Listen to the article, Narcissistic Stupefaction. Until now, I've struggled to name the psychosocial process undergirding the movement that is MAGA. However, I think I've found a term that succinctly identifies the problem: Narcissistic Stupefaction. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor killed by Nazis in a concentration camp, noted that fascists were, in the dictionary definition of the term, stupid saying: Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and,… Read more.

Lately I have read several trans-inclusive feminists take apart the notion that biological reproductive capacity holds any functional validity as a marker of who gets to belong to the category woman. Read more.

Meghan Murphy, a Canadian TERF, is suing Twitter for the special right to harass trans women on Twitter. Murphy is represented by Republican operative and past editor of the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review magazine, Harmeet K Dhillon. Joining Murphy's suit is Noah Peters, attorney for a White supremacist who previously sued Twitter for not hosting his racist tweets. The TERF lawsuit seeks to have Twitter, “cease and desist from enforcing its unannounced and viewpoint discriminatory ‘misgendering’ rule” and stop “enforcing its 'Hateful Conduct Policy' arbitrarily and in… Read more.

TERF activist censors Radical Feminist voices to sneak hate into the classroom. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) activist, Sheila Jeffreys has written a new academic book that claims to inform readers of the various ways TERF culture, "has all been disappeared from history." Chief among those Jeffreys' claims to have the power to disappear TERFs from history is an "influential men’s cross-dressing rights movement which enforces men’s access to lesbians wherever we seek to meet or network." To support this fact claim,… Read more.

If celebrities are going to profit off of being the figureheads for our collective traumas, then we have the right to demand they do it right. Trans people are sexually victimized at a sadly high rate. All victims of sexual harms deserve to be respected and represented by those treated as the spokespeople of the #MeToo movement. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I want to speak out about a nasty case of ally fail that took place this week when a presumed… Read more.

As readers might be aware, the UK media is engulfed in a new and ongoing round of media-created trans panic of the same type that lead to the death of Lucy Medows in 2013. Already, media hysteria coupled with the concern trolling homunculus that is all things "gender critical," has pushed a trans teen caught in the UK media's crosshairs to desperation. Riding the wake of this media madness is Linda Bellos, a sex essentialist "radical feminist" who took to an… Read more.

TransFeminism is an ongoing series of interviews and essays focusing on the intersection of feminist and trans activism. In this installment, John Stoltenberg considers “What the Trans Moment Has to Offer Radical Feminism.” Part One: What the Trans Moment Has to Offer Radical Feminism EPUB Version | PDF Version By John Stoltenberg @JohnStoltenberg I recently read an essay about men and rape, written from a radical feminist point of view, which included a… Read more.

This week's podcast is an audio essay: On The Make It A Slur Campaigns: Are Misogynist, Homophobe & TERF Slurs? By: Cristan Williams Narrated by: Nikki Delgado Duration: 25 minutes Essay Summary: Anti-equality activists, seemingly from the left and right, have worked together to make certain feminist and queer language taboo. In this audio essay, the TransAdvocate takes a deep dive into the ways in which anti-equality activists work together to coordinate efforts to control the… Read more.

Into the nexus of the 'gay alt-right feminist' movement I received notice that an opinion leader in the sex essentialist activist community had linked to one of my articles titled, You Might be a TERF if... The article lists explicit instances of ideological hate and real-life violence (up to and including attempted murder) carried out in the name of a form of sex essentialist 'feminism' that developed in the US during the mid-to-late 1970s. The Feminist Current, a site substantially dedicated… Read more.

You may have heard that a clothing-optional spa in Toronto turned away a trans woman and that has caused a stir. What you may not understand is why she was turned away. Articles explaining the situation often completely omit one very important detail: the trans woman who was booked at the spa was not planning to make her genitals anyone’s business. While the spa is clothing-optional, there is no compulsory nudity. According to The Torontoist, “King asked if her… Read more.

[su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-vi-interview-with-gender-infinity-co-founder-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19773.htm"  style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-reply" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Pt. 7: Affirmative Therapy [su_column size="1/2"] [su_button url="http://www.new.transadvocate.com/part-ix-the-circular-logic-of-disco-sexology-the-rise-and-fall-of-discosexology-dr-zucker-camh-conversion-therapy_n_19923.htm" style="flat" background="#333333" color="#ffffff" size="10" wide="yes" center="yes" radius="0" icon="icon: mail-forward" icon_color="#ffffff"]Disco Sexology, Pt. 9: Conclusion By Cristan Williams   Upon completion of this series, this work will be released, in its entirety, as both an audio and ebook. Installment Preface Welcome to the eighth installment in this series on… Read more.

BY Rani Baker @destroyed4com4t Let’s get this out of the way: deep down, I believe everyone is earnestly trying to do things that are right and protect things that they value. I mean, I kinda have to believe this on some level to keep functioning. I don’t subscribe to the idea of good and evil or social struggles that have a clear cut hero and villain. Life is complicated and fluid, and… Read more.

The TransAdvocate is pleased to announce the launch of a new program aimed at making a decades-old intersectional trans, intersex and genderqueer inclusive radical feminism more accessible. The TransAdvocate, in partnership with the Transgender Archive, launched The Conversations Project on New Year’s Day 2016. The Project seeks to inspire discourse through its community group, a journal, interviews and the publication of a book-length collection of collaborative essays from radical feminist… Read more.

On August 22, 2015, the NY Times ran an article by Richard A. Friedman titled, "How Changeable Is Gender?" One might be excused for mistaking the piece as an earnest call to the medical community for better interventions for the trans community. Alarmingly, Friedman warns readers that science has found that post-operative transsexuals are at significant risk of suicide and moreover, maybe medical treatment isn't actually the right approach after all, especially for trans kids. Friedman gravely recounts a scientific study that… Read more.

