http://www.calweb.net/~mschulter/Naomi_Circle_Statement.pdf
1.
Preamble
2.
The reality of transsexual or neofemale
women
3.
There are different concepts of “woman,” “female,” and “lesbian”
4.
The TERF slur and terfing:
Exclusion in the name of “inclusion”
5.
The Degenderettes art show and
anti-woman violent culture
6.
The San Francisco Dyke March and physical violence
against women
7.
Max Dashu: No-platforming
versus an open community
8.
Sexual noncoercion and
enthusiastic consent versus rape culture
9.
Mutual recognition and respectful language
10. Beyond “Lesbian Not Queer”
— and Transsexual Versus Transgender
11. Conclusion
12. Acknowledgements
13. The Naomi Circle (Who we are)
As
lesbian feminists of the Second Wave, we are raising our voices against a
dangerous trend in the LGBTQ and “transactivist”
communities: the use of violent rhetoric, imagery, threats, and acts against
women because of disagreements about sex/gender theory.
We
write to reaffirm our commitment to Second Wave feminism and to celebrate the
sisterhood of all women, both natal and transsexual. For the last 45 years,
there has been much cooperation within the women’s and lesbian communities, but
sadly also some unproductive conflict. In this call to sisterhood, we seek
truth and reconciliation through mutual understanding and a
recognition of the diversity of our community as a strength rather than
a weakness. It is from this perspective that we must challenge the horizontal
hostility and sometimes even outright violence that is the antithesis of either
the world we seek
to live in or the means
by which we seek to get there.
The
recent Degenderettes art show at the San Francisco
Public Library, and the mobbing and acts of physical violence directed against
ten or so older lesbian women at the San Francisco Dyke March (June 23), illustrate how violent words and images may lead to
violent actions.
Further,
we oppose the practices of terfing (labelling a feminist,
often a lesbian feminist, as a TERF or “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist”)
and no-platforming of feminists so terfed.[1] A recent prime example is Max Dashu. She is a lesbian feminist scholar specializing in
women’s and Goddess history renowned for her scholarship on witches and
witchcraft. She was scheduled to present at the Modern Witches Confluence (MWC)
on October 28, 2018. Her exclusion led to such an outcry among defenders of
free speech and open dialogue on sex/gender issues within the women’s and
lesbian communities that MWC offered to reconsider its unwise decision, but
ultimately without restoring her to the program.
As
older lesbian feminists not so unlike our sisters who were physically attacked
at the Dyke March, or our sister Max Dashu who witnessed
this attack and reported on her experience, we would like also to place these
dangerous trends of violence, exclusion, and dehumanization within the context
of a longer 45-year conflict among lesbian feminists which we know from
firsthand experience. Our purpose is to promote truth and reconciliation, and
to emphasize that respect for boundaries is essential if we are to live and
let live despite inevitable differences on feminist theory and practice.
At
least since 1972, there has been a controversy within women’s and specifically
lesbian feminist communities about the presence of transsexual women, people
who are born in more or less “standard” male bodies, but by early childhood
express a desire to change sex and live as women. After being raised as boys,
and thus experiencing male privilege, male-to-female transsexuals choose and
undergo a process of sex/gender transition. For such transsexuals who are
lesbian feminists, this process of transition has at least four aspects:
n Physical
or medical transition, which involves the use of hormone therapy and surgery to
change many although not all primary and secondary sex characteristics, so as
to approximate the anatomy of women born and raised.
n Social
and legal transition, including the obtaining of new identity documents and,
of course, moving into the everyday reality of living as a woman.
n Female
and more specifically feminist (re)socialization, in which one becomes a “woman-identified
woman” (the name of a famous manifesto by Radicalesbians
in 1970) by identifying and living not only as a woman but with other
women in sisterhood and solidarity.
n Feminist
(re)education, in which one studies women’s herstory,
and experiences women’s culture and feminist process together with one’s
sisters.
Such
a process is emphatically not just a matter of saying, “I identify as a
woman.” Rather, as in immigration and naturalization, years of transforming
education and experience, as well as medical transition, are involved. We also
recognize that in places where medical transition is not available as an aspect
of universal health care, economic barriers and lack of class privilege can
interfere with access to this process; and that certain health conditions may
also preclude some or all forms of medical transition.
During
what may be called the lesbian feminist movement within Second Wave feminism,
roughly 1970-1980, many lesbian groups and communities freely accepted
transsexual lesbian feminists as equal sisters. Others restricted membership or
events to natal women or Women Born Female (WBF) — a fairly recent term widely
accepted by feminists with Second Wave roots. Often lesbian feminists created,
supported, and attended events with both types of boundaries, as has also held
true since. To describe transsexual women, a good corresponding term might be
Women Reassigned Female (WRF), since the process of transition is often called “sex
reassignment.”[2]
Then,
and now, the sane and sisterly policy is one of mutual respect: to recognize
that each women’s and lesbian community and event has the right to set its own
boundaries and decide its membership using whatever definitions or concepts it
chooses.
