Trans liberation and policy

I have had arguments with opponents of trans liberation countless times, and their policy proposals are always bullshit.

We have to keep trans women out of women’s prisons so imprisoned cis women will be safe from rape and other violence? We have to keep trans women out of women’s bathrooms so those cis women will be safe? Trans women are dangerous to cis women because they are “really” men, so we must enact with trans women … the measures which we now use to “protect” cis women from cis men?

These suggestions are so absurd that it would be laughable were they not so horrifying.

You actually want to protect women from rape and other violence in prison? Address prison conditions, the guards, the pervasive jokes about rape in prison. You actually want to protect women from rape and other violence at large? Deputizing everyone to police who looks masculine or feminine enough to be allowed in a bathroom is not going to help.

I will not claim that TERFs are Not Feminists but I will say that these misdirections are contrary to the most elementary lessons of feminist thought, which registers how the “protections” The Patriarchy offers women against violence from men not only do not work, they enable violence.

Since this blather from opponents of trans liberation about “protecting women” does not respond to real dangers, what is it about? All of it is framed to suggest that the mere presence of trans women is “violence”. For them the existence of trans people is disgusting and a threat. This is simply bigotry. We call it “transphobia” because it is a phobia: a cocktail of dread and disgust.

They will not be satisfied with any of the policies they demand, as they do not advocate those policies on the merits. They propose measures which they hope will sound reasonable to inattentive people, as an instrument to recruit others to the same bigotry which grips them. No practical “safety” measures, no spaces exclusive to cis women, no cruel insults to trans people will suffice for transphobic bigots. Only a world entirely rid of all trans people will do.

One can hear it clearly if one actually listens to what they say. This ultimately genocidal fantasy is what animates the narrow group who are literally trans-exclusive radical feminists, animates the “gender critical feminists” who inherit the arguments of TERFs, and animates their theocrat & reactionary & fascist allies … who want to also eliminate everyone queer and then go on to the countless others who disgust them until there is no one left to help Niemöller when they come for him.

This is why their anecdotes and news stories and statistics and arguments keep turning out to be bad faith misrepresentations, even fabrications. They are not honest, not doing a risk analysis, not presenting the facts which motivate them. Every bit of it is propaganda intended to recruit others to bigotry.

There is no “reasonable compromise” to be had with opponents of trans liberation.

I grant them nothing.

Annotated Bibliography of Point-by-Point Rebuttals of Anti-Transgender Disinformation