The code is easy to crack. You don’t have to read far in this new website to see “Lesbian Labour” is only interested in campaigning against trans people. Their aims include “supporting gender nonconforming and same sex attracted girls”- that is, denying that trans boys can know themselves or what they want, and crushing those who detransition by reinforcing their internalised transphobia. Later they claim that homophobia encourages gay people to identify as trans. It is divorced from reality to claim that people who are homophobic are not transphobic.
The site claims it is from December 2020. Odd. I had not heard of them before now. Suddenly there is publicity for them. Who are they? Ah, Paula Bolton, who wrote the Labour Transphobes’ Declaration. She has done some worthwhile work for women’s rights. Such a shame she has given that up to work at trans exclusion.
Paula spreads the myth that lesbian girls are told they are boys, and pressed to take testosterone. No-one treats trans children without the children, and often their parents, fighting very hard for it.
Another woman claims “Labour has forgotten what a woman actually is” because it includes trans women on all women shortlists. She claims we are dangerous. It’s the clearest transphobia. Another will not even use the word “transwoman”, calling us “men”, and later “predatory men”. Her repulsion at medical treatment for trans children is extreme, like the fear of an arachnophobe for a spider. That’s three stories, all going over their glory days in the 70s and 80s. Younger lesbians tend to recognise that our oppression is all bound up together.
Their other aims might seem sensible but are directed at trans people really. “Make Labour a safe and welcoming party for lesbians”- well, that is my aim too, and the aim of LGBT Labour. It’s not that it’s a bad aim, it’s the way they interpret safety- no trans women in women’s spaces.
I click “Find out more” and read an attack on LGBT Labour and Stonewall. They claim women’s oppression is based on sex, not “identity”. That is a false claim that trans women do not suffer misogyny as well as transphobia. They will gain no rights by denying that others are oppressed too.
They demand lesbian spaces free from “intrusion”, that is, from the inclusion of trans lesbians.
In the some personal stories, there’s an Ourselves Alone vibe- “Who can protect Lesbians but Lesbians themselves?” Well, Stonewall is led by lesbians, and LGBT Labour has lesbians at all levels. That’s who support lesbians- we are stronger together. Divide us up, and our rights will fall.
On farcebook, a lesbian claimed LGBT Labour don’t represent lesbians. I pointed out their National Chair is a lesbian. She explains why she is a trans ally. “Window dressing” commented a transphobe, as if Alex Beverley and Nancy Kelley of Stonewall are silly women who don’t know their own minds.
They suggest useful links: LGB All Liars and the Labour Transphobes’ Declaration. Tiny groups of transphobes give themselves all sorts of different names. I wonder what the overlap between these groups is. The threat is the hundreds of millions of dollars provided by hard Right American organisations to these groups to support their transphobia. More on this soon.