#can’t transwomen use their funding for their own shelters?

[coochiequeens]

An intact male is in a woman’s shelter.

A Canadian woman has come forward to reveal that she was removed from a transitional shelter after expressing concerns to management about gender ideology following two disturbing incidents within the residence.

Speaking exclusively with Reduxx, Jane* says she’d never given much thought to the gender identity issue prior to being moved into Peggy’s Place, a shelter for women in a suburban neighborhood of Vancouver, British Columbia which services women struggling with mental illness who have also been the victims of domestic violence.

“Before I arrived, I had never thought or cared much about gender identity,” she says, reflecting on the lead-up to her placement at the shelter. After escaping a situation of domestic violence and experiencing difficulties in access to urgent medical care, Jane says she was initially relieved when her social worker advised her she had been found a room at the shelter in May of 2019. 

“It was a door I could lock. It was a private room for myself. I had what I needed nearby.” Jane describes being asked upon intake whether she was comfortable being around trans-identified people. She explains she’d both worked and socialized with trans-identified people without issue in the past and had no problems with them, so said she was.

“I had assumed there would be a really small chance of one of them being in the house, but I figured there would be some sort of screening process in place and there wouldn’t be any violations of our boundaries.”

But shortly after Jane moved in, she found that a trans-identified male had been living in the residence, and her assumptions were rapidly proven incorrect.

At first, Jane says she’d just tried to avoid Max*, who she described as being over 6′ tall and obviously male. But just weeks after arriving, Jane says she caught him in the hall outside of her room, completely nude but for a bra he was holding to his chest as he modeled his body in the full-length mirror near Jane’s door. He was fully intact, and was not covering his genitalia in any way.

“IN MY MIND, I SHUT DOWN. THERE WAS SO MUCH FEAR.”

“I froze and never made direct eye contact. A part of me died. I went into my room and locked the door,” Jane says, “I kept telling myself I had a door that locked. In my mind, I shut down. There was so much fear.”

Jane states she had briefly considered returning to the house she had escaped from, but it was the fact she had a locking door and room to herself that made her feel she could make it work at the shelter.

Jane attempted to complain to staff over what had happened, but says her concerns were given a low priority and dismissed.

“They just said ‘some people don’t respect boundaries.’ Nothing was done. It didn’t matter that I had sexual trauma,” she recalls, noting that the event had taught her she needed to keep quiet.

Shortly after, Max was involved in an incident with another female shelter resident. 

Jane describes Lucy* as being severely physically and intellectually disabled, and anorexic to the point of often not having the strength to walk unassisted. But Jane describes Lucy as being the victim of a violent tirade by Max, with the man screaming verbal abuse at her.

“Hearing a man scream [like that] reminded me of my dad. If someone is doing a falsetto when they speak but then drop down to their natural octave when they are enraged and screaming, it communicates to you that this is a danger in a really primal way,” Jane says, noting that she hadn’t been privy to what had set Max, but that his rampage had created unease amongst staff and other residents – especially as he had a tendency to steal knives from the kitchen, and threaten both himself and others with them.

“I felt so angry that [this male], who was physically strong and abled bodied was screaming at someone who was physically disabled and psychologically weak. [Lucy] genuinely didn’t know what was going on,” Jane says, describing that the incident had been rattling enough that afterwards, staff went around the residence and asked the women if they were alright.

Jane describes attempts to confide in a shelter staff member about how hearing Max scream at Lucy had brought back childhood trauma related to her father’s abuse. But the staff member quickly express they were more concerned about Jane having perceived Max as male.

“I CAN’T LIE AND SAY IT WAS ANOTHER SEXLESS PERSON … IT WASN’T JUST THE YELLING, IT WAS THE DEEP, ANGRY VOICE.”

“She was very distressed at hearing this. I can’t lie and say it was another sexless person. It was specifically my father. It wasn’t just the yelling, it was the deep, angry voice.”

As a result of the incident, Max was removed from the home, and Jane says that for a period of a few weeks in the summer, conditions in the shelter improved for all residents.

“I did better in the parts of the summer when no males were in the house. There was even a time in the house, the only time this happened actually, when there was a group therapy session with just us as women,” Jane says, “A woman in the house who was constantly undergoing psychosis and could not speak in clear sentences was able to open up about her past trauma.”

