No Debate. TERFs: Hating, Harming and Harassing Trans People.

TERFs have harmed and harassed trans people for more than 40 years. Their actions demonstrate that they are not interested, as they would have everyone else believe, in 'legitimate debate' about trans people...

The 1980s' TERF – Republican alliance against trans people continues...

The battle to withdraw California’s AB 1266 ordinance, which allows trans kids to use the bathroom appropriate to their gender, has been joined by the TERFs. The TERF community has decisively taken the side of the Tea Party, right-wing “Christian” organisations and anti-gay and lesbian groups like the Pacific Justice Institute to try and prevent trans children in California’s schools from using the bathroom facilities appropriate to their gender.

Make no mistake the consequences for California’s young trans people if this ordinance were to be withdrawn would be catastrophic and deadly. Children would be forced to use inappropriate bathrooms, children would be beaten up at school and most trans children would probably start school refusing in large numbers. Every trans child would be outed every day and constantly spotlighted as different. Effectively denied access to education, most young trans people would be left with no alternative but to exist on society’s margins rather than have careers and jobs like everyone else. Many would inevitably end up in sex work and in jail (the wrong jail at that), these people would effectively be placed in situations where they are vulnerable to assault and murder, which is inherent in sex work, especially if you are trans. If this protection is withdrawn young trans people will die.

The TERF community appears to have thrown its weight behind promoting a completely inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and entirely fabricated report of a Trans child supposedly "assaulting" girls in bathrooms in a school in Colorado. The Pacific Justice Institute has admitted that this storywas a lie but employed the classic TERF argument that a trans girl entering the girls’ bathroom constituted violence against girls per se. There has clearly been contact between TERFs and the PJI on this issue as the PJI are resorting to the old TERF canard that “trans people harm women simply by their existence.”

The involvement of the TERF community at the highest level in this miserable and sordid mendacity draws on an alliance between TERFs and the Republicans which was established in the 1980s, when they colluded with the Right-wing Republican administration to have healthcare provision for trans people made unavailable. A direct result of this was that trans people, and especially ethnic minority trans people, were forced into sex work, not only to fund their own medical treatment but to keep body and soul together.

Until now TERFs across the board have denied this, although they almost certainly realise that government papers released to historians and archivists will, at some point in the future, reveal hard evidence of this connivance. Yet despite TERFs being the only group campaigning against trans people in the 1980s they have repeatedly, if unconvincingly, tried to deny links with the Republicans and right-wing groups. Today their denials will be viewed as no more than cowardice.

Yet now the main consequence of the TERF collaboration with Republicans and anti-LGBT right-wing “religious” groups and their deliberate lies is that documentary evidence of the TERF-Republican alliance against trans people in the 1980s is no longer required. By their actions today they have demonstrated that this alliance, to target one of the most vulnerable and powerless groups in American society, is very much alive. They have effectively confirmed their ongoing association with Republicans to harm trans people established 30 years ago and that this behind-the-scenes collaboration is continuing apace.

Doubtless the TERF community will deny this. Of course TERF desperation to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions in inflicting violence and murder by proxy on the trans community is understandable if pathetic. However the consequences of this alliance in terms of their own credibility are even more devastating. The Tea Party, the Republicans in general, right-wing “Christian” groups, and assorted extremist bigot groups of the right-wing fringe are not merely anti-gay and anti-lesbian, they are anti-feminist. They oppose women’s right to choose on abortion and a whole host of other measures that effectively amount to state control over women’s bodies.

Actions speak Louder than words

What these TERF actions say about them is volumes more than the totality of misleading, mendacious and malicious words uttered by them. By siding with the enemies of women, the enemies of feminism and the enemies of lesbian, gay and bisexual people they have shown that they can no longer be regarded as feminists. Just as many trans people, and other feminists, have long suspected their "feminism" is nothing more than a cover for obsessive hatred. These people are not and have never been feminists. Feminists do not work with the Republican Tea Party; the enemies of everything feminism stands for.

