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Quote by Alison Phipps

“Sometimes, sexual violence is a ‘cultural problem’ (but only when this culture is non white). Sometimes, it is a product of male anatomy (but only when this anatomy is assigned to a trans woman or a man of colour). Sexual violence is never the violence of heteropatriarchy or globalising racial capital. Instead, representatives of patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism weaponise the idea of ‘women’s safety’ against marginalised and hyper-exploited groups.”

Quote by Alison Phipps

Work

Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism

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Alison Phipps

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“This…exemplifies how trans-exclusionary feminism uses the experience of rape. Drawing on the radical feminist idea of the penis as a weapon, it ‘sticks’ this organ to trans women through an obsession with their surgical status. The ‘threat’ posed by the trans woman is then juxtaposed with the threatened (white) femininity of the abuse survivor. Cue outrage.”

“The more she thought about it, imagining those soft lips opening around her tongue, those long lashes fluttering in dreamy anticipation, the more she realized that no specific moment, no single touch, was to blame. What mattered was that she’d broken the silent rule. She’d touched a girl before the girl touched her, had laid her violent hands on tender skin. She should have known better. Self-pity pressed against her mouth and nostrils like a sodden rag. I’m a girl until a real one decides I’m not.”

“At the first trans health conference I ever attended, a parent asked about long-term health risks for people taking hormones. The doctor gave a full assessment of issues that trans men face; many of them mimic the risks that would be inherited from father to son if they'd been born male, now that testosterone is a factor. "What about trans women?" another parent asked. The doctor took a deep breath. "Those outcomes are murkier. Because trans women are so discriminated against, they're at far greater risk for issues like alcoholism, poverty, homelessness, and lack of access to good healthcare. All of these issues impact their overall health so much that it's hard to gather data on what their health outcomes would be if these issues weren't present." This was stunning-a group of people is treated so badly by our culture that we can't clearly study their health. The burden of this abuse is that substantial and pervasive. Your generation will be healthier. The signs are already there.”

“Those who were gay were told they were ‘too close’ to the work, and, according to one former senior clinician, anyone who spoke out was ‘made to feel hysterical’ in some way. ‘The more anxious and worried you became, the more it was framed that you weren’t really someone who could handle it.’ It was ‘a brilliant way to divert it away from what we’re actually doing, which was changing children’s bodies’, they say. It is not credible to explain away the concerns of so many experienced clinicians either by accusations of transphobia or allegations that they are simply not up to the task at hand.”

“There’s a subtlety to transphobia that we don’t see, because we’re not meant to see it. That subtly lies with making transphobic stereotypes so pervasive that they go unquestioned, unchallenged, undiscussed. So when trans and gender-nonconforming people call out these stereotypes, we should listen. Just because something is a common trope doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful, complicated and worthy of critique.”