If trans women aren't welcome, neither am I
by Guest Blogger
September 25, 2013
A cisgender sex-positive dyke organizer addresses the cotton ceiling .
By Andrea Zanin
http://www.transadvocate.com/if-trans-women-arent-welcome-neither-am-i.htmThe question of whether or not to include trans women in women's sexuality-based events is old and tiresome, but it still comes up with some regularity. I recently responded to a discussion on this topic and I realized that it might be useful to post my thoughts here, as I don't know that I've ever done so in full.
I see a few main underlying assumptions come up in these discussions, and I'd like to counter them. Some of these arguments are stated outright, while others seem implicit in the language people tend to use. Most counter-arguments I've seen focus on the stated arguments, but I'd like to incorporate the underlying ones too, which makes the discussion a bit broader.
[...]
Assumption 1. There exists such thing as a "safe space."
I feel strongly that the idea of safe space is a really dangerous one, no matter who's claiming it for what space. It seems like there's an underlying assumption in some comments that safe space does indeed exist or that it's something worth striving for. For me, as soon as the concept comes up, whether this precise term is used or it just seems to be implied, I immediately become super uncomfortable and feel very concerned about how people will behave in whatever space is being discussed. I've seen this idea used as a battering ram, essentially, in way too many contexts, usually as a way to police behaviour in a mean-spirited manner or to exclude people or create an "in-crowd" of people who "get it." Doesn't really matter whether it's an activist space, a party, a conference, whatever. Almost universally, it's about people buying into a fantasy of safety that simply does not match reality—and making a lot of people quite unsafe by using policing-style behaviour.
