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Sojourner Truth did not stand up and say, "Ain't I a gender?"

Mary Daly

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I’ve been arguing with an anti-abortion hardcore christian yesterday, and despite entire thing causing me to become enraged at the blatant hatred and dismissal of women’s lives, I feel like I started realizing where is this entire viewpoint coming from.

For instance, I explained to this person that the body autonomy comes before other’s right to life, like if someone right now was dying and needs your blood, or your liver, nobody can force open you up and take whatever they need, because your rights over your own body precede other’s right to life, and they just dismissed it with “it shouldn’t be looked at that way.” I tried to explain the disastrous consequences of not giving rights to abortion to young girls and women who have high rates of dying in childbirth and during pregnancy, they dismissed it with “all of our lives are nearing to an end anyway” basically saying, so what, kill them, they would have eventually died anyway (that is murder rhetoric), I tried to advocate with women who are impregnated by force and raped, they decided to pretend this isn’t an issue, and told me women are created to give birth, when I argued it is not that we’re created to do it, but we have the means and the power to do it, and it’s on us to use it the way we want to, they said “no, women don’t have that right.”

And that one really hit me, women don’t have that right? Because if women did have that right, that would be rather terrifying, wouldn’t it? Because women are the only people on this planet who have the power to give birth, to create life, in that sense we all exactly like gods, able to bestow life when we decide we want to, when we deem it’s what we want. That’s what they’re trying to take away from us here. They want their god to be the one to decide who we give life to, and when and why and in what situation, they don’t want our free will to affect us being child-bearing machines of the world. But there is no god above women. There is no authority of life above women. We are the highest and final authority on life on earth. Once this has reached our collective minds, they are in big trouble. That’s why they fight so hard to prove that we are just incubators, not beings of free will, because once a human has a way to create life, and a free will to decide weather to do it or not, that individual becomes a god. That’s what we were all along. Source of all human life on earth.

Also, women not having the final authority of life created on earth is not only deadly and destructive for women, but for the entire human population, our society, our culture, our environment. When rights are taken away from women, life quality of everyone involved goes down. Women are the ones who will do 90% of the work for the baby, they will have to keep it alive, they will have to make sure the baby has resources to survive, they will have to protect it from death, keep it safe and cared for, so women are the only ones who actually know what bringing a child to life actually means. They’re the only ones who are qualified of making the call, not only because they’ll be lending their own body for the sake of new life, but because they’re the only ones who are able to analyze the state of resources and quality of life in their environment, including their own energy and willpower which is vital, and decide weather bringing another child into that environment is a crime or not. Nobody else actually gives a shit. And nobody else faces the consequences of this decision the way women do. Giving women absolute authority over their bodies, and over childbirth is the only way humanity can keep on going without destroying itself.

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September 15, 2017

By: Meghan Murphy

(more images/video in the link)

When Venice Allen decided it was time to talk about gender and the UK’s proposed Gender Recognition Act (which would update the 2004 GRA to remove the requirement of a gender recognition certificate and allow people to change their legal sex through self-identification alone), she assumed her fellow leftists would be on board. To Allen’s surprise, her Momentum group declined to host her proposed meeting, wherein she suggested people “get off the internet,” speak face to face, and debate the issues. She decided to move forward anyway, inviting an equal number of people from both sides of the gender identity debate to participate. She and her co-organizers arranged for the event, called “What is Gender,” to take place at the New Cross Learning, a community library in London, on September 13th. It wasn’t until Sisters Uncut, a British direct action group advocating for domestic violence services, caught wind of the event, that things became chaotic.

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Dissapointed that @newxlearning is hosting a “debate” that will only serve to increase transmisoginy. Solidarity with our trans sisters!

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“[People] started harassing the library,” Allen told me. “I went in [to New Cross Learning] and heard phone call after phone call, email after email, tweet after tweet.” New Cross Learning was inundated with demands they cancel the talk. Fearing for the space and safety of those in it, the library cancelled the event on September 12th.

Allen had contacted over 20 trans activists to speak at the event, including Paris Lees and CN Lester. Though she was turned down over and over again, Allen felt “there must be someone who is prepared to defend these laws.” She was eventually able to secure Bex Stinson, the trans inclusion officer at Stonewall, an LGBT equality charity, and Claire House, the International Programmes Manager at Stonewall, to speak. But on September 4th, Stinson pulled out, having been offered vacation time at the last minute, and House pulled out two days later, saying she didn’t feel comfortable participating without Stinson present. Allen and her co-organizers had no choice but to go on with the event, without any trans activists present.

A new location was offered up — the University Women’s Club in Audley Square — but, in an effort to keep attendees safe and prevent the new venue from threats and harassment, the location was kept secret. Attendees were told to meet at Speaker’s Corner an hour before the event, where they would be informed of the new venue location.

Keep reading

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I really think we need to stop looking at /solidarity/ as an innate process where oppressed communities NATURALLY align with other oppressed communities and instead look at solidarity as an OVERTLY coalitionary tactic, one that is borne through learning and compassion

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I really think we need to stop looking at /solidarity/ as an innate process where oppressed communities NATURALLY align with other oppressed communities and instead look at solidarity as an OVERTLY coalitionary tactic, one that is borne through learning and compassion

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The only “it’s just a phase” I went through was that weird heterosexual one

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Right now at work we have the most BABE butch construction worker doing work on the house, she's always walking back and forth past my desk and she has the most smouldering gaze I have ever experienced. How lucky am I??

