Thread by @ninavallins

i have always been a feminist. At 9, I complained at school because boys got the footy workshop with the AFL stars but girls didn't. Suffered my first sexual assault was at 10, which was formative. In my teens I changed 'He' to 'She' when I read from the prayer book at schule...

I learned at university that sex = biological categories, female and male. It's binary. That's how procreation happens. "Gender" is a social construct and collection of stereotypes which harms us all. Reject gender, I say: men cry! women play sport! boys play with dolls!...

girls climb trees! women don't have to marry, take their husband's name, have babies, and do all the emotional labour in relationships. Resist!
I was happy to accept transwomen as women because I thought they challenged gendered stereotypes - men can wear dresses and be...

well, accepted. I never thought that transwomen were actually women or that transmen were actually men, but I was happy to accept them thus because I thought they suffered terrible distress at an incongruence between identity and bodily reality and their numbers were small and...

what harm would it cause?
2015: Rachel Dolezal: I didn’t think white people could be black but I still thought that transgender people should be accepted as preferred sex. I was confused by incoherence in my thoughts...

Also 2015: I was able to say to queer friends that I thought that transgender ppl should be accepted as they present but I wanted a world in which no one felt they needed to surgically modify their bodies and this seemed a great shame to me. I can't say this to 'lefties' now...

2017: Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie said “transwomen are transwomen” & TW grow up with male privilege. Apparently this was hate speech. The backlash peaked me, esp an evening with other white well-educated, professional women who condemned CNA. They didn’t want to read her anymore!..

I have trans clients & I work to the fullest of my considerable ability for them, as I do for all my clients. They have my absolute solidarity re abuse they suffered as children. I want all transgender people to have access to housing, employment, services etc w/o discrimination.

But there are areas where the interests of transwomen and women come into conflict. Kind, well-meaning people like to pretend that there is no conflict, but I say that, as a woman who has victimised by male violence, I want spaces in my life free from my oppressor class...

I imagine other women want & need same: women in prison; women accessing services for domestic violence, sexual assault, drug & alcohol addictions, mental health; women seeking political & cultural opportunities to address the historical over-representation of men...

Male-bodied people in female spaces makes those spaces mixed sex. I’m OK with *some* women’s shelters allowing transwomen entry, but not all. Women have a right to have at least some women’s only spaces. For some, this makes me a transphobe which is patently ridiculous…

And this is why I care so much and speak out, despite the consequences for me professionally and personally: because we will lose women’s spaces if no one speaks out. And we need our own spaces. This shouldn't be controversial.
#peaktrans #feminism #couragecalls