This is a good thread about female trans allies

[Doyoumind]

twitter.com/overpow_erin_g/status/1156003798898241543?s=19

Thoughtful insights into how some women get drawn into the wrong side of the debate.

And just adding: it is not GC women who wear t-shirts reading “Kill all TW” but instead transwomen who wear shirts reading “Kill All t*rfs.” It is not GC feminists who carry pink and blue striped baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire to threaten transwomen, but transactivists who carry such bats to threaten feminists. It is not GC feminists who depict transwomen hanging from nooses but transactivists who depict women executed by hanging.

So you might want to check again just who the brownshirts are here.

Sorry Bespin.

The first Pride event was in 1970, according to numerous sources. It's funny, and maybe I haven't looked closely enough but all the banners I can see refer to Gay Pride and Lesbians. Nary a mention of transwomen/trans women of colour or transwomen/trans women at all. Not even a mention of transexuals. The closest thing is Queens in Drag.

Maybe because they were not called transwomen/trans women at the time?

And from the link below, a person who was at the First Pride event, two women were the most active in making it happen. Women, as in women who have XX chromosomes.

Overwhelmingly both articles mention Gay Men and Lesbians organising the march in 1970 and the picket protest held a few days after Stonewall.

www.villagevoice.com/2010/06/22/1970-a-first-person-account-of-the-first-gay-pride-march/

gwenshockeyfineart.com/oral-history-archive/ellen-broidy

Thanks, Agrona. I was around in the 70s and about to tell Bespin how very wrong they were.

The 'cult' aspect is more to do with having a belief that people can change sex, and that men who identify as women are actually women (simply because they say they are). I simply don't understand how any intelligent person can actually believe this, so there must be some other explanation for why people repeat things like 'transwomen are women'. Being brainwashed by a cult is one explanation. If there is another one, please enlighten me.

This is another great example of the way in which the anti-trans lobby refuses to engage in the debate. I've seen the question 'how can somebody change sex?' a hundred times on these threads, despite the fact that it's a complete misunderstanding of transgenderism. It's a false position anti-trans lobbyists pretend is being propagated because it's an easier position to fight than the real one.

Transgender people are not magically changing sex like a light switch. Transgender people are people whose gender does not correspond with their biological sex. Their bodies may have the biological characteristics (genitalia, chromosomes, hormones) that we have assigned as male or female, but their gender doesn't correspond.

You're entitled to hold the belief that gender doesn't exist, and that only biology is relevant. And unlike you, I'm not going to claim that the only reason you hold that belief is because of your desperate desire to belong to a cult of belief. But I can't respect your position if all you can do is resort to bleating 'how can people change sex!'.

We both know that isn't what is being argued. We both know you're deliberately missing the point because you want to have an easier debate.

I will happily debate transgenderism. There are so many questions we should be asking. I want an evidence-led approach to ensuring that the rights of women (including trans women) are being protected without allowing men to exploit them.

I want an overhaul of the process of gender-recognition, which isn't fit for purpose.

I want a debate about white supremacy and the fact that many cultures across the world (including India, many African tribal societies and a range of Native American cultures) recognised gender as being distinct from biology until the British Empire colonised them and made laws outlawing any deviation from binary sex expression. I want to talk about how it's still an expression of white supremacy to insist that these other cultures had it wrong, that the white European model of binary gender is the only valid one.

We can't have these debates if, instead of engaging with the issues, you smugly retreat into an endless repetition of 'how can a person change sex?'. You know that isn't the debate. You know that's not what I am saying. Stop hiding behind it.

ScottishJenn

And that gives you all the right to sit here and judge, ridicule, belittle, patronise and insult my looks and intelligence does it?

That is an overgeneralization. Not all of anyone did everything or anything you allege. But for the record, everyone could have done everything you said and that would have been their right to do so.

I didn't pick on your looks or intelligence, matter of fact I did not speak of any individual - I spoke in terms of groups based on perspectives.