There are many things possible in the universe. If you are called a TERF it could be that the person who said it is actually a self-loathing misogynist who hates feminism and puppies. It could be that the label was unfairly or inappropriately applied. It could also be that someone used the term to point out your casual trans antagonism or unconscionable jackass bigotry. Who the hell knows? Regardless, you have been told over and over again that once… Read more.

Tumblr TERF, radfem-momma apparently thinks it's okay to threaten trans kids with murder as long as you lie about the reason.   BACKSTORY: This post has to do with Tumblr TERFs trying to make the abuse a trans kid experienced by adult MichFest TERFs seem somehow okay. The abuse was witnessed by multiple individuals, specifically members of the Lesbian Avengers and a MichFest performer and member of Sister… Read more.

In the 2013 film Adult World, when cisgender protagonist Amy is cleaning the bathroom, she peers through a glory hole in the stall to see Rubia, a transgender woman, using the urinal. The sequence is constructed around Amy's point-of-view: Adult World Whatever the filmmakers' intentions, this is an excellent encapsulation of the cisgender gaze in cinema: a cisgender person viewing a transgender person without their consent, with little regard for their humanity. The reverse of… Read more.

Why TERF ideology is child abuse and how the media supports it. By  Natacha This article discusses the clash of ideology and lived experience as exemplified by a recent BBC radio program in the UK. This article uses the term Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) to distinguish between the trans-supportive Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, The Olivia Collective or the West Coast Lesbian Conference and sex essentialist anti-trans feminism of Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys and/or the… Read more.

The yearly struggle the trans community experiences with MichFest has been taking place for so long, some of us have trouble remembering why MichFest's "womyn-born womyn" policy was such a painful issue for the feminist and trans communities in the first place. The very notion of "woman-born woman" is now so ubiquitous that many of us have forgotten that its roots span all the way back to when MichFest's organizer took part in attacking a feminism that was trans… Read more.

Catharine A. MacKinnon is a lawyer, teacher, writer, theorist, and activist. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School (long-term). She holds a B.A. from Smith College, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale. Professor MacKinnon specializes in sex equality issues in political theory and under international and domestic (including comparative and constitutional) law.… Read more.

"K" is an intersex, trans and sex worker rights advocate. I interviewed K about their sex work experiences, how the needs of sex workers might be respectfully addressed and the ways in which feminist frameworks interface with the experiences of sex workers. Cristan Williams: How long have you been involved with sex work? K: I’ve been in different types of sex work and I think that it’s important to… Read more.

Some of you might remember that Germaine Greer, a TERF the Radical Feminist Andrea Dworkin took to task for trying to pass off patriarchy as feminism, made some small waves for appealing to the patriarchal vagina smell trope in order to claim that trans women aren't real women. However, what's making waves throughout the UK is that Green Party activist Beatrix Campbell, along with numerous other activists, are appalled that the trans community dared think they had the same rights… Read more.

TERFs battle over who has the correct vaginal odor in order to determine female validity. I've noted many times that while Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) like to speak on behalf of Radical Feminism, the type of so-called "gender critical feminism" they offer is at war with the roots of Radical Feminism. For example, pioneering Radical Feminist opinion leader Andrea Dworkin was supportive of trans women, ensuring that her 1980s-era pro-woman… Read more.

Gender Critical Feminism (GCF) is a euphemism for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF). There is no ideological difference between the TERF and "Gender Critical Feminist" (GCF) movement; they are one in the same. GCF teaches that because sex is a natural binary, intersex people are actually just deformed men and women and trans people are always the sex they were assigned at birth. As Janice Raymond’s acolyte Sheila Jeffreys wrote, “sex” is fixed and referring to trans women with female pronouns is… Read more.

  GallusMag of GenderTrender has, on Sunday, October 19, 2014, been identified as Linda V. Shanko. Linda Shanko Shanko is perhaps best known for mixing false, malicious statements (often sexual in nature) in with her doxxing of trans women on her blog, GenderTrender, and The TransAdvocate won't participate in helping GallusMag hide her identity. Shanko’s actions towards many -- both trans and cis -- may meet the legal criteria for harassment. In fact, Shanko’s actions… Read more.

Via Manic Pixie Nightmare Girls   Read more.

It has long been asserted that the iconic TERF opinion leader, Janice Raymond, played a part in bringing an end to the public and private coverage of transgender medical care, resulting in measurable death and suffering within the trans community. Unsurprisingly, Raymond rejects any assertion that she has blood on her hands. Over on TheTERFs.com, Raymond objects to the following assertion: “It was only after the NCHCT published Raymond’s bigotry in 1980 that… Read more.

The Demands of Michfest's Lisa Vogel: A Response & a Good Faith Offer of Support By Emmagene Cronin   The end of the 39th annual Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MWMF of Michfest) has arrived, and the trans community has been left with a list of “demands” from the Festival itself. To the unknowing reader, this list would seem like the extension of an olive branch, and glimmer of hope for reconciliation between two presently oppositional factions within the feminist movement.… Read more.

In the post announcing #TERFweek, we specified goals for the week. These goals were: Raise awareness about this movement of hate and the groups it forms. Educate people about its tactics. Collectively speak out against its bigotry. Encourage the Feminist, Radical Feminist and Lesbian communities to speak up about the aggressive colonization their communities have faced at the hands of this movement. #TERFweek has accomplished this and so much more. Actual Radical Feminists stepped forward to share their painful… Read more.

