Gendered violence is a major killer of trans people, but it’s not the only one, writes Natacha Kennedy
Anti-trans activists have been campaigning against trans people’s human rights since the 1970s, and one of them infamously called for trans people to be ‘morally mandated out of existence’. At least two conferences of anti-trans activists have taken place in London this year, and this group has now started to actively campaign against trans children’s rights. Their campaigns engage in a mixture of misrepresentation, exclusion and harassment. They have tried to put trans people in harms way, including, for example, attempting to force trans people to use the toilets of our birth assigned genders, thereby deliberately putting us at risk of violence. At its worst this is an attempt to engineer transphobic violence by proxy. I myself have been a victim of their abuse, misrepresentation and (offline) stalking, and could bore readers rigid with a long list of examples of things they have done to harm trans people as a group and individually, including at least one trans child. Too often this has been as the hands of those who would describe themselves as ‘radical feminists’.
Consequently, and for obvious reasons, the descriptor TERF – which stands for trans exclusionary radical feminist – was originally popularised by other radical feminists who did not want to be associated with those who engage in these kinds of actions.
Sarah Ditum’s article on Progress protests use of the term TERF. The problem is that those who claim to be radical feminists but who oppose trans people’s rights are often keen to blur the distinction between themselves and other groups. They regularly claim to speak not merely for ‘radical feminists’ but for ‘all feminists’ and others. Indeed, a prime example of this is found in Ditum’s article: ‘no evidence at all that the words of radical feminists cause violence against trans people.’
The attraction of this obfuscation is not difficult to understand; it makes it appear that one of those groups opposing trans people’s rights (and indeed existence) is more widely representative than it actually is. So it is hardly surprising then that trans people, and our feminist allies, use a descriptor that seeks to clarify this deliberately blurred distinction. If a group that has campaigned for decades to oppose trans people’s rights seeks deliberately to obscure the lines between themselves and others, a tactic that obviously has understandable attractions for them, then they are at least partly complicit in the continued use of a term that seeks to expose this deliberate conflation.
Furthermore anti-trans activists tend to have considerably greater access to the media than trans people, indeed Germaine Greer’s anti-trans outbursts make headlines all over the world and Ditum regularly opines unopposed about trans people in New Statesman. Rarely is the opportunity to respond extended (so I am very grateful to Progress for being an exception). There are those who suggest that the only way to oppose views you do not like is engage with them, expose them and argue with them. Yet when the crunch comes trans people’s arguments get only a fraction of the airing as those of anti-trans activists. So to claim persecution over a term that their own actions have helped reinforce appears to be little more than victimhood through a loudhailer.
However it is not merely this obfuscation that was problematic for me about Ditum’s piece. Her attempt to assert that the murder of trans people is solely down to ‘male violence’ should not go unchallenged. It is probably the cause for many murders but there are also killings that are the direct result of transphobia and of people regarding trans women as men. As part of a team that organises an annual Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil, I have, on many occasions had to collate the grim statistics on how trans people were murdered. There are plenty of trans women who have been murdered because they were trans, and would not have been were they cisgender women. There are dozens, possibly hundreds, of trans people killed in drive-by shootings and other deliberate assassinations. One trans refugee from Guatemala told me how it is so dangerous to be a trans woman in her country that she knew of no trans women there over the age of 35; they had all been killed by then.
I suspect anti-trans activists will continue to misrepresent trans people, especially trans women. I also suspect they will continue to misrepresent their own case by claiming to speak for a considerably wider constituency than they actually represent. In doing so the validity of their claims to victimhood will always be undermined, by their own disingenuousness. Anti-trans activism is not what it seems.
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Natacha Kennedy is a former trans officer of LGBT Labour
Transrights usurp women’s and homosexual’s rights. That explains the opposition you get, its as simple as that.
“Ditum regularly opines unopposed about trans people in New Statesman”
Wow, a journalist expresses an opinion you don’t share unopposed. You’re right, Natacha, it’s just not good enough. Thank heavens we have you and your fellow progressives to protect us from free speech.
There are so many inaccuracies and what seems like deliberate misinformation in this article. It starts with the claim that a feminist called for trans people to be ‘morally mandated out of existence’ – this is often quoted but is actually a misquoting of Janice Raymond who said “the issue of transsexualism has profound political and moral ramifications; transsexualism itself is a deeply moral question rather than a medical-technical answer. I contend that the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence.” She went on to explain “what this means is that I want to eliminate the medical and social systems that support transsexualism and the reasons why in a gender-defined society, persons find it necessary to change their bodies. Nowhere do I say ‘transsexuals should be eradicated on moral grounds’.’’ She adds: “the words of those who echo this falsehood, has overtones of ethnic cleansing and make it sound like I want to eliminate transgendered persons from the face of the earth.”
