Amelia Maltepe, Andreja Pejic, April Ashley, Bethany Black, Caitlín R Kiernan, Carmen Carrera, Caroline Cosset, Charlese Saballe, Charlie Jane Anders, Christine Jorgensen, Christine Burns, Claire Parker, Dana International, Fallon Fox, Geena Rocero, Isis King, Jackie Green, Jaime Clayton, Janet Mock, Jan Morris, Jenna Talackova, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Joan Roughgarden, Juliet Jacques, Kim Petras, Lana Wachowkski, Laura Jane Grace, Laverne Cox, Lynn Conway, Parinya Charoenphol, Paris Lees, Roberta Cowell, Roz Kaveney, Ryka Aoki, Sarah Brown, Sarah Savage.

Did you see what I did there?

There were, of course, lots more fabulous women that I could have added (and a few fabulous people whom I wasn’t sure if they identified as female).

There’s a point I made at the debate at UBU last night that I’d like to spread a bit wider. When I was talking about lack of inclusion of PoC in LGBT activism, I tried this little test on the audience.

First I asked them if, present company excepted, they could name any prominent trans activist in the UK who was not white. I would have named Sabah, who is one of the leading figures behind Brighton Trans Pride, but no one in the audience had a suggestion.

Then I asked if anyone could name a prominent trans activist in the USA who was white. That was a little easier. They could have had Kate Bornstein, Jenny Boylan, Mara Keisling or Masen Davis, for example. However, these days most of the big name activists are black: Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, Geena Rocero, Angelica Ross, Lourdes Hunter, Monica Roberts and so on.

When we complain about trans people getting murdered, it is overwhelmingly trans women of color that we are actually talking about. That makes the lack of TWOC in UK activism even more stark.

This is not their problem, it is ours.

Last night I was honored to be asked to be part of a panel at Bristol University Students’ Union (UBU) that was discussing the question: “What Next for the LGBT+ Movement Following the Passing of the Same Sex Marriage Act?”. This was part of a series of events under the general title of a “Festival of Liberation”. Ruth Pearce reported on last week’s intersectionality panel here.

My fellow panelists were as follows:

• Daryn Carter, the Director of Bristol Pride;
• Noorulann Shahid, the Black Rep on the NUS LGBT Committee and also the Campaigns & Activism Intern at UBU; and
• Sorana Vieru, Postgraduate Education Officer at UBU.

The panel was chaired by Alice Phillips, the UBU Equality, Liberation and Access Officer. Fran Cowling, the LGBT Officer (Women’s Place), was unable to attend.

I may have introduced myself as, “an abusive and violent online mob that mercilessly persecutes New Statesman columnists”.

Alice started by asking us what we thought of the Same-Sex Marriage Act. The general opinion of the panel was that it was good that same-sex marriages could now happen, but the problem with the Act is that it is a Same-Sex Marriage Act, not a Marriage Equality Act. Specific issues that were raised included the complete lack of provisions for non-binary people, the Spousal Veto, and the lack of a civil partnership option for straight people.

We were then asked where we thought the LGBT+ movement should go next.

Daryn and I both mentioned the need for the movement to be fully inclusive of people of color. This is a difficult issue to address. I was delighted to have Noorulann on the panel, and the audience was far more diverse than I am used to seeing at LGBT events in Bristol. However, I totally understand that PoC will feel intimidated by all-white gatherings and may not want to attend them. Having things like UK Black Pride is good, but at some point we all need to start working together.

I’m particularly sensitive to the pressure that people like Noorulann will be under to somehow represent “their people” and drag their fellow PoC along to events. The category “non white” includes a vast array of different cultures, and one person can’t possibly be expected to speak for, or to, them all. Noorulann is a very impressive young activist, and I hope that they succeed in their campaign to get to head up the NUS LGBT team next year, but equally there is only so much that one person can do.

Anyway, the door is open. Daryn and I are happy to listen. Hopefully people will come forward and tell us what they need from us.

