OPINION: An anti-trans protestor who counts Nazis amongst her supporters will soon be entering the country to attempt to spread her transphobic brand of hate. As is pretty obvious when Nazis are on your side, these anti-trans views are wrong, harmful and frankly grotesque, as are the essential gender ideas of TERFs which limit everybody by locking people into outdated ideas of gender.

I once dipped my toes into the cesspool of the TERFs. It was the first time I heard the term ‘people who menstruate’ (referring both to cis gender women and trans men), and I bristled. I have endometriosis and have suffered through 32 years of unbearable monthly pain. This suffering to me felt strongly linked to womanhood, and my instinctual reaction was to think, trans women don’t have to go through the struggle that I do. On reflection I quickly realised that I was being a ridiculous gatekeeper – if I, a cisgender woman, think that trans women don’t understand struggle and pain, then I’m an idiot. Also and perhaps more importantly, the fact that trans women don’t menstruate doesn’t take anything away from me. 

Essentialist gender views – the idea that gender is inborn, biologically determined and immutable – are inherently reductive and misogynistic. They limit all of us by encouraging ideas like, boys don’t cry and girls should be empathetic caretakers. 

Having worked in ECE I always found it bizarre that parents would limit their children by keeping them to these gender ‘norms’ – why would you want to put limits on the imagination of children and their building of self? Wouldn’t you want to encourage them to experience everything on offer, not just the pink or blue choices? 

TERFs revel in this kind of gender essentialism of Victorian times and tie rights to body parts, revealing that there is nothing ‘feminist’ about their efforts to smear trans people.  

My partner and I did unsuccessful IVF two years ago and, as we can’t afford to pay for another round, we can’t have children. To us both, this is the greatest grief of our lives. We both adore babies and children, we both have worked with kids, and we know what amazing parents we would have been. It’s a grief that will never go away and that is inescapable. I can taste it in my mouth every day.

No one tells you that not being able to have children impacts your social life. It’s a stab in the heart to hear your friends talk about their kids, even when you love your friends (and their children) dearly. There are many conversations you can’t contribute to or are excluded from. In the small town where I live, there are groups of mothers, all around my age, who never invite me to join them as they gather for coffee and chats after dropping the kids at the bus stop. Some of them seem wary of me, as if they just can’t do the maths of someone my age not having children. These experiences have given me a tiniest sliver of insight into what exclusion based on gender essentialism feels like. It’s only the smallest sliver though, as my exclusion does not come with threats of violence, exclusion from spaces or international bigots protesting my existence. 

I can’t perform the biological function of having a baby, a trans woman can’t perform the biological function of menstruating – does that mean neither of us are women? After all, these are both gender essentials of womanhood. We are told over and over again – both subtly and crudely – that reproduction is the point of existence. I can’t reproduce, so should I not exist? These questions of gender essentialism were countered and dismissed by feminists decades ago so it’s a sad little world TERFs must live in to be creaking open that old box again. 

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences, as shown in Hobart recently when pro-trans protesters drowned out this ugly rhetoric. Let’s do the same in Tāmaki Makarau and Pōneke this weekend at the peaceful counter protests planned.

Tāmaki Makarau/Auckland: March 25, 11am at the Albert Park Rotunda.

Pōneke/Wellington: March 26, 1:30pm, on the City to Sea bridge.

Let’s do the same and call out transphobia wherever you hear it – in ‘jokes’, in language that isn’t inclusive and anywhere else it appears.