FEMINISTS IN STRUGGLE REORGANIZES AND BEGINS PLANNING FOR FIRST NATIONAL CONFERENCE

FIST’s decision-making body, the Feminist Assembly, has voted to reorganize FIST so that all dues paying members are automatically brought into the Feminist Assembly with full voting rights.  It will take some months as we transition to this new system with one class of members instead of two, but it is a great time to join FIST or pay up on your dues.  We will also begin planning for our long-delayed national conference to take place in the late spring of 2024.

As the only membership-run multi-issue radical feminist organization in the U.S., we are excited to be taking this next step in our grassroots organizing. JOIN US!

THE MULTIPLE DELUSIONS OF TRANSGENDER POLITICS

By Ann E Menasche

This opinion is solely that of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Feminists in Struggle.

On September 15 to 17, 2023, I attended the WDI USA national conference. “Accelerating the Women’s Liberation Movement” along with 100 of my sisters (including several FIST members).  I stayed an extra day to participate in a non-violent direct action in front of San Francisco’s City Hall.  I was one among twenty women dressed in white participating in the action that had as its focus the rights of lesbians.

The conference was inspiring, the women speakers and attendees a fascinating, thoughtful bunch.

But my experiences with the Trans Rights Activist protesters were deeply surreal and even frightening. Outside the conference and at Monday’s demonstration, masked men, some in drag, others with black masks and “antifa” garb, repeatedly hurled ear-splitting yells at us, called us “fascists” and threatened us with death for the “crime” of our feminism.  Signs read, “Millions of dead TERFs”, and “I eat TERFS for breakfast” while the crowd chanted “no TERFs, no KKK, no fascist USA”, “no TERFs on our turf.” and of course the ubiquitous “F*** TERFS!”

In the midst of this mayhem, there were calls for “Revolution”, and there was one sign at the Hotel supporting abortion rights (there was no disagreement between the two sides here). A few TRA protesters near the hotel ended up scaling a locked gate separating the Hilton from a Chinatown Park, punching a hotel manager in the face, defacing the sign in front of the Hilton with various obscenities and chasing down Meagan Murphy and de-transitioner K Yang, who were lucky to escape unharmed. Later, the TRAs sprayed graffiti in front of the entrance to a building hosting a feminist art show featuring the art of de-transitioning women that many of us had attended earlier that evening.

At Monday’s demonstration at City Hall, the TRA counterdemonstration drowned us out so we couldn’t hear the speakers, even though the organizers of our event had obtained rally and sound permits ahead of time.   As time went on, TRAs got more and more riled up and police had to set down a second barricade next to the first.  Meanwhile, we women remained completely peaceful and orderly as we had been trained to do. When we called our rally to a close, we all escaped quickly into two rented U-Haul’s as we had planned, to ensure that we would get safely back to the hotel. We did not want to risk assault while waiting to order Ubers or catch the BART.  Though we laughed about it in the van as the TRAs wondered how we had managed to disappear so quickly, part of it wasn’t funny at all.  The TRAs had reduced us to the status of a bunch of criminals escaping a crime scene, though we were guilty of nothing more than exercising our rights of freedom of speech.

I’m not crazy about police.  San Francisco cops have a sordid history of rioting, and beating up patrons at gay bars, and Black citizens for minor or non-existence infractions.  I doubt it’s all better now, especially regarding the treatment of the disproportionately Black unhoused population.   But if it wasn’t for the police and hotel security guards providing basic protections, on top of our own detailed planning, and sheer luck, some of us could have been seriously injured or even killed.

All this in the very heart of San Francisco.  What happened to the City I had lived in, organized in, and loved for so many decades?  The same City that was a cultural hub of the lesbian community, dotted with women’s coffeehouses, bookstores and bars, the City where 5,000 women marched at the head of Lesbian and Gay Pride in 1977, the City that year after year held International Women’s Day protests in Golden Gate Park called Day in the Park for Women’s Rights? The same City, the same location where I had marched along with 30,000 women and male supporters for abortion rights during the March for Women’s Lives in the 1980’s and joined with Holly Near and Judy Fjell who led feminist songs from the stage? The same City where I had founded a lesbian feminist organization, Lesbian Uprising, that lasted into the 1990’s, and worked in coalition with Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and others?   The same City where hundreds of thousands of folks on the Left, when “Left” meant something, marched together up Market Street to the Civic Center to protest imperialist war, whether in Vietnam, Nicaragua, or Iraq?

