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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!”

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!

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!  

Jenny Brown, organizer for National Women’s Liberation and author of Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women’s Work, presents a different perspective on the rather successful attempts to make getting an abortion– if you are poor– harder and harder.

Brown cites statistics demonstrating that U.S. women are having fewer and fewer babies, right now our birthrate is below simple replacement levels in the population.  This is of great concern to the 1% who fear there won’t be enough workers to exploit in the future.

Besides being a woman’s fundamental right of sovereignty over her own body, Brown reminds us that “The production of children, and who will pay for it, is a key economic battlefront.”

She discusses the carrot and stick methods that governments have used to increase birthrate.  The “carrot,” preferred in Europe and Scandinavia is to provide generous parental leave, good inexpensive childcare and other programs that makes having a child easier.  The U.S. has used the “stick” approach– trying to ban abortion and now going after birth control.

Read more at:https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/abortion-rights-strike-economic-battlefront-birth-rates

contributed by Kathy Scarbrough

the ‘left’ and ‘right’ are not equal.  if you think they are, that means racists are equivalent to anti-racists, working class is equivalent to exploiters.  when the ‘left’ hates lesbians and all women it’s a flaw and an obstacle to unity/revolution, when the ‘right’ hates us it’s core to their program.

wish more women would read The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner and anything else that helps to make sense of these connections.  for some of us it’s not optional, and i’d even go so far as to say it’s white/christian privilege (or aspiration to it, i know there are exceptions) to think it’s unproblematic to make alliances with the right wing.  and it’s a politics of seeking male protection that is anti-feminist, i can’t see it any other way.

we’re also in a period of time where this matters more.  alliances that seemed pragmatic like the disability movement working ‘both sides of aisle’ have now become something different.

feminists have a tough road to walk when what’s called the ‘left’ (but really is mostly ‘centrist’ neoliberals, true ‘left’ space in the US is negligible) endorse the dismantling of our liberation movement and even meaningful reforms for the advancement of women and girls through gender-identity laws that prioritize male demands over our boundaries.  and when they endorse the selling of women’s sexual power and reproductive power (prostitution, pornography and surrogacy).  and when leftist men mansplain, rape, sexually harass, exploit/expect our unpaid menial and emotional labor, and more.  but who are *we* ourselves and what do we stand for, as feminists?  it’s more than a list of issues, it’s the overthrow of male domination of females and all the other forms of domination that this enables.

we can’t allow problems with male leftists and centrist neoliberals to drive us into the arms of those whose entire agenda is destruction of our liberation movement and sending lesbians back into the closet and all women subordinated to and controlled by men at every level.

for US feminists who want to join with like minded women please check out FIST- Feminists in Struggle.

and in the UK, https://womansplaceuk.org is doing amazing work.