Parents, Detransitioners, Lesbians and Gays, and Feminists Protest Child Transition in San Diego May 6th

San Diego FIST members participated in a peaceful rally of about 75 people in San Diego on May 6th at the Pediatric Endocrine Society’s Annual Conference against the medical transition of minors and for evidence-based care.  The rally was sponsored by a coalition of groups, including Our Duty, a non-partisan organization of parents, which played a leadership role. https://ourduty.group.  One of the central organizer of Our Duty in California, Erin Friday, a Democrat, chaired the rally. There were several female de-transitioners that gave powerful presentations about their experiences as teens being rushed into transition and suffering severe and permanent physical harms.  They announced a new organization called Detrans Help.  Other speakers scanned the political spectrum including several lesbians.  No counter-protesters showed up.

The range of speakers and the messages presented – uniformly pro-gay and pro gender non-conformity – made it clear that this is not fundamentally a Right-wing movement.  Rather, polls have shown that a majority of Americans of all political persuasions are sympathetic to these views. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3991685-majority-of-americans-oppose-gender-affirming-care-for-minors-trans-women-participating-in-sports-poll/.

Ann Menasche from FIST was one of the speakers.

Here are excerpts from Ann’s speech:

“I represent here today a small national multi-issue radical feminist organization solidly on the Left called Feminists in Struggle. I, myself, am a lesbian, a feminist, a socialist, a Green, a civil rights lawyer, and a life-long activist. I am proud to join with all of you today, parents, de-transitioners, others from the gay community, heterosexuals, people with a range of political views, to proclaim in one voice that no child is born in the wrong body!  This atrocity of sterilizing and mutilating children and teens who are gender non-conforming, gay, autistic, traumatized, or otherwise different, in the name of what is euphemistically called “gender affirming care”, must end…

There is nothing wrong with these children’s bodies…that needs to be “fixed” by experimental so-called treatments like puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and cosmetic surgeries – the removal or mutilation of healthy body parts.  Feminine boys, and masculine girls, and same sex attracted teens are fine just as they are.  Bodies & roles do not need to “match.” Allow these children to grow and develop with their bodies intact. And tell the truth to young adults that these “treatments” cause serious permanent harms and do not cure gender unhappiness or anything else.

Children of both sexes need to be freed not from their bodies, but from gender roles and stereotypes that put them into boxes based on their sex, preventing them from freely exploring their interests and expressing their personalities…Young same sex attracted people need to be freed, not from their healthy sexed bodies, but from homophobia….Girls need to be freed from sexism that demeans them and their developing bodies as sex objects, that subjects them to male sexual and physical violence, and still, even today, places obstacles in their path to following their dreams because of their sex…

For all the spirited girls out there, for all the misfits like I was, for all the tomboys, for all the future pioneers, scientists, athletes, doctors, lawyers, thinkers, writers, artists, carpenters, mechanics, engineers, leaders who were born female, for the lesbians, for all the future feminists and visionaries, for all the amazing mothers of past, present and future generations, for the memory of my own rebellious and loving tomboy mother who as a child used to run across rooftops tearing her dresses, FOR ALL OF THEM, let’s put an end to this atrocity.  STOP CHILD TRANSITION!  NO ONE IS BORN IN THE WRONG BODY!”

JUSTICE FOR ANN CAMPAIGN SEEKS ENDORSEMENTS! DEFEND FEMINISTS FROM FIRING AND WITCHHUNTS!

The Justice for Ann Campaign is seeking organizations as well as individuals to sign on as endorsers. Ann was fired from her job after 20 years based on her sex and sexual orientation. following her assertion that members of the female sex are the people harmed by abortion bans. She has since filed a lawsuit for discrimination in the Superior Court. Her case is similar to Maya Forstater’s in the UK who ultimately was vindicated. Read Ann’s story at https://defendfeminists.net/the-feminists-we-defend/justice-for-ann-menasche/.

Form for organizations to endorse is here: https://greenalliance.sexbasedrights.org/form/justice_for_ann_menasche–organizational_endorsement.

Individuals can sign on as an endorser here: https://greenalliance.sexbasedrights.org/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=4&reset=1.

