We know The Times is transphobic, but seeing how obsessed it is with transphobia is breathtaking. These are the articles in April:
9 April: our pick of the books you may have missed includes a “fearless” “bleak” book warning of the “craze” for medical treatment for trans children. Continue reading
What turns speech into “hate speech”? What should prevent it?
Ruth Smeeth wrote in the Times that an employment tribunal case had placed anti-trans campaigning in the same category as “dangerous extremism” which threatens society. She claimed anti-trans campaigning was not the equivalent to racist hate speech.
Anti-trans campaigning is often couched in terms of safety. But then so can racism be. 1960s America had unashamed campaigners for segregation, who would argue in terms of safety. Black men were lynched after being accused of sexual crime against white women.
Homophobia can claim to work for the safety of children too. Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which was in effect from 1988 to 2003, prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” and prevented teachers from acknowledging that people could be gay. This tortured gay children. Yet in 1999 in Parliament Jill Knight claimed that “children at school [were] being encouraged into homosexuality and being taught that a normal family with mummy and daddy was outdated.”
Prejudice is also couched in terms of difference. Racists argue that Black people are different from white people. That is the basis of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory. In the same way, trans-excluders argue that differences between trans women and cis women are in some way relevant, so that we should be excluded from shop changing rooms.
The classic free speech defence is that wrong speech will be subjected to the light of truth, and be refuted. This ignores the question of power. Governments of the Right have encouraged racism and homophobia, and governments of the Left have moved to sanction them. Now, racist views are encouraged by the Murdoch media empire, because these views tend to preserve hierarchy and their own power.
Theresa May described her “hostile environment” policy- making sure immigrants without a current visa or right to remain could not work or rent, expelling them from homeless shelters, closing their bank accounts. This, combined with the Home Office’s restrictions on evidence and incompetence led to the Windrush scandal.
The Smeeth article is not an attempt to justify anti-trans campaigning or a discussion of the issues. It uses the word “dangerous” but does not say what the danger is. People who agree with it will be prevented from thinking: they will see the word “dangerous”, agree that danger must be bad, and so conclude that their anti-trans campaigning is unobjectionable. Smeeth uses the word to describe the ET decision- the danger is of restricting speech- but also dangerous extremism, where speech should be restricted.
At its core is an assumption that all good people agree “racist hate speech” is bad, but anti-trans campaigning is not equally bad.
Smeeth claims a right to say who needs or deserves protection. Minority ethnic people need and deserve protection. I agree. She claims, though she gives no reason, that trans people do not deserve the same protection.
Teaching pseudo-scientific claims of racial difference, even where backed up by selected data by tenured professors, creates a hostile environment for Black people in universities. It’s not a question of how language is used or whether it imitates dispassion. The cold hate of Jill Knight is as damaging as the hot hate of the Nazis shouting “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville.
Racists, homophobes and transphobes can easily find powerful backers and ready audiences. They make money from their speech, just as climate change deniers do. Smeeth’s claim that trans people are entitled to less protection than racialised people or gay people makes it easier to persecute us, and drive us out from ordinary society. All transphobia, from debates in university common rooms and Quaker meetings, to assaults on trans people, is linked: it shares a view that we might be in some way dangerous, or not deserve protection, that we have less value than the normal people.
Jesus turned water into wine. The monks of the San Giorgio Monastery commissioned a painting of the event, eleven yards wide, to hang in their refectory. Napoleon stole it, and it hangs in the Louvre.
Here the miracle is demonstrated. The gentleman is painted lifesize.
They are a lively lot, but I am not at all clear what they are doing.
I doubt such Corinthian columns were in style in Galilee.
I think this is the happy couple. As Jesus is at the centre, they are shunted to the side.
People ignore or distract the musicians. They are not valued as they should be, and not by Veronese, either: a bow could not play that lute.
It hangs opposite the Mona Lisa, so most people pay it no attention.
Are you trans because of what you do, who you are, or what you think you are?
What do trans people do? We spend at least some time, possibly all the time, expressing ourselves in our true gender. We seek medical treatment, hormones and surgery. We talk with other people about being trans. But most trans women can remember a time when we never expressed ourselves female- either before we did so for the first time, or between expressing female as children and expressing female as adults. Some trans children are accepted by their parents, and do not have this experience.
Some trans women, like me, try hard to make men of ourselves, and might deny we were trans while doing so. Now, I would say I was trans in denial at the time. So some people I would call trans, if I had a God’s eye view, would deny it.
