Lisbeth Latham
Over the past decade, we have seen a significant growth in the visibility of trans people, particularly trans women. This growth in visibility has been associated with push to promote and achieve full democratic rights and overturn transphobic legislation and policies. In response to the growth in visibility and demands of the trans rights movement, there has been a significant backlash from transphobic forces in society. While many would expect this backlash to come from the political and religious right, and much of it has come from these forces, it has also come from individuals who identify as part of the feminist and left-wing movements the most notable section of these are trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). The struggles between TERFs and trans women and their supporters have become increasingly visible and fraught. Part of the struggle, trans women have at times called on progressive forces and organisations that supposedly promote social inclusion – to not amplify or include transphobic voices - a call which is often resisted in the name of "free speech". A notable example of this has been the decision by the British left-wing paper Morning Star to publish a large number of transphobic articles in response to the proposal by the Conservative government to review the 2004 Gender Recognition Act. These defenders of anti-trans voices within both feminism and the broader left rely heavily on misrepresentation and distortion of the character and impact of the anti-trans forces and who really has power in this debate.
While there are numerous examples of transphobes being given space within supposedly progressive institutions - the decision by the Morning Star newspaper, which is associated with the Communist Party of Britain, to publish a number of transphobic articles under the guise of "defending women’s rights" is particularly emblematic. These articles have touched on a range of issues including:
There has been a range of critical responses to these articles, included a withdrawn motion at the Trade Union Congress’s LGBT conference calling for a boycott of the paper. These criticisms have sparked letters of solidarity with the Morning Star's "stand for women" as well as articles, which while critical of the anti-trans articles defending the right of the Morning Star to publish the articles as part of a "debate". These arguments are fundamentally flawed because it isn’t a question of whether the Morning Star has the right to publish the articles, but whether they should publish them.
A number of authors who have been critical of the campaigns by trans activists and their allies against transphobic feminists have argued that the transphobia within feminism and the left is fundamentally different from the transphobia of the right. In a 2016 article criticising the campaign calling on Cardiff University to withdraw it's invitation to Germaine Greer to give the University's annual lecture, Australian socialist activist Louise O'Shea wrote in Red Flag "Greer’s comments about the legitimacy or otherwise of trans women’s claim to the label "woman" are indefensible and utterly disrespectful … but it is also wrong to equate such ideas with outright bigotry and demand they not be heard". In the January 2017 issue of Socialist Review, TKS argues "There is a massive difference between Germaine Greer and the bigots shown in the recent documentary on Channel 4’s 'My Trans American Road Trip', which explored the reality of toilet bans in the United States. The documentary showed right-wingers who insisted that gender was God-given, rather than a social construct. This is a far cry from Greer’s longstanding rejection of the passive acceptance of gender roles". In making these arguments, both TKS and O'Shea assert that a greater space exists between both the views of transphobic feminism and right-wing transphobes than exists in reality. Whilst there are differences in their argumentation and the expressed intention of their aggressive defence of an immutable binary demarcation based on biological sex, both groups are sex existentialists. As a result, both groups rely at times upon each other's arguments. Right-wing US psychiatrist Paul McHugh, who has relied upon heavily by the Christian Right to buttress their arguments, in turn, relies on the work of Australian trans-exclusionary radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys.
Importantly both groups have frequently joined forces to help each other to defeat legislation advancing the rights of the trans community and to defend and extend existing transphobic legislation. Last year in the US the Women's Liberation Front launched an amicus brief in support of the legal case by evangelical Christian groups Focus on the Family and the Family Policy Alliance against the Department of Education's interpretation of Title IX Legislation against sex discrimination in education as providing protection based on gender identity and requiring schools and universities in receipt of federal funds respect the affirmed gender identity of trans students. During the debate on British Gender Recognition Act 2004 (which removed the requirement for transgender people seeking gender recognition to undergo surgery but retained medical gatekeeping and requires transgender people to live as their affirmed gender for at least two years), prominent Australian anti-trans feminist academic Sheila Jeffreys said that in opposing the legislation the people she agreed with the most was the radical right, particularly Norman Tebbit, former chair of the Conservative party.
In arguing that the transphobia of anti-trans feminists and leftists is fundamentally different to that of the political and religious right, the defenders of the place anti-trans forces within feminism and the left argue that efforts to exclude these forces from platforms, venues, and publications particularly those controlled by feminists and the left is a violation of freedom of speech. These arguments make some fundamental errors about both the amount of power that trans women have and the question of freedom of speech. The struggle for free speech is a struggle against the intervention of the state to criminalise or punish people for the ideas they articulate – or potentially against employer actions against their employees for articulating unpopular ideas – but the trans community does not have this power. Moreover, the calls of the community have been for transphobic forces to not be given a platform either in the media or be invited to speak on campus. Whilst these calls can be seen as a violation of freedom of speech. Indeed O'Shea argued it is a reflection of an authoritarian outlook within the trans community. However as both Sam Hope and I have pointed out – no one has a right to have a university-sponsored public meeting, or for that matter have an article published in publication – indeed publications have editors precisely to determine what will or won't be published and the Morning Star has refused to publish articles by activists which accuse anti-trans feminists of transphobia on the basis that such claims are potentially defamatory. The result of this position is that the defenders of "free speech" on transgender experiences take a position of actively silencing trans women and their allies who seek to call out transphobia – and in these circumstances they have a much greater power to enforce this decision.