And what happened to that Left?  For all the faults or contradictions of our male comrades, once the Second Wave had kicked in for a few years, blatant misogyny was no longer fashionable among either men or women in this milieu, until now. Virtually everyone who was a progressive, socialist, anti-war activist and/or involved in organized labor understood that the struggle for women’s rights/women’s liberation, was on OUR side/the workers’ side of the picket-line.  The Labor movement helped fund women’s rights protests just so they would have an opportunity to express their solidarity with the feminist movement.  They considered it an honor.

Not so for the TRAs in the U.S. and elsewhere. Nor for much of the current labor movement for that matter, which in Canada opposes parents who don’t want their (mostly female, mostly lesbian) teenagers sterilized and mutilated.  Feminists. along with parents having legitimate concerns of child safety, have somehow, in the minds of the TRAS, metamorphosized into the “enemy.”

The TRAs’ delusions thus go far beyond thinking men can be women, some women have penises, and men can be lesbians.  They also are deluded into thinking that they are being “progressive,” even revolutionary, by gathering a group of men together, yelling obscenities at women and threatening them with violence for peacefully protesting or attending a conference together. And worse, they think that women rallying for women’s rights as a sex (always the subject of feminism from the time of the First Wave) and talking about the rights of lesbians as a sexual orientation, are “fascists.”

This is the most dangerous of delusions, as the truth is just the opposite. In every place that fascism has come to power, it has restored the rule of the father, and destroyed feminism.  Feminist organizations were dissolved during the period between the two world wars in fascist Italy, Germany, Spain, and Portugal and their members forced into hiding or exile.  European Feminisms in the Face of Fascisms | EHNE  In Nazi Germany, “[w]omen experienced the rapid erosion of their rights in every sphere…Women were told to give up their jobs for men…Independent women were ruthlessly attacked and driven out of the public domain. Many feminists were jailed and some paid with their lives.” Feminism-under-Fascism

So please, boys, open up your history books before hurling epithets whose meaning you know nothing about.   I’m not sure what you were taught in school besides pronouns, but better late than never.

The next time you are tempted to call a group of independent minded feminists who refuse to defer to you, “fascists” a little soul searching first would be in order.  Threatening women in an attempt to silence us is not progressive.

 

 

 

 

 

First-hand report from WDI conference in San Francisco

by Javiera Sobarzo-Zepeda

This opinion is solely that of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Feminists in Struggle.

On September 15-18 I attended the second annual WDI conference held in San Francisco CA.

It was a great conference with many topics ranging from reproductive technology, desisted and de transitioned women, women’s studies and academia, the rise of queer policies and the effects on our politics, consciousness raising circles, the work WDI has done in legislation, feminist language and many more. I also participated in the non-violent direct action, which was an experience all its own. We were yelled at and taunted, but we persevered.

I got involved in the radical feminist movement this past year, joining WDI and FIST. I grew up on the west coast in a liberal and progressive area and I was in the camp of “transwomen are women” and “sex work is work” for many years, without thinking much about what these sayings actually meant. It wasn’t until I became a mom to a daughter that these mantras began to unravel for me. I want her to grow up in a safe world that honors her for who she is and respects her body as her own.

This conference was the first conference I have been to where I was with other likeminded women. As a baby radical feminist,I found it inspiring to hear from women who have been in this fight for female sovereignty. I feel a renewed strength to stay in this for my daughter. It was encouraging to see other women my age as well, I am in my early 30s, I think a lot of my generation is starting to see through the veil. We want to protect our children, our friends children from these manipulative forces.

I am looking forward and have great hope for what is to come. Women are waking up. We are speaking and being heard. I know we will find a way and it may look different, but through community and working together, we will preserve female sovereignty.

FIST Hosts Feminist Author Shannon Thrace on Oct. 7th to discuss her new book, “18 Months: A Marriage Lost to Gender Identity”

Tickets are on sale now for $5.00 for this special event on Saturday, October 7, 11:00 a.m. Pacific time, 2:00 p.m. on zoom, when Shannon will talk about her recently published book, “18 Months: A Memoir of a Marraige Lost to Gender Identity.”

