The War on Trans People: Part 3, The TERF International

outside the Christian gender binary. But turfs or colonial in another sense as well, exported by white academics to a network of fall feminist and anti trafficking groups, the ideology has imposed itself on the global South, with devastating and violent consequences. As a product of this colonial imposition, Mexico has become one of the front lines in the war

against trans people. I spoke to Emmy Flores and Juliana Newhauser, two members of the Sexual and Gender Dissidence Resistance Network, a group of activists aligned with the Zapatistas who have been documenting and resisting the spread of turfs and me to go when the new Turf Wave started in Mexico

several years back. Um At the time, I thought I thought of it as something that like a radicalization that went too farn you know, like kind of like thinking back to the New Left, and there was a point during the New Left when like suddenly everybody joined a Baoist cult and they were angry for the right reasons, but it just went off. At some point, I thought

that's what was going on in Mexico. But then slowly it started to come out more that more and more turf groups were had to tie us to political parties and one of them and foreign agents. And one of the one of the most dramatic cases, UM is from Toluca Sitty near Mexico City. UM just recently at the International Women's State protests, like there were turf groups that had made a pinata out of the trans flag, had

been burning the trans flag. Also in this same city, one of the main turf groups turns out that their leader is on government payroll. And if you've seen Roma, for example, the incident, the political incident that happens in that movie based on real incident from the seventies, and the tactics of that political party, which is the party that controls the state government of the state to Lucas in basically it hasn't changed and they seem to have

been using these turfs basically as shock troops. At one point there were two sit ins outside the state Congress, one to push for a gender identity a law and another to push for the igaliciation of abortion, which are obviously both important things. The ladder, however, was controlled by these turf groups, who later mysteriously never seems to appear at other protests asking for the legalization of abortion. But they were there and they ran off the trans encampment.

One of them big incidents was defending the sanctity if the women's bathroom with barbed wire wrapped baseball bats Jesus. These groups have deep ties to right wing Mexican political parties, the police, and the growing Turf international, and they seem to be very chummy with the local police. Their leader um gives classes, it gives like trainings to the state

government like that. It's it's not subtle, you know. You can see live strings of the quote unquote protests, and he was mostly them like drinking coffee with the cops, like they were on firstly vasis with the cops, while the the other camp had like translimin the world were too scared to go to the bathroom because they were going to be attacked, and so that's the starkest group I think, right, the delicators, which are Yeah, it's funny because almost every party has their own the wrong group.

But yeah, also it's not surprised that p r I is the scariest. Yeah. We should also say that these groups are affiliates with Jila Jeffreys Women's Speculation International Um. And so this is also a case of an ideology developed in the First World, in this case England, which is largely a safe country where even as fascist and ideology as turfism doesn't or only very rarely leads to real violence, and but it gets exported the countries that are not safe where it does turn into real violence.

So another affiliate UM of Sheila Jefferies Human's Decoration in Mexico would be Las Bruces Delmar, who is another case of At first they seemed to be a group that was just they just radicalized a bit too far. Then photos came out of their leader who is on the time one hundred a couple of years back with Felipe Calderon, an ex president of Mexico and like by far one of the worst in the country's history, and not like like just oh, I saw you walking in the street.

She was at a book signing. It was not a casual encounter. It was a clear sign of admiration in the It's been more than confirmed since then that her political ambitions lie with the p AN, the the farthest right mainstream political party in n School. This political alliance between the Turfs and the right has benefits for both sides. The Turf's gained funding institutional backing for their war against

trans people. The right gained a way to attack the vaguely center left Mexican President Andrea's Manuel Lopez Obrador by blaming him and trans people from Mexico's horrific wave of femicides, while distracting from its actual sources NAFTA and the War on drugs. Mexico's trans population, however, gained a new Western educated threat. When I say the radical feminism was a complete import it's from its very beginning in the For a long while, there was like one Turf in Mexico

and she was She's called gian Maria. Yo, don't even try to pronounce her name. I don't think she can even pronounce her name because she's white ass hill and she's always dresses like she's a fucking Rachel dollars Hill from Mexico's irony that the first originary in Mexico is also the Mexican Rachel, right, because she went abroad and

was like the only Mexican everyone knew. So even though she's white a cell and has blue eyes, she started wearing some Coachella motherfucking as uh feathers and ship right, I've seen I've seen these pictures. It's it is, it is like it is. It is the Mexican version of and not even just the it is the Mexican version of those people like Coachella who like wear indigenous head dresses, who are just like just like look look like they're

descended from like hydroc Hembler or something. And like she's she has like she has like half French, half Spanish name and she changed it to a half maya half novel name. It's gross. So this this person has been actives in the seventies, right, she went to she was present in the first Pride in Mexico, and uh she

who that was? That was also the two year anniversary of the massacre, So Pride was from the start really leftist here in Mexico, but it also had these kind of people, the who who went to the UK, friends and the United States. And I think she was there when Jennie Raymond was like sending her friends with guns to to UH threatened trans women, right, So that's she she She was there when the turf Wars were at the highest point during the seventies and then came back

and parton. She participating in a lot of history of

Mexican feminism. But the time that she came back in two thousand sixteen with that letter, with that backing, because she is also close to Jennie Raymond with the qualities again against Trafficking in Women who the Coalition against Trafficking, the Coalition against Trafficking in Women cat W has a lot of After the Turf Wars, they went underground in the in academia and the universities, right because they were no longer accepted, but they were in the process of

building and geos that could globally affect policy on UH, specifically sex work and trans rights. And you can tell that gian Maria saw that that was her only opportunity to resurface UH and to make her seventies as UH she saw that seventies rat fan discourse was ret right now, and so she became like this uh found found in matriarch for the new generation of transfers, one of them which is a lot of Luana who is part of