Some
radical feminists and feminist groups place a special emphasis on what may be
called “sex-caste oppression” that only women who are
WBF, i.e. are deemed female at birth, experience. Here a caste means a social
group based on birth. Thus natal women or WBF are raised from birth as girls,
and in Naomi Scheman’s words “perinatally
pinked,” facing many disadvantages under patriarchy. Sex-caste oppression
involves being directly targeted by role expectations and stereotypes like
inferiority in science and math, beauty and glamour culture, sexual
objectification, rape culture, etc. It also involves unspoken biases, such as
the documented classroom pattern of calling on boys more frequently than on
girls.
Further,
a large majority of natal women can become pregnant and give birth,
reproductive powers esteemed in the pre-patriarchal “matrix cultures” so named
and studied by scholar Max Dashu, but which under
patriarchy become reproductive vulnerability and servitude. Natal women who
grow up under the expectation that they will bear children, but are infertile,
also experience a kind of reproductive oppression, which may be internalized,
by failing to meet this expectation.
In
contrast, transsexual women or WRF, who are deemed male at birth and are raised
as boys, do not experience these forms of female sex-caste and reproductive
oppression. However, WRF who have transitioned do experience “sex-class
oppression,” the everyday oppression visited on all women by the patriarchy,
related in fully transitioned transsexual women to their female or more
precisely neofemale sexed embodiment. Both a
transsexual woman’s sex (physical embodiment) and gender (social position) are
involved in this sex-class oppression — as is also true for natal women or WBF,
of course.
Some
lesbian feminist communities place a main focus on sex-caste oppression, and
draw a WBF-only boundary on their membership or participation in events.
Others, while recognizing how sex-caste oppression uniquely affects natal women
or WBF, place an emphasis on “sex-class solidarity” and welcome natal and
transsexual women (WBF and WRF).
In
a truly “inclusive” feminist movement, there is room for both approaches,
WBF-only and “WBF and WRF together,” with autonomous choice and
boundary-drawing by each group or event, and mutual recognition and respect
among groups with different positions.
Similarly,
some lesbian groups define a lesbian simply as a woman, WBF or WRF, who loves
and has a primary affectional orientation and commitment to women. Other
lesbian groups hold that only natal women or WBF can truly be lesbian, having
shared the sex-caste experience under patriarchy of surviving girlhood. There
is room for both views, and a need for mutual recognition and respect of
boundaries. The practical reality is that, as Joreen
(Jo Freeman) wrote in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Women’s Liberation
groups are often “friendship networks” where free association prevails.
The
expression “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist” or TERF seems to have
originated in 2008 in discussions of feminist theory, without any intent to be
insulting, but rather simply to distinguish between different radical feminist
positions on transsexualism and related sex/gender issues. Yet even at this
stage, the Australian feminist writer TigTog (Viv Smythe) and others who evidently invented the term, with
some of the first uses dated to August 2008, did so from an adversarial
position. Thus in a blog entry on August 19 of that year, TigTog
speaks of herself as “initially regarding the TERF position as simply a
regrettably prejudiced yet rationally divergent opinion,” but now sees it as also
involving “callousness” as well as using “logically inconsistent” arguments.[3]
However,
over the next few years, two key factors made a term with neutral intentions of
clarifying feminist positions into a slur and indeed often a weapon of
dehumanization and incitement to violence. First, feminists favoring WBF-only
communities, or taken rightly or wrongly to do so, did not accept the “TERF”
label, perhaps not so surprisingly since they quite correctly perceived it as a
term coined by their adversaries, even if not in the beginning meant to be
disrespectful. Secondly, at least by 2012 or so, as this originally Australian
term became more familiar in the UK and USA, those “terfing”
these women made it increasingly clear that their intent was often not to
distinguish between approaches to radical feminism in a benign or neutral way,
but to wound and insult. Thus in a discussion on different forms of radical
feminism, one commenter writes on August 27, 2012, “TERF
(Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) is a term that I’ve seen used for those
people quite frequently.” Another commenter replies that same day: “Hey, I like
it! Sounds kinda negative.
It’s important for an insult to sound like an insult. TERF
indeed.”[4]
During
the last several years, terfing of women has become,
like the patriarchal witchhunts that reached their
height in 15th-17th century Europe (not the “Dark Ages,” but the celebrated
High Renaissance and earlier phases of the so-called Enlightenment!), or the McCarthyist witch hunts in the USA during the 1950’s, an
indiscriminate weapon where any feminist may become “fair game.” Simply
defending the right of WBF-only women’s or lesbian spaces to exist, or
disagreeing with some tenet of current “queer theory” or “transactivist
theory,” makes a WBF or WRF feminist a possible target.
