lb_lee | Leslie Feinberg and 'Safe Space'

Rogan: We found a copy of Leslie Feinberg's 1996 book, Transgender Warriors: making history from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, in a free box. (It's still in print, miraculously!) If you desperately need a book where all sorts of genderful people are exhorted to unite in joyful coalition, then this is the book for you! But that's not what this post is about. This post is specifically about what Feinberg says about safe space, which I want to make required reading for everyone these days.

Feinberg was specifically talking about "women's safe space," in this book, but I feel a lot of things apply elsewhere. It is very much the ethos I try to employ with this blog and the multi meet-up group I co-modded.

Of course, as a result of the oppression women face growing up in such a violently anti-woman environment, some women draw a line between women as allies and men as enemies. While it's understandable that an individual might do so out of fear, this approach fails as theory. It lumps John Brown and John D. Rockefeller together as enemies and Sojourner Truth and Margaret Thatcher together as allies. The view of who to trust and who to dread will not keep women safe or keep the movement on course. (pg. 110)

As a rape survivor, I understand the need for safe space together--free from sexist harassment and potential violence. But fear of gender variance also can't be allowed to deceptively cloak itself as a women's safety issue. (116)

[...] [D]efending the inclusion of transsexual sisters in women's space does not threaten the safety of any woman. The AIDS movement, for example, battled against the right-wing characterization of gay men as a 'high-risk group.' We won an understanding that there is no high-risk group--there are high-risk behaviors. Therefore, creating safety in women's space means we have to define unsafe behavior--like racist behavior by white women towards women of color, or dangerous insensitivity to disabilities. (117)

If the boundaries around "woman" become trenches, what happens to intersexual [sic] people? Can we really fix a policy that's so clear about who was born "woman"? And there are many people, like myself, who were born female but get hassled for not being woman enough. We've been accused of exuding "male energy." Now that's a frighteningly subjective border to patrol. Do all women--or should all women--have to share the same "energy"?

If we were going to decide who is a "real" woman, who would we empower to decide, and how could the check-points be established? Would we all strip? How could you tell if a vagina was not newly constructed? Would we show our birth certificates? How could you determine that they hadn't been updated after sex-reassignment? DNA tests? The Olympics tried it, but they had so many false results they went back to relying on watching somebody pee in a cup for the drug test as the "sex" test.

[...] What does it mean to be a woman in this society? How many different paths lead to woman? How varied are our experiences, and what do we share in common? Isn't this the discussion we need to have in order to continue to build a dynamic women's movement? And yet, we can't even begin the examination until all those who identify as women are in the movement. It's not a definition that's going to create safe space. Definitions have created some pretty unsafe space for many of us who were born female.

Let's open the door to everyone who is self-identified as woman, and who wants to be in women's space. (Not every woman wants that experience.) Let's keep the door unlocked. [...] And we can set some good-sense ground rules for what constitutes unsafe behavior.

What should the sign on the door of the women's movement read? I think the key to victory are these three simple words: "All women welcome." (118-119)

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From:

wispfox

"Let's open the door to everyone who is self-identified as woman, and who wants to be in women's space. (Not every woman wants that experience.) Let's keep the door unlocked. [...] And we can set some good-sense ground rules for what constitutes unsafe behavior."

Yes. Very much so.

lb_lee

It solves a LOT of problems if there are rules on behavior, rather than identity. Some people of my demographics, I wouldn't hang out with if we were trapped in a mine together.