An Op-Ed published on April 14 in Marianne Magazine and adapted by TRADFEM
Several lesbians are denouncing abuses exerted against them, in the name of progressive politics and of the fight against transphobia.
There are women who love women, and who are not physically attracted to men. This is the way it is, and it is not a choice or a demand, it is a fact.Of course, we don’t hate men, it’s just that they are not sexually « our thing ».
Yet, for some time now, we have been told – even within our political family that is the Left – that we should accept unwanted sexual relations with men who have transitioned.
We, the signatories of this letter, attest having experienced sexist, punitive and sexual forms of abuse aimed at « correcting » our sexual orientation in spaces that call themselves LGBTQIAP+, or Queer-TransFaggotDykeNon-Binary (the French equivalent of “queer-antifa”). This is not an urban legend. These are not isolated cases.
Moreover, when, following these assaults, we undertake to create other spaces in order to meet safely and live together serenely our homosexuality, we still suffer bullying (physical assaults, cyber-harrassment…) from the traditional far right, but also from activists who display visual symbols of anti-fascism. (The anti-fascist movement, which has existed for a long time, is of course doing a great deal of resistance work, but we note that today, some fascists are abusing its name by claiming to be part of it).
Because she had published on her blog an article about the current pressure on lesbians to have sex men, lesbian sociologist Christine Delphy was attacked by a collective of three people during a sociology conference she was giving in Toulouse, France. Her attackers violently attempted to block the conference.in order to read aloud a statement explaining that « to say no to a woman as a lesbian because this woman has a penis is to confuse social identity of gender with sexual desires or practices. »
In other words, if men declare themselves to be « penissed » women, they de facto gain the right to have sexual relations with us (independently of our consent), and to confiscate our visibility!
We find that men who have transitioned systematically try to take control of lesbian associations and manage to do so where these are not vigilant enough. In the spaces that these men control, we are made to undergo so-called « genital preference deconstruction » workshops, which are brainwashes to overcome our aversion to coitus and fellatio.
This political movement, which has openly used punitive sexual violence to take over the original institutions of the lesbian community and distort its demands, is now targeting feminism in general.
We have seen this on several instances in recent news, notably with the case of J.K. Rowling, accused of using the word « woman » on Twitter, or in the violence committed against women demonstrators on March 7 during the traditional March 8 demonstration (moved a day earlier because of the curfew).
Let us quote these facts as described the next day by newspapers such as Charlie Hebdo.
Attacked for holding up signs criticizing the prostitution system (in a feminist demonstration…), they were the target of multiple uninterrupted egg-throwing by other demonstrators carrying queer and antifa flags who called them « putophobes » and « transphobes ». Other feminists had to intervene to release the encircled feminists, but not without first getting attacked by the egg-throwers.
This gives an idea of what we have been facing for the last two or three years, for example when we try to organize non-mixed dances or soccer tournaments in nonetheless private spaces. When we talk about punitive sexual violence, we are not exaggerating: the people concerned recognize it themselves, given the level of violence of their threats openly spread on the social networks… It suffices for them to accuse their targets of « hatred » and « moral violence » for all their attacks to appear justified in their eyes.
The signatories of this Op-Ed also includes intersexed women (women with sexual development disorder) who ask that these activists stop exploiting their condition to present biology as saying anything and everything: there is in fact a difference between intersex people (who are born with genitalia considered ambiguous and are then « assigned » to a sex via mutilating operations), intersexed people/people with sexual development disorder (who have genitalia that is not ambiguous and who produce too much or too little hormones and/or have non-functional reproductive organs), and hermaphrodites (who hardly exist outside mythology). Indeed, if there are people who are born without functional ovaries or testicles, no one is born with both at the same time. However, we meet young people who, after reading activist brochures, believe in the existence of people with a functional uterus and testicles.
Moreover, in the same concern of alerting public opinion and refocusing the LGBT debate, we intend to denounce the ever-increasing pressure exerted on young lesbians to accept artificial testosterone injections: in some LGBT centers, psychologists are even trained to identify young girls whom they claim to identify as « repressed trans men who don’t know themselves », and incite them to affirm themselves in this manner and then, consequently, to transition medically.
Don’t such practices take us back more than a century, when Alan Turing, for example, the inventor of the cryptography computer, who was convicted in 1952 of homosexuality, was given the choice between taking artificial estrogen (female hormones) or being sent to jail?
Besides, in Sweden, where children are allowed to try to change their sex with their parents’ consent, a governmental study has shown that 15% of the girls who asked for this change were autistic and 19% hyperactive: this certainly raises questions about the validity of these medical practices on youths, and undoubtedly calls for a collective non-ideologized analysis.
We are from the Left and if we write today, it is to inform the general public of the great inversion underway in French feminism. In the eyes of this inverted pseudo-feminism, when a woman says no it does not necessarily mean no, women oppress men by denouncing sexual violence and children can consent to anything and everything.
As for us, we know that history will prove us right. Look across the Channel and the Atlantic: there, people have already begun to reverse the excesses of all this. The tide is turning.
Signatories:
Camille Girard, life assistant
Carole Barthès, graphic designer
Chantal Hervouet, public service executive
Claire Raynaud Gauthier, seamstress
Muriel Petit, teacher
Agnès Rakovec, musician
Julie Gosselin, computer scientist
Florence-Lina Humbert, journalist
Sophie Plisson, archaeologist
Sarah Masson, doctoral student
Marie Moisdon, feminist trainer.
Supporters:
Marie-Jo Bonnet, historian, writer and feminist activist
Pilar Aguilar Carrasco, film critic and feminist activist
Laurence Croix, psychoanalyst and university lecturer.
Delphine Girard, professor of literature.
Translation: TRADFEM
TRADFEM 