Towards a Queer Offensive.
On the 14th of September 2021, approximately 60 Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) gathered by the Senedd to protest the Welsh Government’s LGBTQ+ Action Plan (Which actually does little to help queer people, the TERFs just hate it because it acknowledges our existence). Amongst their ranks were members of Merched Cymru, Lesbian Labour, and the LGB Alliance, as well as some more infamous bigots, such as Graham Linehan (if you’re reading this, Graham, how’s the wife?).
The TERFs were opposed by a
force of queer people, who despite being less than half the size of the TERF demo and armed with nothing more than whistles and strong lungs, successfully made the TERF speakers incomprehensible to any passer-bys, and visibly agitated and upset the TERFs, providing a physical reminder that their bigotry would not go unopposed.
The TERF demo was a microcosm of the usual dangerous behaviours that make opposing TERFs so necessary; lobbying of politicians to block access to life-saving gender affirming treatment; the use of transphobic lies and bad science to justify discrimination against trans people, most of all trans feminine people, (TERFs made frequent reference to ‘autogynephilia’ and claims of hypothetical trans feminine violence, to protect ‘single-sex’ spaces- not to mention their flawed conception of biological sex); transphobic abuse, and threats of physical and sexual violence (A TERF threatened to attack a queer protester, whilst another threatened to expose herself to a group of queer people, including a number of minors). The abuse did not end with the demo, with transphobic vitriol being spewed online, one person being called the T-slur and having a can thrown at them from a moving car, and the local squat being harassed at midnight.
Revealingly, the rhetoric used by the TERFs is similar to that historically employed against gay, lesbian and bisexuals. There’s the constant worship of a flawed, idealised Biology (“Sex is real” and “Homosexuality is unnatural”), and the constant presence of what Lee Edelman would call Reproductive Futurism (Or, somewhat dramatically, ‘The Fascism of the Baby’s Face’) under which individuals are forced, often violently, to perpetuate the current state of things in the interest of ‘The Child’, an ideological, abstracted representation of future generations (“Our children are being tricked into dangerous medical treatments” and “A child needs a mother and a father”).
Should the TERFs win, their legal treatment of trans people would directly parallel Section 28; schools being forbidden from teaching about trans people, trans people being unable to transition legally or medically or, likely, at all; trans people being barred from certain spaces. This alone would result in an increase of suicide and poverty amongst queers, not to mention a likely increase in assault, but despite the TERF’s claims to an ‘LGB’ identity, it is likely that such legal oppression could extend to a prohibition on ‘cross-dressing’, as well as a need for ID to enter public bathrooms (this would screw over homeless people even further), the placement of extreme barriers for queers working with vulnerable people and the expulsion of queer people from academia and from teaching positions; this is evidenced by the TERFs growing agitation against Queer Theory and hatred of queers, as opposed to their ideal assimilationist LGBs.
Compare all of this to the behaviours of fascists- publicly assaulting people, use of queerphobic abuse, hatred of queers, usage of bad science (‘The Bell Curve’), demos lobbying for the persecution of minorities, doxxing people, appeals to The Child (The 14 Words), etc – and the goal of the fascists- the use of State Power to destroy the Other (for fascists, ethnic minorities and queers, for TERFs, nominally just queers, although their appeal to a eurocentric ideal of womanhood indicates that ethnic minorities aren’t safe once they get control)– and see how similar TERFs and fascists are. Fascism is most effectively stopped through the direct action tactics employed by anti-fascist groups.
The queer force opposing the TERF demo represents both the success of direct action tactics, and the upper-hand that we have; despite the TERF demo being bigger, their demo was largely composed of the same TERFs who are shipped around the country to ‘AstroTurf’, or give the false impression of being grassroots to gain, support for their cause, whilst the queer force was almost entirely composed of local people, indicating that we have strength of numbers, at least in South East Wales.
That being said, Fascism cannot be beaten through defensive actions alone and neither can the Fascism of the Baby’s Face. Anti-fascist action cannot be limited to counter-demos against fascist demos (although these counter demos are of vital importance), it embraces a diversity of tactics, including doxxing fascists, disrupting their meetings and socials, preventing them from speaking at venues, teaching self-defence against fascist violence, driving not only fascist groups from spaces but also any groups that harbour or support fascists, etc. We, as queers, need to embrace this diversity of tactics, and we can no longer only respond to the TERFs, forever being caught on the back-foot- we can’t just bash back, we must strike first!
If the TERFs win, it will mean death for a countless number of queers. If the TERFs continue as they are right now, it means continued harassment, assault, and violence against queer people. Enough is enough! Some will object, and appeal to the moral high ground or the need to be respectable in the eyes of the public, but morality and respectability mean nothing to me when my friends and I are subject to frequent queerphobic abuse, when people I care about are driven to suicide by TERF harassment, and when trans people are facing increasing state oppression to the point where many are fleeing to other countries as refugees. We should not demand rights and tolerance from our oppressors, but instead actively work towards destroying oppression.
Moving to the offensive is the only path now to destroy the TERF menace and secure Queer Liberation. I won’t deny that such a move is scary, we will face increased violence, both from the TERFs and from the police, and we will lose some people who we once considered our ‘allies’ (but if they were only allies whilst it was respectable to do so, then I say, respectfully, fuck ’em). But this is something that must be done. To quote the Street Transvestites for Gay Power:
“If you’re ready to tell people that you want to be free, then your ready to fight. And if your not ready then shut up and crawl back into your closets. But let us ask you this, Can you really live in a closet? We cant.”