Local Press Frames WDI as Not Feminists
Trans Activists Come Out to protest WDI Conference in San Francisco
The Chronicle published two articles about our conference hosted by the Women’s Declaration International. The first claimed that we were “advertising” ourselves as a feminist organization and that allowed them to imply that real feminism does not exclude men, so they could call us an anti-trans hate group without reporting that we might have actual concerns that affect women and our sex-based rights. Of course, they didn’t use the word men.
They did mention a protest WDI held to protest Dana Rivers being housed in a woman’s prison. This was a man, identifying as a woman, who brutally murdered a lesbian, her wife, and their adopted Black son in Oakland across the Bay from us. He had a long history of harassing women at Mich Fest, a woman-only music festival. This was a story the Chron did not cover because that would make it clear that there might actually be concerns about such men being allowed to occupy women’s spaces. He was convicted and transferred to Chowchilla, a women’s prison.
The comments were almost all on our side bringing attention to these concerns.
Alerted by my group about the article, I left a comment under my pseudonym LesbianM56. (I use it so I don’t have to explain that I am a Lesbian every time.)
“Feminists are concerned with the trans agenda of eroding sex-based rights of women. So should San Francisco be concerned about advancing this men's rights movement to occupy women's spaces.
The housing of violent men claiming to be women in female prisons is a violation of the Geneva Convention.
The legislation of gender identity, which is based on nothing in material reality, is now a state-mandated religious belief in defiance of freedom of religion, a basic principle of our country.
Teaching children to accept gender identity as more real than what their eyes and ears tell them is doing them a terrible disservice to their perception of reality and is a safeguarding issue.
Gender identity legislated as a priority over sex-based reality interferes with accurate data gathering for medical research, social learning, and crime statistics. It also affects safeguarding by providing cover for sexual predators and male violence.
This is a disservice to society. San Francisco is providing cover for plain old misogyny. The headline for this article is a huge tell of twisted logic.”
A UK comrade helping me out with the example of a violent sexual predator now being housed in a women’s prison in the UK.
sometimes_dismayed replied to your comment.
Two words from the UK: "Isla Bryson".
This list of bullet points impressed a colleague enough to share it with a friend.
I also added a link to this recent podcast by a respected Korean American novelist and political commentator who interviewed a feminist journalist from Reddux reporting on all the predatory activity perpetrated by trans identified men who were now incarcerated with women.
Another article appeared the evening after the trans protestors staged their rally telling us how trans people had always been here and they spoke the foreign names of these cultures like they were magical words—the fa’afafina, the Mahu… Such appropriation was the basis of my whole quarrel with their cultural appropriation imperialism retread. Again the headline, implied that we are not real feminists.
It does not mention that the protest shut down the street without a permit and that a man clad in antifa garb took a hammer to the Hilton sign breaking the “O” and then punched a security guard who tried to stop him until police came and one wrestled him to the ground. Or that upon seeing four of us watching from the overhead walkway, a group jumped a locked gate to run at us while police intervened and we ran for cover back into the hotel.
Several trans activists did come into the hotel and ran up and down the halls where we were. They were escorted out by security while we were inside our break-out rooms. Usual tactics are to use noise to drown out any presentation including setting off the fire alarm.
I explained to my contacts who are vocal leaders in my community that trans activists cannot allow freedom of speech because they have no argument that would make any logical sense to back up their claim that trans women are women, not men. That men cannot allow women to gather together to discuss their concerns as a legitimate expression of our rights is nothing new our spokesperson was quoted saying in the first article.
We also made it into the Daily Mail in the UK which reported more accurately on the property damage and harassment of us as befitting their conservative bent. I was proud that we had enough of a story to make it to TERF Island.
The Chronicle took one more stab at framing us as a hate group on Twitter with a clip of the direct action on Monday at City Hall, claiming that we were doing the work of the communists meaning that we were fascists. I enjoyed skewering this tweet with my own definition of what is fascist.
“The force teaming of lesbians with the alphabet mafia, now dominated by heterosexual men and their obsession with being women, denies same-sex attraction, denies first amendment rights, denies our living as lesbians. Such force teaming is the very essence of fascism.”
When I checked back to look at it again to refresh my memory, I found that the tweet had been removed. This gave me a great deal of satisfaction.
