Eine Frau Ist Meu Pau: A speech upon a terf talk on the wake of the Colorado shootings

Posted by anarcholatina on 2022-11-23

(Warmly): Lovely siblings, dear allies, thank you! I’m not actually involved in any of the orgas doing this protest, but we’re all anarchists so I’ll speak for them anyway: thank you so much for being here on such a short notice, when you all are still coping, as am I. And ag-do, thanks for the space for my little speech.

But it gets a little bit heavy, so here’s the content warnings. (Softly:) Content warning: Feminist theory. (Increasingly loudly:) Content warning: Academia. Content warning: Terfs. Content warning: Europeans. (Screaming towards the university hall): Content warning: The definition of woman. Content Warning: ANTI-TRANSGENDER HATE. Content warning: ANTI-TRANSGENDER VIOLENCE. CONTENT WARNING: ANTI-TRANSGENDER GENOCIDE.

(Happily warmly again): I have three things to tell you: one about the terfs, one about the fascists, and one about you.

1. Terre des Femmes

On their Facebook event, Terre des Femmes says:

Die Polizei ist informiert und vor Ort. Der Weg INS Haus wird durch die Polizei gesichert, so dass sich unsere Gäste keine Gedanken machen müssen.

You can tell a lot about what kind of woman a supposed “feminist” is protecting, when they assure their folk they can feel safer because many cops will be around.

Terre des Femmes advocates for a legislative ban on Muslim head gear. In other words, these white German supposed “feminists” advocate giving white German cops the right to violently enforce State power over immigrant bodies. It never fails: Scratch a terf, find a racist.

(increasingly angrily:) On her analysis of Terre’s colonialist rhetoric about the “Muslima in Deutschland”, Saskia Metz leverages the theoretical work of the great Indian feminist Chandra Talpade Mohanty re: the category “oppressed Third World Women”, which flattens our individuality and our intersectional struggles under a single binary equation, male=penis=oppressor, female=vagina=victim, so that any of us with a lifestory which challenges their binary theory get denied our own consent, our autonomy, our voice, our personhood itself: So that it doesn’t matter if the woman wants to wear a hijab, or do sex work, or go out in a short skirt, or transition; the enlightened First World feminist vanguard knows our oppression better than us. (Metz 2020, “Eine Analyse der Rhethorik von Terre des Femmes e.V. zum Kopftuchverbot”, (screaming ever louder) i s s n two one nINE TWO DASH FIVE TWO——

(silence.)

It’s hard to even care, isn’t it?

You, like me, are still in deep grief. We are grieving for our dead murdered in our day of grieving, we aren’t even allowed to grieve, like we aren’t allowed our own names in our tombstones. One of my partners said this: “The worst part is I’m not even phased. With all that the U.S. fascists have been saying, with all that the U.K. TERFs have been saying, it was so obviously a matter of time. I feel like the most cynical Cassandra, here looking at my watch, sipping coffee asking, ‘did it happen yet?’”

And the shitty racist Islamophic cop-loving white-ass First-World Fortress Europe regressive pseudofeminists from Terre des Femmes have the gall, the the gall, the GALL, to come here today of all days agitate for the Bundesrepublik Deutschland government to impose on us which gender we really are.

Now Terre des Femmes says:

“Was ist eine Frau? Die Veranstaltung wird das Thema Auswirkungen des geplanten Selbstbestimmungsgesetzes auf Frauenrechte konstruktiv reflektieren. Ein ~respektvoller~ Umgang miteinander ist zu jeder Zeit unabdingbare Voraussetzung.”

FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU Terre des Femmes, you want respect? While we’re walking in DEATH as death surrounds us, in the pit of our grief, in the abyss of our collective trauma, you come tell the cops and the nazis that we trannies are abusers and predators, in the city of the Frontline Skinheads and the Fortress Europe nazi demos, after a 15-year-old girl gets lynched on the streets then misgendered by police, you come demand respect?? I’ll tell you was ist eine Frau, eine Frau ist meu pau is what it is. A woman is my DICK.

“Ah here we see the phallic rape culture enactment of the violent trans-identifie—” FUCK. YOU. I am DONE.

