Rant: Responding to Transphobia When It Comes From A Fellow LGBTQ+ Community Member
- Mikayla Cadger
- Jun 8, 2021
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 18, 2021
I posted this to my Facebook feed. but I wanted it documented on my new blog because it not only upset me, but I feel it is discourse like this that upsets the whole damn applecart. It seems to me to be the perfect subject to represent my first Cultural Commentary/ Thoughts post. It is timely, not only because June is PRIDE month, but because this kind of rhetoric is much debated on social media platforms as of late. How should we feel, and just as importantly, how should we respond to bigotry and Transphobia when it comes from another member of the LGBTQ+ community itself? Worse, from one who has a public platform and has the responsibility and decision-making capacity that goes along with a position of public office? Most Trans people know what a TERF is. TERF is an acronym that stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. TERF's are constantly attacking the concept of Intersectional Feminism, which is inclusive of Transwomen. including attacks on Transgender women personally. I plan on writing a full-length essay on the subject of TERF's and Intersectionality soon... because in my eyes it is verbal diarrhea, and cancer that's infecting the entire Transgender movement, and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole.
This link will take you to an article that was published by contributor Joanna Cherry, who happens to be an MP for Edinburgh South West in Scotland, in the National (A Scottish daily publication) on June 8th, 2021. Ms. Cherry states that she feels unwelcome at Pride events because as a lesbian, she is strictly attracted to other lesbian women...which in itself is not an issue. However, she then goes on to state that she feels her rights as a lesbian, and a woman, are being threatened because she doesn't want to date or sleep with Transwomen. What? How she makes the leap from stating her sexual preference for same-sex partners to feeling her rights are threatened because of us, is ridiculous. Worse, she feels she isn't welcome because she doesn't want to date or sleep with us. When did that become part of the lesbian membership requirements? She goes on to make the shallow, entitled statement that because she fought for lesbian rights in the '80s, for her to be feeling excluded from Pride is ly"particularly unfair'...by implying that Gays and Trans people only have rights today because of HER struggles. This is classic TERF stuff... from a lesbian, who was an activist for Gay Rights. It's bigotry...plain and simple. As shocking as it is to get it from a fellow member of the wider LGBTQ+ Community, it is still Transphobic. and unacceptable.
Here was my original FB response:
Ugh... This article is not just disgusting, it's discriminatory and divisive for the entire LGBTQ+ community. An article was written by Lesbian correspondent Joanna Cherry. who happens to be an MP for Edinburgh South West since May 2015, and she wrote in The National (a Scottish daily publication) on June 6th, 2021, that many Pride celebrations are unwelcoming to her specific community's stance towards Transwomen. She makes the following two statements:
"We are same-sex attracted and therefore don’t wish to date or sleep with people who are male-bodied but identify as female."
"Some, like me, who came out in the 1980s and who are veterans of the struggle for equal rights do not feel welcome at Pride celebrations for the “crime” of daring to defend our rights as women and lesbians. This is particularly unfair when those rights and the rights of gay men and trans people were enshrined in the law because of a struggle in which many of us participated."
I am ASTONISHED that she feels slighted by such a reaction, and I'm disgusted that a member of the LGBTQ+ community with a public platform, who claims to be an activist that fought for LGBT rights during the '80s, is this clueless. Just because you fought as an activist during those years doesn't mean you are entitled to preferential treatment or special privilege- especially when it's bigotted and discriminates against other members of the LGBTQ+ community. What, exactly, were you fighting for in the first place? Equal protections and acceptance. That's what rights ARE. However, acceptance and tolerance are two different things. The fact is Ms. Cherry, those rights are LGBT rights...not YOUR rights. And for a self-proclaimed activist and 'veteran of the equal rights movement" you need to brush up on your history, because it was a pair of iconic Transwomen, Sylvia Riviera and Marsha P Johnson who first stood up to police abuse and initiated the Stonewall Riots in 1969 when Riviera threw the first bottle, an action widely considered as the catalyst which started the Gay Liberation Movement (which went on to be known as the Gay Rights Movement.
I'm not going to delve into the issues surrounding Intersectional Feminism or my feelings on TERF'S in this post, that is something better left for another post, where I can expand on my feelings, but Ms. Cherry is clearly out of touch with reality. To refer to Transwomen as "people who are male-bodied but identify as female" is uneducated, and simply disturbing when I consider the source. As a Transwoman, a survivor of a violent anti-Trans attack, and an activist who is STILL fighting for LGBTQ+ rights today (and not resting on her laurels, waxing philosophic about 'the good ol' days') my heart sinks when I see this from one of our own. I don't like the term "passing", because ALL Transwomen are women- regardless of how femme some of us are, but there are many Transwomen who are stunningly beautiful, feminine, and honey...we are ALL WOMAN. She has made the fatal mistake of judging our whole based on our parts... and for a former activist and Lesbian to stigmatize Transwomen based on our reproductive organs, and whine about being ostracized from Pride events because of it...I had to say something. The whole purpose of PRIDE, the event, is to come together and celebrate our communities, not drive wedges into them. It is pride, the feeling, as opposed to shame and social stigma, that is the predominant outlook that bolsters the LGBTQ+ movement. A true activist stands up, speaks out, and confronts hate wherever they may find it. Even when it comes from one of our own.
Mikayla Cadger
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