For
example, Caroline Criado-Perez, a leading radical
feminist in the UK, wrote an article in 2014 critical of the “cis/trans” binary
that is a feature of recent queer and transactivist
theory. Despite the fact that Criado-Perez has also
written about the valuable role that trans women play in feminism, she was terfed on Twitter, receiving immense hostility — after
having earlier been harassed and threatened for her many efforts to advance the
status of women, by a male antifeminist who was successfully prosecuted.[5]
Not
only is terfing a form of disrespect or even violence
against women who are our sisters, whatever our disagreements; it interferes
with honest and open dialogue about sex/gender issues among feminists based on
mutual respect and the willingness to engage in radical listening to each
other.
A
truly inclusive feminist, or more specifically lesbian feminist, movement must
allow room for differences without insults, dehumanizing rhetoric, or bullying
and threats of violence. We urge all lesbian feminists, WBF and WRF alike, to
join us in reaffirming our commitment to mutual recognition and open dialogue.
We
decry the weaponized and misogynist aspects of the Degenderettes
art show exhibited this last March-April at the San Francisco Public Library.
The disturbing violent aspects seem related to a movement calling itself Antifa (i.e. “anti-fascist”) which in the name of “progressive”
values seeks to “punch” and otherwise launch physical assaults against people
deemed to be “fascist,” “reactionary,” or otherwise undesirable.
One
of the items displayed as part of this art show was a shirt (apparently) soaked
in blood with the motto “I Punch TERFS.” In past decades, feminists have often
protested images of violence against women in pornography and the media, such
as the notorious cover of Hustler magazine showing a woman being run
through a meat grinder. This t-shirt was removed from the exhibit only after
determined protests, especially from feminist women.
It
is not hard to draw a connection between that bloody shirt and the actual
violence, accompanied by cries of “TERF,” against ten or so older lesbians at
the Dyke March.
Also,
the Degenderettes art show included an image with the
text: “Let TERFS wither cold and alone.” These words suggest the usual
misogynist image of lesbians as dysfunctional spinsters whose failure to fit
into patriarchal expectations of heterosexual marriage dooms them to ending up
“withering cold and alone.” A printed commentary accompanying this illustration
explains that it expresses the hope that feminist women whose opinions
supposedly warrant terfing will be abandoned by
partners and friends, a fantasy more worthy of the patriarchy than of women
seeking sisterly and respectful dialogue.
In
critiquing the terfing of women and display of
weapons at the art show, we should emphasize that the Degenderettes
is a group also standing for some positive things, including accessibility of
places and events for people with disabilities, and much political militancy
and humor in the agitprop tradition of groups from the San Francisco Mime Troup
to AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT-UP). The problem with the Degenderettes is not the passionate and dedicated activism
of its members, but the way that this activism is at times misdirected when it
mimics Antifa in opposing “fascism” by enacting Antifa’s acceptance and even celebration of violence; and
more specifically by making terfed women the target
of violent rhetoric and images.
While
the Degenderettes is a group with a variety of
members, oriented generally to “queer” and “transactivist”
culture, it appears that many identify specifically as “Trans Dykes.” They terf not only WBFs not inclined to include people not born
or surgically reassigned female, but any woman skeptical of any point of
transgender theory. In other words, they state their claims and brook no
dissent. This begs the question of how anyone who seeks to be recognized and
accepted as a woman among women — lesbian or otherwise — could use patriarchal
rhetoric and images of misogyny (e.g. older terfed
women “wither[ing] cold and alone”) and violence
against women. Further, we question, with alarm, how establishment LGBT rights
groups can remain silent in the face of rhetorical and physical attacks against
WBF and WRF lesbians, or even side with transactivists
against lesbians’ rights to physical and sexual privacy and autonomy.
Max
Dashu’s eyewitness account as an independent observer
of what happened at the Dyke March clarifies that the ten or so lesbian elders
who were attacked, who were there through invitations from friends rather than
as an organized group, at no point themselves initiated violence. Rather some
carried signs that expressed their positions on certain community issues, such
as “Lesbian Not Queer.” Max adds that in her view some of the signs were “confrontational,”
and that she had urged the use of greater discretion for this setting. A
possible example would be a sign reading “Change Our Society, Not Your Body.”
Yet more provocative may have been a sign raising the issue of puberty blockers
given to young people who are or may be trans, and
including a statement: “Transitioning Children is Child Abuse.” Such a sign
might well prove offensive to young lesbian-identified transsexual women and
their parents. We urge that the appropriate response to signs from our sisters
that may appear offensive is friendly and respectful dialogue, not disrespect,
and above all not violence.
In
reaction, however, they faced a mob directing at them chants of “TERFS GO HOME!”
— sometimes amplified by bullhorns. Members of this
crowd then started grabbing their signs. As a result, some of these older
lesbians were thrown or tripped to the ground; some resisted in self-defense,
assisted by Max when she saw what was happening. There was no security presence
to deescalate the incident, although one woman on the scene wearing a National
Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) cap attempted to use a cane in order to induce
participants to move away from the lesbians being attacked so that they could
proceed in safety. It was only after completing all but the last block of the
Dyke March that some of these older lesbians sought and received police
protection in leaving the event without further attacks on them.