Reserve your tickets below:

FEMINIST BOOK TALK: A MARRIAGE LOST TO GENDER IDENTITY Tickets, Sat, Oct 7, 2023 at 11:00 AM | Eventbrite

Shannon is a writer, cultural critic, and IT professional who lives for travel, good food and summer music festivals. Her book tells the story of the dissolution of her    fifteen-year mariage when her partner began to identify as transgender. She is also a member of Feminists in Struggle. Find her Substack at            https://shannonthrace.substack.com

Shannon’s book can be purchased through Amazon, Barnes and Noble. and other sources on the internet.

This is a women-only event.  You won’t want to miss it!  Please join us!

 

KEEP OUR EYES ON THE PRIZE

It is easy to lose track of the ultimate goal of women’s liberation – the end to sex-based oppression of half the human race born female – by focusing exclusively on our defensive battles. There are many such battles taxing our spirits. In the wake of our loss of abortion rights last year, we have seen the passage of one horrific state law after another placing women’s liberty, health, and very lives at risk.

And of course, there is the defensive fight against a pernicious worldwide ideology that denies the existence of sex, allowing males into women’s spaces and programs, and depriving us of privacy, safety, and opportunity and even the language needed to talk about ourselves and assert our rights. We are also seeing the tragedy of a whole generation of girls (future feminists, future lesbians) desperately attempting to escape their womanhood by doing great harm to their female bodies through submitting to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and lopping off healthy body parts.

Despite these challenges, we must maintain our broader vision. We women have still not achieved equality in the workplace, under law or in the rest of society, and winning our current defensive battles will not by themselves get us there.

We are coming upon the 100th centennial of the Equal Rights Amendment, written by suffragist Alice Paul in 1923, that would finally guarantee equality based on sex in the U.S. Constitution. The ERA does not solve all problems but is a vital tool to move us forward once again.

Feminist lawyer Wendy Murphy recently spoke at Seneca Falls in celebration of this centennial in the presence of the great-great-granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Coline Jenkins:

“For the entirety of women’s 247 years in this country – a country that dares to declare itself the greatest democracy on earth – women have been denied basic legal equality of rights and no laws must be enforced equally when applied to women because without the ERA women are not constitutionally entitled to equal treatment under the law.”

“Neither party truly supports the ERA,” Wendy added. She also extolled the independence of Ms. Paul from both parties. something she claims we need now more than ever, as we have a Democratic President that refuses to instruct the archivist to publish the ERA.

So, no matter how hard things get, sisters, let’s keep our eyes on the prize.

 

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BENEFITS WOMEN OF ALL COLORS

This opinion piece is from an individual FIST member and does not necessarily represent the views of the organization as a whole.  However, FIST is on record in support of affirmative action.

The Supreme Court decision this past June in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard,  finding race based affirmative action in college admissions an unconstitutional violation of equal protection https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf, not only struck a blow to Black people trying to break free from centuries of oppression and racist policies. It is also an impediment to women’s advancement as a sex in our own struggle against male supremacy.

Race blindness, like sex blindness, is an exceedingly bad idea when discrimination and/ or the institutionalized remnants of past discrimination still exist.  Discriminatory intent is hard to prove but if all the staff at the local car repair shop is all white and male, chances are that sexism and racism played a determinate role. And race or sex conscious remedies are necessary.

Like in the case of abortion rights, affirmative action wasn’t gotten rid of all at once but was slowly eroded by the courts until the recent death blow was struck.  The Bakke decision in 1978 marked the beginnings of this downward spiral.  https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/regents_of_the_university_of_california_v_bakke_(1978)

Though most women now work in the paid labor market and women have broken into certain professions, like law and medicine, previously mostly barred to them, the workforce remains highly sex segregated.  There are still “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs” even if advertisements that spelled this out have been banned for decades under civil rights laws.  Women, though highly educated, are still relegated to lower paid, lower status positions, including even within the same field or profession.  Women lawyers, for example, are concentrated in the non-profit world or work for the government (with the few men there disproportionately found in top management) and are rarely owners or partners of successful private law firms.  Moreover, fields where most women work are underpaid and undervalued, despite the level of skill and education required or the importance of the work to society.  Nursing and teaching come to mind.