There are young, middle age, and elder women that reject the TWAW mantra and the remainder of the TRA dogma but that does not equal transphobia. The rejection of an ideology (a religion/dogma/belief system) is not bigotry or hatred or fear. Just because I reject all religion and spiritual dogma does not mean I hate or fear people that enjoy/believe/prefer a faith-based belief system or are dogmatists. Most of the people I love and/or admire (known/unknown, past/present) are/were religious (Catholic, Jewish, et al) and some are/were dogmatists (astrology, TWAW, creationists, et al). Rejection is not phobia. Lack of belief in an ideology does not equal hate of people that do believe in said ideology. Having a belief system does not make someone stupid, fighting for what you believe in is not stupid... possibly idealistic, possibly unattainable, possibly immature, possibly illogical, etc. but never stupid. Virtue signaling is always shallow and serves no one but the person(s) doing the signaling.

Saying TW have a right to their own spaces, refuges, healthcare, protections in law, privacy, dignity, etc. as do girls/women is not hate and is not indicative of transphobia. It is the pragmatic solution for the safety and dignity of girls/women (and TW for that matter). Transgressing personal boundaries harms everyone - including those transgressing as the denial of the identity/existence of one group and their boundaries nullifies the validity of the other.

Transgender individuals exist but their gender identity does not justify appropriation of the opposite sex's resources or existence. Transgender individuals' identities as a group have a gender class in addition to their sex class. Campaigning for resources for their group(s) (TM & TW separately or combined) is excellent and necessary; campaigning to make women's resources include biological males is misogyny. Identifying as something doesn't translate into the reality of being something.

Centering women in feminism is not transphobic.

Inciting violence against women that state/assert their boundaries in the interest of personal dignity is hate. Denying girls/women the right to define themselves as unique from males is denial of female oppression and complicit in said oppression.

Your rights end where mine begin and mine end where yours begin. We can coexist without taking from each other and can respect each other without pushing dogmatism.

Bricker

It is wearying how often history is rewritten for a particular purpose and done in such a way to distort the events and the purpose. It is even worse when people rewrite your history and try to explain it to you .

Centering women in feminism is not transphobic.

Bravo. I think the word feminism is the giveaway, as you know, centering females/women in a movement about females/women?

Vivienne, it isn’t disingenuous. There are genuinely TRAs who don’t believe in biological sex.

I’d also be interested in knowing what you think gender is if it is entirely distinct from biological categories.

As gas as I understand it gender is a set of social norms that are applied to the sexes.

In India you could be man type a, man type b or woman, and they’re norms associated with biological sexes.

Or in Albania you could be woman type a, woman type b or man.

So gender is related to biological sex. You could say we have that in our own culture, that there have traditionally been different norms associated to young gay men.

Agrona

hi sorry but you are wrong

Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992) was an American gay liberation[6][7] activist and self-identified drag queen.[8][9] Known as an outspoken advocate for gay rights, Johnson was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969.[6][10][11] A founding member of the Gay Liberation Front, Johnson co-founded the gay and transvestite advocacy organization S.T.A.R

I'm sorry that your understanding of Lgbt history and the whitewashing of people of colour from the founding of our organisations or the role of trans people in those organisations. I don't care who throw the first brick, what I care about is we were all there together and we were all being victims of oppression. that we were fighting together from the beginning of this movement.

But the transactivist position is in fact that males ARE female.That either the penis is and always was female, by virtue of self-identity, or that the body becomes female by virtue of hormone treatments. Transactivists repeatedly conflate sex and gender. Read the Yogyakarta Principles and you will see exactly that.

In fact, it is now considered bigoted to state that transwomen are male.

THIS is colonisation — the taking of all language by which females exist as an ontological category in their own right and the removal of all territory females can occupy without presence of the colonisers.

And I do hear what you’re saying — you want a debate on your terms. You have romanticized and mythologized disparate cultures you conflate in order to advance a sentimental notion of third genders, even though, for instance amongst the thousands of Native American tribes, third genders served entirely different purposes and even though indigenous people of the Americas have asked that transactivists not exploit their traditions for their own purposes, explicitly stating that their concepts of third genders are part of a spiritual beliefs not to be appropriated.