Close to the end of the summer, Jane says a second trans-identified male was moved into the shelter, bringing an entirely new dynamic, and a new set of concerns for Jane.

Sam* had been released into Peggy’s Place from a men’s recovery house, and was only amongst the women briefly before being shuttled away for a full vaginoplasty after which point he was returned. Jane describes feeling “horrified” as she witnessed someone who was mentally unstable be ‘affirmed’ through a major, body-altering surgery.

“This person was unable to think critically. I do not believe they were in a place where they could have meaningfully consented,” Jane says, “Part of me was hoping or assuming that someone, somewhere in the line of [medical professionals] would have said ‘stop,’ but no one had.”

Jane, who has her own trauma associated with abuses within the medical system, says witnessing the pain and unawareness Sam was experiencing made her feel like he was being subjected to “torture,” and could only recall it through fits of uncontrollable sobbing.

“One night, Sam agreed with me about having needed more questioning before getting the surgery. At one point, [he] said ‘if I had known, I might not have done it.’ To admit that involves being cognizant of a violation that in my opinion is on par with some of the most violent sexual assault because it is literally physically cutting up and hurting the sexual organs.” Jane also notes that Sam had shown her a stack of paperwork he’d been given to read and sign prior to his surgeries, but says Sam only had a Grade 5 education and was blind in one eye.

Jane notes that Sam’s post-surgery care became a central focus of the shelter, leaving many of the women fighting to access bathrooms, or being exposed to things they did not have the capacity to cope with. After her last experience, Jane felt frightened to talk to staff about the impact it was having on her own mental health.

“[Sam] was in so much pain for so many months,” Jane says, “There were specific smells of blood and rot in the bathroom. Things indicative of infection and pain. Things I don’t want to remember.”

When Sam was struggling with an infection in his genitals, he went to Jane for help researching at-home treatments and vitamins. Jane says it was a turning point in her understanding of the gender identity issue, which she had only briefly given attention to after Max had been in the house.

“I came across Trans Care BC website, which was horrifying. It read more like an advertisement than a resource for serious medical information. There was nothing about infections or vitamins. Nothing.” Jane felt the information on the website was almost a “conflict of interest,” with all of the resources telling patients to speak to their surgeons.

“The surgeon makes a living off of giving the procedures, not off of counseling people and figuring out what is best for them. It was criminal that this happened to [Sam] in my opinion.”

As Jane continued to research into issues surrounding gender identity, she quickly became overwhelmed with the realization that what she had experienced in the shelter was not isolated, but rather part of a rapidly expanding problem. 

“Everything was surreal. Just surreal. It’s such a horrible and shocking problem. You’re supposed to be working on yourself and all I did was curl up into a little ball and sleep all day,” Jane says, “I was also someone who cared. Other’s found it easier to not care.”

In July of 2020, Jane was informed she was being evicted from the shelter as a result of her increasingly vocal concerns about gender ideology both inside and outside of the house. She was told she had 3 hours to pack her things and find alternative housing, something that was extremely difficult as the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions had resulted in limited available services.

Jane provided Reduxx with a series of recordings she had made while attempting to engage with staff on her issues. In one, she is heard speaking with the manager of the shelter as she was being evicted.

“We are a trans-friendly house. We will be having more trans women coming in. So the decision has been made that this is not the right place for you,” the manager says, before accusing Jane of being “dishonest” about her position on trans rights during her intake.

“I am really clear about asking people before they move in — you needed to be honest and say you weren’t comfortable with transgender people, and then we wouldn’t have done all this. You wouldn’t have moved in… I felt like we were misinformed.”

The manager then tells Jane she should call Vancouver Rape Relief, which she had labeled as having the same “fears about trans people” as Jane did. Vancouver Rape Relief, Canada’s oldest rape crisis shelter, was stripped of city funding in 2019 after asserting it had a right to cater to females only. Jane told Reduxx she had previously attempted to volunteer at Rape Relief after she had become more interested in gender ideology and witnessed their struggle against the city. She said she’d found the prospect of going there as a resident to be embarrassing after she’d already applied to volunteer.