Women of all colors benefited from affirmative action especially when it was more robust in the early years, i.e., at a time when it included quotas and/or goals and timetables.   For example, women broke into the trades in the 1970’s, the first time since the government implemented its own affirmative action program bringing women into the war industry during World War II.   For a fascinating documentary of this period, I recommend “the Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081053/

So, in the 1970’s and into the 1980’s women worked as car mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, plumbers, electricians, engineers, and construction workers. However, by the 1980’s, women were forced out of the trades, not because they weren’t interested in the work or too weak or lacking in the skills needed to do the job well, but due to the hostility of male co-workers and managers who engaged in severe sexual harassment and violence against the female newcomers. See https://socialchangenyu.com/review/toward-gender-equality-affirmative-action-comparable-worth-and-the-womens-movement/

Affirmative action’s impact on women’s status in the workplace was limited because it wasn’t strong enough.  The number of women brought into male fields was small and the women were left isolated and far more vulnerable to harassment.  If women had been recruited in large numbers or ideas such as all-women teams implemented, women would likely have stayed.

Affirmative action is a vital measure for achieving equality for both people of color and women of all colors.  We need to create a movement strong enough to bring it back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Calling All Feminists Near Dallas Texas for a Protest

Hooters exploitation

An energetic young feminist from Texas has initiated a protest in front of  the Hooter’s “breastaurant” on July 15th at 2201 N. Lamar St., Dallas, TX at noon.  Ever hear of the term “breastaurant?” It was a new term to this feminist writer.  Apparently, it is a recognized term for those eating establishments that use young women’s bodies to attract customers.  The term has even been used in lawsuits as the following Instagram post points out.  The feminist activists behind the planned protest are on Twitter and Instagram as “WomenOverWings,” they demand men respect women and get their wings elsewhere.



Breastaurants use a whopper of an argument and have the nerve to cite the Civil Rights Act: If your business is based on sexism then you have the right to objectify women’s bodies as a bona fide occupational qualification!  And they got away with it, what a legal system we have in this country…

 

#WomenOverWings was inspired by the 1968 protest against the Miss America Pageant as this tweet shows:

 

#WomenOverWings asks provocative questions:

Oppose Injustice

The climate crisis has made Texas a real furnace, so be sure to take precautions against the sun and heat if you attend.  And send your impressions of the demonstration to feministstruggle@protonmail.com!

Feminist Forum set for July 15th: PROSTITUTION, PORNOGRAPHY & MALE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

PROSTITUTION, PORNOGRAPY, and MALE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

FIST presents a zoom forum on violence against women focusing on the issues of pornography and prostitution. 

Forum is Saturday, July 15th, 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time, 4:00 p.m. Eastern

Tickets are $5 and can be purchased here:PROSTITUTION, PORNOGRAPY, and MALE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Tickets, Sat, Jul 15, 2023 at 1:00 PM | Eventbrite

SPEAKERS:

`1) GAIL DINES is a Professor Emerita, researcher and radical feminist activist. She has been organizing against the porn industry for over thirty years and refuses to allow these sexual predators free reign to reduce women to an oppressed sex-class. Her latest book, Pornland, How Porn has Hijacked Our Sexuality, has been translated into 5 languages, and she was recently named one of the topo ten most influential women sociologists in the world by Academic Influence. Gail is in shock that a radical feminist is on such a list!

(2) MEREDITH KERSHAW is an Australian-born attorney, living in New Jersey, with experience practicing law in Australia and New York. She is deeply interested in protecting the human rights of women and girls, having served as a federal prosecutor for the Australian Prosecution Service specializing in the prosecution of crimes involving human exploitation particularly child pornography offenses. Meredith is an advocate for the Equality Model a holistic, legal approach to addressing prostitution, and authored a report published by New Yorkers for the Equality model entitled “Is Decriminalization of the Sex Trade the Answer? Debunking the ADLU’s Report.” Meredith is a commercial litigator with boutique law firm Wasserman Grubin & Rogers, LLP in New York and will commence a Master of Laws at Columbia University in fall 22023.