In the middle of a cool August night in 1991, Nancy Burkholder was thrown out of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) because she’s a trans woman.  Burkholder was Janis Walworth’s friend and she was outraged that MWMF’s would engage in anti-trans discrimination. Walworth, a cisgender radical lesbian feminist,  immediately began to educate MWMF attendees about trans people. After coping with threats of violence and dealing with having her consciousness-raising… Read more.

What follows is a continuation of my interview with Radical Feminist lesbian icon, Robin Tyler. In the previous piece, Tyler talked about being beaten by TERFs for trying to protect a trans woman from their assault. In this portion of the interview, Tyler describes how a TERF's fist at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) led her to conclude that it was time for her to start her own women's music festival.… Read more.

Robin Tyler is an iconic Radical Feminist lesbian who talked with me about the ways she confronted TERF violence and oppression against trans women. We discussed Tyler’s involvement with the 1973 West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference. For some context on why this particular conference was so important, Susan Stryker sums it up well: Elliott also served on the organizing committee of the West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference, planned for April of 1973 in Los Angeles, and she had… Read more.

Sandy Stone was a problem that Janice Raymond, author of The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, decided to take care of. Raymond felt that Stone -- an out trans woman who was part of the radical feminist lesbian separatist music collective, Olivia Records -- didn’t belong. Raymond engineered a smear campaign that nearly destroyed the Collective and put Stone’s life in jeopardy, culminating in armed TERFs asserting their intention to murder Stone. Olivia Records was a successful… Read more.

Many of the TERFs I’ve had the displeasure of meeting move through life belligerently sexing physical phenomena and behavior (especially rape) while simultaneously (and ironically) proclaiming themselves to be critical of gender.  For TERFs, there is no difference between mentally contextualizing a body as a sex attribute and the body itself. TERFs have such a long history of, with all the asperity of a hellfire creationist, asserting that sexing everyone is better/different/more natural than gendering everyone that I hold no hope they will see past their own… Read more.

By Natacha Kennedy Michelle Goldberg’s awful article in The New Yorker will be considered by many to be just another example of the sort of biased rubbish trans people have come to get used to from the media. This kind of article is the sort of thing that (dis)graces plenty of TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) sites and marginal online publications that try to be ‘edgy’or ‘iconoclastic in the knowledge that having a go at trans people is the last… Read more.

Part III of the 'Sexing the Body is Gender' Series: Debunking TERF Essentialism In Part II, what gender is and is not was discussed and the ways in which we contextualize our bodies were reviewed. In this section, essentialism arguments regularly asserted as being self-evidently true are reviewed and deconstructed. When appealing to a substance – say, genetics, chromosomes, etc. – as being a sexed essence which defines how we collectively regard the… Read more.

By Debi Jackson Although I have been part of the LGBT community for the last three years since my daughter transitioned from male to female, I still seem to learn something new every day. Take, for example, my recent discovery of a group that some call TERFs, or Trans-Excluding Radical Feminists. Within the last few weeks, I’ve become a target of hate from some who watched a video of me giving a speech about my daughter’s transition. Most of that… Read more.

TERFs tend to behave much like a fundamentalist echo chamber so that once a new malicious anti-trans trope is created, it is quickly disseminated and replicated until the trans community and/or allied communities must waste their time addressing the fallacies. Therefore, the TransAdvocate has put together this list of debunked anti-trans TERF tropes for your reference. The Cotton Ceiling: TERFs assert that Planned Parenthood conspired to helped teach trans people how to force lesbians to have sex with them and this amounts to corrective… Read more.

Part II of the 'Sexing the Body is Gender' Series: Contextualizing the Body If one is talking about something that has chemistry and mass, one is not talking about the thoughts in one’s head. In this series, I will make this simple distinction knowing that there is robust and nuanced discussion around whether there is a biological predisposition that causes trans people to experience our bodies in the way we do. For the purpose of this post, I will make a distinction between that which we take to be… Read more.

I have seen various version of this phrase. "Quit attacking your allies!" - many, many times.  I've only been involved heavily in trans activism for about two years.  How and why I've become as invested as I am is a long story; but at the end of the day, I am a woman who was assigned female at birth.  I am cis.  So, it's odd that this statement has been directed at me, but it often has.  It's also something… Read more.

About a decade ago, the feminist community came up with the term Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) as a way to halt the default colonization of Radical Feminism and feminism itself by TERFs (and this move by feminists is, of course, claimed to be incredibly insulting). Now, under a wave of new awareness of the hate group hiding among them, feminism is becoming more vocal about its recrimination of TERFs. Old TERFs and TERF allies like Sue Hyde and Gloria Steinem have openly recanted their TERF rhetoric and… Read more.

What it is #TERFweek is a week of education, raising awareness and openly talking about the abuse our communities have endured at the hands of the Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist movement. From Monday, August 11 to the 17, we invite everyone to share their experience with the TERF movement using the #TERFweek tag. We hope that all our diverse communities will take this opportunity to speak with one voice, united in standing in opposition to the hate and very real harm this group has caused. Why… Read more.

The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) has joined the Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Nation Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and several other social justice organizations in petitioning that the trans-exclusionary policy of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MWMF) end. In recent years, the MWMF trans exclusionary policy has been rebranded as merely a trans-exclusionary "intention." In the face of MWMF's continued anti-trans policy intention, the nation's leading equality organizations have joined Equality Michigan in petitioning the… Read more.

At first, I wasn’t going to write a response piece to Caroline Criado-Perez (CCP) article concerning the term “cis”, because many of her ideas were similar to those in Sarah Ditum’s post I recently responded to. Then I realized those similarities should be pointed out. There are patterns emerging where otherwise respected feminists are injecting thinly veiled transmisogynist bigotry within self-congratulatory “bravery” narratives, as well as, patronizing pro-trans-sounding platitudes.  So, when trans activists respond to their seemingly conciliatory knives-in-the-back… Read more.