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:—)

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Trying to wrap my head around what happened in London re: the “What is Gender” event so I’ll gather up all the posts I’ve seen on the matter:

Trans activists convinced a venue of cancelling an event that was supposed to be a discussion on the meaning of gender, hosted by a gender-critical transsexual male and a lesbian & attended by radfems. (Edit: this discussion was happening due to the oncoming law change in the UK to make gender identity a protected legal category instead of biological sex.) The venue claimed it was cancelled for “health and safety reasons" and “not due to outside pressure,” even though campaign groups such as Goldsmiths LGBTQ+ Society celebrated the cancellation saying “We succeeded in putting enough pressure on the organisers that they decided to cancel for ‘Health and Safety concerns’, and without the brilliant work of our Full Time Officers this result wouldn’t have been possible.” (screenshot in the New Statesman article linked below)

When radfems met up at Speaker’s Corner to go find the new venue, a 60-year-old woman was beaten up by 4 trans activists. (I love that in the notes of that post there’s a trans male saying 4 men ganging up to punch a 60yo woman is a bad thing “because then terfs get to continue to bitch and whine about how “violent” we are.” The New Statesman article also quotes a trans activist saying this male violence against women is bad because “it’s EXTREMELY unhelpful to trans women as a whole”. It’s also unhelpful to the woman who was punched in the face but who cares. Meanwhile the poor trans males unfairly stereotyped as violent are disappointed that only one woman was attacked and that “every terf” didn’t leave “bruised and bloodied.”)

“there were about 40 radical feminists/women wanting to attend the talk, and a similar amount of protesters. Women wanting to attend the talk (who mostly turned up alone) were fearful of going up to other people and asking about it, because no one knew ‘which side’ other people were on.” After the attack, the protesters followed them to the venue and stayed outside blocking the exits and chanting anti-terf chants “the whole time the talks were happening”, until the police arrived. (Ironically, one of the chants was “hate not debate”… always poignant to witness the emergence of self-awareness in primitive life forms.) Then “the discussion moved to a pub and the women were harassed as they left the venue.” (x and x)

The organisation “Action For Trans Health London” organised this protest on Facebook beforehand, encouraging trans activists to show up and disrupt the event, incl. through violence - they liked a post on their page by a trans male who said “Any idea where this is happening, I wanna fuck some terfs up, they are no better than fash” (see link). Hilariously they also encouraged “allies” (i.e. women tbh, let’s not pretend that means straight men) to come “act as barriers” between the violent TERFs and the “vulnerable”, “at risk” trans males (who were willingly coming to disrupt an event attended by people they are supposedly terrified of?) “to ensure their safety and protection.” Here a clearly frightened trans activist is desperately trying to locate the violent TERFs in order to run away from them stalk and besiege their event, saying “HERE IS A THREAD OF VENUES WALKING DISTANCE FROM SPEAKERS CORNER. PLEASE CALL THEM TO ENQUIRE AS TO WHETHER THEY ARE HOSTING THE EVENT.” 

The trans organisation later made sure to delete the page where they encouraged the protest, and turned off reviews for their organisation. They also commented “There was an incident this evening which will be hatefully and wrongly depicted by TERFs as male violence. Do not be deceived by violent attempts to discredit and erase our struggle.” A sexagenarian beaten up by 4 men = not violence. Women talking about it = “violent attempts to discredit…”  (Never have I seen this quote more beautifully illustrated.) As someone pointed out in that link, this is textbook DARVO - “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender; a reaction perpetrators of wrong doing, particularly sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior.”

The New Statesman published a shitty article about it (direct link) in which they said none of the organisations who organised the protest (Sisters Uncut, Goldsmiths LGBTQ+ Society, and Action for Trans Health London) incited violent action (except when they liked tweets by trans males about fucking up terfs?) but, on the other hand, the event was “an attack on trans people” because, “for example”, the lesbian radfem who hosted it “calls trans women ‘he’”. Ironically, they quote the pro-radfem trans male who co-hosted the event - “Just once, just fucking once, I’d like one of this lot to condemn male violence without any qualification” - and then conclude, immediately after, “No conclusions can be drawn” re: the attack and “it’s probably best to […] condemn both transphobia and violence against women.” (As someone is the notes said, this is reminiscent of Trump’s “There was violence on both sides”…)

Some of claireshrugged’s tweets about this. And a twitter thread by someone making a point re: the strategy of dehumanising “terfs” and equating them with Nazis/the alt-right in order to normalise and celebrate violence against radfems/lesbians, similar to what I was starting to figure out 6 months ago in this post - “I was talking about moderate trans allies in my last post and how they might feel uneasy about women being threatened and attacked irl by the more extreme trans activists, but honestly I think a large number of them are growing increasingly comfortable with irl violence against women […]” The New Statesman article uncritically includes a tweet saying “TERFism and fascism have similar tones and tactics.” It’s only going to get worse.

I’ll leave the last word to Victoria Smith:

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Leaving this here

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hey radfems!

im looking for book recs related to radical feminism! not necessarily just theory books (although if you can recommend some good feminist theory go for it), but also like books about womens history and biographies and graphic novels and fiction. it doesnt have to be super heavy, either, im just as interested in recs for some cute YA as i am in a 900 page tome on women in ancient history. 

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Went to a Gail Dines talk today and that woman is hilarious and a tiny human. I loved her!

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is anyone else just going through life like “yeah i just gotta get past this last difficult week and then it’s smooth sailing from there!” but like… every week

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