Why I decided to stop using the term “transwoman”

Since the latest arrest of a trans “woman”, for the brutal attack on an actual woman, I’ve seen many women stand by this male and show no compassion for his female victim. I also saw the male judge order the victim to refer to her male attacker as a “she” and when the victim repeatedly forgot to lie under oath, the judge reduced the attacker’s sentence, shamed the victim and denied her rightful compensation.

The absurdity inherent in this situation is evidence of escalating power of patriarchy, which is now only willing to tolerate female collaborators, or handmaidens, while it gratuitously punishes women who resist.

Most visible handmaidens today are highly paid women in politics, media, academia and entertainment industry. Allowed to be there by the grace of men, and expected to police the rest of us. So when small pockets of resistance do form, women with dissenting opinions are told to stay quiet or face double assault – male and female punishment, peppered with betrayal by their own kind.

It’s therefore not a surprise that the handmaidens are the biggest role models to young women and girls. The conditional nature of women in power is all that seems possible. All that’s visible. This is why so many women are lining up for the job, and quite possibly, this is how patriarchy survives.

Consider the recent case of Emma Healey, who stole private information of women on Mumsnet forum, and published it on social media as examples of “transphobia”. What did those mums do to deserve attentions of Emma’s transactivism? They dared to say that men with penises are not women and discussed how allowing “woman-identifying” men into women-only spaces could lead to increased harm to women.

Evidently, gender-critical women aren’t paranoid fantasists or pearl-clutching prudes, as handmaidens and misogynists like to claim. They are regular women waking up to a dystopian nightmare where any man can call himself a “transwoman” and get the state to help him victimise vulnerable women and girls. This abusive male logic is masquerading as “trans activism” and it is only a matter of time before it spreads to all spheres of life, at which point the rights of women will be lost.

Kabul, Afghanistan, 1970s

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan, 2017

I wrote this two months ago.

I can’t believe it’s already happened. The misogynists are escalating so quickly, and hoping that most people won’t believe it’s happening until it’s too late. In the meantime, it’s up to the handmaidens to reassure us that nothing is wrong and ”trans women are women”.

But something IS wrong. Identifying *with someone who isn’t you is empathy. Identifying *as someone who isn’t you is identity theft. Men who claim that they *are women because they “like/wear/do women things” are seeing women through the eyes of an impostor, and their right to take over women’s identities is defended with violence.

Take a look at one of the recent transactivist campaigns.

 

 

In this “art exhibit”, trans activists are showcasing axes clad in transgender flag colours and t-shirts smeared with “TERF blood”.

Considering that feminists have always been at the forefront of defending not only rights of women and all gender non-conforming adults but also rights of children, we need to consider transactivism fixation on not only medicalising gender non-conforming minors, but on defending their sexualisation.

Ask yourself, how can a three year old child be “openly gay”? One of the biggest media outlets for transactivism certainly saw nothing wrong with that statement, they even thought it was “heartwarming” that adults were announcing toddler’s “sexual orientation” all over the internet. And when readers complained about inappropriate sexualisation of that child, because a three year old cannot be reasonably assumed to be sexually attracted to anyone, they took the article down because of “homophobic abuse and bullying of a three year old child”.

So it seems that transactivism isn’t just driven by impostor delusions of “transwomen” and internalised sexism of handmaidens. It’s ultimate goal is something we’ve seen before – misogynists looking to dismantle safeguarding of children and remove women from positions of power.

Thanks to this pressure transactivists are exterting on women as a class, when the madness of gender self-identification is long gone and the damage to children is done, misogynists will be armed with endless examples of how women in fact enabled actions of abusive men, and this will be very hard to reverse because women will no longer have a voice, or worse still, their voices will be replaced by voices of transwomen and because “transwomen are women” women will have nothing to complain about.

So let’s get back to the basics. Regardless of what anyone says, or orders, or threatens, biological males can’t identify as biological females, they can only identify as “trans”, whatever that might mean.   Referring to a man as a “he” is accurate regardless of his “inner sense of gender identity”, while terms like “transwoman” are confusing and counter intuitive, because it feels like we’re talking about a woman, even though this contradicts the obvious.

This is why I decided to stop using the term “transwoman” and use trans-identified male or a transsexual instead. Not because I wish to disrespect anyone’s identity but because this distinction between material reality of womanhood and male domination fantasies is essential if we want to preserve the human rights of women and children and combat male violence that’s inflicted on them.

I will also only use sex-appropriate pronouns. Out of respect, when that respect is warranted (and it’s not when a man is abusive) I’m prepared to use “they” or the person’s name, but I’m committed to not using pronouns for the opposite sex, even though my impulse is to placate.

Which brings me back to handmaidens. Feminism is a journey from trying to comply with demands of violent men, to finding courage to enforce strong boundaries with them. I no longer care how men will react, I am here to demand justice for victims of male violence, immediate reversal of gender self-identification, proof of safety for women and children, and repercussions for anyone in the public eye who supported this dangerous initiative.

Stakes are too high now, kids are being abused and lied to. Women are being harmed and disrespected in ways none of us could have even imagined. It’s time to take a stand.

 

ps. At this point it’s clear that women need all the help they can get to fight this, but we must tread carefully. Male-dominated moderate and Left factions are at the forefront of trans activism. But the conservative Right is working tirelessly to undermine social welfare and women’s reproductive rights. They both suffer from their own brand of narcissism and misogyny, which is no less damaging to women, even if they agree with us on this one issue.