All feminists and genuine progressives who care about women’s rights and the rights of workers to be free from discrimination and to not be targeted for their political opinions and outside political activities are welcome to join this campaign.

Stop the witch-hunts against feminists! An injury to one is an injury to all!

 

STOP THE VIOLENCE AGAINST SUPPORTERS OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS – STATEMENT FROM FEMINISTS IN STRUGGLE

Male violence against women is nothing new and characterizes all patriarchal societies including our own.  As just one example, take the scourge of femicide – men kill three women every day in the United States, mostly their partners or former partners.

Even less talked about is the collective violence against the movement for women’s rights.  This, too, has a long sordid history.  During the Suffrage movement, women marchers were assaulted by male mobs and suffragists were attacked while peacefully picketing the White House with police looking on.  After the suffragists were arrested, guards beat them with Billy clubs, dragged, choked, and kicked them, and subjected them to forced feeding. More recently, anti-abortionists have bombed abortion clinics, harassed patients and staff, and murdered abortion doctors.

Women and some men have been similarly subjected to violence for standing up to the extremist sex denialism of gender identity ideology, and for peacefully protesting for women’s rights – the right of women to speak in public, and to female-only spaces and programs.

Below are some recent examples of this violence, often done in the name of “trans rights” or “anti-fascism.”   Such violence demonstrates that this is not fundamentally about defending anyone’s civil rights but is simply old-fashioned misogyny designed to keep women in our places.  In addition, the women fighting for our rights have been unfairly demonized as “right-wing bigots” and “fascists” when not only is this very far from the truth, but it is the transactivists who are behaving like storm troopers.  And like during suffrage days, the police have often been complicit, doing nothing to stop the violence.

  • Attacks on the Let Women’s Speak rallies in Australia and New Zealand in March 2023. The mob broke through temporary gates set up by police and an organizer had tomato juice poured over her head and an elderly woman ended up with a concussion.
  • Former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer, Riley Graines, posted on her social media account that on April 6, 2023 she was ambushed, physically hit and forced to barricade in a classroom by a mob yelling obscenities at San Francisco State. Gaines speaks around the country saying it wasn’t fair that she had to compete against Lia Thomas, a transwoman who won an NCAA national women’s swimming championship in the 500-yard freestyle in 2022. The San Francisco State University police department is investigating. On April 8 the University put out a tweet thanking the students who protested peacefully, saying nothing about those who were violent.
  • Multiple attacks in various cities during a 2022 US tour featuring British women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen. Keen is known for having founded Standing for Women to raise awareness of issues surrounding sex self-identification policies.  A woman supporting Keen had her hand crushed by a trans-identified male whose aim was to stop her from recording video on her phone during a women’s rights rally in Tacoma Washington on October 26.
  • Members of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) held an event entitled “Fighting the New Misogyny: A Feminist Critique of Gender Identity” at the Seattle Public Library on Feb 1, 2020. During the day, the Seattle Police Department cleared the library following a bomb threat, apparently made as a last-ditch attempt to shut down the event.  A mob threatening violence convened outside while inside 5 men were threatened with arrest after disrupting the talks.  The audience began chanting Let Women Speak! In response to the hecklers. According to Feminist Current “Some of the protestors had dispersed by the end of the event, but a large group remained near the exit, phalanxed by police and shouting insults at the women exiting the library. One man ran around the escort vehicle in an attempt to cut off Meghan Murphy before she entered the vehicle, but was blocked by security. Had it not been for the police, the speakers would likely have faced attacks.”
  • In late 2019 Meghan Murphy booked a speech on gender at the Toronto Public Library and required police protection as she was besieged by trans activists threatening violence. The next day the Toronto City Council voted 20 to 1 to review the booking policy for public spaces.

Feminists In Struggle extends our solidarity to all the women and men who have been harmed by this attack on women’s right to speak and peacefully protest in public places without fear.   Political differences within this growing movement for women’s sex-based rights should never be allowed to stand in the way of uniting in unconditional solidarity with our sisters in the U.S. and around the globe under attack. Stop this despicable violence now!  