Related to this are issues of immigration and international policy. The way in which LGBT asylum seekers are treated by UK immigration officers is an absolute disgrace. I suspect we’ll need a change of government to do anything about that (and given the way that Labour are jumping on the anti-immigration bandwagon, a fairly major change of government). Also, while there are clear concerns about the way LGBT people are treated in other countries, we need to be very careful to not allow our concerns to become a cover for wars over resources, or to lead to a repeat of the colonialist nonsense that exported our (white European) phobias to other countries in the first place.

Lastly (I think) on general issues, we noted that austerity policies are particularly hard on LGBT youth, many of whom are made homeless by their families.

I’ve put the general issues first, because I don’t want people to think that the panel was totally about trans issues, but there was certainly a lot of it, and not just because there were two trans people on the panel. Daryn mentioned that he got into LGBT activism in Bristol in part because he found the local scene too trans-exclusionary at the time. And it was an absolute delight to hear Sorana, as a cis woman, talking about the need to oppose TERF ideology in academia (where apparently it is rife in some subject areas).

Noorulann mentioned that the NUS now has a policy to “smash” the Gender Recognition Act, which is fine by me as long as they don’t take away my birth certificate. Here’s the sort of things I want to see:

• Official recognition of an Other category for gender, as is done to varying degrees in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Australia and Germany;
• Official promotion of a gender-neutral pronoun (as has just happened in Sweden);
• Revision of the Gender Recognition Act to allow for this third category (and doubtless a whole bunch of additional fixes);
• The creation of proper Marriage Equality Act that is entirely gender-neutral; and
• An end to surgical modification of intersex infants.

As far as I could see, the panel and the audience were OK with that.

We also briefly touched on the ongoing attempts to limit or ban treatment for trans people through the NHS. There may be more news on this next month. For now I simply note that the NHS is under very heavy pressure to cut costs, and one of the ways it is looking to do that is prioritize what services it provides. This will mean that there is no explicit “ban” on unpopular treatments, but there will never be sufficient budget for them to be provided.

I note in passing that after several years of investigations the General Medical Council has just decided that Dr. Richard Curtis has no case to answer and may continue to practice. I don’t suppose that this news will be deemed important enough to appear in The Guardian, though it was all over the trumped up charges when they were brought. Sadly I also expect that new trumped up charges will be laid against Dr. Curtis fairly soon, because that’s the way life is for anyone who dares to provide private medical services to trans people.

I also touched on the case of Chris Wilson, the Scottish trans man who was convicted for fraud for failing to disclose his trans status to sex partners. (Someone in the audience mentioned a similar case in Staines. It isn’t clear that Gemma Barker identified as trans in any way, though that may not have been any protection.) Both of these cases also involve sex with minors, which complicates matters considerably, but the idea that failure to disclose one’s trans status to a sexual partner is an act of criminal fraud is deeply disturbing, especially as it appears to negate the central principle of the Gender Recognition Act.

There were some interesting follow-on questions from Alice and the audience and I’d like to touch on a couple.

Firstly we were asked how we could get more young LGBT people involved in politics. It isn’t easy, unless they are directly affected by something. However, I think that the new vlog series that Fox & Lewis have been running on the My Genderation YouTube Channel is a wonderful thing. The young people making the vlogs don’t talk much about politics, but the fact that they are there, talking about their lives, and giving encouragement to others, is enormously powerful politically.

In discussions afterwards we were told that YouTube is a very important venue for reaching out to young people. I have an awful feeling that I need to overcome my horror of seeing myself on film.

Finally there was an interesting question about inclusivity and alphabet soup. There is no right answer here. I’ve used LGBT rather than QUILTBAG here because of the title of the panel. UBU uses LGBT+ rather than the widely misunderstood LGBT*, but as Noorulann noted those who get letters in QUILTBAG but not in LGBT can feel erased by the +. Even when you try, things can go wrong. Some people now use LGB & T as a means of trying to make it clear that T is not about sexuality, but Noorulann was under the impression it was an attempt to jettison the T. In some cases it depends who you are talking to. Daryn mentioned meeting a lot of people who didn’t know what LGBT meant. Some we need both and. We have to be as inclusive as possible, and recognize people’s identities, but equally we need to represent ourselves to the rest of the world, and avoid damaging internal squabbles. We’ll never get it right, but we can keep trying.