Part of the argument to justify the defence of transphobes' "freedom of speech" and inclusion in the movement are not articulating "hate-filled bile". There a number of problems with this argument, the major one is that is primarily being made by defenders of the place of transphobes in progressive movements. Challenging the identities of the trans community and opposing basic democratic rights for the community, is a violence, it wears people down and it is part of the broader transphobic discourse in our society and aimed at both blocking the advancement of rights and winding back existing rights. Beyond the arguments about whether specific articles constitute violence, the authors are part of networks of transphobic feminists that engage in the harassment and vilification of the trans community, particularly of trans women. Even if these articles being published by anti-trans feminists are less hostile in their language than that of other transphobes, the questioning of the validity of the identities of the trans community and challenging their right is a violence which has the potential to wear down the mental health of the trans community. Just as the homophobia and transphobia – some of which was politely worded - which was unleashed during the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey in late 2017 which resulted in a 40% increase in the demand on mental health service by young LGBTIQ people. Moreover, the claims of a lack of violence rely heavily on a sleight of hand where concerns about the consequences of self-identification is framed in terms of concern for the rights of "women and girls" against "men seeking to take advantage the system to gain access to women's spaces" which might seem reasonable and not targeting trans women, except that these anti-trans feminists see all trans women as men. By contesting the presence of trans women in women-only spaces on the basis of both a rejection of their womanhood and by posing all trans women as potential rapists - writers such as Jo Bartosch are not just being transphobic. They are contributing to an atmosphere where trans women, and cis women for that matter, are at risk of violence for not only accessing women's spaces but when moving through society generally
Justifying the publication of transphobic articles and the welcoming of transphobic people in the movement just ends up being a form of gaslighting of the trans community. Where their experiences of abuse, harassment, and trauma are trivialized and explained away. Given the concern about labelling transphobes for what they are - this questioning of transphobia as a form of violence leads to a situation where the defenders of anti-trans feminists become obsessed with the "violence" of the language directed by trans women towards transphobes. The consequence of arguments defending the place of transphobes in the movement is that these arguments not only enable transphobic discourse and behaviour. It also posits the cause of "problems" in the movement between trans people and transphobes as trans people (and their allies) who object to transphobia. This can not only lead to threats of their exclusion from the movement but also makes claims of support for the trans community conditional at best and only focused on the open and naked transphobia of the right.
Of course, things don’t have to be this way. The last year has seen a number of important demonstrations of support for trans rights from the British Labour Party, sections of the British union movement along with Irish feminists which all provide examples of seriously tackling transphobia.
Since the announcement of the Review of the Gender Recognition Act in July, which followed calls by Jeremy Corbyn, the National Union of Teachers LGBT+ caucus initiated a statement in support of the right of transgender people to self-identify and have that identity legally recognised. The statement was formally adopted by National Union of Teachers at its national conference as a basis for lobbying MPs in support of adopting self-identification. When transphobic feminists and their allies in the right-wing press attacked Lily Madigan’s election as a Constituent Labour Party Women’s Officer, leading party members defended her right to stand and be elected and to participate in the Labour Party's women's leadership program. When, Venice Allan, one of the transphobic feminists who had been targeting Lily, and a regular transphobic troll on social media, turned up to a Labour Women’s Network with the intention of harassing Lily, she was asked to stop, then asked to leave and was excluded from the event. The leading party members including Jeremy Corbyn and Stella Creasy have spoken out to defend the rights of trans women and confirmed the reality that trans women are women. This has included a National Executive Committee statement, in the face of a threatened legal challenge, that confirmed the Party’s view that trans women have a right to stand for and be included on All Women Shortlists. These lists are aimed at improving the representation of women in parliament. The party has also reportedly initiated disciplinary action against members who have engaged in transphobic online harassment and vilification - with at least one member suspended pending investigation of their harassment of trans women.
In January, British anti-trans feminists announced a "We Need to Talk Tour" of Ireland to promote opposition to the Gender Recognition Act in Britain - in response Irish feminists issued a statement, 11 organisations and 1168 individuals, making it clear that the tour is unwanted colonialist intrusion by the anti-trans feminists. The statement says in part:
"Trans women and men in Ireland have the legal right to self-declare their gender. Trans people and particularly trans women are an inextricable part of our feminist community. The needs of trans people are part of our campaigns. There is no difference between ‘feminists’ spreading transphobic and transmisogynist ideas or spreading racism or homophobia. We want no part of it, and we don’t want it here. So yes, we do need to talk.