You want to associate gender critical thought with white supremacy, arguing against GC thought by association, and a rather flimsy one at that, rather than examine just why gender critical feminists insist that the subjugation of women is sex-based and therefore the rights and set-asides to ameliorate that subjugation must be sex-based, and in doing so, you want to ignore all of the BAME gender critical feminists and especially ignore the Black GC feminists who have stated that it is racist AF to assume people of colour didn’t understand sexual dimorphism until the British taught it to them. You want to ignore the vast weight of evidence that third genders in the cultures you cite predominately, though not solely, existed where sex roles were heavily polarised and homosexuality severely disapproved of. You want to ignore that the people living as third genders in those extant cultures today make no claim on women’s spaces or language, nor do they claim they ARE women, no debate.

Feminist years ago proposed working with transactivists to create safe third spaces for them, along the lines of third gendered spaces. Transactivists said no — because Transwomen ARE women, no debate.

That is exactly the debate.

I personally want to abolish the GRA — since gay marriage is now legal, it’s outlived its purpose. I personally want to protect gender expression from discrimination while upholding sex-based rights and set-asides created specifically to ameliorate millennia of female subjugation, and I want to end male violence against anyone, including transwomen.

But if you want a real debate, please start by defining your terms. What exactly is a gender identity? And how is it falsified?

"Terfs are fash" is what Tara Wolfe posted on facebook before going out and punching a woman. A crime Tara has been convicted in court for.

Holding a sign saying "Terfs are fash" is a call for violence against women.

When I look back at my generation at university, and immediately afterwards, the difference between us and the current generation is really very striking. We, horrible children of thatcher that we were, albeit of course labour voting, clubbing, class a consuming etc, were very career driven. We were going to do well - and lots of us did. So extreme ideology held no attraction. And of course internet activism didn’t exist. God, I really do think we were better off.
Maybe these kids just need to get a fucking job. A hard, demanding, cut throat, long hours workplace with the promise of big bucks for those who stay the course.

Although I suppose with the nonsense they get up to online, many will have made themselves unemployable. Shame

Vivienne TRAs seem to believe it is wrong to reserve any spaces or services for female people. Because “TWAW.”

If they accepted that changing sex is not possible, would they not understand that some women need certain female-only spaces and services? With similar provided for TW?

Neither the Hijra or the Fa’afafine lay claim to all female spaces or services, expect to be seen literally as women or try to impose “cis” on women.

Eg, Fa’afafine men play on male sports teams. Hence Samoans were wtf!? when a white person took “their” gold medal recently.

This idea that white people invented the male/female sex binary has got to stop. It’s racist and reductive.

both Sylvia rivera and marsha Johnson were at the riots if they started them or not I don't know.

Four years later, Sylvia and Marsha were pushed out of the movement and had to fight for the right to have space in Gay Pride parades. Sylvia fought her way on stage at the 1973 Gay Pride march in NYC to deliver a speech that denounces the liberal white gay rights "revolution" and demanded and ACTUAL revolution, one in which QTPOC, specifically, Trans women of color, were centered.

1973 speech from Sylvia at NYC pride.

Sylvia: Yall better quiet down!
I've been trying to get up here ALL day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail! that write me every motherfuckin week and ask for your help. and you all don't do a goddamn thing for them. Have you ever been beaten up? And raped? and jailed?
Now think about it.
They've been beaten up and raped
And so they have to spend much of their money in jail to get their self home and try to get their sex change. The women have tried to fight for their sex changes, or to become women, of the women's liberation.
And they write S.T.A.R., not the women's group.
They do not write women.
They do not write men.
They write to S.T.A.R., because we're trying to do something for them.
I have been to jail!
I have been r*ped!
And beaten. Many times!
By men!
Heterosexual men, that do not belong in the homosexual shelter.
But: do you do anything for them?
No! You all tell me to go and hide my tail between my legs.