Their determination to harm and bully trans children by proxy, to fight for discriminatory legislation with the deliberate intention of placing young trans people in California in positions where they are particularly vulnerable to violence and murder demonstrates the depth of their hatred. Make no mistake this is TERF violence against trans people pure and simple. The fact that they are prepared to inflict this violence by proxy onto some of the youngest and most vulnerable trans people reveals more about the REAL intentions of the TERF community. The controller of the pilotless drone in his bunker in Nevada is still responsible for the death and destruction caused; just because the TERF community has decided to campaign to place trans people in situations where they are vulnerable to violence does not make them any less guilty of the resulting violence, just more cowardly.

In recent months a number of ”TERF writers have protested that trans people have been 'silencing' legitimate TERF debate about trans people.The actions of the TERF community in this affair have demonstrated that this is not the case. The TERFs are not at all interested in legitimate “debate” about trans people, nor have they ever been. They are only interested in hating, harassing and harming trans people, usually by proxy. The sordid affair of these TERF/extreme-right-wing lies about this trans child has exposed, not merely their ongoing collaboration with the enemies of feminism and LGB equality but the untruth in the assertions of these TERF writers that TERFs just want legitimate debate. They have clearly demonstrated by their actions that they are not interested in debate, they are interested only in harming trans people.

Postscript on "TERF".

The only remaining issue for trans people to consider is what to do with the descriptor “TERF”. ‘Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist’ was originally designed as a factual descriptor (although TERFs would have us believe that it was intended as a deliberate insult, but they would wouldn’t they?). My suggestion is that we keep the acronym “TERF” but alter the meaning slightly, because these people are clearly not “feminists” and there is nothing “radical” about hatred, but replace the “Radical” with “Right-wing” and “Feminist” with “Fanatic”; “Trans Exclusionary Right-wing Fanatics” still gives us the TERF acronym and is a much more accurate descriptor of this group of haters.

Cummings, Gove and intelligence

The outburst of hysteria by education un-expert Dominic Cummings about how genetics are the only determinant of intelligence is itself so ignorant that it beggars belief that this man got a degree at a respectable university himself. The senior management team at Durham must be wondering how they can counter the negative publicity of being associated with such an unintelligent and uninformed diatribe.  It is scary that Cummings, who appears not to believe in education, should have been employed by Gove at the Department for Education.

Cummings completely ignored recent research which clearly demonstrates how exposure to stress inhibits many important mental functions, I suspect this is something we will find out more about as more research is carried out in this area. However this research drives a coach and horses through his genetic determination of intelligence theory, and that is just for starters.

He also, unintelligently, argues that there are very few excellent teachers in the UK. In effect this is just an unsupported assertion, because he bases this idea on absolutely no data whatsoever. Again this is neither intelligent nor educated. Any fool can say something like that, but until he does so in a convincing way, with reference to actual hard data, he might as well be making caveman “ug” noises for all the validity his utterances have. Either the PGCE course on which I teach produces pretty much all the excellent teachers in the UK or he has based his figures on pure guesswork. Again, not a very bright thing to do.

But his doctrinaire and extreme right-wing educational obsessions pose a serious problem for Gove. Gove and his department have, over the last 18 months been engaged in what has amounted to a crusade to impose performance-related pay on teachers. But if one of his main advisers is telling him that teaching, in effect does not matter, that children’s intelligence is determined by genetics, then that seriously undermines Gove’s case for performance-related pay for teachers. If any given child’s educational performance is pre-determined from birth then teachers can do very little to change this, their performance has no bearing on educational outcomes. If this is the case then performance-related-pay is never going to deliver any improvements in education at all, ever.

The fact that Gove has not repudiated Cummings’ views suggests that he does not disagree with them, so we have to ask why, in that case, has he introduced PRP, when it cannot work?

There are two possible answers to this; firstly that PRP is not designed to improve educational standards for children, as we have been told; it has some other purpose (such as divide and rule, cutting the amount teachers are paid, giving heads a tool with which to control and manipulate teachers, etc). The second is that Gove is, apparently like his adviser, ignorant of the contradictions within his own ideology.

Silencing TERFs.

TERFs persist in childish accusations that trans people are silencing them, but exactly who is silencing who? The answer may surprise you...