"We can see from your social media posts about your tour and its contents, that your opposition to the GRA is based on the idea that feminist organising and women’s rights will somehow be harmed through trans inclusivity and organising with our trans sisters. We know this is not true. We, the signatories of this letter, organise hand in hand with our trans sisters. Together, cis and trans, we are Irish feminism. Trans women are our sisters; their struggles are ours, our struggles theirs. They were our sisters before any state-issued certification said so and will always be no matter what any legislation says, either now or in the future".
The actions by trans allies in the unions, the British Labour Party, and within Irish feminism demonstrates clearly ways in which it is possible for left organisations can stand with the trans community, particularly trans women, but it means not just criticising the transphobia of the right, but taking a clear stand against transphobia from within feminism and the broader left.
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Lisbeth Latham
Thousands of people gathered around Australia on November 15 to hear the results of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.
While the survey delivered the result that was hoped for by these crowds, there has been a growing awareness that a majority Yes response in the survey does not necessarily deliver an easy pathway to the legislation that would deliver marriage equality. Instead, a new battle is looming, to win not just the legislation that a clear majority of Australians support, but to defend anti-discrimination protections for LGBTI people.
The past four months have been difficult for the LGBTI community. As expected, right-wing homophobic organisations have used every opportunity to mobilise every tangential homophobic, transphobic and misogynist argument they can think of to support their campaign against equal marriage. At the same time as they constructed an increasingly violent and hostile atmosphere, they sought, with the aid of the mainstream media, to paint themselves as the real victims in the debate.
Despite this effort by the right, participation in the survey at 79.5% was far higher than anyone expected and it helped to deliver a very strong Yes response in the survey, with 7,817,247 people, or 61.6% of respondents saying Yes. This has created an understandable desire for parliament to deliver quickly and pass an amendment to the Marriage Act so that it provides for marriage equality.
This was reflected in the thunderous cheer at the Melbourne Marriage Survey Announcement rally to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's call: "Today we celebrate, tomorrow we legislate". Indeed, parliament has moved quickly, with the Senate agreeing on November 15 to begin the debate on WA Liberal Senator Dean Smith’s private members bill to amend the Marriage Act. Based on the current schedule, it could be passed before Christmas.
Dean Smith’s bill
The Smith bill is seen as the consensus cross-party bill. On October 16, Labor’s parliamentary caucus endorsed the bill, arguing it “strikes an acceptable compromise” between marriage equality and religious freedoms. The Greens, who have historically opposed the inclusion of religious exemptions in the Marriage Act, have also endorsed the Smith bill. Greens leader Richard Di Natale was reported by The Guardian as saying the Greens would push for cross party changes to the bill, but would “not do anything to jeopardise” the bill if those changes were not supported.
However, the Smith bill is flawed, as it maintains the existing exemptions for religious organisations from the Sex Discrimination Act. These allow religious ministers to refuse to marry two people of the same sex or gender, if that is consistent with the beliefs of their church, and allows religious organisations to refuse to hire their venues. Also, as Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart told Fairfax Media on August 20, it would allow the Catholic Church and any other religious organisation to sack any of their employees who marries a partner of the same gender.
It would also extend an exemption to civil marriage celebrants via the creation of a new category of "religious marriage celebrants". Celebrants would be able to register as religious marriage celebrants and be able to lawfully refuse to perform marriage ceremonies on the basis of people's sexuality.
The problem with these exemptions is that they elevate the right of churches and religious individuals to hold their views above the right of LGBTI people to live their lives openly and exercise rights that the rest of the community takes for granted.
As bad as this legislation is, it could get worse as a consequence of efforts to further amend it. It has been very clear that opponents of marriage equality were not going accept the results of the survey if it did not go their way. It was always a cynical manoeuvre. Throughout the survey, the Australian Christian Lobby and other right-wing groups have sought to paint themselves as the real victims in the campaign and as the people in need of protection. The religious exemptions in the Smith bill are not seen as going far enough by more conservative forces both inside and outside of parliament, who have been threatening to move more than 100 amendments to the bill.
James Paterson’s bill
A glimpse of the types of amendments that could be moved was provided by Victorian Liberal Senator and former deputy executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs James Paterson. On November 13, Paterson announced his own bill to amend the Marriage Act – a bill that was described by Anna Brown from the Human Rights Law Centre as "a Trojan Horse, which would allow unprecedented discrimination".
Paterson's bill went much further than the Smith bill in creating "religious exemptions". It also created two categories of marriage — "traditional marriage" between a "man and a woman" and "marriage" between "two people".
The protections proposed by Paterson would have extended the right to refuse goods and services relating to marriage to any person holding a "religious belief" or "conscientious" belief not just about the nature of marriage, but about having children out of wedlock or the existence of trans or intersex people.