I’d like to end by thanking Alice and UBU for a fantastic event. Special thanks are due to Noorulann, Sorana and Daryn for being fabulous fellow panelists, and to the audience for listening to my ranting. Like Ruth, I have come away greatly encouraged about the future of feminism.

As a general rule I think that comparing the oppression that one minority group gets to that another minority group gets is a bad idea. I get very irritated by people who, when on the receiving end of prejudice, go on social media and complain, “that wouldn’t have happened if I was xxx”, because of course quite likely it would. However, in this particular case I think a comparison will help illuminate the issue. My apologies if anyone is offended by it.

Anyway, today’s fracas du jour on social media has been all about the vital importance of keeping those horrible trans women out of rape crisis centers, so that “real” women can feel safe in them. Here’s a little thought experiment for you.

Suppose you are running a rape crisis center. Two women have come in. Both have been raped, and both are deeply traumatized. One is white, and the other is black. The white woman says to you, “I don’t feel safe with that black woman here, black people scare me, please throw her out.” What do you do?

I don’t for a minute suggest that would not happen. Sadly there are parts of the world where I suspect it is all too plausible. However, hopefully you lot will all be as horrified by it as I am.

I’ve never been trained to run a rape crisis center, but this is the sort of thing I hope would happen. Firstly I have a deeply traumatized black woman whose day has just been made much worse by the behavior of the other woman, so I need to get her somewhere where she can be looked after without this unwanted drama. Hopefully I have more than one room I can use, and colleagues I can call on for help. Then there’s the white woman, who is behaving very badly, but is also deeply traumatized. She might be better when she’s calmed down a bit, and in any case it is our job to help women who have been raped, no matter how badly they behave. So we look after her as well. We try to make both women feel as safe, comfortable and supported as possible.

Now try this scenario. You are running a rape crisis center. Two women have come in. Both have been raped, and both are deeply traumatized. One is cis, and the other is trans. The cis woman says, “I don’t feel safe with that trans person here, he’s really a man and might attack me, please throw him out.” What do you do?

If your answer to that is, “throw the bastard out, how dare he come into a women-only space!” then I would be deeply worried about you. Nevertheless, you would have some support, both from prominent media feminists, and from the British Government.

Of course they never put the argument like that. It is always presented as the cis woman who has been raped, and the trans woman who might cause trouble by invading the women-only space. One woman is portrayed as the victim, the other is demonized. But really, why would the trans woman be coming to the rape crisis center if she hadn’t been raped too, and be equally in need of help and support?

As far as I can see, these “debates” have two main purposes. The first is to scare trans women by making it clear that if they were unlucky enough to be raped then there would be no help or support for them, they’d be on their own. The second is to reinforce the idea that trans women are dangerous sexual predators who are not safe to have around “real” women. I find both of these things despicable.

This morning I saw this fine tweet on the excellent Media Diversified feed.

Notice how often people of colour aren't allowed to define what's racist? Or what offends? Jus sayin (SS) pic.twitter.com/WtOW2V2ng3

— Media Diversified (@WritersofColour) February 24, 2015

It reminded me that for the past week I’ve seen a torrent of white cis people explaining that something lots of trans people felt to be transphobic was in fact not transphobic at all, because they knew better than us.

Also this morning, I read this very fine article on sexism in academia. It contains the following: “We’re often told that women overreact, taking offence where none is meant.”

Oddly enough, over the past week, lots of cis people have been queuing up to tell trans people that they are overreacting, and taking offence where none is meant.

Does anyone see a pattern here?

Still, what do I know? I’m just part of an aggressive and violent online mob that needs to be put in its place by the media, right?