LGBT
Related: About this forum"Complicit in trans women's oppression"
by Laura Woodhouse, 17 May 2012
...I was angered to learn that a new UK conference for radical feminists, RadFem2012, is not only playing host to a well-known transphobe, but is actively excluding trans women from attending.
The conference is open only to "women born women living as women". Now, I personally support and fully appreciate the value of women-only space, but that space has to be open to all self-defining women. Excluding trans women from an event that aims to build an "anti-oppressive movement for the liberation of all women from patriarchal oppression" is bitterly ironic.
Trans women suffer horrifying levels of violence, abuse and discrimination, fuelled not only by the fact that they are women, but by the refusal of the vast majority of the cis population to acknowledge and respect their identities. The organisers of RadFem2012 have actively chosen to align themselves with this majority, and in so doing are complicit in trans women's oppression. Radical? Feminism? I think not...
...What is my business, as a feminist, is standing in solidarity with my trans sisters and fighting the system that oppresses all of us. A system of which the term "women born women" is very much a part.
More:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/05/theres_nothing
William769
(55,148 posts)TheWraith
(24,331 posts)yardwork
(61,712 posts)William769
(55,148 posts)Talk about bigotry.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)Vanje
(9,766 posts)I DO NOT understand this.
qb
(5,924 posts)obamanut2012
(26,154 posts)laconicsax
(14,860 posts)(The exclusion of trans women, not the article or OP)
TriMera
(1,375 posts)So, a woman who belongs to not one oppressed group, but two, is willing to oppress other women. IMHO, Ms. Jeffreys is the lowest of the low.
DURHAM D
(32,611 posts)with that attitude over the years. I thought things were getting better but this is shocking.
DURHAM D
(32,611 posts)From the next article - "Transphobia is the great shame of modern radical feminism."
When reading these two articles the first person I thought of was Billie Jean King. In 1977 she stood alone and against the tennis world and insisted that Renee Richards be allowed to play on the women's tennis circuit. She & Renee won that argument. It should be settled matter in every venue.
nickinSTL
(4,833 posts)I was...kind of young in '77, so wasn't really aware of...well, I don't know if I'd even heard of tennis, much less Billie Jean King or Renee Richards.
Makes me respect King even more.