The bill would also have provided wide protections against discrimination for people advocating and holding views regarding the character of "traditional marriage" and provided binding directives to schools regarding the delivery of the Safe Schools or similar programs.
While the Patterson bill was seen as having no prospect of success, it was designed, as Brown put it, as "a blatant attempt to punch holes in discrimination law and introduce special privileges for religious conservatives".
On November 15, Paterson announced he would be withdrawing his bill, saying: “It is clear the majority of Senators believe my colleague Senator Dean Smith's bill is where we should start. I will now work constructively with my parliamentary colleagues over the coming weeks on amendments to ensure that the strongest possible protections for the freedoms of all Australians are enshrined in the final legislation.”
Amendments
Attorney General George Brandis indicated on November 15 he would introduce an amendment to extend the right to conscientious objection to performing a marriage to all civil celebrants.
The Australian reported on November 16 that Treasurer Scott Morrison is leading efforts to incorporate into the Smith Bill Paterson's proposed protections for advocates of "traditional marriage" and for guaranteed "parental protections". These would require schools to inform parents of any discussions that might be expected to occur in class, "which parents might reasonably object to", about marriage, sexuality and gender, and enshrine the right for parents to withdraw their children from these classes.
While there are clearly the numbers in parliament to pass the Smith bill as it is, it seems odd, after a 13-year campaign to end discrimination in marriage and a survey that showed the majority of Australian voters support doing so, that the campaign would settle for legislation that not only accepts existing religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws but goes further — without an attempt to push for a reduction in these exemptions.
More importantly, failing to maintain the pressure allows the most conservative forces inside and outside the Liberal Party to push for amendments that will dramatically expand the right of religious bigots to discriminate against the LGBTI community. They are using the threat of blowing up the party, a threat that contributed to the survey being held in the first place, to help build the numbers to pass these amendments.
Conservatives will also rely heavily on arguments that they are seeking to protect the rights of the 40% of the population who opposed any change to the Marriage Act. It is important that we continue to be in the streets to remind parliament that the overwhelming majority of Australians support real marriage equality.
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Lisbeth Latham is a member of the Socialist Alliance
[This article was originally published in Green Left Weekly #1162]
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Lisbeth Latham
While it is important that the AFL's decision is criticised and we should highlight the troubling logic of policing “womanhood”, it is also important that we look critically at the role played by anti-discrimination legislation in the AFL’s decision and how it highlights the broader weaknesses of this legislation when it comes to protecting the rights of trans and non-binary people, particularly trans women.
The AFL’s position had been “in development” since June when Mouncey was first approached by AFLW clubs to consider nominating for the draft. On October 17 the AFL made its position clear: Mouncey could not nominate on the basis “of analysis of transgender strength, stamina and physique, as well as the AFLW being in its infancy”. Based on this, the subcommittee believed Mouncey would have had “an unreasonable physical advantage over her opponents”.
The timing of the announcement, the evening prior to the draft, has been seen as deeply cynical as it prevented any action to challenge the legality of the decision.
While the AFL’s decision was supposedly based on an analysis of “transgender strength, stamina, and physique”, it is premised on erroneous assumptions about how men and women differ in general in these characteristics with a primary focus on Mouncey's height and weight — she is 190 centimetres’ tall and weighs 100 kilograms.
In asserting that Mouncey would have an advantage over other players, they ignore the diversity of physiques within humanity and assume that Mouncey’s size falls outside the realms of what a woman athlete could be. This is clearly not true, as, if Mouncey had been drafted, she would have been taller than the vast majority of players, but she would not have been the tallest player in the AFLW. That honor goes to 194 centimentres’ tall Erin Hoare, who is also a goal shooter with the New South Wales Swifts in the Super Netball competition.
As Mouncey's coach Chris Rourke pointed out, the arguments against her being eligible to play are based on assumptions that Mouncey is a physical threat to other players. This ignores the fact that women, such as 2016 Olympic shot put gold medalist Michelle Carter, who is 175 centremetres’ tall and weighs 118 kilograms, can be physically larger than Mouncey.
The AFL’s exclusion of Mouncey is an effort to police the boundaries of womanhood. It is not just bad for trans women, but for any woman who is substantially taller or more muscular than the “average”. Champion tennis players Serena and Venus Williams are regularly subjected to racist and transphobic slurs by fans and officials. The most infamous transphobic comments were from Russian tennis official Shamil Tarpischev.
While the concern over size in the ALFW has been premised on concern over player safety, as Richard Hinds pointed out on the ABC, no such concern is expressed over the size disparities in the AFL between 211 centimetres’ tall Aaron Sandilands and 173 centimetres’ tall Lewis Taylor or that Mouncey has been and will continue to play in a lower level women’s competition.
