#Gender Liberation Movement

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Capitol police quickly issued a warning to the protesters — which included U.S. army whistleblower Chelsea Manning alongside author and activist Raquel Willis — to disperse or face arrest, including sexual misconduct charges. Following those warnings, they were arrested and escorted from the building by Capitol police. 

The protest follows Johnson’s announcement in November that transgender women are not allowed to access women’s restrooms and facilities in the Capitol and House buildings — an announcement that was not accompanied with any information about enforcement, or how such a policy would be carried out. The group called for elected officials to block Rep. Nancy Mace’s proposed bill that would ban trans people from bathrooms in museums, national parks and other federal property and for Democratic members of Congress to filibuster and block the bill if or when it comes to a vote. 

“This bathroom sit-in sets an example of the righteous defiance and solidarity needed under a second Trump administration,” Gender Liberation Movement said in a press release, citing support from transgender and cisgender participants. The group said survivors of sexual violence also joined the protest to demand that proponents of bathroom bills stop falsely accusing trans women of endangering cis women when they use women’s facilities.  

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

Photography: Rise Up for Trans Youth Rally, Union Square, NYC 2/8/25

Photography: Rise Up for Trans Youth Rally, Union Square, NYC 2/8/25 @UnionSquareNY @genderlib4all @actupny

Photography: Rise Up for Trans Youth Rally, Union Square, NYC 2/8/25 Last Saturday, an estimated 7,000 New Yorkers arrived in Union Square for the Rise Up for Trans Youth Really on a rather cold February afternoon. The rally was organized to show some much-needed love and support to trans youth and trans people everywhere, and to protest the Trump Administration’s awful and cruel anti-trans…

[its-terf-or-nothin]

[blonkk]

to women being inspired by bursts of emotion rather than genuine curiosity and hunger for knowledge: read. put down your phone. get off tiktok, twitter, ig, youtube. go to the library, get on an archive and read. read feminist theory that isn’t from an influencer or a self-proclaimed “video essayist” or even your university’s “gender studies” prof. read feminist history. read articles that challenge your confirmation bias. read kate millet, catherine mckinnon, dworkin, valerie solanas, betty friedan, angela davis, nawal el sadaawi, judith butler….read shit that makes you uncomfortable. work through why you’re opposed to reading certain feminist thinkers and then read their stuff.

just read the material and then make your own decisions about what you believe. enough of this dime-store feminism. feminism isn’t an identity, it’s not a passive way to state that you care about women’s rights. it’s something that requires real action to be a true part of. most women who think they are aren’t actually feminists. they barely even understand it’s core tenets. if you want to be one that does, and maybe even take some legitimate feminist action, then commit to learning the hard way.

you can’t be an effective activist without action. you can’t understand a movement or theory without undertaking the necessary research and analysis and challenging your preconceptions.

it’s gonna make you question things. it’s gonna turn your stomach, and put you on the defensive, and force you to admit that some of your actions and beliefs are actually not at all feminist, and many may even be anti-feminist/woman. no one’s saying you have to observe and change everything about yourself, but for fuck’s sakes stop calling yourself something you’re not. it’s an obstruction of truth and insulting to women in the movement doing the real work.

[trolltitan]

If you’re fighting the patriarchy but live in a country with free speech, property rights, and zero forced marriages… congrats, you’re not oppressed, you’re bored.

[paintsinthewaterofcreation]

psa: people are allowed to experiment with their gender expression without making definitive statements about their gender identity :)

let people tell you what/who they want to be perceived as rather than prescribing it for them. this includes if people want to identify as cishet despite not strictly adhering to conventions and norms.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Join Gender Liberation Movement for our first-ever mass call! With the Trump era officially here, we've got to build up our people power. And we want you in the mix on the ground floor. So join us to learn about our work (from previous marches and that infamous bathroom sit-in on Capitol Hill) to what we have planned next! Register now bit.ly/GLMCALL

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lil Kalish at HuffPost (09.13.2024):

Daniel Trujillo’s first month of junior year has been a “cakewalk.” He’s in two different jazz bands and is a member of his school’s chapter of March for Our Lives chapter, a student-led organization promoting gun control. He dreams of studying music in college. But getting there has not been easy for Daniel and his family ― especially in Arizona, where a barrage of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and rhetoric has threatened their sense of safety. In 2022, state Republicans banned gender-affirming surgeries for minors in Arizona, though those procedures were already rare, and barred trans girls from playing on girls sports teams in schools. (A federal appeals court decision this week stopped the latter law from going into effect.)

