Excluding trans women from women's spaces is not feminism
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
Excluding trans women from women's spaces is a feminist position. Some women argue that keeping trans women out is about protecting women, and that this makes it a women's rights issue.
What I was trying to say there is that feminism built on exclusion is not feminism at all. A women's space is for women, and trans women are women. When one woman says "I don't want her in my space" and calls that a rights issue, she is using the language of liberation to do the opposite of liberating. I have spent years listening to trans women describe what it costs them to be turned away, to be told they do not count, to have their womanhood treated as a threat. That is not a small thing to ask them to absorb so that someone else can feel more comfortable. The discomfort of inclusion is not a harm. The exclusion of trans women is.
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