze. Not a toilet, changing room, refuge, hostel, sleeping berth, hospital room, dormitory room, prison cell, sports team, classroom, or workshop of any kind, and certainly not any political organising -- not without male presence. Under His Eye indeed. If male presence in female space had been mandated in years past, neither the First nor the Second Wave of feminism would have ever gotten off the ground.
In the US, with trades unions so weak, most employee leverage against employers comes via class action lawsuits. But how can there be a class of women suing, for instance, Wal-Mart, if "woman" itself has no definition? How can there be a coherent class of women suing Wal-Mart for sex discrimination in refusing to promote women to managers when other "women" (of the male variety) are promoted to managers? In fact, the proposed Equality Act in America would redefine sex to include gender identity, making the word "sex" and therefore sex-based worker protections meaningless. This even though gender presentation is already protected in American workplaces under the Supreme Court's Hopkins v. Price-Waterhouse decision, which ruled against PW for refusing to promote a woman PW felt didn't dress in sufficiently feminine fashion. That ruling has been extended by lower courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to include men and women who present in non-stereotypical ways.
As much as I saw transactivism as a women's rights issue, I began to also see it as an employment rights issue. I now think that some of the major billionaire money supporting transactivism in the US, particularly from the tech sector, known for its libertarian politics and discriminatory hiring practices, comes from recognition that a government can eliminate protected classes and pesky class action suits by administratively redefining class membership.
It has long been my observation that the right thinks and works strategically while the left seldom does. Seeing the trans agenda as a stealth means of eliminating rights for protected classes of workers, I suspected that once transgender had gained ground, transracial would be next, as racial discrimination is another route to large class action suits against employers. And yes, that has started up in the US, though its first attempt in Delaware was quashed by protest from the NAACP. I do not think it will be the last.