First-hand
accounts by older women who were the target of this attack rightly emphasize
the elements of fear, disrespect, and intimidation experienced in being mobbed
by a surrounding crowd of an estimated 60 to 70 people. Members of this crowd
used bullhorns at very close quarters to shout at the women, effectively using
amplified sound as an acoustical weapon which served as a prelude to the direct
physical assault which followed. This was not reasoned disagreement, but a
frightening and frightful show of disrespect and even hatred toward a group of
older women presenting no threat to anyone.
We
emphasize that it is not merely unsisterly to direct violence against other
women who share the oppression of patriarchy, but fundamentally opposed to
human as well as specifically feminist values, particularly at an historic
event that has celebrated lesbians for decades. Sadly, the San Francisco Dyke
March has not been the only instance where either unreasonable restrictions
on lesbian self-identification or even outright violence has occurred within the
women’s community, sometimes in the name of feminism.
Thus
at the 2018 Vancouver Dyke March (August 4), at least one woman was informed
that she must not wear the double Venus or double female symbol, a cherished
emblem of lesbianism through the decades for lesbians who are natal or
transsexual women alike. A possible explanation for this curious prohibition of
a traditional Second Wave lesbian symbol at a Dyke March may be the idea that
any association of womanhood with female anatomy is somehow “anti-trans.” We
must differ: the right of lesbians, whether natal women whose bodies have been
demeaned and degraded by the patriarchy for our entire lives, or transsexual
women who have gone through medical transition and now affirm our bodies and
lesbian orientation, to celebrate our anatomy and sexuality is basic to our
identity and politics.
More
generally, there is room in feminism for diversity without destructive
conflict. Through the decades, sisters in Women’s Liberation and lesbian
feminism have celebrated a variety of symbols and emblems from the double-Venus
to the three-armed modern version of the signs of Venus and Mars to the Amazon labrys and clenched fists of different colors.
The
tradition of the Dyke March began as a response to generic LGBTQ (lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Trans, Queer — with Q sometimes also standing for Questioning) Pride
events which underrepresented women in general and lesbian feminist culture in
particular. A commitment to include both natal and transsexual women who are
lesbians is widespread at Dyke Marches, and illustrates the right of lesbian
events to set their own boundaries. However, the kind of “inclusiveness” that
promotes or at least fails to counter the violence against older lesbians that
took place at the San Francisco Dyke March, or excludes famous lesbian symbols
such as the double Venus emblem because they allude to female bodies, is
actually a form of exclusion, not sisterly inclusion.[6]
An
incident which, like that at the San Francisco Dyke March, involved physical
violence, took place in the UK at Speakers’ Corner in London on September 13,
2017. Maria MacLachlan, who styles herself “simply an
old-school feminist,” was 60 years old and part of a peaceful group of women
and a few men who were planning to attend a meeting on “gender critical”
feminist perspectives when they were confronted with a group of young people.
One of these, later identified as Tara Wolf, grabbed her camera and punched her
in the face, an assault for which Wolf was later convicted and fined. After
Tara Wolf’s trial, a group of women were confronted and menaced by a group of
which Wolf was a member, called “Class War.” It is also reported that after her
conviction for “assault by beating,” more familiarly known as battery, Tara
Wolf changed her Facebook name to “Tara The TERF
Slayer.”
As
the violence at the San Francisco Dyke March was preceded by the violent
rhetoric of the Degenderettes, so Tara Wolf had
announced her desire to beat up “TERFs” before her violent encounter with the
peaceful Maria MacLachlin. A special source of
concern is the fact that after the assault had been documented, at least one
LGBTQ activist in a position of power successfully used social media and
personal calls to urge that this act of violence against her not be
condemned by Stonewall or other LGBTQ organizations in the UK. To the contrary,
we hold that violence against women as a way of resolving differences of
sex/gender politics, and likewise the equation of terfed
women with “fascists,” are against feminist and humanist values. While those
involved in the terfing of women may justify their
rhetorical and even physical violence as “progressive” or “antifascist,” it
involves in essence the same form of dehumanizing misogyny which, in connection
with racism, leads to acts of savage and often deadly violence against Women of
Color, including Trans Women of Color. We are opposed to violence against
women, and the rhetoric that promotes it.
These
incidents should bring home to all feminists that terfing
is speech that leads to dehumanization and violence — here, violence against
women in their sixties, some with disabilities. As natal and transsexual women,
we revere these elder sisters of our own Second Wave generation, and decry the
violence directed against them in the name of “inclusivity.” We call for an
inclusive feminism that rejects violence and embraces differences.
We
affirm that our sister Max Dashu’s struggle against terfing, no-platforming, and the use of guilt by
association is also our struggle as lesbian feminists of the Second Wave.
We
note that the Modern Witches Confluence (MWC) wisely decided to reconsider its
decision to no-platform her — that is, to deny her a platform where she can
express her views and participate in public discourse — and join many other
lesbians who affirmed that it must renew her invitation to speak, and thus set
a precedent in favor of frank and honest dialogue among sisters that will
benefit us all. Sadly, these developments did not result in her reinstatement
in the program for the event, which took place on October 28, 2018.
