An open letter to Rupert Read, by Loz Webb on behalf of Action for Trans Health
[content note: discussion of transmisogyny and TERFs]
Earlier this year, I marched alongside Green MP Caroline Lucas at Trans* Pride Brighton, and spoke to her briefly about the importance of improving trans healthcare, a point on which she seemed to heartily agree. I have been impressed with Lucas’ seeming commitment to the trans community, from her presence at Trans* Pride to her consultations with trans constituents, to her awareness of the dire state of trans healthcare in the UK currently.
The Greens have made a real show of their membership surpassing that of UKIP this week, and well they should – this is an impressive achievement. Unfortunately Rupert, you seem single handedly determined to use your platform as a Green Party candidate to attack trans people’s right to exist.
This problem is much larger than a few dodgy comments on Twitter, so let me first address your rejection of the term ‘cis’. You write that the notion of people being forced to use the word cis troubles you, and that some feminists share those concerns. Firstly, let me say that no-one is forcing anyone to use any particular language. It is simply that words mean things, and if you refuse to use certain neutral descriptive terms, don’t be surprised when no-one understands what you’re talking about. However, if your issue is that you believe that cis people should be called normal and trans people should be called trans, then the problem isn’t that you have a problem with random adjectives, the problem is that you think that cis people are normal and trans people aren’t. The problem is transphobia. I want to be very clear, because I can tell from your tweets that you struggle with the definition of words. The problem is not that you are plainspoken, nor that you self-identify as a philosopher. The problem is that you have a problem with transgender people.
I was intending to be a lot more polite when I started writing this open letter but, unfortunately for me, then I discovered your blog. Which, unfortunately for you, is full of transphobic hate speech. I had thought, prior to discovering your blog, that perhaps you were a bit ignorant, perhaps you’d never bothered to educate yourself about trans people, perhaps new words and concepts frightened you, similarly to how new words and concepts frighten middle age wealthy Tories in the Home Counties who estrange their LGBT children in order to punish them for coming out. In other words, I thought you were unintentionally harming trans people because of your narrow, ill-considered viewpoint.
However, it is clear in your blog, where you refuse to accept that trans women are women, and also refuse to accept that women who don’t have periods (thus including young, elderly, disabled, and intersex women) are women, and also refuse to accept that women who aren’t brought up as women (a category that includes women from other cultures where women and men have slightly or vastly different meanings, cisgender girls who are tomboys, children bought up gender neutral, survivors of abuse, and intersex children) are women. In fact, for a cisgender man (sorry mate, it’s nowt personal, it’s just that meanings of words thing again), you seem incredibly concerned with who is and who isn’t a woman. You don’t get to decide who is and who isn’t a woman. In fact, no-one except the woman in question gets to decide whether she is a woman or not. And that’s not based in some bizarre identity politics, it’s simply that no-one else knows, no-one else can possibly know – that’s how being a person works.
It seems to me that your particular brand of transmisogyny is actually about something far darker. It seems to me that you share trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ aims of seeking to refuse lifesaving transition treatment to trans people, that you sympathise with those who assault trans women for ‘deceiving’ people by not disclosing their trans status, and that you wish to deny trans people the right to be who they are. From your blog, and your adherence to trans-exclusionary radical feminism, it is clear that you oppose the rights of trans people. And until the Green Party do something about it, they must be considered a transphobic party.