By Ann Menasche
(This piece is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Feminists in Struggle)
Feminists are quite familiar with the witch-hunt against so-called “TERFS”, women who assert that sex exists, and is immutable, and the female half of humanity (including lesbians, as women who love women), are deserving of rights based on our sex. Such recognition that women are a discrete group of people with our own rights and needs (including our right to privacy and safety and to organize apart from males) and indeed, that we are members of the oppressed sex still living under millennia of male supremacy, used to be a no-brainer for progressives and anyone who considered themselves part of the Left. Then historical amnesia set in and a new catechism, that “transwomen are women”, trickled down from the powers-that-be making a fortune off the bodies of gay, gender non-conforming and/or traumatized children and young people in the “sex change” industry. Before long, they succeeded in labelling anyone who disagreed as “transphobic” – not ordinary “bigots,” mind you, (with whom you might still be able to have a civil discussion) but the equivalent of “Nazis.”
I have experienced the trauma of the witch-hunt personally – fired from my civil rights job of 20 years, excluded from my local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, told that neither my name nor face were welcome in Jill Stein’s Green Party Presidential Campaign, and more recently prevented from renewing my membership in a professional network of homeless lawyers. All because I have spoken out publicly about women’s sex-based rights. There are many other women who have had their livelihoods and community work similarly jeopardized and even their physical safety threatened, courageous women like Amy Hamm in Canada, a nurse, found to have committed professional misconduct for her outside feminist activities and then fired; also, Kathleen Stock in the U.K., Thistle Pettersen in Wisconsin and Christy Hammer in Maine, to name just a few.
Like all witch-hunts, this one creates an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, dissuading others from speaking out. Some have even felt compelled to denounce the “witches” in order not to be accused of engaging in witchcraft themselves. Like the scapegoating of old, including the Red Scare of the 1940’s and 50’s targeting anyone suspected of communism or communist sympathies, the ostracism meted against these women is often all-encompassing. It means that you are blacklisted, no-platformed, removed from the community.
It doesn’t matter if the issue never came up in your job or professional work; your “thought crimes” expressed on social media, in your private life or in outside political activities is enough to hang you. Your very presence, (the magic power of the “evil eye,” no doubt), makes others “unsafe.”
Since it was only feminists affected, for a long time, no one paid much attention to this witch-hunt. (That may be changing in the UK with a significant feminist fight-back culminating in the UK Supreme Court decision agreeing that woman means woman under law, and that single sex spaces and programs for women and girls must be protected.)
But now a far bigger more dramatic witch-hunt is brewing in the U.S. and Europe, targeting both men and women, especially non-citizens legally in the country, but citizens as well, using a strikingly similar playbook as that used against feminists. In the U.S. this witch-hunt is being orchestrated by the federal government, first by the Biden administration, and now with far greater intensity, under Trump.
The “witches” this time are pro-Palestinian activists on campuses, labelled “antisemitic” haters for their opposition to Israeli genocide in Gaza, whose political opinions and very presence supposedly make Jewish students “unsafe.” Never mind that many Jews agree with and have participated in the protests and that even in Israel, a growing number of Jews are demanding, in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, an end to the slaughter. In Columbia University, numerous students have been expelled, suspended or stripped of their degrees for exercise of First Amendment rights to speak and peacefully protest against Israel and U.S. foreign policy. Professors too have been arrested and targeted for peacefully registering their dissent.
For legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil, this witch-hunt has meant detention by immigration agents and attempts to deport him, though he has never been charged with any crime. Nor has any evidence been produced that he was antisemitic or even pro-Hamas. In witch-hunts, evidence is besides the point.
None of this is ever about anyone’s safety, but about silencing speech and preventing critical thought.
Freedom of speech and assembly is for everyone or for no one. Suppression of speech and thought, whether through government-led repression or by groups claiming to be “progressive” while targeting others’ jobs and livelihoods and ostracizing them from the community for their “wrong” opinions, makes all of us less safe. We never know who will be the next “witch.”
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