I would call them trans because I don’t like the idea of becoming trans. It’s an idea transphobes use to belittle trans people, who they say “wake up one day and decide they are the other sex”.
So what do trans people do? Some of us live as trans taking hormones and have had surgery, and some of us live in the assigned gender and deny being trans. The behaviour is the same as the whole population, though the proportions are different. But statisticians can only count people who will admit they are trans.
They might also count people who answer that they are trans because they think it is a stupid question and they want to mess with the statisticians. Some of those may be trans in denial.
Transphobia affects all of us. I spent time trying to make a man of myself because of internalised transphobia, feelings of disgust and contempt at being trans. I still have some internalised transphobia now.
You are trans because of who you are, so in theory a psychiatrist could question a person and identify transsexual traits even if they claimed not to be transsexual. That happened to me. I saw the psychiatrist because I would cross-dress for a time, and then throw out all my women’s clothes. I thought it was bearable to cross-dress alone, in my home, as I had a stressful job and if that was a way I could relax, it is completely harmless. And I thought it was reasonable to think I am a man therefore it is shameful to cross-dress, and I will not. I could not bear oscillating between these positions several times a year. It caused me great distress.
That was the internalised transphobia. So, I would call anyone who cross-dresses occasionally trans, especially if they want the term. They may, later, become staunch transmedicalists denying the term trans or the rights of trans women to anyone who is not at least on the gender clinic waiting list, but right now they only cross dress in private now and then.
Or, you could be trans because you talk to others about it online, without any cross-gender behaviour other than that. I call such people trans if they claim the term. They are not expressing themselves in their true gender offline, or going into single-sex spaces. They are no threat to anyone.
You are trans because of who you are, but no-one might know if you deny it. So you are trans because you think you are. No-one who thinks they are trans is not trans.
Some people detransition. They remain trans. Something prompted them to transition. They may regret it, and particularly any medical treatment, but that does not stop them being trans. They may retransition.
A trans woman who only spends part of the time expressing female might go into a women’s loo when dressed female. She harms no-one else. She may be checking out whether transition is right for her- because transphobia is oppressive, and she may be unable to bear it. So I want everyone dressed as women able to use women’s loos. The ones who look most weird, or shifty, or mannish, are the ones who are most in need of kindness and courtesy: and because they are doing something so brave, the most entitled to it.
How does it feel, to be real?
I am scrolling facebook, feeling the things one feels scrolling facebook. At a joke I feel happy. At something moving, I feel moved. At something political, I feel the feeling appropriate for my tribe- anger or hope, derision or inspiration. Other tribes feel the same feelings at different stimuli. These are simple feelings I share with many people. It is easy to know the right feeling, and to feel good at feeling it. So facebook is a warm comfort-blanket, insulating me from reality. I could be plugged into the Matrix.
There is something I promised to do. Scrolling, I am only dimly aware of it. I will do that later, and that makes me feel mostly OK about not doing it though later never comes. The conventional feelings get in the way.
I close my computer. How do I feel about what I promised to do? I do not want to do it. I feel fear. I sit with that and discern underneath that is a feeling of hopelessness: I find myself creating arguments why doing it is counter-productive, and though I promised I would be forgiven for not doing it. And also self-loathing, at perceived uselessness, which is exacerbated by scrolling facebook. I am writing this today because I did what I promised, just in time. Yesterday I did not, because I got into arguing with a transphobe on facebook.
Doing it, I have fantastic things going through my mind and realise they are symbols or indicators of anger. The anger, now, is at something particular, and energy for the task I am completing. It is so good when that happens. I take care to complete the task: this requires love. Doing it at another time, I gave myself encouraging pep-talks. Do you still feel the fear? Yes. It’s not enough to stop you doing it, though. There is the feeling being and something else giving the pep-talks.
This is human. When I find myself bullying myself, that is probably a bad thing, but an inner dialogue, from two different points of view, can be advantageous: just as a group of people will make a better decision than individuals, so an individual may make a better decision having worked through different ways of thinking about a problem.
The only motivation is desire. If the desire is merely to survive, it wears us out. I need desire in my life that is more inspiring.
A Tory party leaflet, before the local elections. Vote Conservative because of the vaccine, it says! Ha! We have vaccine success because of public enterprise, with only a tiny input from business required by Tory ideology, because that particular public enterprise has not been Toried yet. Bribe-taking, body-piling, trans-hating, racist, lying Tories!
