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Irantzu Varela

Journalist. Pikara Magazine

Why don't trans people erase women?

Trans people do not erase women, firstly because they are women. 

Because they experience the violence that affects all bodies perceived as women, but also specific forms of violence related to the pathologization of their bodies, the economic and social vulnerabilities imposed upon them, and the burden of dissent from obedient femininity.

Violence against women is perpetrated by a system that grants privileges to masculinity and cisheteronormativity. These are our enemies. Those who experience even more severe violence than you, caused by the same enemy, are your sisters in the struggle. If you don't understand this, you're not defending your rights, or anyone else's; you're trying to perpetuate your privileges, which always come at the expense of others' rights.

All women experience violence and oppression because of their gender. But we don't all experience the same violence. Our responsibility is to fight against those who perpetrate violence against those who are more vulnerable than us. And right now, trans women are being made vulnerable, much more so than cis women. We must fight WITH them, FOR them, not against them.

Is saying that trans people erase women hate speech?

To say that trans people erase women is hate speech, defending one's own privileges, legitimizing violence and transphobia, and being complicit in the cisheteropatriarchal system, which is the system that exploits us all. 

Cisheteronormativity only benefits those who profit from a system that thrives on exploiting the majority of the population. And that needs violence to keep all dissenting bodies and lives obedient, submissive, and afraid.

Havi Sánchez

DJ and model, Mexico

Why don't trans people erase women?

It's a revictimizing conversation. Trans people were wrongly assigned the opposite gender at birth. We were forced to fulfill roles and be part of spaces where we didn't belong and where we suffered violence, leaving lasting scars we still have to deal with. When we have the capacity to end this imposed cycle of violence, we are subjected to violence again under the premise that we are putting at risk those who are trying to maintain the system that sought to erase our lives and our existence. The lives of trans women, non-heterosexual cisgender women, and Black women are being used as cannon fodder to support arguments about "protecting and preventing the erasure of women." Which women? Cisgender, heterosexual, white supremacist women, primarily from first-world countries. 

Everything has been built under this cis-theme. How could a group that does not have access to this erase rights built on an unscientific fallacy, without political or social bases that dictate that there is a risk from the implementation of public policies that protect and promote the rights of historically marginalized and excluded groups?

Is saying that trans people erase women hate speech?

Yes. The women who promote and have the resources to implement this conversation with minimal consequences are white, heterosexual women in positions of class and political power, who, in an attempt to maintain their supremacy, focus on vulnerable groups of women who have historically been denied access to these spaces. By playing the victim from the position they themselves have constructed with colonial arguments like "non-violent, good women who don't harm anyone," they cry. And their tears are the knife that discriminates against women who are not like them.

María Pía Ceballos

Afro-Indigenous activist from the Argentine Trans Women's movement 

Why don't trans people erase women?

Trans and travesti people do not erase women; quite the opposite. We have learned from intersectional feminisms, from Black feminism, from grassroots feminism, from a feminism that embraces trans and travesti people, and understands the enormous inequalities and oppression that our community faces. 

We have experience in struggle alongside the Grandmothers and Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, grassroots feminism, Abya Yala, and our Indigenous sisters and comrades who are reclaiming ancestral memory and challenging a colonial, racist, cisgender system. The agendas of trans-exclusionary groups are not taking into account all these struggles we have been waging from social movements and territories to demand recognition of the oppression of our community throughout the region. 

Is saying that trans people erase women hate speech?

Yes. Radical and trans-exclusionary feminism generates hate speech that impacts our daily lives through discrimination and violence. When they use their biological discourse to disqualify and erase us, they foster hatred. In these contexts, situations of discrimination and violence against our community intensify. These effects are seen in complaints filed, in our inhabiting public spaces, and in police violence. Trans-exclusionary feminism is not taking into account the situation faced by gender and sexual minorities. 

Pewma Figueroa 

Trans communicator, Mapuche non-binary. Movement of Indigenous Women and Diversities for Good Living

Why don't trans people erase women?

Because they cannot erase themselves when many of them (trans) are also women. In my experience, I don't know of, and I don't believe there is, any trans collective, organization, or individual whose activism is based on erasing the female gender identity or its history. To believe that we do this is to ignore and deny the history of the trans, travesti, and trans movement, decades of struggle. The ultimate goal of travesti and trans people is to end the oppressive system of patriarchal and racist domination. The role imposed at birth, of subordination to men, is shared among women, femininities, non-binary people, and intersexuals, with whom they socially organize to achieve greater visibility and power.

Is saying that trans people erase women hate speech?

Yes. Those who construct the idea that trans women erase women are, first and foremost, denying the identity and self-perception of trans women. It seems to me to be hate speech that seeks to displace a lived gender experience into a monstrous otherness with no right to exist. Those who promote these ideas appear to be people who feel their womanhood is at stake. It speaks to a fragility that needs this hate speech to reaffirm itself.

María Belén Correa

Activist and founder of the Trans Memory Archive

Why don't trans people erase women?

Because there isn't just one type of woman. There are Afro-descendant women, Indigenous women—there's a great variety of women. When feminism thinks that being a woman means being white and blonde, it's wrong. There are women who lose their breasts or uterus due to a tumor, and that doesn't make them any less women. Trans people can be women or men. We are just another variety. And we're not taking away any rights. In fact, we're following the same path as women's rights movements, like the quota law that allowed them to have equal representation. 

Is saying that trans people erase women hate speech?

It's a failure to recognize a population. Like saying that Afro-descendant women aren't women because they're Black. Or that Roma women aren't women because they live in a patriarchal culture that demands they remain virgins until marriage. We must respect diversity.