Lizette Trujillo, Daniel’s mom, has traveled from their home in Tucson to Phoenix each legislative session over the last six years, taking time off work to testify in opposition to such anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Daniel has joined her on those trips since 2020. “My husband and I are small business owners, and it’s given me the flexibility to devote my life in this really distinct way to fighting the trans legislation in our state. If I clocked the hours of free volunteer time, it’s significant,” Lizette Trujillo told HuffPost. And when they aren’t traveling to the state Capitol, the Trujillo family is focused on cultivating a safe, accepting community in their city. [...] Organizers across the country are sounding the alarm about the high stakes of the November presidential election and the looming threat of Project 2025, the conservative playbook for a second Trump presidency spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 equates being transgender with pornography, calls for federal government to enforce sex discrimination protections based on the “binary biological meaning of ‘sex,’” and argues that educators and librarians who share materials about trans identity should have to register as sex offenders. In addition, Trump has vowed to roll back Title IX protections for transgender students and criminalize doctors who provide gender-affirming care if he’s reelected. The former president has spent the last few weeks repeating false claims that children are undergoing gender transition surgery at school and without parental consent. This week, he also refused to answer whether he’d veto a national abortion ban. By contrast, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has campaigned on the promise of restoring access to abortion and the “woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.” Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has been a champion of trans rights in his home state.

A forthcoming Supreme Court case, L.W. v. Skrmetti, will decide the legality of Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for youth. Justices will begin hearing oral arguments next month, and their decision, which is expected next summer, could have sweeping ramifications for the state of gender-affirming health care for trans youth nationwide. Activists argue that the outcome of the election and the court’s decision on gender-affirming care, like its decision overturning the right to an abortion, will affect all kinds of people who are made vulnerable in society. That’s why organizers are working so hard to bring those fights together, under the umbrella of the broader struggle for bodily autonomy — and to do so while also celebrating the beauty of self-determination. Daniel’s story is one of nine about trans and gender-nonconforming young people featured in the American Civil Liberties Union’s new “Freedom To Be” campaign, which launched this week and aims to spotlight two things that advocates say are largely missing from mainstream stories and coverage of transgender youth: joy and intersectional identities. And on Saturday, the Gender Liberation Movement — a new group to help bridge the gap between the trans rights and reproductive rights movements — will hold its first march and festival at Columbus Circle in Washington D.C., one block away from the Heritage Foundation’s headquarters. Daniel and Lizette Trujillo are slated to take the stage at the event, along with trans rights advocate Miss Major and actors Elliot Page and Julio Torres.

“At the heart of this effort is looking at the connections between all of the attacks, particularly from the right, on communities on the margins,” said Raquel Willis, a Black trans activist and writer who co-founded the Gender Liberation Movement with Eliel Cruz, an organizer and communications worker, and others. “We know that restrictions around access to abortion and reproductive justice have been a galvanizing fight for a lot of people on the left, and in queer and trans circles a lot of us have been fighting against restrictions around access to gender-affirming care.” Conservatives often use the same political playbook to target both abortion and trans rights, Willis said.

“The strongest connective tissue between our struggles is bodily autonomy,” she added. Restrictions on reproductive rights go hand in hand with the rollback of LGBTQ+ rights, harsher immigration policy and restrictions on what parts of U.S. history can be taught in schools — and what should be censored, Willis said. Everyone is harmed by anti-trans laws and rhetoric, she added, but especially cisgender women of color and gender-nonconforming women. For example, she pointed to Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, whose recent Olympic win in women’s boxing was heavily criticized by Trump, author J.K. Rowling and billionaire Elon Musk. They falsely claimed Khelif is trans and helped drum up a barrage of online abuse against her.

This past weekend featured a new protest movement called the Gender Liberation Movement that tackles abortion, gender-affirming care, and bodily autonomy.