We
join Max in decrying the kind of campaign that resulted in her no-platforming:
the citing of actual or often imagined past writings,
and of alleged ties with this or that activist or group, as a tactic for
silencing an eloquent and outspoken woman’s voice. If her right of speaking
freely is in jeopardy, none of us in the lesbian community is secure in this
right.
In
any lesbian feminist community, the sexual ethic of noncoercion
and enthusiastic consent must be paramount. That is, the only reason for women
to have sex with each other is mutually enthusiastic desire and free consent.
Rape culture, sadly, is not only pervasive in the larger society, but can
appear within lesbian communities also. Woman-on-woman sexual harassment,
outright sexual assault, and domestic violence are tragic realities.
This
should go without saying, but we feel a need to emphasize that no lesbian has
either a right or an obligation to have sex with any other lesbian!
Why
are we stating such an obvious fact?
The
reason is because of certain trends in “transactivism,”
in which women who choose not to consider or have sex with self-identified “transactivists” are called “transphobes” or terfed. Such conduct is a form of patriarchal rape culture.
The simple feminist rule is this: “No means no — no explanations needed.”
Woman-on-woman
boundary violations can be committed by and against natal and transsexual
women, WBF and WRF, alike. A problem in recent years have been the claim of a
few “transactivists” who have not or do not intend to
have Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) that it is somehow “transphobic” for
lesbian women to prefer to have sex only with people who have vulvas. We reply
that each woman has absolute sovereignty over her body and her decision to have
or not to have sex with anyone or everyone. This same sovereignty applies to
women who choose to have only natal women or WBF as partners.
Within
the lesbian community, women have been engaging in various consensual dialogues
about body image and sexuality as they relate to matters of race, colorism,
fat, intersex variations, disability, transsexual history, etc. However, such
dialogues need not and must not bring into play the rape-culture logic: “Have
sex with me, or else you’re a bigot.” Such false logic not only violates women’s
personal boundaries, but endangers the health of the women’s community and
feminist movement. When unreciprocated attractions occur, lesbians must be able
to say and accept “No” and continue as sisters and friends in ongoing
community. Those unable to do this are contributing to cultural misogyny.
Different
feminist groups, as we have noted, may have different concepts of “woman,” “female,”
and “lesbian.” A truly inclusive Women’s Liberation movement requires mutual
respect in sometimes “agreeing to disagree.”
Thus
terfing must absolutely be avoided if we are to have
any kind of open dialogue: WBF-only women’s and lesbian communities deserve
respect from natal and transsexual women with a different view. Also, some
lesbian women enthusiastically participate in both WBF-only and WBF-and-WRF groups and events, and their choices
too must be respected, wherever they are welcomed.
Clearly
identifying an event as WBF-only — or as “women only” or “female only” with a
definition of who is deemed to be a woman or female — promotes this mutual
recognition and respect. Simply using the term “women-only” or “female-only,”
without a definition, can promote misunderstandings.
Likewise,
groups or events intended for both WBF and WRF participants should make this
explicit, as some women may read “woman-only” or “female-only” to mean WBF-only
unless these terms are defined.
We
also strongly urge that while women’s and lesbian groups have every right to
embrace and apply whatever definitions they wish on these issues, certain
language guidelines can serve to promote mutual respect.
Whether
or not transsexual women or WRF are deemed women, (neo)females,
or lesbians in a given feminist group, we ask that they not be referred to as “men”
or “males.” Terms such as “ex-males” or “male-socialized” express much the same
point without seeming to erase a person’s current sexed embodiment or social
status. We emphasize that the term transsexual continues in use in the
21st century not only because many transsexual women have used it for four
decades and more, but because it affirms the importance of embodied sex as
well as gender status in shaping the identity and affinity of women, WBF and
WRF alike.
Also,
groups which do welcome WBF and WRF alike sometimes describe themselves as “inclusive”
— but women favoring WBF-only groups can take this to imply that they
themselves are “exclusionary,” a theme of terfing. We
might better speak of “mixed” or “motley” women’s and lesbian groups, terms
which define one option in setting boundaries, rather than a monopoly on the
moral virtue of “inclusion.”
We
emphasize above all else, however, that language which seems less than ideal is
not a reason for terfing, no-platforming, threats —
and never acts of violence against women. We affirm that threats and acts
of violence among and against our sisters are not a part of women’s culture.
Women Reassigned Female (WRF/transsexual women), especially
those who are feminist, feel and act on sex-class solidarity with their natal
female or WBF sisters. Some of these sisters may be
emphatically separatist, wishing the exclusion of WRF
feminists from their women’s and lesbian communities. They may not condone or
participate in any plan to create and defend WBF women’s spaces in which WRF
feminists are taking part. They may not even consider negotiating spaces where
WBF and WRF can operate in harmony. Nevertheless, there is a gulf between the
situation of both WBF and WRF, and the situation of transactivists
for whom feminism is at best a secondary value, given the very different
outlooks, life experiences, and politics of these groups. Thus WRF lesbians have every reason to ally with their WBF sisters in
the face of anti-lesbian transactivism. Indeed,
transsexual lesbian feminists really do hold to this alliance of some four
decades when push comes to shove.
