This is a re-post from a transwoman named rebbeccasf. I saw it today on Facebook and thought it was a very poignant piece and needs to be seen by as many people as possible. Not just because of the ridiculousness of a stupid t-shirt and some lame sounding music fest, but just to get across one simple point...We are ALL just PEOPLE; OK?? And I'm not just talking about just trans people here, I mean EVERYONE! As a transwoman I deal with weird looks and labels and all that everyday. I knew that was part of the package when I decided to live my life MY WAY, and I'm OK with that. What I want to know is when are we going to get past all of this petty b/s and live as human beings who all share ONE planet. Not men or "womyn", or black, white, gay, straight, bi, tri, or whatever. Just simply ONE people!
OUT!wear Pridewear Selling Anti-Trans Woman T-shirts!
By rebbeccasf
This afternoon I came across a company selling WBW t-shirts. Their home page states the following.
OUT!wear™ is quality custom Pridewear and Accessories "WORN WITH PRIDE" to promote visibility, unity and self esteem amongst Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans-gendered persons.To promote a positive image within our community, whether bold or discreet.
The womyn-born-womyn policy of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is rooted squarely in prejudice and has aided the marginalization of trans women for 36 years. The selling of WBW items is clearly anti-trans woman and goes against everything in the companies own statement above. If you don't know what the WBW policy is, please read my (very) brief herstory of the exclusion of trans womyn from womyn only spaces below.
It's astonishing that an LGBt company would actually attempt to profit off the marginalization of trans women. I had made a few posts on their facebook page along with at least a dozen others, asking them to stop selling these items. I also sent an email to the addresses on their contact page with no response. A little while ago they deleted all wall posts and comments from their fb page they deemed negative while leaving many comments in support of the WBW policy at MichFest. They then banned everyone who posted comments asking them to stop selling the t-shirts from posting again. The deleting of the comments was especially sad because there was some really good dialog going on between a few of us and some of the supporters of the wbw policy. I feel like a good opportunity for discussion has just been completely nuked and will never appear again.
As a community, I'm looking for some ideas on how to respond. So far, there has been only silence and censorship from OUT!Wear. I think a good first start is to repost this on your own blog and ask your friends and all trans allies to do the same. I've reposted this already to the blogs below. I was thinking of trying to get a google bomb together to label them anti-trans. Also, they seem to be a large supplier of shirts and other items to PFLAG. If PFLAG truly supports the T, they should cease all business with them until they stop selling WBW gear. At the very least, OUT!Wear should remove any reference to trans people from their website since (at this point) it appears to be an absolute lie!
Let me know what you think!
Love and respect,
Bex Cat-herder
A (very) brief history of the exclusion of trans women from women only spaces.
The history of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's womyn-born-womyn policy is based on the notion that trans womyn are really men. It relies entirely on biological determinism, something feminists have been fighting against since there was feminists. It also completely ignores the life experiences of trans womyn and their chosen identities.
The implementation of the wbw policy in 1979, was a time when radfem lesbian separatists were carving out space for themselves and completely throwing off all reliance on men, financially, emotionally and politically. In the fervor, lesbians also began excluding trans women from their spaces claiming they were men infiltrating the burgeoning lesbian movement as a patriarchal attempt to disrupt. It's a beautiful history marred by this legacy.
The first well documented case of trans exclusion came in 1973 at the first West Coast Lesbian Conference held in southern California. One of the co-organizers, a trans woman named Beth Elliot, was at onetime the vice-president of the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis and also a folk singer. She was scheduled to perform on the first night of the conference, and as she was getting ready to take the stage, several women began shouting, "There's a man on stage!" Immediately a discussion ensued about Beth's legitimacy as a woman and her right to attend the conference she had helped organize. At one point, it was decided to put her presence to a vote. By one account, the vote was 75% in favor of Beth's attendance. However, the disruptors vowed to continue their activities if she stayed. Beth was so distraught by the often times bitter and cruel debate, that she left early the next morning.
In 1976, the struggling women only record label Olivia Records was threatened with a boycott if they didn't fire their chief sound engineer, Sandy Stone. By all accounts, Stone, a trans woman who had recorded with Jimi Hendrix, was generous with her talents teaching other women at the label the intricacies of sound recording. However, the threats from fellow radical lesbians became enough, that she left of her own accord in an effort to ensure the survival of the label.
In 1978, Mary Daly published "Gyn/Ecology" and a year later, her protégé, Janice Raymond, published "The Transsexual Empire: the making of the she-male." Both books promote the notion that trans women are men and accuse them of colonizing women's space. Raymond’s book was particularly caustic towards trans women. In it, she writes, "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves .... Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive." She also referred to trans women as "male-to-constructed-females" while largely ignoring and dismissing trans men.
In 1991, the National Lesbian Conference in Atlanta passed a resolution declaring the conference only open to "genetic women" and explicitly excluding "non-genetic women". Using the term "non-genetic" to refer to trans women is particularly de-humanizing as all humans are genetic. It is akin to calling them "it" or "things".
Just weeks after the conference, the Michigan Womyns Music Festival ejected Nancy Jean Burkholder, a self identified post-op transsexual. After receiving much criticism, the festival sent out a press release. In part it said, "In the simplest of terms, the Michigan Festival is and always has been an event for womyn, and this continues to be defined as womyn born womyn." It continued, "When it was clear this summer there was a known transsexual man attending the event, the festival security staff dealt with it as respectfully as possible." It's obvious from this wording that the organizers of the Michigan Womyns Music Festival do not respect the identities of trans women and are using an essentialist and non-feminist argument for excluding trans women. I'm also fairly certain that Nancy Burkholder would not refer to the way she was treated as respectful!
While the language of trans women exclusion has changed over the years, the prejudice and animus remain. It's time to put the term "womyn-born-womyn" in the history books and to give trans womyn the same dignity and consideration that is given to non-trans womyn by respecting their identities and not policing their bodies. Trans women are women, and like all women, they may have several other identities too (lesbian, trans, Christian, Asian, etc.). I'm asking OUT!wear to live up to the statement on its home page to "promote visibility, unity and self esteem amongst Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans-gendered persons" and to fully respect trans women. Please ask them to stop selling WBW schwag!
transgender: OUT!wear Pridewear Selling Anti-Trans Woman T-shirts!
WWJD...What Would John Do??
He'd sing...
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