Judith Butler is a preeminent gender theorist and has played an extraordinarily influential role in shaping modern feminism. They've written extensively on gender, and her concept of gender performativity is a central theme of both modern feminism and gender theory. Butler's essays and books include Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993) and Undoing Gender (2004). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc However, the concept of gender performativity… Read more.

I heard of Poppy years before I met her. I knew her to be a major force behind Southern feminism. Poppy has a long history of working for reproductive rights both as an attorney and as a volunteer clinic escort. It was as a volunteer clinic defender that I got to personally know her. The National Organization for Women (NOW) is the largest multi-issue women’s rights organization in the United States dedicated to taking action to bring women into full… Read more.

The right to body autonomy and being free from oppressive gender stereotypes is an issue that's near and dear to my heart. I've noticed that the same hubris people who stand in the way of trans people are generally the same people who are standing in the way of the right to safe and legal abortion services for many of the same reasons. The Pacific Justice Institute, the very organization that hounded a trans kid to the brink of… Read more.

The Third Wave Fund (TWF) is a feminist, activist foundation that works nationally to support the vision and voices of young women, transgender and gender nonconforming youth. I came across the TWF while researching the ways in which anti-abortion narratives often intersect with anti-trans narratives. I spoke with TWF Director and out trans man, Rye Young who, working as the coordinator the TWF Emergency Abortion Fund, developed their report on barriers to abortion access report. In 2012, the concept of "Gender Justice" was the unifying… Read more.

In late November of last year, Secular Woman began a petition asking the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to list Cathy Brennan's Gender Identity Watch as a hate group. In January, during the SPLC's internal discussions concerning their yearly hate group list, Cathy Brennan made public her donations to the SPLC on her facebook page. And the SPLC accepted her donation. When asked about the donations, the Gender Identity Watch twitter account claimed that Cathy Brennan routinely donated money… Read more.

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF) are quick to make fact assertions about the term, TERF. According to TERFs, the term is a slur and use of the term makes one a misogynist.   Others assert that the term is insulting, hyperbolic, misleading, and ultimately defamatory. Allen actually calls for more people to recognize radical feminists as a hate group and then pointedly adopts the term Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) to refer to them throughout the article. Make no mistake, this is a slur.… Read more.

If you’re of my generation and grew up in the U.S., you’ll remember the movie “Kindergarten Cop” where a gruff police officer goes undercover as a Kindergarten teacher.  At one point, one of his students raises his hand and blurts out “Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina”.  At the time, publicly discussing genital anatomy, much less discussing genital anatomy with other people’s children, was incredibly taboo.  So, the audience recognized the awkwardness of the situation and found it… Read more.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/136808690" params="color=ff2c00&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] Hey there folks this is Cristan Williams with another TransAdvocate podcast. Today I have a few topics I want to touch on. We'll talk about the Arizona "right to discriminate" bill. Specifically we'll hear the office of the bill's sponsor, Senator Yarbrough, say that his bill will protect the right of the Ku Klux Klan to institute racial segregation based on "religious belief." We'll talk about why a recent… Read more.

Recently the South Florida Gay News interviewed me for an article on the TERFs, Cathy Brennan and her group, Gender Identity Watch: The Web is where this feud appears to have escalated with Brennan trading barbs between journalists and advocates from the transgender community who claim Brennan and her blog are insensitive. “I believe the petition served to clearly demonstrate that many thousands of feminists view the GIW team to be a hate group,” said Cristan Williams, editor of Transadvocate.com. “I… Read more.

What follows is an amazing speech given by Graciela Sanchez on realizing liberation through building a "community of the heart." Sanchez, a self-identified lesbian Latina queer spoke on the intersections of oppression and of social justice. [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/121478145" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] The last page of the Houston and San Antonio TDOR booklet This speech was taped by the TransAdvocate at the San Antonio, Texas Trans Day of Remembrance on November 21, 2013, held in the Metropolitan Community… Read more.

As a feminist organization, Secular Woman promotes gender equality. We stand against and combat sexism, hate, intolerance, and misogyny. Transgender women are women. Cisgender women are women. We do not, in any way, view the existence of transgender women, genderqueer individuals or transgender men as a threat to the safety of women, female identity, or the goals of feminism. As intersectional feminists we acknowledge the privilege that cisgender people experience. We aim to dismantle the axis of oppression that this… Read more.

Would you be surprised to learn that a wildly popular front group TERF attorney, Cathy Brennan runs is fake? The group, Organizing for Women's Liberation (OWL) claims to have received well over 100,000 FaceBook likes and is the more palatable face of Cathy Brennan's hate group. OWL mixes anti-trans messaging in with news reports chronicling rape and brutality against women, thereby linking "trans" to real violence against women. The reality is that OWL is a fake group whose "like" numbers… Read more.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/117840029" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] In this podcast, I review the way in which the mainstream media has responded to the TWO right-wing hoaxes which spread the trans bathroom meme in mainstream media. Also, there's a short interview I did for Swirl Radio - a Clear Channel radio show - and an excerpt from the radio interview that followed my on: an interview with Cathy Brennan, the TERF opinion leader.   Tip this TransAdvocate! Writers… Read more.

Cathy Brennan, an opinion leader in of the Trans Exclusionary RadFem movement has chosen to side with the ex-gay organization, the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI):   Fails to mention this story was recanted   Worse, Brennan volunteered to serve as the mouthpiece of the right-wing anti-gay activist organization: Trans people are "inherently intimidating and harassing" and no, we've not actually supported anything we've said with any evidence, but trust us. We wouldn't… Read more.