One
very basic reason is that WRF who have
successfully transitioned both physically and in terms of resocialization
share the concerns of WBF about bodily privacy and sexual boundaries,
because they come with living as female in our society. Transactivists
who do not respect the lesbian culture of noncoercion
and enthusiastic consent (see Section 8) exempt neither WBF nor WRF from
pressures to socialize as female peers, date, and/or have sex with them. Such transactivists have terfed WBF
and WRF (some of whom transitioned decades ago) alike for standing up for women’s
boundaries.
Both
WBF and WRF who are lesbians face a push to turn us into generic “LGBTQ people”
whose community and culture, rather than being founded on our unique lesbian
and woman-identified heritage, are dissolved into a vague (and usually
male-defined) “LGBTQ” or “Queer” culture. Problems occur especially when the right of lesbian women to draw our own boundaries on sexual
relationships, to have vulva-only or WBF-only preferences, are
questioned. To subjugate our lesbian culture and fail to respect our bodily
autonomy is the essence of lesbian erasure, as it affects WBF and WRF alike.
From
the 1970’s to the present, this commitment to lesbian autonomy has taken
different forms, one of them being lesbian separatism, where lesbian women seek
to form distinct and independent communities, with each community defining its
own boundaries. Some lesbian separatist communities, seeking what they see as
maximal independence from the patriarchy and male culture, have defined these
boundaries in WBF-only terms, including only women who have lived their entire
lives as female. However, some lesbian separatist communities have accepted
transsexual women as members; and some transsexual as well as
natal women have embraced this separatist commitment. We resist lesbian
erasure by affirming the right to separatism as part of our heritage of
lesbian autonomy, including WBF-only groups and communities for those lesbians
who choose them.
Another
aspect of lesbian and female erasure is the refusal of some transactivists
to understand the nature of women’s oppression. The situation of a WBF
feminist who has lived under sex-caste oppression for her entire life, or of a
WRF feminist who has experienced sex-class oppression for a good part of her
life, is equated with that of a transactivist who
retains male privilege in everyday life and sometimes cross dresses or takes
part in other cross-gender expression. This leads to the idea that
self-identification alone makes one a woman — as opposed to either one’s body
or one’s everyday social condition as a woman. Claims to access female
facilities such as spas or changing rooms where nudity is expected, based on
self-identification alone or before surgery, are problematic for many women,
WBF and WRF alike.
Certain
transactivists and allies have promoted female erasure
by objecting to vulva cupcakes and celebrations; an event for women’s reproductive
rights entitled Night of a Thousand Vaginas; and other affirmations of women’s
bodies and experiences that are shamed and degraded by the patriarchy, such as
menstruation and childbirth.
To
WBF feminists, these events are an opportunity to shake off lifelong external
oppression and internalized misogyny. To WRF feminists, who have acted out of a
deep-seated need to share this embodied female reality through what might appear
extreme measures (hormones and surgery), such events — even those intended for
WBF only, a boundary to be respected — are a treasured affirmation of what
they now share in good part (although not menstruation and childbearing, for
example) with their WBF sisters. To seek an end to such events and celebrations
is an act at once of female erasure and lesbian erasure.
Shockingly,
in 2018, transactivists succeeded, after a long
effort, to frighten off the Red Tent Temple from participation in Pantheacon, an annual Neopagan
gathering first organized in the late 1970s.[7] The
Red Tent Temple movement is a nine-year-old tradition of creating space for
women to decompress and center in female company one day a month, around the
new moon.[8] This is a practice
connected with female spirituality’s prehistoric roots, without the
rediscovery of which there would be no Neopaganism and certainly no Pantheacon. In their Facebook statement (see note 7), the
Red Tent Lost Forest Lodge stated, “with great sadness” and “thoughtful
reflection,” the “difficult decision” to withdraw because “it has come to our
attention that there are some community members who are ‘irate’ and thoroughly ‘outraged’
at the very idea of a Red Tent and that our safety, privacy, and sovereignty
would be at ‘high alert’ level risk.” This state of affairs has shocked even some
heterosexual Pagan men into discontinuing their attendance at Pantheacon. It comes, along with yet another deplatforming of Max Dashu (a
perfect presenter for Pantheacon), despite Pantheacon 2019’s statement that “This year we especially
want to emphasize that PantheaCon is a Safe
Space for all. We tolerate no harassment of anyone by others. This is
called Pax Templi where
differences of opinion are set aside for the duration of the Sacred Space”(emphasis in original; irony readily inferrable).