Looking for the art-work for this post, I had an experience I have not had since the last time I went to the National Gallery, over a year ago. With this Vermeer on my screen, I was overwhelmed with delight at the beauty of the pure colours, and their relationship to each other- that blue of the table-cloth, and the yellow of the sleeve, as an abstract composition before I spend time on the skin, and then the facial expression. It is ravishing. I get that experience with real art in galleries, and rarely with copies on screens. If you don’t get that with this picture, I hope you have it, somewhere in your life.
Natalie Bird perfectly illustrates how transphobes may drown in their own hatred, and become divorced from reality. She joined the Lib Dems in 2015, and stood for the local council. In November 2019 Bird was barred from holding or standing for election to any party office for ten years, because of her transphobia, or for arguing against party policy. She denies being transphobic, claiming she simply supports women’s rights.
Now, her discipline by the LibDems consumes her. She must have had some reason to join- its environmental policies, perhaps, its record in local government, or its longstanding commitment to women’s rights. She wanted to work for it. Now she wants to attack it, only because she disagrees with the party on the issue of trans rights.
She is trying to raise £55,000 to sue the party. When I looked, she had raised £6,715. She is an ordinary woman, of no particular interest, yet her transphobe campaign was reported in The Times. What has she to say about it?
She claims it is a matter of protecting women’s rights, but the LibDems strongly support women’s rights. They seek equal representation by women in their “Campaign for Gender Balance”. They take women’s rights seriously. They emphasise their policies on violence against women and girls, the gender price gap, and period poverty. Once, perhaps, Bird supported them on these things. Now, she claims the party is not supporting women’s rights. The issue of trans inclusion, for her, trumps all the work they do for women’s representation and women’s needs.
She claims that once trans women are included, women won’t be able to fight for any women’s rights issue. I presume she thinks all the gains will be taken by trans women. Possibly there might be a trans woman on a Scottish public board, but violence against women will hardly become invisible just because violence against trans women is included.
She claims excluding trans women from shop changing rooms is a child safeguarding issue. Of all the ways a child abuser might approach children, dressing as a woman and going into shop changing rooms is perhaps the least likely. Most child abuse is by family, and family friends. Picking on a safeguarding issue stops her thinking. She simply gets angry: What about the Children? Her arguments make no sense at all, but she has gone beyond that: they are satisfying to her emotionally, and part of her “sense of self”.
She brought up the scary issue of penises- “male equipment”. Someone asked her, “When did you last see anyone’s genitals in a shop changing room or public toilet?” She could not answer. But this will not stop her scaremongering about trans women’s penises in the future.
The LibDems have eleven MPs, and seven of them are women. All of them support trans rights. Bird alleges they are all too scared to challenge policy on trans rights, and claims misogyny. Actually, the misogyny here is claiming that women MPs do not have the self-confidence to say what they mean and what they believe. Women can be scared to speak up. Hannah Bardell, now an MP, did not come out as lesbian until 2012, when she was 36. But now she is an MP she is no longer scared, and she stands up for trans rights.
Bird might have been a useful campaigner for the LibDems, putting out leaflets, canvassing, perhaps even standing for the council in a winnable seat. Instead she obsessively attacks the party. Rupert Murdoch is laughing at women like her, his dupes. She does not risk prison like Rob Hoogland, but otherwise her life and her community work are turned upside down, by her obsessive transphobia.
At our Yearly Meeting Quakers in Britain will consider “acknowledging and welcoming gender-diverse people”. This will be
early steps in a longer journey. As a starting point, we hope to name the places where there is unity, acknowledge that there are trans people in Quaker communities and state that they are welcome.
We are enjoined to respect our diversity and “take care over how you communicate”, and told bullying will not be tolerated, either from unconscious patterns of behaviour or deliberately: people breaching the guidelines may be excluded. Immediately I feared being excluded, which I hope is just a paranoid reaction on my part. I don’t know it has ever been seen necessary to warn against bullying before. I agree bad behaviour is more likely online than in person, and Quakers are not immune.
And, the distress felt by people affected may result in hasty words. I hope this could be handled with sympathy rather than condemnation. Stating that trans people are welcome seems innocuous, and minimal, but do we trans people feel it? I know trans people who have been in dispute with meetings. A cis woman Friend, with whom I reconciled after years, suggested trans women were like teenage girls. Well, possibly. We are in adulthood coping with unfamiliar hormones which change us, and coping with the loss of male privilege passing as straight. Even if that trans person who left was being totally unreasonable, could love have found a better way?