While there are many who feel that morality must be built into law, I believe that the elimination of transsexualism is not best achieved by legislation prohibiting transsexual treatment and surgery but rather by legislation that limits it and by other legislation that lessens the support given to sex-role stereotyping, which generated the problem to begin with. Any legislation should be aimed at the social conditions that initiate and promote the surgery as well as the growth of the medical-institutional… Read more.

  Used with permission: (c) Rebecca Cohen   Read more.

I've noticed that there seems to be some confusion about what a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) is so, here's a quick guide to help you figure out if you're someone who pushes TERF ideology, which is to say, someone who's a TERF. Chances are that you're a TERF if you believe that you're a feminist when you... 1.) Claim that trans women are cis men, that trans men are cis women and purposefully misgender trans people. 2.) Out trans… Read more.

TW: transphobic violence Like a lot of people, I was transphobic when I was younger. Society had conditioned me to be. There were men and there were women, and anyone who didn’t fit into the narrow definitions of one of those categories was abnormal, abhorrent, a freak. I remember (much to my shame) pointing at people I saw on the bus who didn’t look like what I thought a man or a woman should look like and laughing at them.… Read more.

So last week, my new book, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, was reviewed in Publisher's Weekly - you can read the review here. It is generally positive and I am pretty happy with it! However, there is one line in the review that I feel misconstrues what I was trying to say in the book. Namely, the reviewer describes my supposed ‘denial of the existence of a “gender system”’ and how it ‘flies in the face of much social… Read more.

Victoria Brownworth, self proclaimed "award winning" TERF journalist (though she calls herself RadFem), hates me. Like, a lot. I wrote the following factual account of how she used her privilege to coerce a trans minor (actions Brownworth herself describes as both creepy and wrong) to expose his genitals to her: Gawking at TransKid’s Genitalia is “Freedom of Speech” says Philly PD Instead of owning her privilege and/or lapse of professionalism, she went on the offensive: She… Read more.

I ask this question based on several reasons. I am seeing the exact same wording from the “Radical Feminists” that I am seeing from the Christo-Fascist Organizations that have words like Family and Concerned in their title. I’ve seen this before back during the right wing  Schlafly et.al. campaign against ERA, which passed itself off as a grassroots organizing effort, when it was actually a well financed campaign. ALEC and the Tea Party. The hijacking of “Susan B. Anthony” a… Read more.

The TransAdvocate recently featured a piece by Radical Women. The group touched on many radical positions on gender and the transgender experience. In this piece, the TransAdvocate interviews Sharon Presley, Executive Director of the Association of Libertarian Feminists (ALF). ALF was formed in 1973 by Toni Nathan, the first woman to have received an electoral vote in a US Presidential election. Look for interviews and pieces by various Feminist opinion leaders in the near future! If you as a… Read more.

NOTE:  Radical Women wanted to share this article on the TransAdvocate so that people understand that not all radical feminist women are TERFs. Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism (TERF) is a relatively small - but extremely dedicated - hate group which passes itself off as feminism to create, support and promulgates negative opinions about trans people. Formed in 1967, Radical Women is a socialist feminist grassroots activist organization that provides a radical voice within the feminist movement, a feminist voice within… Read more.

The above is a picture of militant lesbians and gays protesting against a movie that promoted false gay stereotypes. March 18, 1970 Ladies' Home Journal Sit-In Above is what happened when a bunch of RadFems righteously took over the offices of the Ladie's Home Journal because it was a vector for promoting false stereotypes about women. Protesting negative stereotypes of cisgender women in the media has a long and proud tradition among feminists. Queer Nation's New York… Read more.

Trans pioneer Dallas Denny published an article on TA about expressing her misgivings about the upcoming publication of a book promoting  Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) hate. She just received a chilling response from a group of  TERF academics declaring war on trans people. The anonymous author declares war on me and for that matter on all transpeople. He or she and his or her six compatriots claims that they will raise an army of graduate students who will oppress me… Read more.

When I learned Routledge Press was planning to publish a book about "transgenderism" by Australian academician Sheila Jeffreys, I was astonished. Why was I astonished? Because Jeffreys considers transsexual surgery a human rights violation, has called medical intervention with transgendered children eugenics and McCarthyism, and refuses to use appropriate pronouns when referring to us, cynically claiming she is seeking “clarity.”  I identity FTMs and MTFs by the pronouns that demonstrate their sex class of origin for the sake of clarity. –FTM Transsexualism… Read more.

A much older adult, who was famous in the eyes of a kid, talked the minor into exposing themselves to the adult. The adult then took a good long look - long enough to memorize the details of the kid's genitals. The adult then wrote an article featuring the explicit details of what the underage kid's genitals looked like. While this might elicit a strident response from folks who care about things like the age of consent, the use of… Read more.

A TERF hate-tracking site recently raised a warning that Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) leaders are attempting to appropriate the Trans Day of Remembrance: Cathy Brennan, contributor to the Radfem2013 conference, has sunk to yet a new low.  She is now trying to exploit the death of our sisters (Transgender Day of Remembrance – TDOR)  to further her justification of transphobia. She wants us all to believe that it isn’t transphobia that kills us, it is male violence. While it is true that the majority of… Read more.

Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery By Janice G. Raymond Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Women's Studies Hampshire College/University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts June, 1980 Note: If you're looking for the article that proves that Raymond helped strip insurance coverage of trans care from public and private insurers, that article is located here. The subject of transsexualism, whether raised in the public forum or in the academic or medical communities, has been viewed… Read more.

The Omen Damn! 4:30 a.m. I fumbled with the off switch on the alarm clock, knocking over the glass of water I kept on my bedside table. I can only compare the sound my alarm makes to the unholy union of grinding metal and fingernails on a chalkboard. I needed to get up. I needed to get ready. I thought of the things I needed to do. I reminded myself to make sure I have all of the documents I would… Read more.

