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