“THERE’S ONLY TWO THINGS GOING ON: YOU’RE TRANSPHOBIC, AND THIS IS A TRANS-FRIENDLY AGENCY.”

“The fact is, you’re transphobic. We are a non-transphobic agency, and it is not appropriate for you to be living here,” the manager is heard saying, “I asked you when you moved in and you lied — you said you weren’t transphobic.”

Jane then is heard crying, and trying to insist her views had only recently changed, to which the manager responds: “There’s only two things going on: You’re transphobic, and this is a trans-friendly agency.”

Jane was removed from the house and sent to a facility with a 30 day time limit. Her experience rapidly became one of scrambling to find a new place to live without having to return to her sexually abusive ex-boyfriend.

In November of 2020, after settling into a more stable place, Jane tried writing BC Housing multiple times to file a formal complaint against Peggy’s Place, but was repeatedly bumped back to internal complaint processes within The Kettle Society, the organization which oversees the shelter.

Throughout 2021 and even into 2022, Jane tried reaching someone at BC Housing, and she showed Reduxx multiple chains of emails she’d sent detailing the lack of care from staff towards her concerns, as well as the exact incidents she’d experienced in the shelter.

By May of 2022, Jane still hadn’t received any response from BC Housing, and says she resorted to “begging” for someone to respond, and had an emotional breakdown while trying to contact Ali Ayala-Davidson, an operations manager for BC Housing’s Women’s Transition Housing & Supports Program division.

“There is no help,” Jane wrote in her last email, “Just say I am worthless. Say women are worthless. Say they are. Say they are nothing. Say they are only as good as a male whose dream they can be a prop in. Say that by saying nothing.”

Jane describes being burdened with feelings of guilt and shame related to not having spoken out about her experiences sooner, but it was witnessing the escalation of gender ideology’s impact on women that convinced her she had to take a stand.

“I was in a women’s only space. Women’s only spaces in Canada are now unisex. Most people don’t know or believe it,” Jane says, expressing some degree of disbelief at her own situation, “Women deserve better … How are women supposed to heal from sexual violence when they are forced to pretend sex isn’t real?”

Jane says she considered going to a Human Rights Tribunal, but feared she wouldn’t be able to keep her composure.

“I feel that even if I do send a human rights complaint, I’m going to be so upset they won’t take me seriously and just throw me out,” Jane says, “My time is also almost up at my current residence, and I am searching for new housing … but I struggle with agoraphobia, and find it difficult to organize myself.”

She is currently in the process of seeking a lawyer who might take on her case for reduced-to-no cost as she has limited resources, but has been unsuccessful so far.

Reduxx reached out to The Kettle Society for comment, but did not get a response prior to publication. This article may be updated in the event one is received.

* Names changed to protect the privacy of the individuals mentioned.

By Anna Slatz Anna is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief at Reduxx, with a journalistic focus on covering crime, child predators, and women's rights. She lives in Canada, enjoys Opera, and kvetches in her spare time.

[comrade-meow]

The commodification of women and “enclosure” of sexuality through prostitution, widespread porn and the resulting fallout led to the next frontier: biology itself, womanhood itself. Transgenderism leverages the mind/body split that rape culture promotes by introducing a new form of biological enclosure. With transgenderism, the reality of sex is no longer something natural that we simply share in common, but a place for Big Pharma to set up shop in the name of “identity.”

I have a “big picture” brain. I’m unsatisfied with superficial explanations of current events and political trends, and only understand them once I’ve placed them in the context of deeper historic trajectories, social patterns and human drives. Without these explanations, I remain unsatisfied and questioning (and can’t be sold on false solutions either).

Transgenderism is one contemporary political trend that requires big picture thinking to comprehend—because there are no casual explanations for why, in less than a decade, people all over the world have started to accept a set of bizarre and contradictory ideas: that sex is a spectrum, that sex can be changed, and/or that sex is not real at all, only gender identity is—all to justify the political mantra, “transwomen are women.” This mantra is simply an assertion of male privilege, that men should be able to claim female identity if they want to, without needing sound justification. How did it spread so fast?