In the wake of the President Obama's historic speech referencing Stonewall, NPR ran a piece asking and purporting to answer the question, "So, what was Stonewall?" The article calls upon Martin Duberman, now 82, to retell the story of Stonewall. Martin Duberman published the first history of Stonewall in 1993. His history significantly featured trans folk. Bizarrely, the NPR author Liz Halloran seems to rewrite Duberman's history, spending many lines minimizing the trans aspect of Stonewall:  "I liked the mix of people," he said. "It was not… Read more.

This video has been compiled by TransBareAll as a response to recent transphobic articles in the press. We don't aim to debate the merits of freedom of speech, or the rights and wrongs of different sides of an argument. Instead we want to show the real impact of the way language is used, how it can affect the people it targets. In the media (and society in general) there are some words which we never use, such as the 'N'… Read more.

So, who’s heard of Julie Burchill and her “censored” article? Coming to the defense of her maligned feminist friend, columnist and author Julie Burchill wrote an article about trans women. Apparently, her friend Suzanne Moore’s latest article contained a faux pas. In Burchill’s words: She wrote that, amongst other things, women were angry about “not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual”. At best, this is simply a poorly constructed byproduct of the aged-out argument that idealized… Read more.

There’s a laughably pathetic piece of nonsense making the rounds right now – emanating from one of the usual pits of transexterminationistic insanity.  I have no intention of linking to it, but this is the beginning of it: First they came for Janice Raymond and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t an academic. One doesn’t really need to be an expert on the Holocaust (or even Godwin’s Law for that matter) to see where its headed, but the supporting cast includes Mary… Read more.

Regarding the recent brouhaha over Julie Burchill's recent article in the Observer, republished (and then taken down) on the Guardian website, and re-re-published at her request in the Telegraph, an article referring to Trans people as "Shims" and "She-males", "Dicks in chick's clothing" etc... The Guardian said it best, the last time this happened. Or rather, one of the last times - it happened again and again afterwards too. On January 31 the Guardian's Weekend magazine published the first of two articles by the… Read more.

Twenty years ago, a now defunct trans newsletter captured a really interesting moment in trans history: a linguistic tipping point. As I've noted: "Transgender" has been around since at least 1965 "Transgender" was not "coined" by Virginia Prince Transsexuals have been using the term "transgender" since the 1970s "Transgender" was used in a modern sense as early as the 1970s Trans Terminology Timeline Here Even so, it was between the years 1985 and 1995 that the term… Read more.

Much attention has been focused on the 'War on Women', the anti-woman political policies the conservative movement and Republican politicians have been pushing for years and implementing once they gain political control of state legislatures. And yes, being that we are now estrogen based lifeforms, they affect trans women as well.. Girls like us have been fighting a two front war. Since the 1970's we've had to deal with the War on Transwomen whose reprehensible foot soldiers are radical feminists in addition to… Read more.

The problem is that the very imagery of what she’s referring to is so weird that I honestly can’t tell precisely what its a threat of. Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore has launched an outspoken attack on PinkNews after it published a story about the killing of a trans woman in Brazil. Linking to Wednesday’s story, Moore tweeted from her account @suzanne_moore Read this piece of shit and Pink News will hear from my lawyers in the morning I am back to sort this out and to… Read more.

The British Transphobic Feminist Troika unleashed their hate speech upon the world last week probably thinking they would get pushback from the trans community they and their acolytes could spin and demonize them with until it quickly blow over. Not this time. This time it isn't just our British trans cousins who are pissed off about the transphobic scribblings.   They got reinforcements from various trans bloggers around the world and pushback from the surprising direction offeminists, allies and other justice minded folks tired of the… Read more.

After all, the Julie Birch Ill Society probably just cheers whenever a transsexual woman gets ‘cut out.’ From Pink News: It’s being reported that a transwoman has been shot dead in Brazil. According to the ‘Guerrilla Angel Report’ blog site, it is claimed the victim, named by the site as Cecilia Marahouse, worked as a performer and that the shooting took place near Fortaleza, north-eastern Brazil, on 11 January 2013. She is described as being a “well known” figure among the area’s LGBT community. Earlier this week, British journalist Suzanne… Read more.

One of the things that has irked me about the renewed “debates” about women-only space is that the defenders of “womyn-born-womyn” (WBW) policies keep utilizing specious counter-examples to try to defend their position.  For example, those of us who are criticizing a non-inclusive women’s space are asked:  “would you critique a transgender-only space?  No???  You’re a hypocrite!”  Apparently those who espouse this position need a reminder of Social Justice 101. Women-only space is necessary.  Women are oppressed under the patriarchy,… Read more.

Recently, I have experienced a round of attacks by some radical-identified feminists and lesbian feminists for my writings and transgender advocacy.  There is a long history of conflict between transgender/transsexual people, especially trans women, and radical feminists and lesbian feminists that dates back beginning in the 1970s.  The pinnacle of this battle was when lesbian feminist Janice Raymond published her notorious book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male in 1979.  For nearly 15 years, Raymond’s anti-transsexual screed often… Read more.

Please note at writing, the planned dedication service for the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial has been postponed. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.… Read more.

I dread writing this post. Not because it is laborious, or texting on my personal resources, but because my sensibilities are afflicted by the subject matter. It is neither my desire nor intent to further inflame an already hot topic. There are plenty willing and so capable of stoking that fire. It is my only desire to offer a consideration, a course of action which may or may not resolve the matter, but it will define us as a community… Read more.