The subtle violence of TERFism has in many ways intensified in recent years. Making use of the panoptic effects of the internet they trawl the web attempting to find ways to out and harass trans people. Outing transguys who use video, harassing trans women on dating sites, outing trans people to employers, outing trans children to their schools, attempting to bully trans children by proxy through the parents of other children are but a few of their cowardly tactics. Some TERF academics have even threatened to deliberately introduce transphobic elements into their Gender Studies courses, something that most students are likely to be able to see through, but also something worth monitoring…

Yet in spite of all this in the topsy-turvy universe of Planet TERF, where everything is the opposite; the myth that trans people are attempting to ‘silence’ them is still propagated. Their use of the panopticon, their lies, their threat to indoctrinate students, their myths of silencing are all they have left.

The reality, of course is quite the opposite. Harassment of trans people who argue against TERFs is common, and recently they have used legal threats to try and silence us and our friends and supporters. Prosperous, white, cisgender, secure, middle-class TERFs using their positions of privilege to silence and intimidate trans people from much less privileged backgrounds.

Yet TERF attempts to silence trans people have not stopped there; some are now attempting to deny trans people the language we need to articulate, describe and make sense of our circumstances. TERF efforts to argue that “TERF” (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) is an insult or a discriminatory word are matched in their dishonesty by their attempts to convince that dwindling group of people who will listen to them, that “cisgender” is supposed to be an insult rather than a simple descriptor of people who are not trans; no more of an insult than “heterosexual”.

Violence can be overt, covert, tacit, abusive, subtle or indirect, but the ideology of TERFism now requires its use. As its core ideology has failed it cannot exist without becoming more abusive, violent, and complicit in atrocities perpetrated by groups that are the enemies of feminism. TERF arguments against the existence of trans people have all been comprehensively discredited, and remain so no matter how often they are restated. Once you strip away the veneer of argument and discredited justifications, all that remains is the raw hatred. This is what TERFism has become.

But the tide is turning, and it is the activities of the TERFs, which are now centre stage. So TERFs now regularly delete or conceal their own material from the internet as it is used by trans people to demonstrate to others exactly what they are like.  I recently needed to explain to a neutral journalist about the TERF problem, all I had to do was point him in the direction of a couple of TERF hate-sites and lend him my copy of The Transsexual Empire. He called me the next day saying “I see exactly what you mean, I had no idea!” They claim trans people are silencing TERFs, yet the truth is that TERFs are now silencing themselves as trans people use TERF material to expose their hate.

So let the TERFs speak, (although they should still be no-platformed, which is different from censorship) they condemn themselves by their own utterances. Some of the material published in faux-radical online magazines this year has been particularly valuable for exposing TERFism, especially when used in conjunction with other elements of their output. Exposing TERFism has rarely been so easy.

But in a sense TERFs are right, trans people do silence TERFs, but not in the way they would have others believe; we silence them by getting up every morning, we silence them by interacting with others everyday online, in our social lives and at work, we silence them by marrying or living with our partners, we silence them by bringing up our children, we silence them by telling our stories, we silence them by walking the Earth as trans people have done for centuries before us, we silence them by our very existence. 

Good News: Success in Thessaloniki...!?

I have just received this email via TGEU from a transactivist in Greece;

"As a follow up of the situation of last months in Thessaloniki (systematic pogrom against trans women from police), we would like to give you some info.

 

Until 21st of July that we managed to have a meeting with the head of police of Thessaloniki, the pogrom have stopped. We had only sporadic persecutions (at the beging of September) of 2 trans women, but it was not in the systematic way of massive detentions, and the attitude of the police has totally changed.

 

Also yesterday, two representatives of Greek Transgender Support Association had a meeting with Mayor of Thessaloniki, Mr Boutaris.

 

We had a totally agreement with Mr. Boutaris about the persecutions of trans women. He said that it is not accetable, and that he will talk with head of police of Thessaloniki.

The other subject was the discriminations and exclusions that transgender people face - mainly in work and employment.

He promised that he will do his best in this directions, and also, he promised that he will do everything he can for the employment of trans people in Municipality (to be more specific he told us word for word: "I will employ a trans person in my office as an example of good practice to be followed").