 

 

Minority Statement on Missouri Senate bill Banning Child Transition

Members of FIST voted to support the Missouri Senate bill banning so-called trans “affirming” care for minor children, as posted on this blog March 31.  However, that vote was quite close and those of us in the minority would like to put forward our arguments in the spirit of furthering the feminist debate on this important issue.

The Missouri bill does not “stand-alone” but is one of a tsunami of bills released recently sponsored by the Right, as part of a concerted build-up for the next presidential election—basically to get a far-right person elected president in 2024 (DeSantis or Trump).  The fact that some feminist groups joined the Right in promoting these bills has no influence on the Right’s culture war strategy.  Other rightwing bills that are part of this strategy include: the plethora of abortion bans in 13 states (including the recent attack on medication abortion); the erasure of actual US history from K-12 curricula, in the name of “protecting children” from knowing the truth about slavery (and civil rights and women’s rights); the attacks on affirmative action, Social Security and voting rights. We cannot separate all of these right wing attacks (even the one that we might agree with) from the general attack on everything progressive that is unfolding before our eyes—and we do not think FIST should play a part in what will play into that build-up by the Right despite our best efforts to separate ourselves as Leftists, lesbians, etc. .

A major argument in the fight for abortion has always been: “politicians should not be legislating healthcare—this is the province of medicine, not politics.”  “Bans off my body”  should be upheld for all adults, but minor children are often treated with additional care.  Any legislation on specific medical procedures can be used to strengthen the hand of politicians to adjudicate and police abortion care.

If state power is used to enforce “healthcare” bans at a time when there is so much sentimentalized propaganda FOR “gender affirming treatment”, it will make the parents seeking these procedures for their children into MARTYRS and will simply strengthen public sympathy FOR “gender affirming care.”

Even when the Right seems to be in agreement with us on transgender ideology, the way they see women and gender is very different  from a feminist perspective.  They want to preserve gender norms while feminists have always argued that the stereotypes associated with sex are confining and oppressive and should be eliminated.

A better strategy for us might be to put our energy into pressuring medical organizations (AMA, etc) or mounting a public service campaign to increase public understanding of the dangers of these “treatments.” Really putting on the pressure as to how their junk science is mutilating children, making them sterile, some unable to ever enjoy orgasm while simultaneously turning children into lifelong medical patients consuming the exact same powerful steroid hormones that the Women’s Health Movement of the 1970s worked so hard to warn us about. We could be spreading the word about the reasons Sweden, Finland and the UK have closed “gender clinics” and publicize the fact that even the US FDA has been forced to add the word “experimental” to its definition of sex hormones in “gender affirming treatment.”

FIST issues statement supporting Missouri Senate bill 843 banning child transition

On March 25, 2023, FIST sent a statement to the Missouri legislature supporting a bill that would ban medicalized transition for children under 18.  The letter declared in part, “Child transition involving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries that remove or modify healthy body parts are extremely sexist and homophobic practices.  They disproportionately harm a growing number of girls, most of whom are same sex attracted, i.e., are likely to become lesbians, and girls that don’t fit in with sex stereotypes of traditional “femininity” imposed on them by a sexist society.

Medical transition is experimental, cosmetic, and doesn’t cure anything.  Instead, it results in sterilization, prevents proper development of brains and bones, and causes other permanent physical disabilities and shortened life spans.  No child is born in the wrong body! As feminists solidly on the Left, we call for saving the tomboys and future lesbians and feminists as well as all children struggling with being different from these permanent medical harms.”

The bill passed the Missouri Senate and is now pending in the House. If it passes, it will join a number of other states that have passed similar laws. According to ABC News, “At least 11 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah — have passed laws or policies that restrict gender-affirming care for people under the age of legal majority, which is the threshold for legal adulthood.”

FIST is highly appreciative of the work of Scott/Kellie Newgent who has been traveling all over the country working on bills to protect children and who encouraged our participation in this campaign.  Please support her work at trevoices.org.

SAN DIEGO FIST MEMBERS PARTICIPATE IN INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY EVENT IN SAN DIEGO

Dozens of women and their male supporters including FIST members helped organize a candlelight vigil and rally on March 8th 2023 for International Women’s Day in downtown San Diego. The demonstration highlighted women’s demands for restoration of women’s right to abortion nationally, the registration of the ERA into the Constitution that has already been ratified by 38 states and is being held up by the Biden administration, and an end to male violence against women and girls.