I recently had a discussion with a person with cisgender privledge about Michfest. I thought feminist/POC theory taught rather early on that a person who isn't in the oppressed category doesn't get to define if they are in fact, an ally. If you support Michfest, you're NOT a Trans ally. This is what I said: "No, we don't share similar viewpoints on Michfest. I wouldn't go to Hammerfest, no matter how 'good' or how much of a "safe space" it… Read more.

Today's guest Transadvocate is polerin. Her bio on Twitter states: "Trans woman, radical lefty, wannabe cartoonist, geek, phreakNIC director, web developer, person. Will eat for food, and rock your face off. Or on. On is good." Inspired by the TERF’s posting and commenting at The Magazine Project. You insult us. You claim we are ruining everything. You sourly say “Well I’m glad YOU are happy but everyone else is mistaken.” You describe us as the scum of the Earth… Then… Read more.

Reading Nexy's blog, I found out about a post over at Feministing and the boycott that's being called by some in the transgender community. The title of the post is "Men in Women's Bathrooms, Is Your State Next?" I don't believe the post itself was bad. The original post author, Miriam, asked in the last paragraph: "Here's the thing that always gets me about the bathroom debate: The idea that laws governing a space which by nature is unpoliced, unregulated… Read more.

"I don't give a shit whether or not they [MTF transsexuals) want to chop themselves up. I don't give a shit if they want to wear dresses. That doesn't make them female. It doesn't mean their issues and concerns are female issues and concerns. So long as female issues and concerns are subsumed to and absorbed by male interests (as they are when male people call themselves and are accepted as female), women will never socially realize our full humanity AS FEMALE PEOPLE." Read more.

Bird Of Paradox their 'crisis of faith’ with feminism, This Ain't Livin posted about discussing how your gender gender effects you, and Planet Transgender posted about Columbus Ohio'd City Council passing a transgender anti-discrimination law. Read more.

I found a pretty intriguing comment over at Womens Spaces/The Margins concerning a post written by Harry Benjamin Syndrome apologist, Cathy Platine, at Pam's House Blend. That whole thread over at PHB consists of males scratching out turf over the female body, each laying claim to ownership. While I live in this society as a woman, the reality is that I'm male bodied and a surgically constructed vagina will not change that. Thoughts? Read more.

With a vote coming soon on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, I'd like to revisit something Chris Crain said a while back in his post "A trans activist tees off on ENDA" that was in reference to my post "You Can Still Fire Me". At his blog he said: The EEOC says exactly what I said: "existing federal civil rights laws have already been interpreted by SOME JUDGES to protect trans workers." Is it every judge? No. Would adding "gender identity"… Read more.

Typically, when reading about radical feminists on various blogs, it's an "us verses them" type of debate. I've been thinking a lot about that, as witnessed by my last post, Michfest Music Melodrama I've been thinking a lot about the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival lately. So much anger and divisiveness occurs between radical feminist and transgender bloggers, it really turns my stomach. Very few posts on either side attempt to understand each other. so much so, it ends up being… Read more.

I've been over at Feministing all day, writing responses to "You learn something new every day." The post is a response to The BBC's recent coverage of a debate with Julie Bindel. Julie believes that sex reassignment surgery is a "mutilation." The debate over there is one of the best I've ever encountered. There's a whole lot of cross talk and listening, and very few personal attacks. This is the first time I've ever posted about this in a forum where I didn't feel like I was talking to a wall. I've included some of the comments, and my responses, under the cut. Read more.

Things I learn from the radical feminist blogosphere: -" Male-to-female transsexuality/transgender is really about men’s rights. It has nothing to do with feminism. As such, as feminists, just as we oppose men’s rights, in general, we oppose this manifestation of men’s rights as well." - "Radical feminists are no more “transphobes” than we are “manhaters.” To allege that we are is to indulge in sexist, misogynist, anti-feminist propaganda." - " Female-to-male transsexuals/transgendered persons are situated much differently than male-to-female transsexuals/transgendered… Read more.

Years before my transition, when asked how I felt about abortion, I would jokingly I would say, "personally, I'd never have one." It was my way of wiggling out of this very sensitive hot button issue without really answering the question. I don't have the reproductive ability to carry a child to term, so I always felt the issue didn't concern me. I've come to realize over the years that a woman's right to choose isn't just about reproductive choice.… Read more.

With the ongoing battles between radical feminists and transgender bloggers, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be transgender. Radical feminists, in the vein of Andrea Dworkin's dream of an "androgynous society," hope to demolish gender roles. Recently i read an article written by Susan Cole of Now magazine. She discussed her gender fluidity and how she's beginning to enjoy it. "Does this mean I've lost my feminist edge? I know I still believe that… Read more.

In reading the recently published "Interview: Transgenderism Emerging on the Heels of Homosexuality in Media" at the Christian Post, I sat amazed with my mouth agape at the following statement. "When you look at Scripture for example, when Paul talks in 1 Corinthians 6:9 about the following group of people will not inherit the Kingdom of God. One of those groups of people he calls the “soft men.” Now the meaning of that essentially, in its historical context, is men… Read more.

Until someone puts actual empirical data along side radical feminist doctrine, I refuse to call it a theory. It  isn't a theory, it's a religion. And it's about as believable as there being a man named Jesus Christ that rose from the dead after three days. If your wondering, THIS is the genesis of my reason to post. Now, let us pray. Read more.

It's such an amazing thing, the transformation of Transadvocate.com. Once a blog of my personal opinions and beliefs, TA has become everything I ever envisioned it to be when I first purchased the domain on March 1st, 2002. There is enough traffic here that many times a good discussion happens without me commenting. Transadvocate.com is slowly becoming more about community, and less about me. Transadvocate/Abnormalheights.org blogger, Autumn Sandeen has amazed me with her thoughtful and in depth posts. That being… Read more.

