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Powerful declaration from @WomensLibFront calling out LGB Movement orgs& funders @HRC @stonewalluk @thinkprogress @splcenter @ACLU @amnesty @hrw @OSFGrants @FordFoundation in statement of no confidence womensliberationfront.org/declaration-of… [Thread: my twitter summary]
"To the political, civil society, foundation funding, and media leadership of the former gay liberation movement"please stop this or resign your claims to speak on behalf of the rights of lesbians, or any other women and girls:
(1) Misuse of science – Sex is not a mental state. Mammals can’t change sex. Stop encouraging the idea that sex is a “social construct.” Stop claiming that colonial-era Europeans were the only people who ever figured out how babies are made, This is nonsense.
(2) Misuse of suicide statistics – Claims of high suicide rates are based on poorly designed surveys & used for coercive suicide threats. Prevention experts warn strongly against attributing suicide to any single cause and call for responsible messaging @Action_Alliance
(3) Cosmetic sterilization of healthy children – Sterilisation of LGB & autistic children encouraged as a way for them to feel “normal". Studies indicate that most of these children would have grown up to become comfortable with their bodies &their sexuality.
(4) Anti-lesbian harassment – Telling young lesbians that a rejection of sex with male people is “transphobic” is homophobia. Young women told they’re “vagina fetishists,” “violently exclusionary,” or straight men “trapped in the wrong body".
(5) Lesbian & gay erasure – Calling heterosexual men who enjoy dressing “as women” lesbians, or calling heterosexual women who’ve undergone extensive body modification gay men, is an erasure of the unique experience of being exclusively same-sex attracted.
(6) Transing the dead and historical revision – Stop rewriting history. Marsha P. Johnson was a gay men. Stormé DeLarverie was a butch lesbian. Joan of Arc and Pauli Murray were women.
(7) Seeking and securing extraordinary privileges for terrible men, while endangering incarcerated women – You are seeking a world in which incarcerated woman have to worry about sharing a cell with violent men, and where predators can hide themselves behind new identities
(8) Trauma and emergency shelter – Women in domestic violence and rape crisis shelters are traumatized by men, and that many in homeless shelters are fleeing domestic violence. Stop tellingtraumatized women to get over their fears on demand, so that men can room with them
(9) Ending other single-sex accommodations for women and girls – women and girls are safer and better able to participate in public life when we have access to single-sex public accommodations for toileting and changing. Discussions about neutral third spaces have been shut down
(10) Sexist demonization of women for ordinary political activity – feminist and gender identity-critical women are being no-platformed, slandered as Nazis, fascists, or white supremacists.
(11) Supporting the sex trade – Movement leaders have fought laws that penalize pimps & johns who exploit & rape trafficked persons. Stop using the rhetorical shield of the underaged homeless to justify the sex trade. Children do not need violent men to penetrate them for cash
(12) Degrading, dehumanizing names - Stop calling us menstruators, bleeders, breeders, cervix havers, pregnant people, non-men, chestfeeders, We are not “cis" suggesting that we picked feminine sex stereotypes. We are women and girls: the proper terms for human females.
(13) Appropriating intersex language – Stop stealing from intersex discourse to call all women and girls AFAB, assigned female at birth. only 0.02% of the population has a condition that makes it medically difficult to determine their sex, and it’s insulting to suggest otherwise.
(14) Prioritizing untreated psychological distress over physical health – Encouraging patients and providers to act as if sex should be irrelevant to medical care puts people’s lives at risk, and discourages honest, medically accurate conversations.
In conclusion, while claiming to fight sexism, you work to forbid the law to see sex. This will not work to end discrimination against women. While claiming to fight homophobia, you promote neutering of youth & abet abuse of lesbians & gay men over exclusive same-sex attraction
While claiming to fight transphobia, you demand that trans identities be turned into secrets, and allowed to be used as an escape hatch from ordinary background disclosures. This will not end the irrational fear of people who aren’t happy performing gender stereotyped roles
Do better, please. If not, please stop claiming to work for the liberation of same-sex attracted women in particular, or any other women, in general. (you can sign here: …mensliberationfront.nationbuilder.com/declaration-of…)
