Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn Statement on the Hostility Toward Transgender Women in Queer Political Spaces
In honor of Women’s History Month and recognizing the barrage of trans discrimination laws that are being introduced across the country, we would like to reiterate LID’s stance and support of trans women.
Recently, several members of Brooklyn’s transgender community have voiced concern to LID leadership over transphobic comments made within our meeting spaces and in the public sphere. These comments include an invalidation of people’s gender identity and references to trans-exclusionary radical feminist ideology (TERF). Such remarks create a hostile space for transgender women in particular, and LID leadership regrets our failure in not addressing them properly in the moment. That hesitancy to address transphobia when it happens creates an environment that implies such prejudice is accepted. A lack of allyship from cisgender members contributes to the invalidation of transgender experiences and lives and LID is working to rectify this institutional problem.
Hostility to trans rights and the refusal to understand the elasticity of gender expression, self-affirmation, and self-determination has created tangible violence. TERFs such as the Women’s Liberation Front, for example, have allied with conservatives in South Dakota to pass a bill in the state legislature restricting medical interventions for trans youth. Other online movements, such as DeTrans Voices, advocate for conversion therapy for transgender people, something LID has fought too long and too hard against to tolerate among its members. Activities like this stand in contrast to reports of high suicide rates within trans youth, the deaths of trans men and women across the world at the hands of transphobia, and the many local, state, and federal laws in the United States discriminating against TG/GNB people.
LID has developed an Inclusion, Diversity and Recruitment Committee to assess how the club excludes, however unintentionally, transgender and gender non-binary (TG/GNB) members from positions of power and to develop a more inviting and inclusive working space. We hope this committee restructures the club into that of an environment that properly reflects the recognition of TG/GNB voices as well as improve on pathways to ascend to leadership roles in the club.
Many activists and organizers have pushed for greater accessibility in politics for TG/GNB people and we have seen some significant achievements including the recent repeal of a gender binary requirement that allowed only cisgender men and women to run for party office in Brooklyn. It is important for Democratic clubs to be mindful of when transphobic rhetoric and misinformation seeps into local politics. As we take efforts to look at our own restructuring and self-work, we want to remind members that LID will not tolerate any hostility to trans rights and the refusal to understand the elasticity of gender expression, self-affirmation, and self-determination. LID will initiate censure and/or expulsion proceedings, in accordance with our bylaws, against any member who publicly espouses the aforestated views.
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