I'm in the midst of a move, and a couple of other pressing things right now, but this really is worth some discussion.  Are radical lesbian separatists/feminists an enemy that we  should fight with the same veracity as we do the religious right? Your thoughts? Read more.

"Mayor Pat Gerard says she doesn't believe Stanton will have any problems when he walks in wearing a dress, lipstick and heels." - Mike Deeson (Tampabays1o.com) Call me a Marxist Radical Feminist Nazi, but I don't think Ms. Stanton has to wear a dress, lipstick, and heels to present as a woman.  Why is it that when people think of transwomen they think of something close to a Stepford wife or June Cleaver? Where's my lighter, I have bra to… Read more.

(I wrote this post a while ago, but forgot to put it up.) Call it synchronicity or blind luck, but at times multiple posts converge into one line of thinking for me. The Kim Nixon case is one such intersection. Ms. Nixon was rejected from the Vancouver Rape Relief Society training program when they found out that she was transgender. Ms. Nixon brought a suit against the center. You can read more about that here and here. I found the… Read more.

But it's for the reasons I provided there that in my view females (women born female who have lived all of their lives as girls and women) cannot "discriminate" against transpersons. They can be nasty and mean. They can be unkind and assholish. But they can't "discriminate"– because discrimination is a function of power, and females/women (born female who have lived all of their lives as girls/women), in fact have not, and do not, enjoy sex privilege with respect to… Read more.

I'm not sure why I've been thinking about gender roles so much lately. Maybe it's because I listened to Radio Open Source show on Hillary Clinton. Maybe it's because of this: "Sometimes, I think feminism and some feminists expect everyone to march to the same drummer, and Kim really seems to dance to her own tune, despite herself sometimes. Her writing is both personal and political, and she has adorable cats. Kim really comes across as human, strenghts, faults, questions,… Read more.

In the haze of my early AM internets blog reading I came across this post: "I'm coming out of a depression, so I'm very vulnerable, and I might not be seeing things clearly. Maybe by this time next week, I won't feel this way. But I've really had my fill of blogs. I guess I should have stopped reading blogs that feature regular doses of infighting. But Laurelin's right: there's a thin line between stirring and silence." I've felt the… Read more.

Charles revisited the transgender/feminism debate, this time centering on the "Language Around Trans, How it Works, How it Doesn't...." Little Light said: "Honestly, I don't feel comfortable getting involved in this discussion until the trans people in it actually have our words honored. In the previous thread, most of the trans folk involved dropped out quietly in frustration, and part of the reason is that our arguments and statements were not actually being engaged with. " I agree with Little… Read more.

It was New Years Eve when I learned of this post, and I've spent the last 13 days digging around the radfem blogosphere reading all the posts that sprouted from that initial post. One post in particular caught my attention. As the thread developed you could see each side digging in for the long haul. As of Thursay morning, I stopped posting there because I could feel the negative energy building, which started to wear on me physically and mentally.… Read more.

Can we can all agree that anyone who gets their kicks off by mocking women is a patriarchal jackass that truly hates women? Read more.

For the past week or so, I've really had my mind rapped around the "gender binary" and feminism. (maybe it's because I'm reading Jen Burke's "Breaking The Binary)." I'm no expert on either, so I'm looking for some direction on direction on the issue. I understand what the gender binary is "the idea that there are only two groups that a person, action, or behavior can belong in: male or female." All the reading I've done lately seems to indicate… Read more.

Ya know, maybe it's because I've read every goddamn post on the radical feminists take on transgenderism, but I'm pissed. I won't denigrate this blog with my rant. If you want to read it, it's here. I've read the following posts: Any Excuse to Denigrate Lipstick 275 comments Queer Dewd Layeth The Bitchslap Down For Sex-Positive Feminism Twisty Goes to Camp: A Very Special Episode 96 comments Okay. 316 Are Feminists Allowed to Be Partnered with Transmen and Transwomen? 310… Read more.

For the past week or so I've been digging through just about every post I could find about this post on I Blame The Patriarchy. I was planning on writing a mega-post in response to the different blog posts I found, but today I found this post by ampersand at Amptoons.com. Ampersand breaks it down better than I ever could. "Argument #1: The argument from freeform, irrational hatred of transsexuals. Luckynkl provided such an exaggerated example of drooling, bile-soaked hate that if I hadn't known her for years, I would suspect she's a sock puppet intended to discredit feminism. Here's a couple of examples, drawn from a dozen or more similar statements: ‘You want to know how men can hurt women? **chuckle** You're joking, right? Oh wait. I'm supposed to believe men in drag are women. And if you put on a werewolf mask, will you also expect me to believe you're a werewolf? This is about what all this nonsense amounts to. In short, trans are nutjobs. The bathroom is about the last place I want to be alone with a male nutjob. These unfortunate, but seriously disturbed individuals belong on the 5th floor in a straight jacket. Not in a women's bathroom.' In this case, the important part of Lucky's argument isn't the argument itself (which is based on the nonsensical notion that men — or transwomen — who are apt to break the law by being violent against women in public bathrooms, will be stopped by the sign on the ladies' room door). Lucky's real argument here isn't what she says. It's her derisive, sneering tone: the point is to let transwomen know that they are "men" (in Lucky's view, men are evil) and that they are semi-human objects of contempt. The most reasonable reply to Lucky's argument is (to quote Brownfemipower): Fuck you. Lucky's a bigot and an asshole; the difference between Lucky and a Klanswoman is only in which oppressed minority her hate is focused on. (I should note that although Lucky was the most extreme, several feminists joined her in her hate-fest.)" Read more.