I have just finished writing a series of books called the Brief, Complete Herstory (2021) which offers a continuous narrative of history from the Big Bang to neoliberalism. It discusses pre-patriarchal cultures around the world, and the creation of patriarchy, church and state, capitalism, and neoliberalism. Only the last volume mentions transgenderism, but writing these books has helped me put the transgender trend, among others, in context.

One thing that is clear to me is that the idea that men can become women is not new—it began when patriarchal religions insisted that God, the creator of life, is male. Before this, if “god” had a sex, it was commonly female: she who birthed the world. The idea of god as male-produced all sorts of weird stories and myths to capture the imagination: like the one about Aphrodite being born out of Zeus’ head, and Jesus being born after an “immaculate conception” involving a male sky god and Mary, a sexless virgin (trans activists might call her an “incubator”).

Another thing that strikes me, taking this long view of history, is a succession of waves of “enclosure” or colonisation that cause enough social and economic fallout to prepare the ground for the next, more intimate, “enclosure.” The pattern begins earlier, but if we start with the enclosure movement of the 15th and 16th centuries, also called the “privatisation of the commons,” it is easy to place transgenderism in the context of a historic trajectory. I’ve discussed this before, in a talk on YouTube, but here I want to cast a wider net.

The 16th century saw the Protestant Reformation and the rise of modern capitalism while the Tudors reigned in England. The Tudors used the Reformation as a way of breaking from the Catholic church in order to act without, or against, the pope’s approval. After breaking from Rome, they seized church property, privatised the commons, and colonised Ireland. For centuries, peasants had used common lands to graze milk cows and gather water, edible and medicinal plants, and wood for construction and making fires.

The simultaneous confiscation of the commons and church property cast many people into poverty because the lands were a source of sustenance and, under feudalism, it was the church that had given aid and shelter to the poor. Women were especially affected by the double whammy of enclosure and lack of poverty alleviation. In her biography My Own Story, British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst traces her feminist awakening to witnessing women in the homeless shelters and workhouses that queen Elizabeth I eventually established to address the crisis.

Looking back, we can see that the enclosure movement provided the preconditions for Britain’s industrialisation. When common lands were privatised, they largely became lands for grazing sheep used for wool in the textile industry, the biggest industry of the early industrial revolution; and it created a class of people desperate enough to work up to 18 hours a day for a pittance in dismal conditions, in the factories or “satanic mills,” as the poet William Blake called them. Most textile workers were women. Urbanisation also took place in tandem with the rise of prostitution, with many women forced to choose between that, factory work or domesticity.

In her book, Witches, Witch-Hunting and Women(2018), Silvia Federici connects the 16th- and 17th-century witch hunts in England with the rise of capitalism and the privatisation of the commons. She writes that “women were the most likely to be victimised” by enclosure, pauperisation, and the “disintegration of communal forms of agriculture that had prevailed in feudal Europe,” because they were “the most disempowered by these changes, especially older women, who often rebelled against their impoverishment and social exclusion.” She notes that some women participated in protests, pulling up fences enclosing the commons, and explains:

[W]omen were charged with witchcraft because the restructuring of rural Europe at the dawn of capitalism destroyed the means of livelihood and the basis of their social power, leaving them with no resort but dependence on the charity of the better off, at a time when communal bonds were disintegrating, a new morality was taking hold that criminalised begging and looked down upon charity.

The premise of Federici’s book is that this very same correlation between privatisation and “witch” hunting can be seen with neoliberal privatisation. She shows how witch hunts have escalated dramatically following the neoliberalisation (or “re-colonisation”) of the African continent and the privatisation of lands there, for instance in Tanzania, where more than 5,000 women per year are murdered as witches and in the Central African Republic, where “prisons are full of accused witches.” In Indian tribal lands, “where large scale processes of land privatisation are underway,” witch hunts are also increasing, as they are in Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Saudi Arabia. Describing the way witch-hunting frames the female sex, Federici argues that, “we have to think of the enclosures as a broader phenomenon than simply the fencing off of land. We must think of an enclosure of knowledge, of our bodies, and of our relationship to other people, and nature.”

