WHY TRANSPHOBIC FEMINISM IS LIKE RACISM.

When I was in my first year at university, I remember having an argument during a tutorial with a self-confessed racist when we were discussing what it meant to be Australian and much was said about Professor Fred Hollows. I said that I thought Dr. Victor Chang deserved a mention, too, to which the self-confessed racist replied, “He wasn’t Australian.” Implicit in this statement was that Dr. Victor Chang wasn’t white.

I remember during the Leaders’ Debate in the lead-up to the 2022 Federal Election, someone asking Anthony Albanese what was a definition of a woman and he replied “Adult Female Human.” A skillful reply, I believed and one that should be applied, but does one have to have been born female to be a woman? In my belief, the answer is no.

Gender dysphoria is a condition where the sex that a person is assigned according to their genitals does not correlate to the sex that they are in their mind. I have said sex, as to me, sex is biological, gender is societal.

To say that a person who undergoes a medical and/or surgical transition to become the opposite sex is not a man or a woman is akin to saying that a fourth generation Chinese-Australian is not an Australian. And I apply that whether a person had one Chinese great-great-grandparent out of 16 or both parents were Chinese but born in Australia.

While it’s true that gender reassignment surgery does not alter a person’s chromosomes, what is needed is for them to be treated as a human being, as that’s what they are.

It is also important to understand the difference between a drag performance and a transgender. For a drag performance, a man or group of men dress and have their make-up done to over-emphasize femininity. While I had a transgender person tell me that often when someone transitions, they are unsure of how much make-up to apply, it is worth noting that in some cases, a drag performer merely becomes a character in a performance when they dress up and may present as a cisgender male when not performing.

I remember reading a story about a Chinese-Malaysian male who married an Anglo-Australian woman who said that when he came to Australia as a student, he shared a house with some Anglo-Australian males who said, “Right, this is how we cook, here.” One placed a piece of steak into a frying pan and turned on the heat and then poured a can of baked beans into a saucepan and when the steak was cooked, placed it on a plate and poured the baked beans over and beside it.

Just like he had an introduction to Australian life that way, we have to remember a few points. Yes, a transwoman will not menstruate, so she doesn’t need to learn about sanitary pads, but, as a cisgender girl enters puberty, she learns these things. A transwoman may have been socialized as a male prior to transitioning, and there are still finer points that need to be learnt on the journey. And let’s not forget that MANY transwoman, just like cisgender LGB people, have been rejected or shunned by their families.

Some say that the LGB community is being bullied by the trans community and to that, I say, a cisgender LGB person has the same right to decide whether or not to date or have a personal relationship with a transgender person as a non-smoker does to decide whether or not to date a smoker. That right, however, does NOT extend to denying access to public spaces. If I take an example in my city, a transgender person should have the same right to enter the Wickham or the Sportsman (LGB pubs and clubs) as a cisgender LGB person, and transgender people who are victims of violence, should be able to enter spaces for cisgender victims of violence of the same sex as they transitioned to. I understand concerns about transgender women entering women’s prisons, but I also point out the case of a man who murdered four women who claimed to be transgender and sought access to hormone therapy and to transfer to a women’s prison and his request was denied as he was considered too great a risk. And let’s not forget that transgender people are more likely to be VICTIMS of violence not perpetrators.

Let’s face reality, a feminist who does not support the rights of transwomen is not a feminist but a transphobe, just like the person who denied that a man born to Australian-born Chinese parents and who lived over 40 years of his life in Australia was not a patriot but what they appropriately labelled themselves as. A racist.