At the end he told us that he wants to have the open speech of our TDoR event that we will do for first time this year in Thessaloniki, and that he is determined as long that he's a Mayor to be advocate to transgender issues, and to start a constant contact with us.

 

We hope that Mayor will keep all his promises."

This goes to show that, in many cases, the best trans activism is the quiet transactivism. Talking to people is usually better than shouting at them.

Chelsea Manning - Cisgenderism at Wikipedia

In a few weeks time I will be publishing the first of a number of academic papers about what I have termed "cultural cisgenderism".

Distinct from transphobia, cisgenderism is a culture which

• erases trans identities, 
• views gender as entirely binary, unchangeable and fixed at birth and 
• something which should be imposed on others from outside. 

It is a culture, however which, although prevalent throughout Western society, is almost entirely tacit; this means that it is a culture that is not expressed in language and which is communicated without language. It is just something people know, without having to talk about. The great French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called this sort of thing a "doxa". In other words it is a culture (or ideology, these concepts are closely linked and overlap) to which people are largely unaware they are adhering.

Cultural cisgenderism is the problem at Wikipedia. Although Sue Gardener's blog excellently explains some of the internal problems at Wikipedia over the way the decision to change Chelsea Manning's entry back to Bradley, it does not explore the wider cultural influence of cisgenderism which has also had an influence on Wikipedia. Here we see all three main features of cultural cisgenderism at work. Wikipedia, by changing Chelsea's name back, has, in effect, erased her identity, it has viewed her identity as unchangeable, but mostly it is engaging in the external imposition of gender.

The external imposition of gender is one of the most significant features of cultural cisgenderism, not merely because it disempowers trans people and hands the power to decide someone's gender to other people, but because it is largely viewed as unproblematic by those who are doing it. As such the individuals at Wikipedia who consider that they have a right to vote on Chelsea Manning's gender, clearly do not view their actions as in any way unreasonable. Yet they have clearly decided that they know better than Chelsea Manning what her name and what her gender are.

Of course there are transphobes who deliberately misgender people as well, and one of the things to remember about cisgenderism is that it often has the same effect as transphobia. This apparent isomorphism should not blind us as to the causes. It is entirely possible that some people in Wikipedia are transphobic but it is unlikely that a large number are, so this needs to be put down to cisgenderism,  and dealing with cisgenderism is different from dealing with transphobia.

As anyone who has had any dealings with TERFs (Trans Exclusionary "Radical" "Feminists") knows, their transphobia is an individual prejudicial attitude, which, like racism, rapidly descends into verbal violence and name-calling, and is based on an irrational fear and hatred of trans people. This is something which cannot be reasoned with. You can no more have a reasoned discussion with a TERF than you can with a White Supremacist, their prejudice is based on nothing more than emotional hatred.

But cisgenderism is something which, when discussed in a reasoned and non-accusatory way, and a way which seeks to educate rather than blame, is possible to overcome because it is not based on an emotional hatred in the same way transphobia is.

It is important to realise that everyone is affected by cisgenderism, it is a culture to which we are all exposed, whether transgender or cisgender, from early on in our lives. It is a culture we internalise without realising it. It is one of the reasons trans people have so many problems in coming out, in being ourselves and in fitting into society. It is also the reason why Chelsea Manning was not able to come out as herself when she was 5, and it may have been one of the reasons that she chose to join the army.

Because cultural cisgenderism is a tacit culture/ideology which is rarely expressed or communicated in words, the goings-on at Wikipedia have thrown up a rare opportunity to observe cultural cisgenderism manifested in langauge. As such it is important that their discussions are recorded and made available to analyse this phenomenon and illustrate its functioning and its effects.

ACTION: Transphobia in Schools

The Tories have deliberately excluded trans children from its inclusion statement for the final draft of the National Curriculum. This appears not to be an oversight but a deliberate decision.