Some commentators have raised concerns that the AFL has failed to apply the International Olympic Committee’s rules regarding the participation of trans women in women’s sport. Under this rule, which Mouncey meets, a trans woman must undergo hormone therapy and demonstrate that the total level of testosterone in the blood has been below 10 nanomols per litre for at least a year before competing.
However, while the IOC rule is clearly better for trans women athletes than the approach adopted by the AFL, there are real problems with this rule. Limits on the level of testosterone for a woman to be able to compete are arbitrary and have been used to exclude women athletes such as South African middle distance runner Caster Semenya and Indian sprinter Dutee Chand. This exclusion was overturned when the Court of Arbitration in Sport suspended the International Association of Athletics Federation’s rule on the basis that it had failed to prove that women with naturally high levels of testosterone had a competitive edge.
While the AFL’s decision to exclude Mouncey from the draft is discriminatory, it is arguably consistent with the exemptions within the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Act (Vic), which the AFL relied on in reaching its decision. The law allows lawful discrimination against a person on the basis of their sex or gender identity if strength, stamina or physique is relevant. While this does not mean sporting organisations must discriminate against trans athletes, it means that they can, although the basis for doing so can be contested legally.
This reflects the reality that the law, which is supposed to provide protection from discrimination, enables transphobia in sport and other aspects of social life. Avoidance of discrimination is based on organisations going beyond the requirements of the law rather than complying with it. This reality is not limited to the Victorian law, but is a feature of aspects of anti-discrimination legislation in other Australian jurisdictions.
While we must call on the AFL to reverse its transphobic approach in excluding trans women from the AFLW, we should also call for state and federal governments to provide greater protection from transphobic discrimination in anti-discrimination legislation.
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[This article was originally published in Green Left Weekly #1159]
[Lisbeth Latham is a trans woman and a member of the Socialist Alliance.]
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Lisbeth Latham
Ever since it was announced, the federal government’s postal survey on marriage equality has been met with responses questioning both the legitimacy of the survey and demonstrating support for marriage equality — responses that have been vital for the confidence and morale of members of the LGBTIQ community.
Despite this, the right, particularly the Christian right, has demonstrated its determination to defeat the push for marriage equality through the mobilisation of homophobic and transphobic hatred and disinformation.
This opposition and the desire by significant sections of the Liberal and National parties to avoid legislating for marriage equality suggests that a clear and decisive response to the survey in support of marriage equality may be insufficient in itself to achieve that goal. We will need to build the strongest movement in the streets not just for marriage equality but in support of the broader rights of the LGBTIQ community.
The survey has been widely denounced by supporters of marriage equality. There are currently two High Court challenges to the constitutionality of the survey. These cases are scheduled for September 6, just six days before the surveys are due to be mailed out. Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who is one of the High Court litigants, has described the survey as a “sham” and argued that the government is “exceeding its powers and acting illegally”.
Despite this opposition to the idea of the survey, there is a widespread understanding that if it goes ahead, it is important that people engage in the survey in support of marriage equality.
Alex Greenwich from Australian Marriage Equality told ABC News on August 11: “Should we have to deal with a postal vote plebiscite being inflicted upon us, we have a duty of care and responsibility to make sure we campaign for marriage equality, to make sure we campaign Yes for marriage equality.”
This determination to engage with the survey is also reflected in changes in electoral enrolments since the survey was announced. Guardian Australia reported on August 24 that 90,000 young people had enrolled to vote for the first time, along with 675,000 people updating their details. At that time, a further 165,000 forms were still to be processed.
While some of these interactions with the Australian Electoral Commission would include opponents of marriage equality, the latest Newspoll on support for marriage equality indicates that 67% of those polled support marriage equality.
This support has also been reflected in and reinforced by the 20,000 people who rallied for marriage equality in Melbourne on August 26. Protests in support also occurred on August 26 in Perth and August 27 in Wollongong and further mobilisations are planned across Australia over the coming weeks.
The focus of the campaign has been on maximising both participation in the survey and the number of people who respond in support of marriage equality. Achieving a strong response in support of equality will put pressure on the government to introduce a bill to parliament and encourage its members to vote for that bill, but it may not be sufficient to secure marriage equality.
Despite this broad support, and to some extent because of it, the level of homophobic and transphobic rhetoric from opponents of marriage equality has increased.
Homophobia rising
The clearest example of this has been the appearance of homophobic posters distributed by neo-Nazi organisations in Melbourne and Sydney which have linked equal marriage with child abuse and paedophilia.
The posters drew widespread condemnation from across the community, including forcing sections of the religious right to seek to distance themselves from the posters. Lyle Sheldon, the head of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), did so by arguing the posters were part of a conspiracy by supporters of marriage equality to call into question the legitimacy of the survey. The ACL is seeking to paint the survey as a threat to marriage generally and an assault on religious freedom, with some of its more feverish supporters online suggesting that marriage equality would lead to the need to establish “underground churches”.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has sought to normalise this hatred by saying that it is part of democratic discussion around the survey and that people were likely to say things that are “hurtful, unfair and sometimes cruel” but, rather than stifle free speech, Australians should stand up for any friends and loved ones feeling distressed “at this challenging time”.
