[NextGenderation]
Please see the following response to an incident of transphobia which
occurred at London Pride this year. While this specific incident
occurred in London, both the issue itself and the general responses
have much wider relevance for gender/queer politics and policing more
broadly.
Also, there is a brilliant anonymous "Pride" zine that is circulating
around London, but apparently the file is too big (711KB) to
circulate on this e-mail list. So if you e-mail me directly, I can
forward it to folks individually.
~Sam
TRANSPHOBIA, PRIDE & THE POLICE
An open letter to trans organisers and Pride 2008 participants in London
Ref: http://www.transatpride.org/TransAtPride/Transphobia.html
Facebook Group: "Stop Transphobia At Pride"
"UK: Public Statement on the Incident at the women's toilet at Pride
involving a Trans woman" from Pride London forwarded by email on July
8th by Press for Change
Letter to the trans community by Steve Allen (Metropolitan Police) of
11 July, 2008
We were very sorry to hear that Roz Kaveney, a well-known trans
activist who has made important contributions to trans organising,
was harassed in the middle of the Pride march when trying to use the
women's toilet, first by a steward sub-contracted by Pride and then
by an LGBT liaison officer.
The two people, both presumably LGB:
· abused Roz by refusing her access to a women's toilet
· demonized her by comparing her to a man who had assaulted a
woman (even though, as was later discovered, the victim had actually
been trans)
· flagrantly used recent gains in gender citizenship
legislation as a weapon against her by demanding a Gender Recognition
Certificate
· attempted to criminalize Roz and those who spontaneously
came to her support as an unlawful demonstration on private property
(and had verbally abused them as a 'trannie mob')
· and threatened detention.
We welcome the debate that this incident has provoked, about the
relationship between trans communities, wider LGB communities, and
the police.
However, we believe that the debate has remained limited in several
respects:
1. The representation of trans people and their interests.
In the debate, some individuals (particularly those involved in the
public and voluntary sectors) appear to have appointed themselves as
leaders and representatives of the trans community. We see several
problems with this:
· Where do these individuals derive their accountability from?
Both Pride and the police have 'apologised', whilst defending their
sub-contractors and officers. As solutions, diversity training
(Pride) and a meeting and 'dialogue' (London Met Police) have been
offered. As members of the trans community, we would like to know:
Who attended these meetings, and what entitles these individuals to
represent 'the trans community'?
Whose interests exactly are being represented? How reflective are
they of the trans community, which as we know is very diverse in
terms of race, class and immigration status?
Who will carry out this diversity training?
Who will train stewards, and in what will they train them?
Whose trans issues will Pride volunteers and police be sensitized to?
Whose political voices have been heard?
In the debate so far, only the most conforming of trans voices have
been heard. The political solutions suggested will likewise benefit
mostly those who are already heavily networked up with the corporate
LGBT sector and the police, and are regular participants in local
government 'consultation and participation' settings.
How will this exacerbate existing divisions and hierarchies in the
trans community, and lead to a new class of self-appointed 'community
leaders' who claim the right to speak on everyone's behalf?
One trans 'leader' has urged trans people to refrain from writing
angry letters to Pride, stating that this will endanger the
"recommendations" and "negotiations taking place at the moment". She
was uncritical of Pride's decision to report the letter writers to
the police.
We want to know:
What are these recommendations?
Who is making them?
What gives her the authority to speak for all trans people?
Whose voices are being sidelined?
Whose interests are being represented?
How will we reflect the full spectrum of views and political
responses to this incident, if we are not allowed to voice them?
· What kind of a society are we envisioning?
The strategies that have dominated the debate so far rely upon a
citizenship model that reduces trans people to a 'minor/ity'. Do we
want to be minors, who receive rights and privileges in return for
our obedience and deference to a patriarchal state - which will
protect our own best interests, which we cannot define and contest
for ourselves? What other visions of society are possible?
2. The relationship between trans people and coercive gender norms
Some of the responses to the incident affirmed dominant gender
binaries and hierarchies. For example, one trans organiser commented
on Facebook that Roz was able to pass as a woman. In a different
forum, a transman highlighted that Roz had had surgery. This would
imply that those who resemble non-trans standards of gender most, are
the least deserving of abuse. It leaves intact the hierarchy of
obedience towards gender norms among transpeople – where rewards are
due to those who pass most authentically.
A second example of such hierarchical thinking is on the Trans at
Pride website. A butch lesbian, it is argued, would never have been
excluded from the women's toilet in the same manner.
· This ignores the routine harassment experienced by gender-
nonconforming people, and those who do not choose to pass as (non-
trans) men or women.
· It also normalises the idea that binaried gender identity is
a justifiable criteria for personhood and citizenship.
3. The relationship between trans people and the state
What is the relationship between transpeople and the state and its
monopolies of power? Do we really believe in the myth of police
protection?