I will not no longer put up with this shit.

I have been beaten, I have had my nose broken,
I have been thrown in jail, I have lost my job,
I have lost my apartment,
for gay liberation.

And you all treat me this way??
What the fuck's wrong with you all??

Think about that!

[crowd noise: applause]

I do not believe in a revolution, but you all do.
I believe in the gay...power.
I believe in us getting our rights
or else I would not be out there fighting for our rights.

That's all I wanted to say to you all people.

If you all want to know about the people that are in jail, and do not forget Bambi L'Amour, Andora Marks, Kenny Messner, and other gay people are in jail, come and see the people at S.T.A.R. house on 12th street on 640 E. 12th Street, between B and C, Apartment 14. The people there are trying to do something, for ALL of us, and not men and women that belong to a white middle class white club!

And that's what you all belong to!
REVOLUTION NOWWWWW!!
Gimme a G! [crowd: G!]
Gimme an A! [crowd: A!]
Gimme a Y! [crowd: Y!]
Gimme a P! [crowd: P!]
Gimme a O! [crowd: O!]
Gimme a W! [crowd: W!]
Gimme a E! [crowd: E!]
Gimme a R! [crowd: R!]
Gay... [voice cracks] [more quietly] Gay power.
[crowd noise: applause]
Sylvia: Louder GAY POWER!!
[crowd noise: whistling]

Bespin How am I White-washing when I specifically named Storme DeLavarie, the Black lesbian who instigated Stonewall and who transactivists continually erase? I’m well aware of Marsha Johnson, a drag queen who stated repeatedly that he was a man.

Trans in the 1970s was not the same as trans today. There was no word “transgender.” There were transsexuals, drag queens, and straight transvestites, the last of whom weren’t part of the gay scene in the 1970s.

You cannot say “we were all” part of Pride when a significant portion of the transgender community of today — males sexually attracted to females — were not part of the community then.

Bespin, Marsha is described as a drag queen and transvestite on wiki. With homophobic parents.. AGORa says drag were there. Not eliminated .

Sylvia Rivera did not consider herself to be trans in the way it meant now, and believed men who were attracted to women could not be trans. She was entirely within the gay male community.

But I can't respect your position if all you can do is resort to bleating 'how can people change sex!'.

You really haven't understood the point, have you? So here goes.

Biological sex is important. If men want to identify their "gender" as women, or vice versa, that's fine. But crucially, as a society we segregate certain spaces and services on the basis of biological sex. Rape shelters, prisons, changing rooms, hospital wards, sports are all segregated by biological sex. Therefore it doesn't matter how much a man "bleats" that his gender is female, he cannot - as you have just admitted - change biological sex and therefore he is not entitled to use spaces and services that belong to biological women.

Understand now?

I am fully aware that the definition of trans as changed over time, but the point is we were all there we were all in these clubs together and we were all fighting together and we lost that for so many years due to the middle class take over and search for respectably lead by gay white men who also erased a lot of lesbian involvement in our movement. even with this you are trying to state that I have no understanding of our history and are trying to belittle it because it does not fit your narrative.

Straight men were never in the movement.

The only trans people were gay ones.

Bespin

You wrote: "the pride marches not the riot were very much pushed forwards by trans woman of colour until they were sidelined by gay white men looking for acceptance."

The response was talking about the first Pride March and an event a few days after Stonewall.

The liberal gay rights ‘revolution’? You put that in the quote marks of irony? OMG you don’t know anything about history, do you,Bespin?

You certainly don’t know anything about how things were for gay men in the US in 1973. Do you seriously think Sylvia Rivera was the only person at that march who’d endured violent attack and imprisonment? Do you not know the state of radical foment America was in, in 1973? Most especially in NYC? Do you think gay men and lesbians weren’t part of that? Do you not know that NYC in the 1970s was very heavily populated by people of colour, and if you do know that, why would you think that there weren’t people of colour involved in that ‘liberal gay rights ‘revolution’’? Hint: there were.

You make a LOT of assumptions.