Diana Shaw – Women Are Human March 17, 2020

Hate in two languages: Trans activists in France and Spain have been openly calling for the mass murder of women. Click to enlarge

FR; ES — . 2020 has seen a sharp rise in violent public threats from transgender activists aimed at women who advocate for women’s human rights.

In France and Spain, transgender activists have been openly displaying messages calling for the mass murder of “TERFs” and particular groups of feminist activists, at times suggesting specific methods of execution. In Spain, the threats came to life when crowds of transgender activists violently attacked women who were peacefully demonstrating during International Women’s Day.

France

In the summer of 2019, French FEMEN activist Marguerite Stern launched Collages Feminicides, a movement that has French women take to the streets to create canvas art in protest of and to raise awareness about France’s position as a nation with one of the highest rates of women murdered by intimate partners.

“In Paris, when I welcomed hundreds of women into my home at the very beginning of the movement, I had made it clear that I wanted us to be united, beyond our disagreements, to fight against domestic violence,” the activist tweeted.

The collage movement quickly took on a life of its own, evolving to address issues beyond femicide that are important to women’s lives, which the activist celebrated.

However, on January 22, 2020, Ms Stern announced her dismay that the movement that she had created to advocate for women had been weaponized against women: “Universalist feminists tell me that they have been excluded from branches where activists position themselves as intersectional, and make collages on divisive subjects while using the label (to my great regret, it has become a label) ‘collages féminicides’.” (Feminist author Nathalie Heinich views universalist feminism as a counterpoint to theories of postmodernism, postcolonialism and gender studies, defining it as a call for women to put aside differences “within the civic framework of citizenship” and focus on what they have in common.)

Ms Stern revealed that transgender activists had written “Des sisters pas de cisterfs” (“Sisters not CisTERFs”) on a building, and posed intimidatingly before the scrawled slogan. Worse yet, she said, transgender activists put on the outside of a building a call for “TERFs” to be burnt at the stake: “Les terfs au bucher.” (TERF is a slur used primarily against women who express doubts or disbelief about the ideology that a human being can be born in the body of the wrong sex, or transition from one sex to the other.)

“TERF IS THE NEW WITCH,” Ms Stern tweeted. Feminist Stephanie Lamy agreed, “Unacceptable. Advocating feminicide when it was initially a campaign against feminicides.”

Those were far from the only hateful expressions from transgender activists toward women that she had seen displayed on buildings in the name of the movement she had started, the Collages Feminicides creator explained.

Ms Stern issued a strong statement on Twitter that transgender activism is functioning as a Trojan Horse that deliberately destroys feminism from the inside, silences women and reinforces stereotypes and dehumanizing language about women:

-> The first thing is that I find that debates on transactivism are taking up more and more space in feminism, and even crystallize all the attention. I interpret this as a new male attempt to prevent women from expressing themselves. Men have always tried to silence women by silencing their revolts. Today, they do it from the inside by infiltrating our struggles and by taking center stage.

-> The second thing is that I find it hateful that a tool as important as inclusive writing, and which is supposed to serve the interests of women, is now used to make them invisible. in feminist debates on Instagram (and I realize that perhaps these are niche debates), we no longer use the words ‘women’ and ‘men’ to talk about specific subjects such as rules for example. We now speak of ‘people with vulva’. Well I consider that it makes me invisible.

-> No, I am not a ‘vulva person’, I am a woman. I was born a woman, and before I was born, in my mother’s womb, I suffered discrimination because of this. I have suffered things that a man who wants to become a woman can never apprehend.

-> Third, I am in favor of deconstructing gender stereotypes, and I believe that transactivism only reinforces them. I observe that men who want to be women, suddenly start to wear make-up, to wear dresses and heels. And I consider it an insult to women to consider that it is the tools invented by patriarchy that make us women. We are women because we have vulvae. It is a biological fact.

-> Wear dresses, heels and wigs, make up, if you want. I won’t go screaming cultural appropriation, but don’t come out and say you’re women. Just as I would never have the indecency to brown my skin and declare that I’m black.

Ms Stern was demonized on social media for speaking out.

https://twitter.com/LyyPerr/status/1229439898849042433

A letter – in which 60 signatories publicly stood with Marguerite Stern in her condemnation of transgender activists in the Collages Feminicides movement – was published in the Le Huffington Post, a French language version of a popular news and opinion website, but was yanked following backlash from transgender activists.

Lauren Provost, Managing Editor, wrote in a conciliatory statement:

It was an op-ed and not an editorial, but it had no place on our site. It was a mistake to have published it. The transphobic comments inside go against the values that Le HuffPost has promoted since its creation. Trans women are women. We sincerely apologize for the publication of this text.

Marianne, a weekly current affairs magazine based in Paris, later published the letter, noting that “the debate is essential.” The number of signatories had by then jumped to almost 140.

SPAIN

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