There is huge hurt around gender diversity. I know of trans people, allies, and sex-based rights campaigners who have felt unable to continue worshipping with their meeting or with Friends.
The hurt is not always expressed as hurt. Arguments for reducing trans rights may be couched in impersonal, superficially rational terms, without expressing underlying hurt, which I believe is the trauma of male privilege and violence. I am aware of male violence against women even among Quakers. Asking people to express their hurt makes them vulnerable, so requires a space where they feel safe. Rooms full of Quakers do not automatically feel safe for everyone.
We do not share language. The concept of “sex-based” rights is an attempt to exclude trans women from women’s spaces by stating we change gender but not sex. Sex-based rights campaigners can demand the end of trans rights without mentioning trans people, because of their definition of “woman”. There is a campaign against “medicalising children”- that is, to prevent trans children having treatment they, their parents and specialist doctors consider necessary.
I am glad documents for YM use the term “gender diverse”- in my experience sex-based rights campaigners are often particularly different from feminine gender stereotypes, and have a great deal in common with nonbinary people and trans men. However, they might say all women are oppressed by those stereotypes.
We do not share facts. Trans women have been in women’s spaces for decades, and with legal entitlement since the Equality Act 2010. Some campaigners argue the law is far more restrictive.
A Friends Quarterly article included the claim that most trans women do not have genital operations, based on a false interpretation of the source it cited. The scary idea of penises in women’s spaces is used to incite fear of trans women.
I have seen a minute claiming that adolescent children are making life-changing decisions, that is, getting hormone treatment they will later regret. In fact, since November 2020 trans children have been refused hormone treatment their doctors recommended, because of a high court decision.
If you include Quakers who support trans rights, like me, and those Quakers who are anti-trans campaigners, there is no unity. Individual Quakers do not have a right to “stand in the way” of a Yearly Meeting decision if most Friends are convinced it is a spiritual leading; but a decision can hardly exclude those most involved or concerned in the issue.
Unity might have to go back to the most basic principles. Quakers value Equality. But we do not all agree about Privilege. White straight men with professional careers can get nervous when the word is mentioned, as if it were an attack on them. Privilege is usually unconscious. Stevie Krayer’s article in The Friend gives an example: she had an immediate reaction she then analysed, and found it was unconsciously racist. Quakers may have such reactions without performing the necessary analysis, and, believing their adherence to the testimony to equality is sufficient protection, not see their unconscious prejudice. Society is awash with racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. People, even Quakers, take it into themselves unconsciously.
The sex-based rights campaigners would argue I have male privilege. In a negotiation, I would not want to concede that. But a Meeting for Worship is not a negotiation, but coming together in Love under Spirit.
I love meeting on Zoom. I have experienced gathered meetings on Zoom. Some Friends have not found Zoom meeting nourishing and sustaining, and miss meeting in person; when meeting for worship in person has been discontinued some have not worshipped on Zoom.
God moves in mysterious ways. I trust the process of meeting. I know that for there to be progress, people must come prepared to be changed. Common-sense, rational answers will get nowhere.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is arguing that transphobic beliefs should be protected, and no-one should be sacked for transphobia. I hope the Centre for Global Development (CGD) win in the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Why should they? What “beliefs” should be protected from discrimination, and when do they become behaviour for which it is reasonable to dismiss someone?
The sacked transphobe claims she was sacked for believing “Sex is real”, but that is ridiculous. There must be something more. If she simply believed that sex is real, like almost all the population including most trans people, she would not have been sacked.
It’s not just a belief that sex is real, it is a belief that this affects trans women and the way she sees us and interacts with us in a particular way. I believe sex is real, and I believe that trans women are women. But it’s not just that she believes trans women are men, it is that she believes this matters. She would hardly have got to the stage of losing her job if she did not. She believes that access to women’s spaces should be for women as she defines the word, so that trans women should not be admitted. She believes that she is entitled to misgender people. She used male pronouns to refer to a nonbinary person.
There has to be some behaviour for others to realise she holds a belief. For example, she wrote, “Trans women are men, and should be respected and protected as men”. She means, we should be excluded from all women’s spaces, and that some other way of accommodating us should be found. On 2 September 2018 she tweeted, “women and girls lose out on privacy, safety and fairness if males are allowed into changing rooms”. So when buying a skirt I would have to go to the men’s department to try it on.
In October 2018 some staff at the CGD complained that her tweets were transphobic. The employer investigated the complaints. She claimed she would respect “anyone’s definition of their gender identity”. Would she object if she saw a trans woman enter a women’s loo?