Federici considers her analysis of the correlation between privatisation and witch-hunting to be ongoing, a work in progress—but I think her project is hamstrung. Her conclusions will remain sorely limited as long as she maintains the position that there is such a thing as a “sex worker” and a “transwoman,” because these ideas are central to the neoliberal “enclosure of knowledge, of our bodies, and of our relationship to other people, and nature” today. The term “sex worker” was coined by the global sex trade lobby on the back of women’s poverty and the normalisation of prostitution under neoliberalism.

In his book Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (2010), human trafficking expert Siddharth Kara shows that neoliberalisation leaves indigenous women especially vulnerable. He unveils a pattern of neoliberal government reform followed by land confiscation, leading to domestic poverty, and then prostitution in Asia, Europe and the United States. His book covers the period of the 1980s and 90s when the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were handing out “structural adjustment packages” all over the world. These are financial loans conditional on land and infrastructure privatisation, cutbacks to health and welfare spending, and removal of legislation protecting workers and obstructing profit.

In The Shock Doctrine(2007), Naomi Klein argues that this neoliberalisation requires disaster to disorient people and render them sufficiently immobilised to have their rights stripped. Once implemented, just like enclosure and colonisation, neoliberalism creates its own fallout. As Klein explains, neoliberalism began to enter more intimate territory after September 11, 2001, when surveillance culture began to “enclose” our privacy in unprecedented ways. This led to an age where internet companies, which are best positioned to track and collect data, reign.

History shows us a continuous pattern that goes all the way back to the Tudors and before: disaster followed by enclosure creates more disaster that allows for further, more intimate, enclosure. This is precisely why Federici’s argument that we need to define enclosure more deeply and broadly, is so important: otherwise we cannot properly track the pattern and we will fail to notice when neoliberalisation starts claiming new frontiers.

Combine the internet age with prostitution and you have today’s growing porn industry—and porn creates its own fallout. As feminist author Gail Dines points out in Pornland(2010), the average age boys start watching pornography is at eleven years, and porn brainwashes them into objectifying women by linking the image of rape to orgasm. There is hardly a more efficient way to condition somebody than through orgasm. Social conditioning normally involves a system of punishment and reward by some external body—but when men learn to objectify women by watching porn, their own penises dispense the rewards. After that, nobody needs to offer them any other incentives to keep repeating the behaviour.

The fact that porn not only depicts rape but drives it is well established. We can see the link in high profile rape cases like those involving Brock Turner and Larry Nassar. Turner took photos during his assault, and shared them with friends; Nassar was found to be in possession of at least 37,000 child pornography videos and images. New Zealand women’s organisation the Backbone Collective’s report on child abuse "Seen and Not Heard" shows that for 54% of abusive fathers, pornography is a factor in the abuse of their children.

The fallout from rape is dissociation. The human stress response is designed to allow us to run from predators, or to overpower them if we judge ourselves as capable. It is not designed to deal with entrapment and cruelty, and when faced with these situations, women often freeze, our minds shutting off conscious awareness of what is happening, whilst the subconscious absorbs it for dealing with later. This mind/body split is at the root of patriarchy and patriarchal religion because patriarchy relies on it: it requires men to detach from their own humanity and cultivate the dissociation, body hatred and dysphoria that rape culture fosters.

The commodification of women and “enclosure” of sexuality through prostitution, widespread porn and the resulting fallout led to the next frontier: biology itself, womanhood itself. Transgenderism leverages the mind/body split that rape culture promotes by introducing a new form of biological enclosure. With transgenderism, the reality of sex is no longer something natural that we simply share in common, but a place for Big Pharma to set up shop in the name of “identity.”

Trans activists assist this commodification of sex by excitedly censoring, blacklisting, firing, harassing and abusing women as “TERFs” (“trans-exclusionary radical feminists”). “TERF” is a now well-known misnomer for feminists who have not forgotten what sex is, and, whilst trying to tear down the fences transgenderism erects around it, get in the way of the rollout of this new form of enclosure. With respect to her work, it is almost mind-boggling that Federici does not take into account this neoliberal “witch-hunting” that trans activists participate in.

If this terrifying trend exists as part of a broader trajectory—how far can it go?

