via Stop the Harassment and Threats Against Radical Feminists

This month, The Progressive ran an advertisement that seeks comment on the need to eliminate intimidation, threats of violence, and no-platforming and other silencing from the debate around gender identity and radical feminism.

This comes not a moment too soon. The advertisement lists several examples of very serious violations of the norms of political discourse. One incident included transwomen sending rape threats to a radical feminist, along with photographs of their genitals, presumably as a way to prove that they are capable of carrying out the threat.

In January, 2017, Carey Callahan, a person who has detransitioned from a transman back to female (not herself a radical feminist), posted on her blog a link to screen shots of responses a friend of hers, also a de-transitioner, had received to a post the friend made on twitter. Her friend had tweeted that she believed there was a need for female-only space. Two transwomen responded by providing a detailed description of how they would rape her, sending her pictures of their genitals.

This kind of sexual terrorism is more of what women must already endure under the patriarchy and is specifically why radical feminism even exists. It is disgusting and defies all logic that people would use their penises to perpetrate sexual terrorism against women under the guise of promoting gender inclusivity.

My personal take is that the recent rash of promotion of violence among progressives is somehow being influenced by the power structure. In response to the ad, I submitted the following as my comment:

I am writing to submit a comment of support of the initiative to stop the harassment and silencing of Radical Feminists.

I have noticed, because of my work for Black Liberation, that a lot of the themes of Antifa approaches to confronting white supremacy also appear in their confronting what they perceive to be trans exclusion. I oppose Antifa on many grounds but one of the biggest reasons is their promotion of the notion that a means to combat racism would be to “punch nazis.” Interpersonal violence as a strategy for liberation is obviously fundamentally flawed and advances no progress. I became concerned about Antifas involvement in racial struggles because they do not take their orders from POC, but instead self-deputize, which essentially results in a lack of agency by the people Antifa claims to be trying to protect, namely people of color.

I bring that up because I have noticed that, and this is clear from spending anytime on social media, a lot of folks in the current transactivism movement are also loosely affiliated with Antifa and support the Antifa approach that to eliminate problems, here “TERFs”, interpersonal violence will do. This again violates the norms of collective agency because individual interpersonal violence, especially first strike aggressor violence, does nothing to advance the interests of an oppressed class.

It is clear to me that this promotion of individual interpersonal violence is coming down as from a hierarchy. Somebody somewhere is deliberately advancing and distributing this “Punch a [blank]” messaging, and it is not the people at the grassroots that are personally affected by these struggles.

I believe to freeze this line of thinking it would be best to issue a complete moratorium on violence and threats of violence. It may be appropriate to create a RadFem/Trans alliance that is bound by a commitment to nonviolence and the eradication of threatening language. It is also important to have standards for excluding people from places of importance in this debate if they prove they cannot exercise that minimal bit of self control. These are very serious topics with many people’s lives, safety, and futures on the line. We must find ways to move together harmoniously.

I recently became a radical feminist specifically because I noticed there are critical questions and gaps in transgender activism that leave women and girls vulnerable and these things need to be discussed. Biological women, not empowered by any such thing as “cis women’s privilege,” are helpless to fend off silencing by people who simply throw around the term TERF when confronted with genuine concerns about the erasure of biological sex based protections. For the liberation of women, this must end.