When I was at university – late Pleistocene – I shared a flat with two women. Just two women. I really have been a woman loving man hating person all my life. One of those women, briefly my lover, was the President of the Liverpool University Guild of Undergraduates Women’s Group. The other woman, longer time lover of the woman briefly my lover, was the Chairperson of the Liverpool University Guild of Undergraduates Women’s Group.
You may think I mention this just to prove my credentials as a life-long feminist. You’d be right.
Oh, sorry, it’s not the end of the post. My bad.
Back then we went on demos together, waved flags together, hurled abuse together. Such fun. I even experienced hero worship (mildly, and briefly) when my mate¹ Mark and I (there have always been exceptions to my misandry) were quite badly beaten up fighting a bunch of Neo-Nazi scum (they started it). I think I nearly killed one when I hit him on the head with a brick. He dropped like a sack of coal. Anyway, we staggered back to my flat, where we both experienced the adulation of these two radical feminist women, who were so proud of their men. Nice, odd, and painful. The President fixed up our wounds.
Still not the end – I’ll get to the point sometime. The point is this. These two loved me, we were feminists together, no one questioned the commitment of either of the others for an instant. I was never, never treated differently as a feminist for being a man. Never. But I was not welcome in the Women’s Group. That was not a feminist thing, that was a woman thing. That was the sort of thing that the three of us were supposed to be fighting for, after all. But I had no part in it, because I was not a woman. That’s fine, it didn’t bother me. Actually, I was young and un-wise, and it did a little. Because of anti-discrimination stuff in the Guild Constitution, the Women’s Group couldn’t stop men joining. Yet whilst feminist men like me would never dream of joining, misogynistic filth who wanted to wreck it could join. Oh well. Happily, women have an ability to make men feel most unwelcome 😊.
I’ve very nearly made it to the point now. I’m a woman – I’ll use the term trans woman when needed, but I’m a woman – so now I can join those groups, enter those spaces. Yes, TERFs say I can’t, and they can fuck off. But whilst I’ll sit with women at Diwali lunch, join women to get my hand decorated for Diwali, go to the nail salon with women, count myself among the girls at work (at least those who know I’m trans), and generally be happy as a woman in the company of women, I would find it extremely difficult to use a women’s restroom, for instance. I don’t feel I should, because the women there won’t know I’m a woman too, and I’m guessing won’t like it. Which is what the TERFs have said all along. I just find it weird that I’d join a women’s group, but won’t use the women’s restroom (though I would use it at a meeting of the women’s group, no worries). Happily, it has been proven by stereotype that women always go to the restroom in at least pairs, so all I need do is take one with me – then the others will know.
I’ll get used to all this soon. I love you all (even men in some sense to some degree, albeit small).
¹Commonwealth English slang for friend, just to avoid confusion