The first volume in my Brief Complete Herstory argues that the most basic quality of life is sensitivity. Water has a miraculous capacity for storing information, for picking up the qualities of all it encounters. Even the smallest, single-celled organisms share with human beings the capacity to sense and respond to light, movement, and other environmental patterns and changes. Yet the more people are tethered to our phones and smart devices, our behaviour mined as “data” and sold to those who profit from predicting and manipulating our movements, the more numb and desensitised we become. I sometimes worry that as privatisation and dispossession advance in what Shoshana Zuboff calls the Age of Surveillance Capitalism(2019), this is the current frontier: our very sensitivity.

If we listen to spiritual teachers and visionaries throughout the ages, the seat of human sensitivity is the heart. Indigenous cultures have always recognised this, and herbalist Stephen Buhner taught me that this is not a metaphor: our bodies are surrounded by an electromagnetic field generated by the heart, and this field is five thousand times more powerful than that created by the brain. In The Secret Teachings of Plants(2004), Buhner writes that this means that the “[a]nalysis of information flow into the human body has shown that much of it impacts the heart first, flowing to the brain only after it has been perceived by the heart.”

If this is true, then in an era of desensitisation, the heart is the new frontier of enclosure. Can it be captured and domesticated? Or is there a freedom in the heart that simply cannot be enclosed?

One thing the long view of history shows us is that freedom does not exist in the hands of politicians who will deliver it after they tidy up the aftermath of the latest crisis, as they like to promise. I would also suggest it shows us that not only is the very idea of a patriarchal state incompatible with human freedom by definition—the tactic of negotiating with governments to have our “rights” and freedoms delivered has proven ineffective through centuries of trial and error. History shows us that governments are irredeemably deaf to the voices of women, and when they appear not to be, it is short-lived. Between the era of enclosure and the present day, women won the right to vote. Today, we may officially still have that right, but as womanhood is redefined beyond meaning, so has the relevance of the vote to our lives.

I am not saying that people should not lobby governments to promote the recognition of their rights, or that changes in the law have never benefited those who fought for them. I am also not suggesting that you can save the world by sitting under a tree and searching your heart. What I am saying is that in an era characterised by noise and desensitisation, there is no better time to tune out for long enough to discover whether you do carry within you a freedom immune to enclosure—because if you do, if this is part of our make up, surely there could be no better advisor in the decisions you, and we, need to make from here. There cannot be a better guide in the defence of freedom than freedom itself.

[aridara]

So, apparently, @terfslurring​ didn’t like it when I called out her “Trans people reject the biological reality of sex and want to impose gender roles on everyone!” bullshit, and decided to write me some responses. By reblogging a completely different thread that wasn’t about trans people (it was about abortion), but whatever.

So I decided to answer them here.

First post: two quotes from Andrea Dworkin. Which have nothing to do with the argument at hand. Next.

Second post: A pamphlet about “How to spot MRA ideology”. Which basically tries to claim that Men’s Rights Activists and trans activist are somehow the same thing. Which is patently ridiculous.

For example, the first page claims that MRAs:

... Are anti-feminist. (True.)

...Focus on issues that, according to MRAs themselves, discriminate against men. (True in the sense that MRAs do claim that those issues discriminate against men; whether those issues actually discriminate against men or not is another issue entirely.)

...Often use the term “TERF” against feminists. (False. MRAs don’t care about whether feminists are against trans people or not.)

The second page claims that MRAs often label themselves “Trans Rights Activists”, or “TRA”. Which is completely and utterly false: the most cursory exploration of any MRA website (for example r/mensrights, A Voice For Men, Heartiste...) will show that MRAs are openly against trans people, frequently vilify them and declare them to be mentally ill, openly advocate in favor of forcibly institutionalizing trans people to “fix” them, etc.

There’s more lies in that pamphlet, like the lie that trans advocates deny the existence of sexism or the lie that TERFs do not claim that “trans women are violent predators, pedophiles and rapists”. But really, just the fact that the pamphlet tried to conflate a pro-trans group with a very anti-trans one is enough to dismiss it as total bullshit.

Third post... Oh, boy, I’ll need quotes for this.

Gender Critical Feminism

is a term used by those in the feminist community who consider gender a harmful social construct that is confused with -but distinct from -biological sex.

The World Health Organization defines gender as “the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women”.WHO: gender equity, human rights

Except that trans people are talking about gender identity, not gender roles.