Turnbull also said: “You cannot ask for respect from the No case if you’re not prepared to give respect to the No case. The vast majority of people who do not agree with same-sex marriage are not homophobic and do not denigrate gay people.” This makes how the community has responded to homophobic attacks the problem, rather than the attacks themselves.
The reliance of the right on hatred and fear to mobilise its base is not just upsetting. It is potentially dangerous both in the lead up to the survey and in the wake of any legislation being passed.
In both the US and France, the final pushes towards marriage equality were responded to by the right escalating violence against the LGBTIQ community. This violence did not drop to the earlier lower, but still unacceptable, levels in the immediate wake of achieving formal marriage equality.
In both countries the right have continued to use marriage equality as a basis to mobilise their base to attempt to not only wind back marriage equality but also other rights that have been won by the LGBTIQ community and to block further gains. The clearest example of this push has been the growth, after the US Supreme Court’s decision in favour of marriage equality, of legislative efforts to block trans people from accessing the toilets of their affirmed gender.
The Christian Right and far-right are not as large or energetic here as those in the US and France. But we can see evidence of the right attempting to energise their base through hypocritical and hyperbolic attempts to convince themselves and their supporters that the survey and Safe Schools programs are existential threats to families and particularly children. These attempts have the potential to create a desperate desire not only to maintain the right’s rage against marriage equality but also to increase the physical threat towards visible members of the LGBTIQ community.
Need for mobilisations
This situation makes ongoing mobilisation during and after the announcement of the survey result central to maximising any result. It will also help maintain morale within the LGBTIQ community. Mobilisations will raise the pressure on the government — particularly those concerned that opposition to marriage equality is a vote loser — to push for marriage equality legislation to be passed.
Equally importantly, ongoing large mobilisations will help to create an atmosphere where homophobia and transphobia are not tolerated in our society. As part of our efforts to build mobilisations in support of marriage equality and against homophobia, it is important we build empathy and support for issues facing the broader LGBTIQ community.
We must support efforts to enable trans people to achieve gender recognition, combat broader discrimination against the community, particularly the religious exemptions from the anti-discrimination acts, and actively combat the Australian government’s ongoing racist policies targeting refugees, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
[Lisbeth Latham is a trans woman and a member of the Socialist Alliance.
This article was originally published in Green Left Weekly #1151
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Lisbeth Latham
[This is an extended version of my article published in Overland, the article had to be substantially cut to meet Overland's word limit]
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| Event Poster from overland.org.au |
Modern Australian society is riven with sexism and misogyny. We see this in the horrifying rates of violence against women: close to two women are murdered every week. Our labour market is characterised by significant vertical and horizontal segmentation causing a gender pay gap of 18.8%. Both gender violence and the gender pay gap reflect systemic and structural oppression which all Australian women face – oppression that can result in internalised misogyny that assumes the marginalisation of women is natural. This diminishes the self-esteem of individual women and encourages lateral violence between women. It is precisely this internalisation of oppression that historically made consciousness raising an essential strategy of feminist women’s only spaces. We need to construct and defend such spaces to enable women to collectively fight misogyny.
It precisely this objective that defines Brigitte Lewis’s article in Overland ‘Pussy Power in Peril’ in its discussion of the cancellation of the “Pussy Power” DJ night at Fitzroy’s Little and Oliver bar. Unfortunately, rather than challenging misogyny, Lewis’s piece attempts to justify the use of language that excludes trans women and frame attempts to challenge that exclusion as a threat to “females”. In doing so, Lewis demonstrates both a limited knowledge of the facts around the event cancellation and a heavy reliance on cissexist and transmisognyist views which exclude trans women from the feminist movement.
‘Pussy Power’, which was launched on May 9, was a night that profiled “femme DJs”. Almost immediately the event’s Facebook page received posts from patrons concerned that the event was transmisogynist. Requests were made for the event’s name to be changed. Despite these concerns the event went ahead for more than a month before being cancelled in mid-June. It has now been replaced by a new “All Girl DJ Night”, ‘Ciao Meow’ which began on July 4.
Lewis takes issue with the objections of trans women and the cancellation of ‘Pussy Power’. Lewis attributes the event’s cancellation to an “activist boycott”, implying the event’s success depended on trans women’s support (and their “activist” allies) and that trans women were obliged to attend. Implicit in this is that the success of the event was dependent on the patronage of trans women (and their “activist” allies) who were – in Lewis’s mind – obliged to attend a night that they found objectionable. There is apparently no obligation for the event organisers to build an event that people actually want to attend.
What is cissexism and transmisogyny?