In the February 2013 the draft National Curriculum document included "gender identity" as part of its inclusion statement;

https://www.education.gov.uk/consultations/downloadableDocs/National%20Curriculum%20consultation%20-%20framework%20document%20(2).docx (Page 9 section 4.2)

The Final version, published in July excludes "gender identity" entirely, it has quite simply vanished;

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/210969/NC_framework_document_-_FINAL.pdf (Page 8 section 4.2)

As such it must be assumed that this is a deliberate exclusion rather than what trans people have become used to, being excluded through thoughtlessness. As such it is difficult to come to any conclusion other than that it is deliberate transphobia. The category "gender reassignment" is enshrined in the Equality Act 2010 and by excluding it as a conscious act, the DfE appears to be attempting to harm the interests of transgender children.

I have just made the Freedom of Information request to the DfE;

"The final version of the new National Curriculum, published in July, in its "Inclusion" section on P 8 (section 4.2) excludes "gender reassignment" whereas this aspect of diversity was included in the Feb 2013 draft version. Please could you send me the minutes of the meeting at which the decision was made to exclude this protected characteristic and please could you also send me a copy of the Equality Impact Assessment made prior to the exclusion of this protected characteristic. Please also send me copies of all emails, memos, discussion documents or protosals in which the exclusion of "gender reassignment" was discussed, mentioned or proposed."

If anyone can think of anything to add their FOI page is here;

https://www.education.gov.uk/help/contactus/dfe


I would suggest everyone to write to their MP and as him or her to ask Michael Gove. Secretary of State for Education why he has excluded "gender identity" from the final version of the National Curriculum inclusion statement, and if he will ensure that it is re-included. You can write to your MP here;

http://www.writetothem.com

This does not appear to be an oversight but represents a deliberate act of transphobia, we cannot allow trans children to be excluded from school life, it is vital that they are included in everything to do with schools.

The most chilling newspaper editorial ever written.

The one thing you can rely on with the Tories is that you can always tell what their real policy priorities are by listening to what they say. However it is not quite a simple as it appears; you can tell what the Tories main policy aims are from the opposite of what they are saying.

So when Michael Gove made a speech a couple of months ago against homophobia (but not transphobia) in schools, this was the forerunner of the huge number of his academies adopting homophobic policies. He gave them the freedom to adopt their own policies, so he has to take responsibility when they do so. The silence from Gove on this has been deafening.

When the chancellor, George Osborne tells us "we are all in this together" you know we are definitely not in it together; the rich have become immensely more wealthy since 2010, boosted by his tax cuts and wilful reluctance to collect billinos of pounds in taxes owed to the nation from the wealthiest companies. The rest of us get poorer, the 1% get richer at our expense.

So when David Cameron made a great show of championing a "free press" after Leveson, fighting to allow the billionnaire-controlled propaganda machine to retain its own toothless and biased "self-regulation" system, one had a feeling that there would be more to this than met the eye. It didn't take long for this to be revealed. Today the editor of the Guardian published what has to be the most chilling editorial ever written by the editor of a newspaper. In it Alan Rusbridger described how government agents entered the Guardian's HQ and ensured that hard drives containing data about NSA and GCHQ surveillance of ordinary people worldwide, through the internet, were destroyed. Cameron talked press freedom whilst attacking the Guardian's reporting on how his government is watching us. There can be no greater hypocrisy. Over Leveson Cameron talked press freedom, yet only a few months later he was sending his goons in to destroy the evidence of how his government has talked freedom and "rolling back the state" whilst in fact it has greatly increased state interference in areas where the state should not go; everyone's personal emails, social networking and internet activity. Ask a Guardian reporter or David Miranda whether, as William Hague infamously asserted "The innocent have nothing to fear."

These are important issues concerning freedom and personal liberty and state transparency, things which Cameron was all talk about just before the election. All talk and no trousers apparently. He has made no comment at all about these crucially important issues, indeed all we have heard from him is that his back is too bad to go deer hunting. This is not just a disingenuous silence on his part (have you noticed how Cameron, Gove, Osborne etc never speak about issues like this, they just shut up and ignore anything about which they could be criticised) but a rank cowardice. I said three years ago that Cameron was not the Prime Minister, that view has been greatly reinforced, he is simply a leader of a despotic cabal of the rich and powerful who wish to use state apparatus (while saying they are anti-state) to crush dissent and make themselves richer at our expense.