FEMBA and the Gean media and Lekuana. We're not faced at all by the accusations of aligned with the reactionaries because they know their history, they know where they come from, and they know that this is how Dorkin survived, this is how uh how Sheila Jefferies and Jennie Raymond survived. This is where you get the fucking money. And later Quana gehn Maria and turned the whole environment around them

into these uh well, these surf questions. The only two issues that we talked about nowadays in Mexican feminism are our president and trans people. It's kind of gross Jesus, and that like remember, like there's only a handful of

states that have legalized deportion. There's femicides happening all the time, and but we're we continued to debate these two issues over and over and over again like a feedback group, and like, as trans people, we don't have any choice because we're the targets of this right, and it's not

it's not an academic debate. Last fall, um there was some Turfs who had taken over a public park to set up their separatist space, and there was a disabled CIS woman and her trans girlfriend who are denied entry at the park and threatened with tasers. And so when they're taking over these public spaces and using violence to defend them, because the next week there is a protest over this and they there is a they taste to transpan and it's like, this is like a public park, like,

of course we have to defend ourselves. M The Coalition against Trafficking and Women or cat W, an international anti sex worker group which provided a refuge for white turfs driven from mainstream feminism in their home countries, has been

a major source of Turfy influence in Latin America. The reason there is so much important of this ideology towards radical feminists in Mexico, Uh, it's that they needed something to say and something to do and something to feel the void uh in organizing and n geos and the people who stepped up where Jenny's Raymond's cat W right, the Coalition Against African in women who since the noneidies, UH spent UH a decade and a half building contexts in the in the u N, in the O S

in several international organisms to extend their influence across the whole continent, specifically in Latin America and UH you can see this affecting stuff like stuff like Venezuela where they broke up sex worker unions too two with the the O A S right and in Mexico, the founding leader of the Mexican branch of of cad W, Teresa used to be a un employee, specifically it's drug and crime segment,

and before she was like a radical feminist. She used to conduct drug rades in Chapa's and yeah, and after that she became UH the founding member of cad W

Latin America and the Caribbean. And with Janice Raymond, they you can see them go together to the Beijing Conference on Women and they influenced like those they they were a big part of why gender is not recognized as a social construct by the u N. They allied with the Holy See, with the representative from the Vatican in the u N, got together with a couple of radical feminists and pushed back against gender being recognized as a social construct in so that's the level of influence these

groups have in Mexico. UH, these groups which morphed into the c w UH supported the war and drugs from the get go. They were very high in some of the biggest events in now curating the war and drugs. They were present right there, because if you're fighting drug trafficking, it's very easy to just sleep the word human right there. Right, No politicians gonna say no. They all fucking love to say, yeah,

I'm hard on on human trafficking. And the way that UH showed itself A was just targeting trans sex workers and migrant sex workers. And with that and that feeding the agenda of Jenny's Raymond perfectly. Sheila Jeffries Gotta basically survived the whole two thousands on writing garbage for reports for the u N. Most of her published works during

the two thousands and early twenty tents. It's stuff paid for cattle, and they they they In two thousands sixteen, they started pushing for more and more anti trans legislation worldwide because they could see the writing on the world right. They were behind the Women's Declaration, the Sheila Jeffries is not okay, she is part of catally, she's I think

card W Australia. She has her own all other coltics, all Space International, which is behind Foster system by the way, in the US, where she allied with a couple of conservative sheriffs to write the legislation so we could go on and on on. How like people that read that our transitions think are gone and forgotten by history. Right, the the authors of these horrible books that haunt us to this day are still active, and not just in the US. They're active in Mexico, in the UK, in France,

in South Africa, in Korea. Korea is huge in I think I would say Korea is as has as big a problem as Mexico and the UK. We just don't talk to them as much and we can't realize that. But if you check them the languages that have signed the Shila Jefferis Declaration against trans People, which is a specifically general sidal, the Coloration Declaration. It doesn't stop at like legislation. It wants to exterminators out right. Yeah, and

most of them. You were gonna see a lot of Brazilian flags, a lot of Mexican flax, a lot of Korean flags, even more than the United States flags. And if you track the USA flags, it's mostly like weird randalls that have yoga classes and ship it's not relevant politicians. But if you track the other countries, you're gonna find some of the biggest collectives in the in their own countries. You're gonna find or just spooks. Right, You're gonna find a lot of people who have really weird careers that

spend a lot of time in Italy and Uganda. It's it's it's a never ending uh right, whole of of of spooks, of conservatives, of has been feminists that have regranted as NGOs to get money from those groups and directed towards breaking up trans rights, towards affecting sex workers, towards breaking unions, breaking student movement. It's a global movement that is birthed by conservative thought, but getting more and more reactionary and more and more organized as time goes by.