Claiming that “They [feminists] have tried to put trans people in harms way, including, for example, attempting to force trans people to use the toilets of our birth assigned genders, thereby deliberately putting us at risk of violence. At its worst this is an attempt to engineer transphobic violence by proxy” is also nonsense. There have been no reported accounts of transwomen experiencing violence in toilets of their ‘birth assigned gender’ (male) and no evidence that feminists have added to the violence that transwomen face.
With regard to “I myself have been a victim of their abuse, misrepresentation and (offline) stalking, and could bore readers rigid with a long list of examples of things they have done to harm trans people as a group and individually, including at least one trans child.” I think we can all agree that there are unpleasant people who revel in abusing others – I have been abused, misrepresented, stalked and threatened by transwomen. I can also name countless women and girls that have been ostracised and attacked for having dissenting views about gender identity. Personally, I wouldn’t extrapolate that to be a defining action of a community – just an example that people don’t know when to stop.
The history of the term ‘TERF’ given by Natacha is also inaccurate, “the descriptor TERF – which stands for trans exclusionary radical feminist – was originally popularised by other radical feminists who did not want to be associated with those who engage in these kinds of actions.” The term was actually coined by a liberal feminist – whose views are diametrically opposed to radical feminists. This is an ‘other’ defined term, no radical feminist would describe herself or other women as such. Beyond that it’s also entirely inaccurate, radical feminism is inclusionary of trans men (who are female by birth) it only excludes males – as a female liberation movement and it’s been that way since the 1960’s prior to the rise of transgender activism. Looking at how the word ‘TERF’ is used now also shows that it’s not a ‘simple’ description – it’s largely used as a slur, and often at women who are not radical feminists.
The attack on Sarah Ditum is simply unfair, she doesn’t represent a blur but rather a shift from a liberal feminism which embraced ideas around gender identity to a more radical approach and rejection of such. There are many women on this journey, and many more who are simply afraid to speak out because of the orchestrated backlash they face when they start to question ideology around gender identity.
When Sarah says there’s ‘no evidence at all that the words of radical feminists cause violence against trans people’ she’s entirely accurate. Where is it? It is men who commit violence against trans people not feminists. Questioning the veracity of claims about the existence of ‘gender identity’ is not a violent act. Indeed for many feminists, for decades and still today, ‘gender’ (that is the social and cultural baggage placed on people because of their sex) is exactly the problem that needs to be dealt with for females to be liberated. That’s not an obfuscation, that’s over a century of feminist dialect.
The suggestion that radical feminists are given greater access to the media than transactivists is also ludicrous. From the Guardian to the Daily Mail, trans issues are headlined whilst radical feminists are routinely no platformed, banned and edited into neutrality. Radical feminism now only exists within personal blogs and social media, and is much misaligned whilst in comparison transgender issues reign at the forefront of media everywhere without a feminist right to reply.
With regard to the deaths of transpeople I’ve no doubt we’d agree that one is too many and the 1,731 killed in the last 7 years needs action – just like we’d agree the 66,000 dead and millions of missing women per year does. But I’d urge Natacha to review the evidence. When it happens globally (in the UK there’s been 2 deaths in the last 7 years so it’s difficult to postulate) the death of transpeople is overwhelmingly transwomen of colour involved in prostitution. In the US transwomen are killed by punters, by intimate partner violence and by other transwomen. So the real issue is very much male violence. Evidence that points to transphobia is few and far between.
There is much hyperbole around the violence/deaths of transwomen, and this is where the real disingenuousness and claims of victimhood lie. But ultimately there is a real issue here and using dead transwomen to score points against feminists doesn’t do anyone any good, especially those transwomen at risk.
Riiight… she doesn’t want to morrilly mandate trans people out of existence, she just wants to morrilly mandate trans bodies out of existence. Yeah, that’s totally different :/
Being trans is not a choice, any more than being gay, or white. Nobody would go through the painful and d What TERFs and other anti-transpeople do is simply bullying others, fascism, however you try to dress it up.
I don’t, and can’t know their reasons, I avoid imputing motives but I guess it will be much the same as any other bully or fascist.
Thanks, Squirricorn. It’s not new that men blame their troubles on women. But it continues to be annoying.