After she parted ways with the CGD, the transphobe entered a “very bitter” dispute with Gregor Murray, after misgendering them. This indicates how her beliefs affect her actions. She campaigns for a radical change in trans rights, so that trans women are excluded from the women’s spaces we have been in informally for decades and under the Equality Act since 2010.
Protection from discrimination on the grounds of belief does not mean that an employer has to tolerate any action by the employee. You can’t be sacked for being Christian, but if a Christian baker refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple their employer would be entitled to sack them.
The transphobe wanted the CGD to publish her screeds claiming trans women are men, or should be excluded from women’s spaces. The 2 September 2018 tweet argues for stripping away my rights. The transphobe’s contract involved writing essays for the CGD, some of which still appear on its website, above her own name.
Even if her belief is protected, that tweet is behaviour which could have brought the CGD into disrepute with some of its clients, which entitled it to sever links with her. For example, Kristie Higgs was sacked, reasonably and without unlawful discrimination, for facebook posts.
However, that does not address the question of whether the belief should be protected, if it is not expressed in a public, objectionable way.
To be protected, a belief “must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not be incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others”. If the transphobe’s “belief” is protected, that is a limit on my rights.
I have a right not to be discriminated against on the grounds of sex. The European Court of Justice in 1996, and the US Supreme Court in 2020, held that discrimination on the grounds of transgender is discrimination on the grounds of sex.
I have a right to transition and thereafter to be treated as being of the sex to which I have transitioned. That was the result of Christine Goodwin’s case.
The Employment Judge wrote that the belief “involves” violating trans people’s dignity. The transphobe claims that it did not, that she was quite capable of treating a trans woman with courtesy, which would involve not misgendering them. However she believes that I cannot honestly describe myself as a woman. That belief is not worthy of respect. It violates my dignity.
If the transphobe wins her case, it may be a distinction without a difference. Transphobes can still be dismissed if the employer considers their campaigning brings the employer into disrepute or offends the employer’s customers. The transphobe would not have had her contract terminated merely for a belief: it was terminated because of her obnoxious tweeting. Some employers would find that tweeting offensive, and end her contract. Some employers would not.
What would it mean if I looked upon myself with the eyes of Love? I say what I feel: horror, worthlessness, misery, fear, unknowing (which is painful)- and I hear that, and still hold myself in sympathy and respect?
-I’ve done some good things
-I know.
-I’ve faced some hard things
-I know. That’s all past. You are here, now.
I feel bewilderment. My intelligence should be capable of sorting this out, and I can’t.
The fear is usually unspoken, unacknowledged, unconscious. It’s always there, but I don’t feel it in the sense of fear that spikes my blood with adrenaline and makes me need to run, or able to run, or know what to run from.
-Yes. It’s fear of the whole situation, not one thing like a bear.
-I feel tired.
-That’s the response to chronic fear.
I am seeking. I feel questioning, determined. Love and respect for myself, accepting the fear and sense of worthlessness, helps me see that. I am not all bad.
I have inestimable value. Saying that does not seem arrogant, just a statement of the truth.
Reason is the slave of the passions. If I think my life is mere existence now, it can be otherwise if I want it to be otherwise, but I have to want that. I am unclear what I want, beyond hiding away and not being seen, in order to be safe.
I know that I experience delight. Being in the Now, so that I am perceiving what is around me rather than thinking about past or future gives me delight. Then seeing flowers and birds gives me delight. Seeing beauty, including in an art gallery, delights me. Sometimes reading delights me: new understanding, seeing things in a new way, an idea beautifully expressed.
Creation delights me. I wrote a poem. I love it, and sending it to an editor made me feel high. I enjoy writing for The Friend. I am less sure about blogging because that is linked to receiving attention online, which seems more addictive and less nourishing. You cannot be addicted to human contact, it is a human need. However when you don’t get enough human contact you can be addicted to the ersatz contact of facebook likes and WordPress views. But, heck, I still like writing.
I like talking to an audience. I like making something new. I like joking around, and laughter. I like listening to someone and helping them think things through, even advising. If I make them feel better, I love that.
Denial of reality is a huge part of my life. I suppose it is like bracketing feelings. I won’t face that now, I will consider other things. Possibly denial takes energy. In CS Lewis’s depiction of Hell, people built huge houses, as large and complex as they liked, just by imagining them, but they did not keep out the rain. Am I beating myself up again? No, I think just acknowledging. This is something I do.
Whom do I love beyond myself? Family? I have no sexual attraction at the moment. Covid has reduced my human contact.