[bullshit-tqia]

Gender is a social construct for people to express the complexities of their identity as they experience it, when humans relate to each other in similar ways, we can define these experiences as specific identities. There's infinite ways to identify so there's infinite genders. Only focusing on the societally imposed 2 genders and trying to find scientific links is of course not going to yield results because it's a social construct. That's like trying to find a scientific link between red and stop because you see it on traffic lights.

Just let people express their identities, it's not that hard. You're not helping anyone like this. There are plenty of social constructs that deeply impact us as people and gender is one of them. If transition keeps people alive I don't really care if there's a "reason" they're trans. We're not asking cis people if there's a "reason" they're a man or a woman.

If you're the psychology major, I think it's concerning that you haven't realized this or haven't been taught this. Eh, well, I forgot that I actually went to a tier 1 so I may be overestimating other schools. Lol. Sorry, I have to flex as much as humanly possible.

Let me point out the assumptions in your argument:

A. You assume "identity" is material, a legitimate thing. Thoughts can be illegitimate.

B. Each human being genetically different from every other human, except a twin, but regardless of such, having their own unique experience, does not mean there are no patterns of behavior.

C. Just because you can't see the results doesn't mean the results aren't there. My last post did show that female and male brains can be distinct from each other.

D. It's not keeping them alive.

A.

You can be wrong. What stops you from being wrong about yourself? And I mean "stop" in a physical sense. What is the existing barrier that prevents you from being wrong? No force on Earth stops you from being wrong. You just have faith in yourself that you aren't misinterpreting yourself or lying to yourself. I don't believe in magic. You can't argue that magic is real by making arguments that only make sense to people who already believe in magic. You have to step into my philosophical foundations and argue me out of it.

But where does this threshold lie? When is your brain honest and when isn't it? You can only guess, so you have to analyze all your thoughts, and feelings, and you have to come up with ways to determine your true feelings. This is why I do coin flips, why I give myself plenty of time to think about myself by myself, and I argue against myself to be as logical as possible.

Saying there are infinite ways people can identify doesn't mean that their identities are valid. If I can identify as a cat and still not be a cat, you can identify as a man and still not be a man. What separates "saying you are a cat and not being a cat" from "saying you are a man and not being a man?" How does the universe separate the two?

In terms of physics, what would make it true that saying you are a man makes you a man, but not true for saying you are a cat and not being a cat regardless? That's why I focus on cause, it's because things can't appear in reality from nothing.

The law of conservation of energy says that energy is neither created nor destroyed. I believe in this principle of the universe, so I do not act like there are no reasons for something to happen. To every effect, there is a cause.

This is just intellectual laziness. You aren't motivated by being right, you're motivated by validating other people and misinterpretations of Hegel's dialectic. You think that other's thoughts about themselves are right, that other perspectives of the world are the truth, that empiricism reigns supreme, and observation is true. This is where I bring up the double slit experiment. to simplify, scientists were trying to predict which slit an electron went through, and found out that when they thought it was going to go through the left slit, it did, and vice versa. So they opened up both slits, thought it would go through both, and it did. Then they went back to thinking it went through one slit, and it did. What explains this?

The electron simply went in every single possible direction. It only seemed like the electron was going into one slit after someone thought it would because after thinking it would go through one slit, they would only observe that slit. They essentially closed all awareness of the electron going in different directions when they thought it would go in one direction. That's confirmation bias, that's how observations can be wrong. Regardless of what the scientists thought the electron would do, it went in every direction. They only observed it going in one and thought that was the only direction it could go in, but they were wrong. Physics said otherwise.

Physics is independent of humanity. It happens regardless of an observer of physics. The universe was still expanding even if humans couldn't see it.

Reality is separate from what you interpret to be reality. You can interpret your reality and say you are a cat, but in reality, you are not. You only think something is the case, but your thoughts cannot manifest into reality. If you cannot ponder spaghetti to appear in front of you, you cannot believe that someway somehow your thoughts will manifest you into being a cat. Life doesn't work like that.

You cannot think yourself into being a man or woman.

But what is "being a cat?" How can I know how it is to be a cat if I never was one? My only "sense" of knowing what being a cat is like is by observing cats.

My only sense of knowing what being a man would be like is by observing men. But that doesn't make me a man.

Comparing myself to what I observe to be true of cats doesn't make me a cat. I also like to lay in the sun and I like to sleep. That doesn't make me a cat. I also like seafood. That doesn't make me a cat.