Cissexism refers to attitudes and beliefs that assume that the experiences of cis people (people whose gender identities corresponds with the gender they were assigned at birth) are either normal or superior to those of trans experiences; the term also points to views that question the authenticity and validity of trans experiences. Transmisogyny refers to the intersection of transphobia and misogyny. Transphobia intensifies the misogyny experienced by trans women, and vice versa.
Why ‘Pussy Power’ is cissexist as an event name and why it excluded trans women
Central to Lewis’s defence of the event is her view that it was inclusive of trans women. She states that the “event was boycotted by activists who claimed such an event title actively excluded transgender-identified people even though the by-line read ‘gay straight transgender friendly party”. What the events’ byline actually states is that “Female, Male, transgender, gay, straight, bisexual, Agender/Neutrois, Androgyne/Androgynous, Bigender, Cis/Cisgender, Female to Male/FTM, Gender Fluid, Gender Nonconforming/Variant, Gender Questioning, Genderqueer, Intersex, Male to Female/MTF, Neither, Non-binary, Pangender, Other, Trans/Transgender, Transsexual, Two-spirit friendly event. Basically what we are trying to say is EVERYONE IS WELCOME. LET'S RECLAIM SATURDAY NIGHTS TOGETHER”. It looks like the organisers randomly threw a list of gender identities and sexualities together to appear inclusive (and co-opted the unrelated feminist movement, Reclaim the Night, into an apolitical DJ night). Stating an event is inclusive of an identity does not make it so. Indeed, an obvious first step towards including trans women would be to avoid labelling them as MTF (male-to-female). Many trans women view MTF as an offensive term and not an accurate reflection of their identity or experience.
Using ‘Pussy Power’ as a title for a supposedly feminist, inclusive, women's event is problematic. It promotes the idea that having a vagina is synonymous with being a woman. This is cissexist on two levels: it excludes those women who do not have a vagina from the category of women; it also erases the gender identity of trans men and non-binary people who have vaginas by insisting they are women. Merely stating that the event is trans-inclusive does not address these concerns – trans women do not want to be included in a women's event on the basis of being trans but on the basis of being women. The reality is, in practice, “trans inclusivity” at women-only events tends be used to signify that trans men and non-binary people with vaginas are welcome that exclude cis men. A trans woman who does not “pass” can still expect to have their gender interrogated at such events.
Even if the intent to include trans women was genuine – which I don’t think it was – it is not enough to want to include a marginalised section of the population. You have to actively seek dismantle the barriers that prevent the involvement of that marginalised group. Apart from the important reality that associating vaginas with womanhood can trigger dysphoria for some trans people, trans women, like other trans people, face the constant negation of their gender identities. Trans women in particular face active exclusion from women’s spaces and the erasure of their very existence.
Is ‘Pussy Power’ okay…because it is a subversive reclamation of pussy?
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A less subversive take on "Pussy Power"
[ResidentAdvisor.net] |
Lewis argues that ‘Pussy Power’ “was meant to be subversive, a tongue-in-cheek alliteration, a literal call to party” as a consequence of pussy having always “been a dirty word. If you’re a ‘pussy’, you’re weak, you’re a girl and you throw like one too.” There are two problems with this argument. It is questionable how transgressive the phrase “pussy power” or whether it subverts negative meanings associated with the word pussy. ‘Pussy power’ has been used in misogynistic way by chauvinists since at least 1969. Secondly, a subversive reclamation cannot justify being transphobic – particularly if you are using it to describe a space that is supposed to be inclusive of trans women.
Do trans women’s objections to ‘Pussy Power’ marginalise ‘Women with Vaginas’?
Lewis’s attempts to defend the use of ‘Pussy Power’ on the basis that not using it would marginalise "women with vaginas". This is disingenuous. Not using that title would not marginalise cis women, it simply avoids the erasure of trans women from the category of women. It might be marginalising if there was a reality in which trans women were centred in all discourses about women – but since this is not the case Lewis’s concern is simply hyperbole. Trans women’s rejection of the title of the event is not about the use of the word pussy in general. Trans women reject the assertion that possessing a vagina is synonymous with being a woman.
But cis women experience discrimination too
Lewis attempts to justify the use of the word pussy on the basis that cis women experience discrimination. She points to the existence of the gender pay gap – although she acknowledges that trans women experience more discrimination and links to the Private Lives 2 report. However, using language that excludes trans women is never justified, irrespective of cis women’s experience of discrimination. Lewis fails to recognise that trans women also experience sexism and misogyny and have a shared interest with cis women in combating it.
A broader definition of womanhood?
