Society + Culture

Also.Also.Also: How British Feminism Is Being Eaten Alive by TERFs and Other Stories for Your Day

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Good morning! Happy last day of me being this age! Oh I’ll remember it fondly — me, you, all these links. I’ll think back on this last day of me being this age and I’ll say, “I hope each person found something that spoke to them that day; hope the variety of links was sufficient.” 💌 🎂

Queer as in F*ck You

How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans

LGBTQ Parents Face ‘State-Sanctioned Discrimination,’ American Bar Association Says

A Night Club Map of Harlem

The Gay History of America’s Classic Children’s Books

I Thought I Understood My Trans Body—Then I Tried VR by A.E. Osworth! You know them!

Young LGBTQ Families Are Growing Dramatically, Survey Finds

Who Gets to Decide What Your Anatomy Is Capable Of?

Remembering Babs Siperstein, the First Lady of New Jersey Transgender Activism

Arizona ‘Funding Anti-LGBT Hate Group’ With ‘In God We Trust’ License Plates

Tennessee Bills Would Allow Adoption Agencies to Deny LGBT Couples on Religious Grounds.

Saw This, Thought of You

The Period Emoji Is Finally Coming (And There’s A Waffle And An Otter Too) — a hearty thank you to everyone who DM’d me about this 🙏💉❣️

This is a Schitt’s Creek appreciation post.

It’s (Still) Hard Out Here for Women Producers And Songwriters

Student Loan Relief or Paid Vacation? These Workers Get a Choice

A Hole Opens Up Under Antarctic Glacier — Big Enough to Fit Two-Thirds of Manhattan. Yikes bye.

Related:

Laneia is the Executive Editor and founding member of Autostraddle, and you're the reason she's here. She's 37, has two kids, two dogs, one cat, one Megan, and some personal essays.

Laneia has written 857 articles for us.

34 Comments

  2. Happy birthday for tomorrow, Laneia! I hope you get some time to enjoy the new season of One Day at a Time, which I can only assume is being given to the world as a birthday present for you and me and everyone else whose birthday it is tomorrow.

  5. #NotAllBritishFeminists

    The transphobes are very vocal and will try every avenue. I don’t think Mumsnet are left wing, they seem like Daily Mail readers. They are so obnoxious that the NSPCC (National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children) cancelled a planned Facebook Live discussion with them due to the transphobic questions Mumsnet users kept sending them about their inclusive policies.

    Sadly The Guardian newspaper, which is otherwise left wing, seems to think there is a debate to be had about gender and women’s spaces. (I cancelled my Guardian membership and upgraded my Autostraddle membership at the same time a few months ago as a result of being sick of their stance on this. They sometimes have trans friendly articles but they also have transphobic ones).

    Happy Birthday Laneia!

  9. I was reading that TERF article in the New York Times and I followed the link to an article about TERFs putting up a sign in Liverpool that had the Google definition of woman on it. So, it said:

    woman

    noun

    adult human female

    Umm, that doesn’t even support your argument, you weirdos! Adult human female includes trans women! I mean, I know it doesn’t in a TERF mind, but it doesn’t make sense for them to pay for a billboard that trans women and trans allies could also look at and say, “Yep. Agreed.”

    • If you’re expecting TERFS to be logical, then you’re going have to brace yourself. They’re not. Some prominent TERFs have allied themselves with far-right groups, other have expressed surprise at these far right groups then being misogynistic.

      You make a really excellent point that most people would look at that statement and see nothing to disagree with. I think perhaps what that article is trying to convey, and I don’t think quite hits the mark, is that “The Debate” in Britain, in the mainstream media, is often between quite old school feminists, (who are maybe used to fighting for the recognition of women as equally deserving of rights within a binary system, and recognition for women-specific needs within that system (ie, Period justice, more maternity leave, support for victims of doestic abuse)) and more modern, intersectional feminists, who include queer theroy, post-colonial understanding of gender, marxist interpretations etc to try to deconstruct the power of ‘gender.’
      And this is new and this work is still being done, so it does sound a bit academic and not ‘common sense,’ and what happens is that your words then get twisted to “Are you saying that a woman is not ‘an adult human female,’ and you’re like “Well, it’s actually an embodied identity constructed through relational interactions between the hegemonic structures of society as performed by individuals” and then you find yourself arguing with a billboard that’s understood by most people as correct.
      So… you’re not wrong, but I guess The Discourse is at an awkward adolescent stage right now.

  13. Happy Birthday! Hope you have a good one!

    This para is excellent:
    “It’s also worth noting that the obsession with supposed “biological realities” of people like Ms. Parker is part of a long tradition of British feminism interacting with colonialism and empire. Imperial Britain imposed policies to enforce heterosexuality and the gender binary, while simultaneously constructing the racial “other” as not only fundamentally different, but freighted with sexual menace; from there, it’s not a big leap to see sexual menace in any sort of “other,” and “biological realities” as essential and immutable. ”

    But I wanted to chime in on the “not all British feminists” line. Not even most, and given that there’s relatively little coverage of Britain on AS, perhaps just having “British Feminists are TERFs” is a little… I think it maybe gives more power to what is still quite a niche narrative, like expecting all Americans to be creationists.

    Also, I swim at the place used in the picture to illustrate this and they are _explicitly_trans inclusionary and the lifeguards go out of their way to welcome trans women. So maybe you could make that clear somewhere, because otherwise people might be put off going! If any London based AS readers want to come and swim then join the FB group and make yourself known and I’ll go with you. It’s cold rn but so beautiful.

  15. good. good. nothing is forgotten, nothing will be forgotten and i am proud your cult fails and goes openly irrelevant with all-out petty hatred here in UK of all places.

    For an upstart cult who declared a complete sacrifice and then failed to implement the genocide in 1976 – from the occult perspective the price is that they will take the place of their declared but undelivered sacrifice.

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