Yet
another facet of female and lesbian erasure, highlighted by Max Dashu, is the replacement of Women’s Studies in much of
academia by Gender Studies, as if the latter could be a substitute for the
former, as opposed to a possible complement or alternative perspective (as with
chemistry and physics, which may look at some of the same phenomena in
different ways). Unfortunately, the loss of Women’s Studies departments has
tended to deprive dedicated WBF feminists of careers, with “Queer Studies” or “Trans
Studies” displacing them. Lesbian feminists, WBF and WRF, affirm the centrality
of women’s herstory and women’s culture.
Positively,
we affirm the celebration of natal female and transsexual female bodies as a
vital and liberating ongoing tradition of Second Wave feminism. We emphasize
that this tradition includes a celebration of the bodies of intersex women,
whether deemed female at birth or deemed male at birth and later transitioning
to female. Further, we urge that the Second Wave tradition is also relevant to
the celebration of other kinds of trans or nonbinary bodies and communities, with the moving memoir
of Hida Viloria, Born Both: An Intersex Life, as a powerful statement.
For
the lesbian feminist community, “inclusion” has two sides, one of them too
often neglected. The first side, better known, is recognizing that the lesbian
community as a whole includes both WBF and WRF feminists alike — and also
includes a myriad of lesbian groups and spaces with a right to draw their own
boundaries (e.g. WBF-only) without being branded “exclusionary” or “TERF.”
The
other side of inclusion is that lesbian women have a right to have our
community’s character and culture respected, not erased, and likewise our
personal boundaries. Erasure is the ultimate form of exclusion. This is why
lesbian feminists, WBF and WRF, are determined as women-identified women to resist
this erasure, however delicate the
politics involved within our community and regardless of the fears some of us
may have of becoming collateral damage as we maintain resistance together.
As
Second Wave lesbian feminists, we express unity with our sisters who are being terfed; targeted for no-platforming, like Max Dashu and many other feminists working on issues such as
sex trafficking and racial stereotyping;[9]
degraded and subjected to violent words and images like those of the recent Degenderettes art show; and sometimes physically attacked,
like the older lesbians at the San Francisco Dyke March.
In
opposing this trend of misogyny and violence against women, we also hope to
demonstrate by example how natal and transsexual women, WBF and WRF, can stand
together as sisters in the struggle for Women’s Liberation and a flourishing
lesbian feminist community and culture. In such a culture, differences lead to
open dialogue, and boundaries are respected.
As
authors of this statement, we would like to thank our sisters who have shared
ideas, criticisms, and many valuable contributions. Barbara Ruth offered very
extensive and creative feedback and additions reflecting her many decades of
activism, making this a better document, although the responsibility for any
remaining flaws and imperfections belongs to us. Joan Annsfire
wrote a powerful eyewitness account of the violence at the 2018 San Francisco
Dyke March (see Section 6 above), helping to bring about this statement as one
response, and seeking since to bring about constructive feminist community
dialogue on the issues raised by this and related incidents. Sherri Golden’s own description of the events of the march,
including violent treatment of a disabled woman, informs that report. Esther
Newton, another Second Wave activist and also a Professor Emerita of Women’s
Studies, in related discussions shared some of her wisdom growing out of a
knowledge of lesbian feminism and the lesbian community that is the basis for
her book My Butch Career: A Memoir. We additionally thank many others
who participated in dialogues growing out of the San Francisco Dyke March and
Max Dashu no-platforming incidents, and who share our
purpose of constructive peacemaking, truth, and reconciliation within the
women’s and lesbian communities.
Kes Sparhawk
Amesley grew up somewhere between poor and working
class, and organized her first protest at the age of five. In her teens and
20s, she was involved in campus issues, including defining a student women’s
commission as a radical feminist resource, being elected student body
president, and serving as board member and president of the U-YWCA. She has
four advanced degrees, including a PhD in cultural studies and an MFA from the
Iowa Writers Workshop. As a professor, while teaching classes in public
address, rhetorical studies, and public speaking, she and a colleague proposed
what became a Women Studies department at Drake University. She has also taught
courses in rhetoric, ESL, and English. She specializes in the history of the
Second Wave and other social movements, and defines “woman” as either born
female and raised as such, or acquiring the experience of being subordinated
through cultural expectations for women; ie
non-essentialist patriarchal policing.
Amesley has also worked
with survivors of sexual and domestic violence. She is a trained facilitator
and organizer, helping neighbors get drug sellers out of their manufactured
housing parks, and protecting tenant rights. She was born female, and sees the
oppression of women in the West rapidly increasing in a world where she assumed
it would decrease. She is dedicated to building a theoretical bridge between
radical/lesbian feminism and socialist theory. She has never had any aloha for
postmodernism. Her theoretical work has mostly focused on class, race, gender, and
marginalization.