Apply this to being a woman or a man. You can also like makeup and dresses, but that doesn't make you a woman. It can't, your only frame of reference is your observations, but your observations do not bend reality, your observations come after reality. Your observations react to reality. It takes a few microseconds for your brain to interpret what you're seeing, and that only comes after the light enters your eyeballs. Reality is the light entering your eyes and observations are what you interpret the light to be and mean.

B.

Even if every observation about oneself is valid, it doesn't mean there are no patterns. It is true that the overwhelming majority of women in the West like makeup. But what is false is believing that this is inherent of women, and not the result of conditioning.

Believing that something is inherent is believing in determinism. At the time of their birth, women are set on the path of liking makeup. False. What comes first is birth, how women are treated, and then liking makeup. Women like makeup because they are essentially groomed into a mindset that makes them predisposed to liking makeup. But this doesn't ring true for all women. For me, the "grooming" into liking makeup went in the complete opposite direction, when I wear it, I become overwhelmed with thoughts that I am a fraud, that I'm useless, and that I'm better off dead. But it doesn't mean I was not predisposed into thinking that because of how people reacted to me being born a certain sex even if I deviate from what is considered "normal" of women, because the causes are the same-being born female. There are of course other potential causes, but if being female is true for both, then it is true for both. You can't put them in different categories, they overlap. They don't contradict.

If I say "Books are fun to read" and there is one book that is not fun to read, it doesn't mean "books are fun to read" is false. A singular book does not prove that generally, reading books is not fun. Singular cases do not prove or disprove general cases. General cases prove or disprove general cases - because general means general and singular means singular. Intersex people do not generally disprove that there are two sexes, because regardless of their existence, the two sexes are still overwhelmingly true. Intersex people are still classified within those two sexes, because intersex is only a difference of one or two traits, and besides those traits, they overwhelmingly overlap with one sex, but never both. No human on Earth cannot produce both egg and sperm simultaneously. No being on Earth can, for that matter. Intersex people still would produce egg or sperm, what makes it not the case is one or two traits. Remove the traits and they'll be like everyone else.

C.

This is just an effect of you being tunnel-visioned through ideology. My position is incomprehensible to you because I operate with different principles, principles you do not believe in. Imagine it like sunglasses. You cannot see what I see with sunglasses on. Only having the sunglasses on makes you see what I could see with sunglasses.

Only believing in my principles will make you see the world as how I see it. Don't be hung up on the sunglasses example. You can still imagine how I think, but it doesn't mean that you're necessarily right. And you don't need to believe in my exact principles to comprehend my beliefs, you just need to think similarly enough to how I think to comprehend and come to an agreement.

D.

This one is short. Recent studies show there is a spike in suicides around 10 years down the line for people who transition. They experience temporary relief, then dysphoria comes back and it wreaks havoc and leads to many suicides.

From Chapter 1 of Detransition Diaries by Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell

[its-terf-or-nothin]

Mild pet peeve I feel like no one talks about but should talk about more: Headbands on baby girls. They look uncomfortable, they’re impractical and I hate how even from birth baby girls being cute is prioritized over their comfort.

[cozymushroom13]

I just finished ‘stone butch blues’ (Leslie Feinberg) and it’s amazing. I read the German translation bc that’s what we had in our local queer association (they have a small library with books of many different genres and out of different times) and now I want to read it again in the original version.

I love how big of a timeframe with the societal norms and topics was shown (I think between 30 and 40 years)

Even though I live in a very different time with different challenges (which I’m happy about since I luckily haven’t been beat up, thrown in jail and/or experienced police brutality because of my gender presentation) I could see myself in the main character a lot. Towards the end of the book she even has a struggle I’m dealing with right now. It feels nice being able to read a book about someone like me in a different time period.

It also showed once again the importance and value of unions.

I also love how well the translation was (I assume, as stated I haven’t read the English original yet), I learned a term I’ve never heard before. Apparently the German equivalent to the word butch was “Kesser Vater”, which was shortened to KV. (I finally looked it up when I had reached about the middle of the book, stuff made a lot more sense afterwards) the terms KV and Butch were both used consistently throughout the book, a really nice solution for the language differences, I think. (I’ll probably put a post it with an explanation of KV in the book when I give it back, I don’t think people that are around my age or younger know about it and it took me a while to finally find a fitting explanation online as only the shortened version was used in the book)

If you are interested in queer topics and history it’s most definitely worth a read.