Lewis ends her article by acknowledging the need for “broader conceptions of what ‘woman’ is” – yet, she herself has imposed limits on the definition of being “female” as possessing a having a vagina – which she describes as being either “biologically female” or “surgically constructed”. To support this position she ends with a quote from trans feminist Julia Serano “to believe that a woman is a woman because of her sex chromosomes, reproductive organs or socialisation denies the reality that every single day, we classify each person we see as either female or male based on a small number of visual cues and a ton of assumptions. The one thing that women share is that we are all perceived as women and treated accordingly”. The visual cues that Serano is referring to, as the quote makes clear, is not whether a person has a vagina – you generally can’t tell much about a person’s genitalia by looking at them fully clothed – but the extent to which the way they dress and carry themselves fits our socialised ideal type of “woman” that we carry with us.
Woman, female, or femme?
A significant problem that Lewis and the event organisers stumble over is their use of the terms femme, female and woman interchangeably. These terms are not interchangeable. Female relates biological sex, woman is a gender category, and femme is a gender expression. Having or not having a vagina does not determine whether you are female, a woman or femme. A night that seeks to highlight femme DJs could conceivably feature people from any gender identity, because anyone can present as femme.
Lewis’s piece is riddled with cissexism and transmisogyny. Some of the worst of includes:
- trivialising trans women’s concerns with a supposedly inclusive feminist event taking ‘Pussy Power’ as its title
- treating cis and trans women as having exclusively separate gender identities
- repeated references to “biological females”
- repeated discussion of trans women’s genitalia.
Given the general tone of the article this might be explained by Lewis's general ignorance of respectful ways to discuss trans issues. However, as both an academic and a member of the board of the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Lobby you would hope that Lewis would know how to discuss transgender experience in more appropriate and sensitive ways. If we are to combat the misogyny that devastates the lives of millions of women we need a feminism that is inclusive of all women – and the continued marginalisation of trans women within feminism echoes patriarchal power dynamics which exclude, thus only strengthening misogyny.
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Below is the letter and critique wrote in response to an article, published in issue #1040 of Green Left Weekly, looking at Germaine Greer's recent transphobic and trans erasing comments during her appearance at the Cambridge Union.
Dear Jemma,
I'm writing as a trans woman, a feminist and a Marxist to express my concern about your recent article addressing Germaine Greer's recent comments regarding transphobia at the Cambridge Union. As I have attached a line-by-line critique of your article, I will try to keep this letter brief.
Before I start - I don't know you or how you identify but from how your article positions people I am assuming you are a white cis woman - if those assumption are incorrect I apologise.
When I first saw your article on Facebook the person sharing it said it was positive that GLW had run an article on the issue. While I agree with that sentiment I had a sinking feeling just from the title alone as it reads like an endorsement of Greer's position. When I read your article I found it hard to follow your argument. I felt that your article misses the intent of Greer's statements - which are to deny the validity of the identities of trans people generally and trans women particular. Greer's historic statements and writings around the nonexistence of trans women and that they are instead “deluded men” “masquerading as women” with object of infiltrating women’s spaces, is a position which has a long tradition within transphobic discourse within feminism and broader society.
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While your article attempts to combat Greer's gender essentialism it does so inconsistently and in ways that could be seen as both cissexist and as erasing of the experiences of intersex women. Your article also does not address Greer's obsession with "smelly vaginas", which I think reflects an embracing, on Greer’s part, of misogynistic disgust at women's anatomy.
I think you are correct to say that having or not having a vagina does determine a person's status as a woman. However I don't think it is correct to say that gendered violence against women has nothing to do with vaginas. Indeed much violence against women, including street harassment - is premised on women having vaginas.
The use of statistics to discuss transphobia is problematic both in the casual way it is done but also because it both ignores the everyday transphobia that people experience. In addition to the very real threat of violence there are also difficulties involved in navigating medical system to access assistance in presenting as their affirmed gender this combination results in significant levels of psychological injury amongst trans people.
The discussion of statistics is made more problematic with your argument that men are not responsible for violence against women (including trans women) but instead the system. Beyond reifying the system, such an argument denies the agency of those who commit violence towards women – while this violence is based on men embracing sexists ideologies that legitimate their dominance and entitlement to control women – this adoption of sexist ideology by men is not simply a consequence of the power of ideology but as a consequence of these both experiencing material privilege from the subordinate position of women but also their perception that the liberation of women as threat to their own position.
Ultimately there are a number of sections of the article which while trying to explain the experiences of trans women, which would not be seen by trans women as reflecting their experiences and instead would be seen as examples transmisogyny. It is my opinion that when an article is going buttress it’s argument based on what it is to be a trans woman, that the article needs to be either written by a trans woman or written in close consultation with trans women. If this has been the case then it is really important that it is clearly stated that it is not cis people speaking on behalf of trans people. Otherwise you risk having an article which is patronising and alienating at best and outright transphobic at worst.
I hope that both you and the Green Left staff take this letter in good faith and that you find my comments helpful in addressing issues relating trans issues in the future. I’m happy to discuss the content of both this letter and the critique of the article.
In solidarity
Lisbeth Latham
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