The Problem with TRA Demands in a Nutshell

Although our experiences are not the same, why should we expect that all women have the same experiences? Is not our tapestry more rich when we include the voices of trans women?

You’re not asking to be included. You are asking to be centred. You are asking for all our language to be changed in order to obscure the ways in which we are not the same. You are asking us to give up our analysis of our own oppression so it fits your ideology, you are asking us to relinquish our rights to self-definition and self-organisation, and you are using a whole panoply of coercive methods to achieve those ends. You are, above all, exhibiting the belief that your needs and your feelings are the be all and end all of this matter, which is to say, you are exhibiting the core psychic mechanism of male dominance, with all its attendant coercions and condescentions, with its complete and unrelenting inability to recognise that we. are. our. own. people.  To be absolutely blunt Rachel (and I’ve told you this more than once already, but shockingly, you do not hear it), if you wanted to convince us you were women, this display of self-centred bullying is possibly the least effective means you could ever have come up with. Our tapestry is doing just fine without you, we have no intention of letting it become all about you, and we’re going to need you to go and make your own.

--Dr. Jane Clare Jones in response to Rachel Anne Williams

Read the entire exchange here.