FIST’s Feminist Forums series are interactive and organizing events. At our forums, women have an opportunity not only to hear interesting speakers on a variety of feminist topics but to meet each other, make comments, ask questions of the presenters and discuss feminist politics together. We also usually tape the events so they may be viewed later. Women in attendance are free to shut off their cameras and mute themselves, should they prefer to do so. If you prefer to remain anonymous within the group, or plan to sign in under a different name from the name you have used for registration and purchase of your ticket, please contact the organizer prior to the event. Thanks.

While some of our events are open to both men and women, THIS IS A FEMALE ONLY EVENT. We ask that our male allies respect our right to meet together as women.

ON PRIDE & SHAME

This is an opinion piece submitted by two lesbian members of FIST and does not necessarily reflect the position of FIST as an organization.

We used to look forward to participating in Pride parades. In the days when they were called Lesbian/Gay Pride, they were political events with a feminist message. In 1977, 5,000 women marched at the head of the Pride March in San Francisco, right behind Dykes on Bikes. Lesbian-feminists spoke and sang from the podium. We needed Pride because our same sex love had been shrouded in shame – the silence and invisibility of the closet, something never demanded of heterosexuals. We were losing jobs, housing, and custody of our kids because we were openly gay or lesbian or because the sex of our partners had been discovered.

But Pride has changed. And we don’t mean the drag. Gender non-conformity including cross-dressing was always extremely common among lesbians and gay men, and was, from the beginning, pervasive at our Pride events. There were always drag queens on elaborate floats in attendance, and women in full butch regalia. But, until quite recently, the idea that cross-dressing and other behaviors that do not conform to sex stereotypes meant your sexed body was “wrong” and in need of medicalization, was exceedingly rare among gay men and almost non-existent among lesbians.

In addition, overt sexual displays such as BDSM did not exist at Pride events to any significant extent until the 1990’s. Lesbian, gays, bisexuals, and our straight supporters always brought their kids to Pride without hesitation. These were not X- rated events. Now they are.

To be blunt, Pride is no longer the event we remember. It has become thoroughly corporatized, pornified, and coopted, a shadow of its former self that was forged in the struggle for lesbian and gay rights.  The extent of the merger that has occurred between Pride and corporate America is a bit shocking.  For example, the list of sponsors of San Diego Pride is a virtual Who’s Who of corporate America. Sponsors include Bank of America, Starbucks, Northrup Gruman, Charles Schwab, Jack-in- the-Box, Coca-Cola, Greystar, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Chevrolet.  There are also sponsors from the medical industrial complex, including Blue California, Kaiser Permanente, Genentech, and notably, Rady’s Children’s Hospital which works in the highly lucrative field of gender medicine, operating the Center for Gender Affirming Care for “children, adolescence and young adults.” 

The community, too, has changed. The growing amalgam of lettered identities introduced heterosexuals into our community and has increasingly marginalized lesbians and gay men. Lesbians especially have been almost completely squeezed out of the community now dominated by the “TQ”. Women’s spaces and cultural events that nurtured and supported lesbians such as the Michigan Women’s Music Festival were labelled “trans-exclusionary” and are now gone; female-only lesbian groups and a lesbian same-sex sexual orientation itself have been redefined as “transphobic bigotry.” A misogynistic and homophobic sex-denying ideology has become dominant and is encouraging the medical transition and sterilization of mostly female teens – tomboys and future lesbians – into facsimiles of the other sex, at great cost to their long-term health.

Pride has also been torn from its roots. Our lesbian and gay history is being rewritten so that we have forgotten that in 1969 drag queens were gay men, rather than “trans”; that it was not transgender identified males but an African-American butch lesbian, Storme DeLarvarie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm%C3%A9_DeLarverie who kicked off Stonewall; and that gays and lesbians, not trans identified individuals, organized the first Pride March. Please listen to the words of Fred Sargeant, who was there. https://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_C9A3B5DB7A6848F7B5F9858C106C6854

So, has Pride outlived its usefulness? Despite the progress we have made since Stonewall, anti-lesbian/gay prejudice continues to run deep within the population. Witness that homophobia – both external and internalized – is one of the main forces propelling medical transition in both children and adults.