You, First-World colonial supremacists gorging on the wealth you plundered from my country and a hundred others, you who cannot hide your DISGUST for our body and our desire so you dress it up as supposed “feminism”, you who call my sisters “sex traffick victims” so that you can deport them back to Hell, just so that you don’t have ever to look at the proudly exposed trans body of the Latina travesti, like you don’t want to look at the proudly covered body of the Islamic feminist, because our existence doesn’t fit your shitty self-serving malformed theory. I have no time to argue with you, I am too busy teaching my queer kids how to stop bleedings from gunshot wounds. I have nothing to argue with you, from the valley of death I spit on you, in the name of the travesti amapô I curse you: tonight our dead will haunt your nightmares.

2. The danger of terfs, the irrelevance of terfs

Those of you who were here with me humiliating the Nazis on 1st of May: Those of you who defined the Versammlungsgesetz and the illusion of safety of the liberal order to mask up and face the enemy up close, you will remember: We didn’t just have the NPD and Die Rechte and the III. Weg and the local Hammerskins, we also had the Légió Hungária, the Bulgarski Nationalen Sajuz, Les Nationalistes and the Polish reactionaries and the Italian brotherhood—real internationale solidarität they have, European fascists. That Nazi influencer, remember her? The nazi Twitter girlfriend? announced a Fortress Europe alliance at that day.

The Colorado shooter, as you heard, is the grandson of a MAGA Republican lawmaker. Another Republican, Arthur Jay Finkelstein, spent decades consulting for European fascists from Austria, Hungary, Czech, Ukraine, all over. Ordo Iuris, a Polish Catholic fascist organisation, has hosted Brazilian fascists, has received help from U.S. fascists to pass anti-abortion legislation, the Bolsonaro family is working with the Trump clan, UK terfs are now using anti-LGBT symbolism from Eastern European fascists, only switching the rainbow flag for the pink-white-blue.

Do you get it, the scale of this? It’s the work of years. We are under attack, it’s not just random shootings, there’s no Einzelfälle, American politicians are openly calling for genocide now, the day after the shooting. We cannot fight this with just demos. We cannot / fight this / with just / demos.

Are terfs even relevant at this point? Yes, they enable and empower the rise of fascism, but if they all stopped tomorrow little would change, because trans-exclusionary “feminism” is self-defeating. The same power they ceded for Republicans to oppress us trans people, was immediately used to overturn Roe Vs. Wade. Terfs are so eager to kick us out of women’s spaces, they are so disgusted by our bodies, so desperate to build walls to leave us out, that they don’t even look at who’s handing them all those bricks. Terfs think that their walls keep us out, but they’re walling themselves with the men inside Gilead.

The rotting trans bodies hanging from those walls will prove to be poor consolation for them.

3. Juicy gossip bitterness

No, it’s not to them that I came to talk today, it’s to you. My siblings. All of you my folk, all of you queer, interestingly gendered anarchists, actually feminist feminists.

I’m Brazilian. Most trans folk killed last year are from my country. By a large margin. For the 13th time in a row.

Police kills an average of 17 people per day in my country. If I dress like this outside in my country, there’s a very high chance I’ll be beaten to death; half the time the murderers will be in police uniform.

When I watch the rise of fascism, the rise of anti-queer violence here inside the progressive walls of Fortress Europe, I, like all my immigrant friends, have a very specific kind of chill: That I am being thrown back into that, terrified of ever looking too fem, too sexual, too myself. And I cannot—I will not go back to that. I would rather die lynched on the streets than live in hiding again.

I’m not a citizen. Any crime, however how minor, can get me deported, back to that. Antifa action might get me deported back to that. Having, quote, “extremist political beliefs”, endquote, is grounds to get my citizenship denied.

I’ve spent Trans Day Of Remembrance being slut-shamed online by some swerf who thought me, a Latina travesti, going to an anti-police demo with this outfit, yes this glorious outfit you see me in right now, was grossly inappropriate. The kicker? The swerf in question wasn’t a cis terf. She was a trans anarchist. While the shooting victims were still bleeding she was trash-talking me to my partner on how me posting my boobs online is me being a whore, without tact or niveau, without class, for submission to men.