People tell me I appear “serene”. I don’t feel serene. I feel numb, which means there are feelings under the surface too terrifying to acknowledge. I feel dissatisfied, but that is a common feeling among humans. It is why we change. Dissatisfaction without change is another image of Hell. Or, thinking of what I could do, ought todo, but don’t want to do, there is no fire or life in it.
My life is governed by fear, sometimes felt, sometimes just a dead weight. I live with emotional pain. This produces depression. Rejecting and denying them makes them stronger.
Not as a problem, but as part of the human process.
Is there any such thing as “transgender ideology”?
Trans people exist. Brave souls have always found ways to transition, authorities have often condemned it, trans people terrified to transition have led stunted lives. Now, perhaps 50,000 people in Britain are transitioning, about 0.1% of the population. I have no idea why I wanted to transition, just that it was the most important thing in the world for me.
I have no choice about being trans. I have wished I was not trans, but that would mean I did not exist and a different human- perhaps a cis man, perhaps a cis woman- existed in my place. It would be harder to cut my trans out of me than for Shylock to take Antonio’s flesh without blood.
Society faces the issue of how to respond to this reality, and one such response is denial. Being trans, say the transphobes, is “only” a feeling, as opposed to the physical reality of being a [cis] woman. But, I am not a Cartesian dualist, imagining I am a mind or soul in a body, so my being trans is in my physical self just as a cis woman’s being female is in hers. Unless you believe something like a “mind”, or “consciousness”, is in some way separate from neurons and dendrites, being trans is a physical condition.
This is not an ideology. It is a fact.
Many attacks on “transgender ideology” attack words we have used to try to explain ourselves. Few people now say “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body”- this is my body. Yet transphobes used the phrase “My body is me” to try to attack trans people.
Other attacks relate to words we use. I am a woman.
Words are imprecise attempts to divide one reality into discrete units, in order to communicate. What matters is that we communicate, that the listener understands what the speaker means, not that words have rigid definitions. In practice, rigid definitions make words even less able to relate to strange, fluid reality, which is always changing, which we can never completely understand.
I read that “Stonewall defines homosexuality as orientation towards someone of the same gender”. This is misleading. Stonewall does not use “Homosexual” and related words except when quoting others. Stonewall defines “gay” as man attracted to men, and as a generic term for gay sexuality, so some women attracted to women say they are gay. That is, its definitions are descriptive, attempting to capture what people actually use the words for, rather than prescriptive, attempting to restrict use to one “correct” use.
Quite possibly, a gay cis man might be attracted to a trans man. Should he lose his “gay card”? Most people would be happy enough for him to continue to describe himself as gay. Some weird pedants who insist that “words mean what they choose them to mean”, and that they must be master of this, might insist that he was now straight, or heterosexual, or at least bi. Pedants have their obsessions. It’s better to ignore them.
Or, a cis lesbian might say “I could never be attracted to a trans woman because I am attracted to my sex, and to women’s genitals”. They really do say things like that! It’s an attempt to deny the word “lesbian” to trans women, or even the word “woman”. I have no objection to a cis lesbian saying she is not attracted to me. It’s transphobic to say she could never be attracted to a trans woman. Even if it is true, why say it except to be mean to trans women?
Stonewall works for the interests of queer people in a heteronormative society, which assumes people are straight. That means it needs flexibility of language. LGB All Liars works to forbid trans women from using the words “lesbian” or even “woman” to define ourselves, as a means of reducing trans acceptance, and to exclude trans women from women’s spaces. That requires an ideology: the false idea that trans people as a group are in some way a risk to women’s spaces. They want to upend our lives and roll back the shaky progress to trans acceptance so far.
Trans excluders might want a rigid definition of transition before they might tolerate trans women. They might say we are not proper trans before we have had a genital operation. These definitions are created in order to exclude, so tend to get stricter over time.
I read it is “dangerous” to say men and women are defined by our feelings rather than our biology. That is, the word “woman” cannot include a “trans woman”, or there is some danger to someone. This is a conservative idea, that people should be distrusted unless they conform to strict rules. Trans women should stay out of women’s spaces, say the conservatives, just in case one of them has some immoral purpose in being there. The progressive, by contrast, say people should be free to express ourselves as we like, and any conflicts should be resolved in good-will rather than by rigid rules. Rigid rules do not fit reality, which is constantly changing, or human beings, who are infinitely varied. So, trans-exclusion is an inherently conservative ideology.
Clare Flourish 