Gender identity (which is what most people and especially trans people and advocates refer to when they say “gender”) is, by definition, self-determined. You decide the label of your own gender identity, and how to express yourself; nobody else can do it for you.

Gender role (which is what pretty much only trans-exclusionary feminists refer to when they say “gender”) is the idea that people should act in a certain way depending on what genitalia they have. By definition, you’re trying to tell other people what to do.

Trans advocates advocate in favor of letting everyone express their own gender identity however they want. TERFs falsely claim that trans advocates are in favor of imposing gender roles on everyone, whether they want it or not - which is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what trans advocates are doing.

Gender critical feminists believe the definition of “man” and the definition of “woman” should be based solely on biology, rather than on “masculine” or “feminine” personality traits or an innate sense of gender identity.

They recognize those with XX-chromosomes, ovaries designed to produce large egg cells, female genitalia, and a relatively high level of estrogen and progesterone as biologically female. They define “woman” as an adult human female.

They recognize those with XY-chromosomes, testes designed to produce small sperm cells, male genitalia, and a relatively high level of testosterone as biologically male. They define “man” as an adult human male.

Intersex people, who represent less than 0.02% of the entire population are those whose chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, and genitals do not conform to the biological binary of female or male bodies. Gender critical feminists recognize intersex people as a distinct group of people with an empirically diagnosable medical condition.

Alright. So, as I’ve repeatedly stated, pretty much all transphobes do three things.

1. They claim that there’s only two separate human sexes (plus eventually a small amount of exceptions, tiny enough to be ignored). According to Terfslurring, “gender critical feminists” fit the bill.

2. They claim that sex must be determined by looking at specific sex-determining characteristics. Again: according to Terfslurring, “gender critical feminists” fit the bill - they look at chromosomes (XX versus XY), gonads (ovaries versus testicles), genitalia (I suppose vagina versus penis), and hormone levels (high estrogen + progesterone versus high testosterone).

3. They believe that making everyone determine everyone’s sex in the “correct” way (see the above) is VERY important. This is blatantly obvious - whenever goes against the “there’s only two separate sexes” claim (for example, by saying that sex is a spectrum), gender-critical feminists actively oppose that someone and claim that they’re wrong. Likewise, whenever someone goes against the “chromosomes/gonads/genitalia/hormones determine a person’s sex” claim (for example, by respecting a person’s chosen identity, regardless of their genitalia), gender-critical feminists actively oppose that someone and claim that they’re wrong.

So, here’s something fun that I want to point out: transphobes love to claim that their beliefs are absolutely correct and precise, and that whoever refuses to determine people’s sex in the “correct” way must necessarily be in the wrong.

This also applies to the transphobes themselves. They don’t get to viciously attack anyone who goes against the “there’s only two separate sexes” claim when THEY THEMSELVES go against that same claim.

For example, let’s take everyone on the planet and divide them like gender-critical feminists want me to.

Everyone who has XX chromosomes, ovaries, a vagina, an uterus, and high levels of estrogen and progesterone will go in the “FEMALE” box.

Everyone who has XY chromosomes, testicles, a penis, and high levels of testosterone will go in the “MALE” box.

Everyone else will go in the “EXCEPTIONS” box.

Here’s the problem: the exceptions are way, way, WAY more than 0,02% of the human population. So, I can’t ignore them.

But if I can’t ignore them, then I must accept that there aren’t just two separate human sexes.

And if I accept that there aren’t just two separate human sexes, gender-critical feminists will declare that I’m wrong.

Conclusion: according to gender-critical feminist theory, gender-critical feminist theory is wrong. So, I’ll throw it out.

Moving on.

“Cisgender”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines cisgender as “denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to their biological sex; not transgender.

”Gender critical feminists object to the idea that their “self-identity” “conforms” with the feminine gender role they were assigned at birth. They reject their assigned gender traits and roles as a form of oppression, and do not “self-identify” with them at all.

This is more of that thing where trans advocates talk about gender identity, and gender-critical feminists talk about gender roles.

On the plus side, it means that gender-critical feminists have absolutely no argument against gender identity.