[faildaughtered]

getting tired of GCs on twitter endorsing trump i really think being a single issue voter on trans issues is stupid if it means voting for the party that sees women as baby factories

[its-terf-or-nothin]

[fucktoyfelix]

This is actually a useful thing to understand how to spell out. What exactly is wrong with puritanical attitudes towards sexuality? TW: Discusses body image issues, suicide, STIs, sexual assault etc

1. It fosters fear, disgust and loathing of our bodies. By hiding the human body as soon as we are born, and treating it as an object of inherent shame: THAT creates trauma. Shame is one of the primary sources of trauma, its the fuel and lets trauma burn. Those raised in nudist societies, and children raised in households where nudity is treated in a neutral and non-sexual tend to have a much more positive relationship with their bodies as adults. This makes complete sense when you think about it. Going through puberty not knowing if your body is "normal" terrifies children in ways that stick with them for life. In fact, most cultures outside of the Unites States aren't as strange about non-sexual nudity actually...and are healthier for it. We can't have body positivity as long as we are literally criminalized for having an uncovered body. 2. It creates fear, shame and disgust about sex. Most people have sex at some point in their lives. No one would be here at all without it. Most people have sexual desires which lie outside their control. When people are ashamed of those desires, it leads to self hatred, and depression and anxiety. This shame is just as traumatic as bodily shame. When sex is normalized, and treated with the same candor as any other hobby: it becomes less apt to traumatize people.

3. Puritanical attitudes towards sex limit sex education. When people are too ashamed to talk about sex, people don't learn about pregnancy, stis, or consent. All of these things can and do kill people when they aren't addressed with an open dialogue.

Sexual shame leads to people too ashamed to buy condoms, to talk to their doctor about birth control, to ask their partner to use protection, to get tested...the negative health impacts of sexual puritanism have a massive negative effect on society.

4. Sexual shame leads to poorer communication in relationships. Ohh if I had a dime for every person i knew who ruined their relationship because they felt too guilty to talk to their partner about their sexual feelings...Not just that, but the general body shame that comes with puritanism blocks people from connecting to one another too. Have you ever avoided getting close to someone because you were ashamed of your body? If not, I guarantee you know someone who has.

5. Misogyny! Puritanical sexual believes hold that women are not capable of sexual agency. That only men should initiate sex. That women should only ever want babies and not pleasure from sex. All of this rolls right into the next one:

6. Victim blaming in sexual assault. When women are the gatekeepers of sex, its easy to blame them when they 'fail' to protect their chastity when someone violates their trust. This isn't something that just effects women: as the same attitudes hold that men are not capable of experiencing sexual assault. The lack of education and discussion about sex in a sex-negative world inherently prevent the open dialogues necessary for creating and maintaining consent culture.

7. Suppression and marginalization of the queer community. If we're too ashamed to talk about sex, we'll be too ashamed to talk about sexuality. Puritans can't accept any deviation from gender norms either. Anything other than sex between a cis man and a cis woman for the purpose of making a baby is a deviant kink, a mental illness, and needs to be wiped out. Its important to point out that many queer people hold puritanical values about sex: believing that they can achieve sex negativity and queer liberation at the same time. However, sex negative movements always rise with censorship and discrimination of queer people...because queer people are inherently considered deviant by the vast majority of sex negative "allies". It's very dangerous to forget this.

8. Censorship of art. Who decides what is sexual and what is not? Its easy to agree that sex needs to be hidden...but it never takes long before the definition of what is "sexual" expands. Even women's breasts are considered sexual in the United States. Its so normal for Americans to think of them that way that women can't feed their children in public. Drag queens face violence for reading at libraries. Books get taken off the shelves. Artists are bullied offline.

9. Censorship of scientific exploration. Scientific research into reproductive health, sexual behavior, gender identity and more are often hindered due to the "moral objections" of puritans, delaying progress and understanding. That's just off the top of my head. I think its time for people to take how problematic 'puritanism' is more seriously. As we see fascism rear its ugly head all over the world, we're going to see a lot more talk about 'degenerates'...and we know where that kind of talk leads.