Present Day: Towards a Queer and Trans Politics
While BCRW today is steadfast in its commitment to embracing trans feminisms, both in theory and praxis, this has not always been the case. Most notably, in 1977 BCRW had hosted writer Janice Raymond, infamous today for her transphobic publications and anti-trans activism, which was echoed at the time by much of the feminist mainstream. Today, BCRW sees trans liberation as inherent and crucial to the liberation of all people from gendered and sexual oppression. In 2014, Janet Jackobsen, then-director of BCRW noted how historically, marginalized women including lesbians, Black women, and trans women, have been denied recognition as “real” women in order to inhibit their claims to certain rights and liberties. BCRW maintains that all women are women, and sees both feminism and trans liberation as part of the struggle for gender justice.
Resisting the Politics of Inclusion, Embracing Disruption as Potential
Many of the talks on sexuality and gender hosted by BCRW in more recent years have focused on resisting the politics of respectability and inclusion, or the idea that liberation lies in being accepted into the already existing society. Scholars and activists over the years have argued that marginalized people should instead form solidarities with one another to critique the systems which create the conditions of their oppression, and to transform society into a freer and better world.
In 2005, pioneering transgender activist, Leslie Feinberg, spoke alongside voices such as Staceyann Chin, Dorothy Allison, Rachel Maddow, Minnie Bruce Platt, and Amber Holibough at the S&F XXX: "Past Controversies, Present Challenges, Future Feminisms.” In 2009, Dean Spade gave a talk called, “Trans Politics on a Neoliberal Landscape,” in which he spoke on the neoliberalization of queer and trans politics. He noticed that the conversation on queer and trans liberation were often focused on topics such as gay marriage and gays in the military, or queer and trans inclusion in normative institutions which the mainstream movement failed to critique. He argued that focusing on creating “diversity” within existing structures without critiquing those structures allows neoliberalism to borrow terms from resistance movements and use them for its own benefit. He further critiqued what he calls the non-profit industrial complex, which finances work which stabilizes the status quo, while civil rights efforts center on ideas of normative personhood and citizenship, reinscribing social ideas of who is a “proper” person and citizen. Dean Spade also critiqued narratives of harm which individualize oppression, and ignore conditions and history behind the harm caused and the person causing the harm. Furthermore, he argued, “discourses for inclusion have made queer possibilites and interventions less and less disruptive and more and more compliant,” and instead sees liberation lying in the disruptive potential of queer and trans politics—to oppose and rework the system rather than try to find inclusion within it.
Other talks and events dealing with the disruptive potential of trans politics include Redefining Realness: A Salon in honor of Janet Mock, Queer Anti-Militarism Townhall: Trans Liberation Not U.S. Invasion (at Seattle Public Library), and Dean Spade: History of Queers Against Police.