In the U.S., lesbians and gay men are still at risk. It was only in 2003 that the Supreme Court in a 6 to 3 decision invalidated sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/558/while such laws criminalizing homosexuality between consenting adults remain on the books in Texas and 11 other states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States#:~:text=As%20of%20May%202023%2C%2012,result%20of%20Lawrence%20v.%20Texas.

We are still not protected by federal laws explicitly prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination. Instead, we have one Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf that protects against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation under sex discrimination; and another, Obergefell v. Hodges, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-556 that recognizes the right to marry a same sex partner. But we have seen how Supreme Court decisions can be quickly reversed as happened regarding the issue of abortion. Justice Thomas has recently called for revisiting both Lawrence and Obergefell. It would be foolish to let our guard down now.  

Large sections of the world present an even more dangerous picture. Places like Iran and Uganda continue to criminalize same sex love, subjecting lesbians, and gay men to the death penalty.

Yes, we still need Pride, as a movement for lesbian/gay rights, not as a market share.  Our liberation from anti-gay prejudice and compulsory heterosexuality has not yet been achieved.

One of the most persistent myths used against us is that we lesbians and gay men are “perverts” who “groom” and molest children to “recruit” to our “lifestyle”. Yes, as in all sectors of society, there are gay people, especially gay men, who think “love” between grown adults and minors is just fine. Pornography has permeated our community just as it has straight society. But the vast majority of our community, both men and women, have long ago and wholeheartedly rejected pedophilia and continues to do so, in part due to having been influenced by a feminist understanding of power and abuse. Moreover, the Catholic Church was far more of a hotbed of sexual abuse of children then the lesbian and gay community is or has ever been.

This reality did not prevent anti-gay right wing Christian fundamentalist forces from campaigning against lesbian/gay rights in the early years based on the risk lesbians and gay men supposedly pose to children. Witness in the late 1970’s the “Save Our Children” campaign of Anita Bryant to overturn local gay rights protections in Florida; and the California Briggs Initiative, one year later, ultimately defeated, that proposed to exclude gay teachers and anyone else in the schools that openly supported lesbian/gay rights.

These arguments seem to be resurfacing once again, from right wing anti-gay politicians like DeSantis who write overly broad bills and policies; and even from members of the our own community who, in fighting against child medical transition and indoctrination of children into gender identity ideology in schools, appear to agree that (open) gays and lesbians are a threat to children and should be kept away from them until they are 18 to avoid the adults being “groomers.” For example, Rainbow Rebellion and Gays Against Groomers are organizing a Pride counter-protest in St. Louis which proclaims, “LGBTQ+ Stay away from the kids.” https://www.trevoices.org/

But lesbian/gay parents and teachers do not threaten children’s safety nor do they “recruit.” Moreover, it should be o.k. to “say gay” in schools, to discuss and read books about same sex families and relationships or learn about lesbian/gay history. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens dating and exploring their same sex sexuality with their peers also deserve our support. The teaching of age-appropriate sex education in schools, including that related to homosexuality, is fine. Even being exposed to cross-dressing or drag is not in itself a risk to kids. Rather, pornified displays by adults whether by drag queens or by Beyonce, Lady Gaga or other similarly hyper-sexualized “straight” performers, are inappropriate for young children.

It is not gays and lesbians, nor, for that matter, individual adults that identify as transgender, that pose a risk to kids. We do not need to stay away from children. Rather, it is the teaching of gender identity ideology to children, whoever does the teaching – that a child may have been born in the “wrong” body which the doctor can “fix” for you, that “feminine” men and boys, and “masculine” women and girls are not really members of their sex, and that biological sex either doesn’t exist, or can be changed. chosen, or overridden by an amorphous feeling called “gender identity” that everyone is supposed to have- which causes children profound confusion and can unleash untold physical harm.

Lesbians and gays are not responsible for how our community has been hijacked. Let’s reject the shame and take-back Pride from our corporate masters. We can fight against child transition while remaining vigilant in defense of lesbian and gay rights and not giving an inch to homophobia. WE WILL NOT GO BACK.

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!”