According to trans-inclusive feminists, being cisgendered means that biological women and girls have “cisgender privilege” which is defined as the “set of unearned advantages that individuals who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth accrue solely due to having a cisgender identity”.

Gender critical feminists do not believe that both being biologically female and knowing you are biologically female makes you a member of a privileged class. Nor do they believe males who identify as female are more oppressed than actual females.

What follows is a long list of statistics about issues that women face due to sexism. I’ll spare you, because I don’t actually object to those statistics.

What I do object to, is Terfslurring’s claim that transphobia - which is oppression from cis people (men or women) against trans people (men, women or otherwise) - doesn’t exist because sexism - which is oppression from men (cis or otherwise) against women (cis or otherwise) doesn’t exist. Which makes as much sense as claiming that racism doesn’t exist because sexism exists.

Likewise, Terfslurring is trying to imply that cis women can’t be transphobic towards trans women, because cis women are victims of sexism from men. Which makes as much sense as “white women can’t be racist towards black men, because cis women are victims of sexism from men”.

Then there’s a bunch of lies that aim to absolve TERFs from their transphobia. I’ll just give you the highlights.

Despite claims that “transwomen are women” gender critical feminists note that laws based on gender identity allow any predatory male to claim a female identity and gain access to vulnerable women in shelters, locker rooms, restrooms, and prisons. 

Except that those laws have NOT helped predatory males to gain access to vulnerable women. For example, the “If we let trans women in women’s bathroom, predatory men will assault women in bathrooms!” panic? A complete fabrication made from homophobic groups.

Lesbian feminist Janice Raymond is frequently accused of having “blood on her hands” for single-handedly denying government funding and insurance coverage for transgender surgery/hormone treatment.

According to The Terfs.com “It was only after the NCHCT [National Center for Health Care Technology] published Raymond’s bigotry in 1980 that the US government reversed course in 1981 and took up Raymond’s views and rhetoric.”48

But the US state and federal government had never funded sex change procedures, so the accusation makes no sense.

This is false. Before 1981, the USA did fund trans care. The USA changed their stance after the OHTA Report was issued.

Still, trans activists claim a single sentence by Janice Raymond included in the 15 page NCHCT report (“transsexual surgery is controversial in our society”) caused the US state and federal government, under the Reagan administration, to reject government funding for sex change procedures. 

False. The NCHCT asked Raymond to write a report about the ethical and social aspects of trans care.

The USA state didn’t “reject government funding for sex change procedures” because of the NCHCT report, unlike what Terfslurring is claiming; it did because of the OHTA (Office of Health Technology Assessment) report. The OHTA report made three claims - one of which was that ”transsexual surgery is controversial in our society”. Two sources were used to back up that claim:

Raymond’s NCHCT report, which was about the ethical and social aspects of trans care (NOT about the economical or experimental aspects). The entire report - not a “single sentence”.

A review of Raymond’s 1979 book, “The Transsexual Empire, The Making of the She-Male”.

Along with allegedly denying the existence of transgender people, gender critical feminists are accused of being responsible for the high murder rate of transgender people even though transgender people are overwhelmingly murdered by men...

Except that gender-critical feminists promote the same “trans women are violent rapists” mentality that those men use to justify their attacking - and killing - trans women.

...and have high rates of involvement in the extremely dangerous sex trade.

44% of black transgender people and 33% of latino transgender people have experience in the sex trade. People involved in the sex trade are 18 times more likely to be murdered than others of their same race and class.

Funny that 1) you haven’t confronted statistics between cis and trans people;

And 2) you actively refute any testimony from transgender people. Including those black/latino trans people in the sex trade - especially when they try to tell you that, having experienced both sexism, racism and transphobia, they can tell the difference between the three.

But no. You just immediately assume that they don’t know what they’re talking about, and that all transphobia is just misguided homophobia/sexism/whorephobia/anything-that-isn’t-transohobia. Old tactic.

Despite this, trans activists rarely blame male sex buyers (or males in general)...

This is blatantly false. Just look at how often they talk about male transphobic groups.

Also, “male sex buyers”? ...Why do I suspect that you’re also against sex work (not “sex trade”, I’ve said sex work)?

There’s more, but frankly, I had enough.