Transgender-&-Transphobia

For radical feminists, gender is understood as not merely a subjective internal sense of self; patriarchal gender norms are a product of culture, imposed on people and limiting everyone’s humanity. by Robert Jensen / Feminist Current I am routinely described as cisgender (defined as people whose internal sense of gender identity matches their biological sex). Because I have critiqued the ideology of the transgender movement, I also am often labeled a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). But neither term is accurate — I don’t self-identify as cisgender or as exclusionary. ...

Featured image: Yuly Chan, a founding member of Chinatown Action Group. The smearing, harassment, no-platforming, and silencing of women who express feminist opinions about gender and prostitution is unacceptable. by Cherry Smiley / Feminist Current I can’t remember the exact words, who said it or when, but the general message was: courage isn’t the lack of fear, but doing something even when you’re afraid. I am writing this with lots of fear about a backlash that will almost certainly happen. However, I’ve reached the point where I can’t stay silent any longer and need to muster whatever courage I can and do what I think is right, regardless of the cost. ...

Featured image: San Francisco Public Library exhibit featuring blood stained t-shirts encouraging patrons to attack feminists, and deadly weapons—baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire, axes, and more—designed by men to kill feminist women. Credit: GenderTrender. Threats of violence against women branded as “TERFs” are increasing—will liberals and progressives speak out before it’s too late? by Meghan Murphy / Feminist Current In January, a woman was photographed holding a sign at the Vancouver Women’s March that included the words, “Trans ideology is misogyny.” This might be viewed as a hyperbolic message for those who consider themselves good, liberal people and who care about a group they have been informed are in extreme danger, and particularly marginalized. And perhaps, if you were unfamiliar with the way women and feminists are addressed by trans activists, you might wonder what statements like this are rooted in. A few years ago, I might have questioned this as well, thinking, “well that’s a bit much, isn’t it.” But as trans activism has gained ground and as I myself—as well as many other women—have begun questioning and speaking out about the aims, ideology, and policies supported in the name of “trans rights,” it has become impossible to deny what is being supported through trans activism: violence against women. ...

Featured image: Display case of weapons at San Francisco Library by GenderTrender If you thought the age of scold’s bridles and dunking pools designed to torture and kill disobedient women were a thing of the past, you would be wrong. The San Francisco Public Library unveiled an exhibit this week featuring blood stained t-shirts encouraging patrons to “punch” feminists, along with several installations of deadly weapons painted pink: baseball bats covered in barbed wire, axes, among others, all designed by men to kill feminist women. ...

“Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability” aims to clarify, but succeeds only in highlighting the lack of clarity which dominates transgender theory.__by Robert Jensen / Feminist Current“Let me define the terms, and I’ll win any debate,” a friend told me years ago, an insight I’ve seen confirmed many times in intellectual and political arenas. But after reading Jack Halberstam’s new book, Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability, I would amend that observation: Debates also can be won by making sure a term is never clearly defined. The transgender movement has yet to offer coherent explanations of the concepts on which its policy proposals are based, yet support is nearly universal in left/liberal circles. Whether or not it was the author’s intention, Trans* feels like an attempt at an outline of such explanation, but I’m sorry to report that the book offers neither clarity nor coherence. ...

_Under patriarchy, women have been groomed into a perpetual state of tolerance; today, “tolerance” has been taken up by certain feminists, making it impossible to define a set of collective values or assert shared goals._by Marta Brown/Feminist Current “We have become reluctant to be labelled as moral crusaders in an age when human potential has degenerated to ‘doing your own thing.’ We are conditioned to making bland observations and cynical jokes in response to obscenities of a national scale and perversity of universal magnitude. We are numbed to the point of being at home with cruelty and despair.” – Hilde Hein, 1982 ...

Featured image: The International Coalition Against Human Trafficking by Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance “Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.” – bell hooks Last weekend, I was tabling for Deep Green Resistance at an environmental conference. A young man, who looked to be in his early 20’s, came up to the table. I approached him and asked if I could answer any questions. ...

by Gender Critical Action Center A collective of people who are concerned about society’s growing obsession with “gender identity” ideology announced today that they are launching the Gender Critical Action Center (GCAC) – a weekly international call-to-action. About the GCAC The purpose of the GCAC is to organize collective activity to push back on growing efforts to redefine sex to mean “gender identity” in laws, schools and universities, private settings, events, language, crime reporting, incarceration, journalism, etc. The organizers of the GCAC maintain that human beings are sexually dimorphic mammals, that women are female, that men are male, and that there is a small percentage of the human population that are intersex. ...

Featured image: Transactivist Andi Dier, left, and Rose McGowan. We claim to be ready for women’s anger, as a society, but we clearly still expect women to express it in ways we are comfortable with. by Raquel Rosario Sanchez / Feminist Current One of the first lessons you learn when you do shelter work is that women’s pain and trauma manifests differently from individual to individual. Women are incredibly resilient, but experiencing male violence can lead to months of intense emotional instability or deep depression. Some never recover. ...

by Meghan Murphy / Feminist Current Last week, a 60-year-old woman was beaten up at Speaker’s Corner by several men. She was there with a group of women, who had chosen the historic corner of Hyde Park as a meeting place, before heading off to a talk called, “What is Gender.” The men who punched and kicked Maria MacLachlan had come to protest the women on account of their interest in feminism and in discussing the way new conversations and legislation around “gender identity” could impact the women’s movement and women’s rights. The protestors did not frame their anger and inflammatory rhetoric in this way, though. Instead, they labelled the women “TERFs” (trans exclusionary radical feminists) — a word that has come to signify a modern witch: to be silenced, threatened, harassed, punched, and — yes — killed. ...