Ann Menasche. a co-coordinator of FIST, spoke at the rally urging that women should utilize their own voices and mobilize in the streets, rather than rely on politicians or judges.  Menasche said, “We have the power to change the world, sisters, and there is no better time than now”, and led the crowd in a chant made popular by Iranian feminists, “Woman, life, freedom.”

Andrea Gabay a grassroots feminist activist and organizer for Femme Fight Club, also spoke and was interviewed by a local TV station.

The coalition of local feminist groups plan to organize other protests in defense of women’s rights in San Diego.

FIST to host Zoom Forum March 25th on Strategies for Winning Back Abortion Rights

Feminists In Struggle continues its series with a forum on abortion rights: “After Dobbs and the continuing threat to women’s reproductive rights, how do we develop a strategy to regain and secure the right to abortion nationally?”  Tickets on sale now!

FEMINIST FORUM: STRATEGIES FOR WINNING BACK WOMEN’S ABORTION RIGHTS Tickets, Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 1:00 PM | Eventbrite

Here is our exciting panel of speakers:

Andrea Gabay is a grassroots activist who first volunteered in 2020 while living in New York City. She was an active volunteer doing food drives and composting at GrowNYC environmental program to empower New Yorkers to secure a healthy environment. She also supported many marches throughout NYC, including many BLM movements and was involved with Women’s March in Manhattan. Andrea brought her activist work back with her to San Diego, where she organized a march/rally in January 2023 as part of the national Women’s March.

Wendy Murphy , J.D. is an impact litigator specializing in women’s and children’s civil and constitutional rights. She won landmark Title IX cases against Harvard, Harvard Law, and Princeton between 1992 and 2010 that led to the revolutionary 2011 Dear Colleague letter; and sued the Trump and Biden Administrations in federal court to advance women’s rights. She also won landmark cases to improve privacy rights for women crime victims and testimonial rights for disabled crime victims. She is adjunct professor of sexual violence law and law reform at New England Law Boston where she directs the Women’s and Children’s Advocacy Project under the Center for Law and Social Responsibility. She is well known for her legal advocacy in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.  See our ERA-FIST brochure, “Why We Need the ERA” on which Wendy collaborated, and her book, From Suffrage to Inequality.

Ann Menasche is a San Diego civil rights attorney, grassroots activist, lesbian, and long-time feminist who is a founding member and co-coordinator of the national radical feminist organization, Feminists in Struggle. She is also co-chair of the Green Alliance for Sex-Based RIghts. She has fought for access to safe legal abortion in the years before Roe and in the decades that followed. In the 1980’s she led a landmark case against an anti-abortion center or “fake clinic” for consumer fraud and won. She also helped organize Marches for Women’s Lives in San Francisco that drew tens of thousands of people. Ann was recently fired from her civil rights job for asserting that abortion bans harm women as a sex and has filed a wrongful termination law suit against her previous employer as a result.

JOIN US FOR THIS IMPORTANT DISCUSSION!

FIST’S Ann Menasche Files Suit Against Former Employer for Wrongful Discharge, Discrimination, and Retaliation

On January 26, 2023, Ann Menasche filed suit in San Diego Superior Court against her former employer, Disability Rights California, for wrongful termination, sex and sexual orientation discrimination, and retaliation.  She claims she was fired for declaring that “safe legal abortion is a life-and-death issue for women as a sex”  and for supporting the maintenance of sex and sexual orientation as protected characteristics under law.  For this she was labelled a “TERF” and a bigot and a few days later and without warning, fired.

Feminists in Struggle and allies have initiated a Justice for Ann Committee that is working with others on getting media and garnering support for Ann’s case.   The case is the first in the U.S. to challenge in court the silencing and no-platforming of feminists through targeting their livelihoods.  In the U.K. there have been several cases including that of Maya Forstater and Allison Bailey that led to successful outcomes for the women and helped lessen the fear women have of their gender critical views becoming known.

