I feel a need to go on record regarding the latest transgender/women’s rights controversy that has broken out this month.

Starting last summer I’ve found myself in the unexpected and unpleasant position as lone defender of trans women in debates on Facebook. The intensity of people’s opposition to transgenderism has shocked and shaken me. I’ve grown to assume my friends and associates accept LGBT people — all LGBT people, I thought — but I see now this isn’t necessarily true. My instincts and convictions as a gay activist from the ’70s have kicked in making me now a defender of the transgender community on Facebook, Twitter and my blogs.

At the same time, I’m concerned about certain trends in the trans community and among those seeking to support trans people, specifically trans women.

Latest Issue of The Lancet Sparks Uproar

The problem is illustrated by the newest issue of The Lancet, a prestigious weekly peer-reviewed medical journal published in Britain. This issue features a cover story entitled ‘Periods on Display.’ The article reviews an exhibition at London’s Vagina Museum on the history of menstruation. (I confess I didn’t know there was such a museum before now.) The article uses the word “women” throughout except for one line where the phrase “bodies with vaginas” is used instead. The Lancet chose to highlight this by placing the quote front and center on its cover.

Outrage has exploded across social media, academia, the medical profession, women’s rights organizations, and beyond. This is just a sample of the furor on Twitter.

Along with The Lancet, the ACLU has joined this new practice of erasing women as well. It posted the following last week on Twitter. I first saw it on a friend’s Facebook feed.

The full ACLU image:

I assume the substitution of terms like “person” for “woman” is being done in a well-intentioned effort to be fair and inclusive of transgender people. A worthy goal, for sure, but the practice has some negative consequences for society as a whole.

Rights & Responsibilities

As I said at the opening above, over the past year I’ve been fighting an online battle defending trans women. I stand steadfast in defense of my community — LGBT people of all stripes — and in particular my defense now of the transgender community since they are most under fire these days.

This isn’t to say, however, that everything transgender gets an automatic pass.

With rights come responsibility. The rights of one person or group must not diminish or cancel the rights of another person or group. Now this gets messy. There are a few problem areas that we need to address as a community and as a society. At the risk of alienating some in the transgender community, two particular issues come to mind for me:

• Sports competition. Total unrestricted inclusion in every sport isn’t practical or fair, but neither is total exclusion. Reasonable guidelines need to established. The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group is one effort underway to address this.

• Access to Restricted Spaces. While I think transgender women should be allowed access to restrooms, locker rooms, etc., I don’t think it’s in anyone’s best interests to expose cisgender women and girls to male genitalia. At times it can traumatize those observing it, and in general I think it risks undermining broad public support for transgender rights. From a pragmatic standpoint, it’s not strategically wise. But access is a right, I believe, so accommodations must be made to enable trans women who have not gone through surgery to shower and dress, etc., with discretion in spaces consistent with their gender identity. Restrooms, store changing rooms and similar places have stalls and doors where there should be no problem. Many locker rooms and change rooms, however, need modification. (I will note here that I oppose limiting transgender people to single-person unisex restrooms, especially when far away and inconvenient to reach. I understand, but this is not an acceptable solution.)

Inclusion Without Exclusion

I’ll go back to Sarah Graham’s tweet above: “It IS possible to be inclusive AND accurate AND acknowledge medical misogyny (& transphobia) all at once, without reducing anyone to their anatomy.”

Trans women are entitled to dignity and respect as human beings, and basic democratic rights including housing and job protections, full access to medical care, and more. I personally fail to see why transgender women’s rights and cisgender women’s rights cannot coexist side-by-side equally. To accomplish this, though, one cannot be subordinated to the other. That’s not equal coexistence. A way must be found that does not negate or “erase” cisgender women and all their advances over the decades.

If cisgender women become generic “people,” indistinct from others, separated from their identities and history, then everything the women’s movement has fought for and won is undermined.

The Militant newspaper explained the implications of this:

For the working class under capitalism, the lion’s share of the financial, emotional and practical responsibility for child rearing falls on children’s mothers, including shopping, cooking, and keeping up a clean and decent place to live, usually while holding down a job. In the U.S., 40% of babies are born to unmarried women. Nearly 16 million children lived with a single mother in the U.S. in 2019. Many working-class women have difficulty obtaining family planning and prenatal and postnatal care. Women earn on the average 81% of what men earn…

Women’s subjugation developed with the rise of class society. Under capitalism the rulers use it as a central way to divide working people and to superexploit women, driving down the wages of all workers…

Women’s oppression will not be eradicated by women refusing to be women, but by deepening the fight for women’s rights and other struggles in the interests of the working class.

That starts today by supporting workers’ fight for higher wages, safe working conditions and dignity at Amazon, Marathon and ATI steel. It requires demanding the prosecution of the cops who killed Breonna Taylor and pointing to the example set by women and men who have taken to the streets in Argentina and Poland recently to fight for abortion rights — a fight that needs to be emulated here….

There are other portions of this same Militant article that I disagree with — basically its fundamental denial there can even be such thing as a ‘transgender person’ except as delusion — but that can be a separate discussion. Even as we argue whether there’s any authenticity or legitimacy to transgenderism, recognition and understanding of the historic role of cisgender women in class society is essential. To throw it away is as damaging as if we were to throw away Black or Jewish history.

So, for the record…

• I support full and equal rights for transgender women to participate in society as women in the ways I’ve touched on here, and in others ways…

• …but I do not support a blurring, diminishment or “erasure” of the identities and history of cisgender women. We must retain and expand an understanding of their fight, the conquests of the women’s rights movement, and the important role women must and will play in working-class struggle going forward.

• For this reason I disapprove replacing the words “woman” or “women” with broad generic terms like “person” or “people” — not to mention references like “bodies with vaginas.”

• At the same time I support and defend the right of individuals to choose a name and pronouns that match their personal gender identity, and I believe these choices should be respected and used by others.

• While I concede there are a few practical and thorny issues to work through, I believe that transgender women’s rights and cisgender women’s rights can co-exist. They need not be mutually exclusive. There is no reason the historic achievements and victories of cisgender women need be lost.

Maybe someday in a hundred years or so there will be uterine transplants enabling someone who was born cisgender male to bear children. If this happens we can reassess a lot of things at that time. For now, today, such a scenario is close to science fiction. At this time only those born as cisgender women experience menstruation, only cisgender women can get pregnant and only cisgender women can give birth.

These qualifications notwithstanding, I will continue my defense of the transgender community, and transgender women specifically, with all my heart and soul.

Edited for clarity.

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