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Seventies feminists rejected trans women

1975


Bridget said the Women’s Liberation Movement was also “a safe haven for the misfits who would have had some difficulty fitting into society”. Barbara said, “Yes, there were some lesbians who were on the periphery and coming more from the sexuality than the politics,. and we were a broad church and would accept everybody. Bridget said, “Everybody except transsexuals – transgendered people were viewed with a huge amount of suspicion because they were basically men.” Bridget said that a lot of these women were practically homicidal about these women coming to join the party. Barbara said there were a lot of women only events and things and transsexual men to women were regarded still as being men, so they were, then, made very unwelcome. Bridget said she wasn’t a part of that particular group, while Barbara said “I’m ashamed to say I was”.  Bridget said “I’d rather have got rid of the tough lesbians who smashed the place up.”  It was also because often, in order to adopt, being a woman, it was done in quite a stereotypical way, the rest of us were all dressed in our jeans and dungarees and we weren’t going round in coiffured hair and loads of make-up, this was the very sort of thing we were trying to distance ourselves from. Different planetsville, really”. Bridget said “They weren’t just kicked out of our movement but also from their own, they were in ‘no man’s land’ in the middle, I always thought we should be a bit more open about that.”

Contributed by: Barbara Carter, 53, Bridget Malin, 62

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