To get more details about Ann’s case, go to defendfeminists.net where you can view the summary of the Complaint, or sign on as an endorser of the Statement of Solidarity.

FIST Speaks at Abortion Rights March in San Diego

On January 22, 2023, the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Ann Menasche, member of the Coordinating Committee of FIST, spoke at a San Diego rally for abortion rights.  Ann framed the abortion issue as one of women’s rights, called for the restoration of abortion rights in all 50 states and that women rely on ourselves and not the politicians to win back our rights.   She was well received by the crowd. The spirited demonstration of a few hundred was organized quickly by grassroots feminist activists when the Women’s March failed to organize anything locally. FIST also distributed 60 half page flyers with our statement on abortion rights on one side and our thirteen principles on the other.  The rally was followed by a march through downtown San Diego.   San Diego FIST members and supporters look forward to future local feminist work.

Building Hope for the New Year

It’s been a tough year for women’s rights.  We lost abortion rights (even though access had been eroded for years) when the decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health was issued this past June with our reactionary Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade and 50 years of precedent to give a green light to states to outlaw abortion.  Now 13 states ban all or virtually all abortions and only 17 states and the District of Columbia broadly protect abortion rights. No doubt, many women’s lives and liberty now hang in the balance.

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has continued to fight in the courts against adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even though already ratified by the requisite 38 states. See Maura Casey’s article, Publish ERA, let skirmishes begin and watch Equal Means Equal’s video: Joe, Do It!

The ERA would establish sex as a protected category, with the same weight as race, which would make it far easier to challenge all kinds of discriminatory practices in every state in the union, including jobs discrimination, violence against women, and yes, abortion bans. See and share our Why We Need the ERA brochure.

And then the coordinated worldwide effort to deny the existence of sex, and to remove sex-based protections including the ability of women to organize against our oppression and to even have language to talk about ourselves, has continued apace in 2022.  California passed two horrific bills this year, SB 923 and SB107 and would respectively indoctrinate the medical and mental health professions in gender identity ideology and make the state a magnet for minors seeking sterilizing and mutilating so-called “gender affirming care.”  See our post about these dangerous bills.

Indoctrination in our schools and universities is endemic.  Feminists are losing jobs and livelihoods and facing civil rights complaints for refusing to deny the existence of two biological sexes. A lesbian in Norway was even facing criminal charges and up to three years in prison for supposed “hate speech” for stating that men could neither be lesbians or mothers.

And most recently, Scotland passed a gender self-ID law, the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, that will allow any male, including convicted sex offenders, to enter women’s spaces and programs simply on his say-so, disregarding concerns about women’s safety.

So, there is plenty of reason to despair.  But there is also reason to hope.

Women can and are fighting back.  Women in Scotland protested and sang a rendition of Auld Lang Syne outside of parliament during the vote, “women’s rights are human rights.”  Their struggle is not over.

Rise-Up for Abortion Rights has done amazing organizing in response to the overturning of Roe.

Two women who challenged their sacking in the UK for their gender critical views were vindicated in court:  Allison Bailey  and Maya Forstater.

Our Duty, a non-partisan group of parents opposing child medical transition, organized a successful “First Do No Harm Unity Rally” of 100 people in Anaheim California in front of a national convention of pediatricians.  The central organizer is a mother, lawyer, and liberal Democrat.  The Tavistock Gender Clinic in the UK has been shuttered following the investigation headed up by Dr. Hilary Cass revealing dangerous invasive procedures being recommended for gender dysphoric youth with little screening or oversight.

And then there are the women of Iran, who are leading a struggle against an extremely repressive and misogynist fundamentalist regime.  In response to the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in custody of the morals police for not wearing her headscarf properly, and at great risk to themselves, our Iranian sisters have poured out into the streets again and again.

The song, Baraye, has been the anthem of the protests:

For the sake of dancing in the street

For the fear felt in the moment of kissing

For my sister your sister, our sisters

For changing the rotten minds

For shame, for pennilessness

For the yearning for an ordinary life

For the sake of the children that mine the garbage and their dreams…

For women, life, liberty

 

For women, life, liberty!  If they can do it, we can do it!

Happy New Year, sisters!