Historically, the police have been perpetrators of gender violence
rather than protectors against it. However, there is an increasing
belief among queer and transpeople that the police are part of our
community. Besides Pride, trans organisers, too, have invited police
into our spaces. The 'Trans Community Conference' was even held in
the headquarters of the London Met.
Who or what exactly are the police 'protecting' us from, and what
does this 'protection' look like?
What if the police pose a threat themselves – who will protect us then?
Is it a coincidence that the 'LGBT liaison officer' joined in with
Roz's abuse, rather than protecting her - and attempted to
criminalise her and her supporters?
The shock with which participants in the debate reacted to this shows
the success which the police have had in promoting themselves as 'pro-
diversity' and 'equal opportunities employer', through such measures
as sponsoring Pride and the Trans 'community conference' – or indeed
years of expensive advertising campaigns.
If LGBT people are now the major symbols of police diversity, this
was not always the case. It was the MacPherson Report into the racist
murder of Stephen Lawrence, and its verdict that the police were
'institutionally racist', which created the need for the police to
present themselves as pro-'minority'.
What has changed since then? The 'war on terror' is the new context
for diversity politics. While the police are advertising themselves
as diverse (largely through LGBT inclusion), police violence overall
is again on the rise. If in the 1990s, there was wide-spread
opposition to the routine 'stop and search' of non-white people, this
is now widely accepted as necessary for 'our protection'.
Queer and trans people are increasingly buying into ideologies of
'terrorism' and 'Muslim homophobia'.[1] The unspoken subtext behind
involving police of community events is often that LGBT people
(assumed to be white) need 'protection' from Muslim people (assumed
to be homophobic and transphobic). At the same time, white, middle-
class queer and trans people participate in processes of
gentrification, by organising events in brown, working-class
communities which are perceived as very different from the queer/
trans participants – at times exotic, at others threatening.
What does this mean, on a national and international level?
In consenting to police protection and inviting the police to enter
our events, how do we participate in the Security Ideology which is
serving to terrorise non-whites and other criminalised groups, such
as sex workers? In presenting ourselves as a collective object in
need of protection, how are we allowing the state to use us as an
excuse to brutalise racial others in Britain and abroad?
Wherever there are people in uniforms there will always be gender
violence. This is the case internationally – from the Stonewall riots
in New York City in 1969 to transphobic and homophobic violence in
present-day occupied Iraq (where American soldiers are joining local
militia in attacks on gender and sexually non-conforming people). Is
it really surprising that the police attack us when we invite them as
a mass presence into LGBT spaces?
Finally, not all LGBT people have the same relationship with the
police. Some are safer in the presence of police than others, some
may actively seek out proximity to the police, while others (such as
undocumented transpeople, non-white transpeople and trans sex
workers) are targeted by police as criminals.
One example of this was the asylum strand in the 'Trans Community
Conference', held at the headquarters of the London Met. The
conference, and its venue, were widely celebrated as a step for
inclusion, even though it actively excluded transpeople to whom this
venue would have been dangerous or inaccessible. However, whose
inclusion are we talking about, and what does this inclusion mean?
Are we talking about a safer society for transpeople, or about
status, funds and positions for the most powerful of transpeople?
In summary, we see an urgent need for a queer and trans politics which:
stays autonomous of the police.
goes beyond tokenism, opportunism and paternalism, and seeks to
empower all queer and transpeople rather than a select few.
refuses to be enlisted into racist backlash and imperialist war.
challenges corporate LGBT interests rather than training them to hide
their hatred of us behind more 'pc' language as well as meaningless
policy acronyms (LGBT-BAME, more of the SAME).
We look forward to hearing allied voices.
Pride and Solidarity,
People's Revolutionary IDeas Eatery
[1] For an example of LGBT racism and imperialism, see issues 706 and
709 of Pink Paper ('Blood and Sand' and 'Ready for War'), which
celebrated the gay participation in the war on Afghanistan. Confer
also Leslie Feinberg's critique of Peter Tatchell in Workers World:
»Anti-Iran protest misdirects LGBT struggle« (17 July 2006), URL:
http://www.workers.org/2006/us/anti-iran-0720/index.html and Jasbir
Puar's book Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times,
Durham: Duke University Press (2007).
A recent example of queer and trans Islamophobia is the facebook
discussion which followed an incident of transphobic name-calling at
the Transfabulous picnic in June 2008. Photos of the incident were
published on facebook and commented on in Islamophobic ways, such as:
'Not to make any assumptions, but they are probably Muslims. Why not
tell them that Ayatollah Khomeini spoke in favour of transsexuality
and that the Iranian state (which they probably will recognise as an
Islamic state) pays for operations? (I know the motives and ways they
do it are not wonderful but that's not quite the point here. It's
just a way to make those kids change their mind and show them how
ignorant they are)....'._______________________________________________