Sister I WISH I was a whore! I’m not ALLOWED be a whore, because women like THEM (points to terf meeting) as well as like YOU will sicc the cops on me if I even try. So I have to sell my body to other, significantly worse forms of wage slavery, working for capitalists rather than myself.

I prepared a speech for this Trans Day of Remembrance; I put a lot of blood and tears into it. Do you know who gave me space, who wanted to listen to my speech, who thanked me for it? Pride Rebellion. For those who don’t know, Pride Rebellion is not an anarchist org. They’re close to Apoists, they have people who wear the hammer-and-sickle. Theoretically, not my politics. They’re closer to second-wavey forms of feminism; their theory, unlike our queer theory, has little allowance for slut pride. In traditional Jineologî there’s no discussion on trans people, yet do you know how many times the Kurdish heval have given me problems over my gender? Never. Do you know how often my outfits have been policed by these revolutionaries whose theories could justify that? Never.

Do you know why that is? How come the hevals will unconditionally gang up with me, even when my positions don’t fit the ideology? Because as we speak the Kurds are being bombarded by Turkish airplanes, in a renewed genocide, aided and abetted by NATO and by the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, with next to no notice on mainstream media. When my existence doesn’t fit their theories, the Kurds open space for me, because we are under attack, and unlike white German activists, the Kurds have a sense of the enemy. The Zapatistas have a sense of the enemy. BLM has a sense of the enemy. We are under attack, and insurrectionaries know we won’t solve this with demos. The first time I talked to a Kurdish activist—the first time!—she offered to take care of my queer kids, should anything happen. I want you to think how many queer anarchist comrades you can trust to have that kind of commitment. Which of your comrades would offer you, spontaneously and unconditionally, long-term childcare? Who would offer you shelter and food and cover fire, even if someone has a shitty take, even if there’s a relationship conflict, even if the positioning differs or the theory doesn’t fit?

My heval’s theory doesn’t cover my nonbinary kid’s gender identity, but she will put my kid above her theory, because we are comrades and the enemy wants us both dead. This isn’t hyperbole, this isn’t me being dramatic, they literally wants us all dead, dead, and unlike the terfs in here, we can’t count on the cops to keep us safe. Who keeps us safe? Who keep us safe?

Compared to the Kurds, the German left is severely limited in action by their investment in the fake security they think they have. All I hear is attempts to dissuade me to do anything that could get me in trouble, to go help with the struggle in safer ways, maybe do a Küfa (if you get the Ordnungsamt permission for one, natürlich). The very first antifa demo I did in Germany was against the Versammlungsgesetz, summer 2021, you know how that went: We were kesseled on the asphalt til midnight, detained, profiled, photographed, catalogued in all shitty government databases as potential terrorists. It was a legal demo! I followed all the rules! I was profiled for holding a sign that said „Antifaschismus ist kein Verbrechen“! And all the good-opsec Germans in black masks and North Face windbreakers were minutely profiled right along with me. When the boots come for you, your crypto apps won’t save you. I’m presenting this with my face exposed, which is nice cos you get to see my new haircut, but I actually came here masked! (lifts pink mask theatrically from the ground) You saw me going Karen at the cops before, they forced us to unmask!

I’m borrowing from the civil rights movement here when I say: mobilisation won’t save us, we need true organisation, we need to provide our siblings with shelter, with food, hormones, safety, we need fucking guns. The terfs are a lost cause but you are my people, the fascists are coming for all of us, we’re the sacrificial goat. Half of you thinks me having ten girlfriends is #problematic, that my sexuality is Inappropriate in Public Spaces I should tone it down. And the other half thinks my aggressiveness is too overt, my violence too proudly worn, I’m better off cancelled by security culture. For the third half, the small half that doesn’t want to tone down ANYTHING for the sake of cis sensibilities: Are we going to wait until the fascists take power? Are we going to keep shitposting about antifaschistische aktion, or are we going to actually do it? Crew up. Bash back. Bash first.

Filed under Discourse transgender

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