Beth
Elliott is a published author and an independent recording artist whose lesbian
activism began with the 1970s. She was a local chapter officer of the Daughters
of Bilitis and a Shirley Chisholm alternate delegate
in the 1972 California Democratic primary. She was driven out of DOB and the
movement by a coterie of radical dyke feminists attempting to impose their
standards on all lesbian groups, most infamously through a false accusation public
denunciation at the West Coast Lesbian Conference (of which she had been an
organizer) in April 1973. (This is chronicled in “Fear and Loathing in
Westwood,” an appendix to the 2011 edition of her biography Mirrors:
Portrait of a Lesbian Transsexual.) She won health insurance coverage for
her SRS at Stanford in an arbitration hearing whose finding was that the
surgery was medically necessary and not a cosmetic procedure. In the early
1990s, writing for TransSisters: A Journal
of Transsexual Feminism under the pen name Mustang Sally, she was an early
critic of the emerging transgender political correctness. She later joined in
an open letter to Son of Camp Trans opposing its adversarial stance to the
Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (though still
blacklisted from performing there herself). In 2006 she drafted an amicus brief
for the beloved women’s Japanese-style bath Osento
when transactivists threatened a complaint to the San
Francisco Human Rights Commission to gain access (and therefore go naked) on
the basis of gender identity alone. In 2011, she wrote a rebuttal to the
Brennan-Hungerford petition to the UN to ban trans
anti-discrimination legislation that promoted a hostile environment sexual
harassment defense for women’s facilities privacy, only to see later
legislation and the like specifically breach that protection. She retired from
her day job as a paralegal in 2018 and is the beloved eccentric aunt of a
long-time California family.
Margo
Schulter is a lesbian feminist of the Second Wave
with transsexual history who was born in Los Angeles. In 1974-1975, she was
active in Boston, taking part in the group Lesbian Science Fiction Liberation
Theater, and writing as a member of a thriving lesbian feminist community
within the larger community of Gay Community News (GCN). Returning to
California in 1976, she took part in San Francisco politics, lesbian and
otherwise, and then moved to Sacramento in 1984 where she has continued with
more of the same. She is also interested in the music and tuning systems of
medieval and Renaissance Europe, and of the Near East.
Notes
1. Feminist scholar Max Dashu has proposed that the word “terf”
(or “TERF”) be used only as a verb, to describe the act of labelling or
branding someone as a “terf.”
2. One contributor to this statement
would prefer a term other than “reassigned,” which suggests a change
in sex/gender status that happens to a person rather than is brought about by
that person as an exercise in autonomy and self-determination. However, like
naturalization, sex reassignment for a transsexual woman is indeed a social
process with consequences not entirely under her control, as is also true for
the experience of living as a natal woman. It may be that there are better
terms, and we leave this question open.
3. See TigTog
(Viv Smythe), “An
apology and a promise,” (August 19, 2008) Finally,
A Feminism 101 Blog,
4. Comments to Heather (Heather
McNamara), “In
a radical feminist world, there is no transphobia”
(August 24, 2012). See comment of Lena (August 27, 2012 at
11:48 AM); and comment of Great American Satan (August 27, 2012 at 2:29 PM).
5. Thus see Caroline Criado-Perez, “What
Does Being ‘Cis’ Mean For A Woman,” (August
1, 2014), and “Becoming
a Woman: Trans Women and Male Violence” (January
28, 2015).
6. We emphasize, based on experience in
participating in, organizing, and providing security for events, that
organizers of such events have a positive responsibility to prepare for
possible incidents or disruptions by training in nonviolent methods of de-escalation
and conflict management. Part of this training, especially for monitors or
others at the event committed to peacekeeping responsibilities, is how to cope
nonviolently even with outright counterdemonstrators who come as adversaries to
the main purpose of an event, as well as with differences among those who are
attending the event to support that purpose (here, the celebration of lesbian
identity and culture). The lack of such preparation, training, and affirmative
nonviolent peacekeeping presence at the Dyke March contributed to what became
menacing and indeed dangerous acts of aggression and outright violence against
older lesbians who posed no threat to anyone. There can also be an element of
ageism in operation, since terfing is often targeted
at older feminists, and specifically those perceived as having Second Wave
roots. Again, we hold organizers responsible for violent attacks.
7. See their
statement, accessible on Facebook as of late November 2018: https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-red-tent-lost-forest-lodge/red-tent-pantheacon-2018/1993757523974547/.
8. http://redtenttemplemovement.com.
9. For example, feminist Nina Paley was
no-platformed in July 2018 by the Arcadia cafe in
Urbana, Illinois, which in its own words “has
made the decision to cancel the Art Salon with Nina Paley event.” As
Arcadia explained, “We do this not to silence Nina’s art or her artistic voice
but because this event is no longer about Nina’s art. There are many divided
opinions regarded the topics that have arisen from Nina’s personal stances on
certain issues. Our small business is not in a position to hold the forum for
such a debate over these issues.” It is easy to imagine basically the same
language being used to justify the practice of blacklisting (another variation
on no-platforming) during the McCarthy Era in the USA. We hold as feminists and
champions of free speech that the public interest is best served by providing
forums where we can experience Nina Paley’s art, even at the risk of delving
into some of her political stances and possibly arriving at a more
well-informed view. Note also how the no-platforming of her art show merely
because of her political opinions compares with the Degenderettes
art show (see Section 5), with its weapons and violent rhetoric against terfed women.