That international transphobic movement has increasingly found purchased in the US. I spoke to Lee Liaville and Kay Shiver's, two members of Health Liberation now with intimate experience with the turf movement who spent years particularly documenting its rise. So my first question is, can you'll explain what Wolf actually is? And I guess subsequent to that, what the relationship to hands across the aisle is? Um? Yeah, so Wolf is. UM. There are transphobic feminist group UM with at this point

extensive ties to right wing organizations. Um. They've worked with Family Policy Alliance here, Died Foundation, and Alliance Defending Freedom Concerned,

went for America Family Research Culture among others. Um. But they um, they got their start um and they started back in two thousand thirteen around when they were founded by Lear Keith, who also was one of the leaders of Deep Cream Resistance, and she basically got like, um, kind of run out of anarchists and environmentalist groups and then kind of like went over to uh established like turf communities try and recruit there. So I sort of like started out trying to like recruit from these like

older turf and transphobic lesbian communities. And then after Trump got elected and um, you know, the conservative Christians on the far right became more mobilized and more empowered. They kind of like rebranded themselves and we're like, oh, let's form alliances with these right wing groups, and they kind

of like traded. They're sort of like like crunchy lesbian feminists, like like image for like Kara Danski, who like you know, is a straight, fairly feminine looking woman who used to work for the c LU and like a Democrat and like you know, she's way more presentable to like the conservative audience, you know, by working with the right than they have access to like money and power, and they

can it's easier to get on the media. Like like Kara Dansky is no longer with Wolf, but like she was with them for years and still has relations like like good relations with them, and she's been on the Tucker Carlson Show like many times. So I think one of the important pieces when it comes to understanding like

how this relationship with the right started. So in in late two thousand and sixteen, Wolf put forward they're filing against the US Department of Justice and US Department of Education, right, and they were going up against aspects of like trying to reform Title nine to include gender identity, you know, to to protect folks um who need to be able to use the like women's restroom, our locker room or whatever, right, And this is the case that they ended up getting

some of the a d F funding for. So it's like one of the first official seeds I guess of the direct collaboration ended up happening. Those A lot of that stuff did up eventually end up getting leaked, and then they started doing some more official collaborations. Just a few months later, Um, when they were working with like Family Policy Alliance, um Bile Amicust briefs against Gavin Grimm

again out of bathroom case. Yeah, they took something like I think was like fifteen dollars from the Alliance depending Freedom, which is one of the main right wing groups like like trying to pass all these like anti trams bills like going after a pediatric transition and trans girls and in women's sports. So they took that money. And then yeah, then later I think like, um, the whole working with Family Policy Alliance I believe was the first time they

like publicly allied with with the right ring group. I think. So that yeah, in January of two thousand seventeen. Yeah, and then they've just sort of like yeah, like they also were involved with like the Amicast frieze against was it Amy Stephens, um another Supreme Court case. I can't remember, Yeah,

I wouldn't surprise me. And like members of both of a period on like Heritage Foundation panels, they helped like released a parent Resource Guide and anti transparent Resource Guide that was also sponsored by like Heritage Foundation, Family Policy Alliance. This this this is very similar to almost exactly what you see in Mexico, with just sort of slightly less physical violence, which yeah, it's it's a lot of you know. And the the other thing is that these are to

a large extent exactly the same organizations. And that was one of the other things I want to talk about was the influence of Sheila Jeffreys and the Women's Decoration,

which has been all over this whole movement. Yeah. The one thing to point out, so, like you know, the Women's Declaration International is in this in the US is led by Kara Danski, who Yo, she like basically like left you worked at Wolf for a long time and still has lots of connections with them, is on good terms with them, but she like left and now is

like working with Women Declaration International of US France. So and she winds up having kind of like a foot in both worlds at the same time too, so like she'll like the US chapter Women's Declaration International previously like Women's Team and Rights Campaign before they had to rebrand um they but if if you if you read this

COMMI yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. Um So, what what ends up happening is that Karen Danski will either like have the chapter sponsor particular events or she herself will become actively involved in the formation of the events, right, which we saw happen with UM women pick at d C last year where they were parking themselves outside of that was like it was a well that was that was a whole fix. Oh god, it was the purchase that

happened on International Women's Day to protest the Equality Act. Yeah. And it's not like it's people's first time dealing with the Equality Act either. I mean, like so prior prior to that point, which and this starts to go into the like hands across the Aisle Coalition because they were actively involved in opposing the Equality Act as well. So to to kind of roll back a little bit, um

that the hands across the Aisle Coalition. This was something that started developing in early two thousand seventeen, you know, not that long after Wolf started building the more direct relationships with the right and so that the people of this coalition would have like you would have members of

the right itself. And in the process of that um, towards the beginning of two thousand nineteen, in May, they filed this joint letter to the House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi to oppose things like the Equality Act UM and they did so alongside with Natasha Chart representing Wolf, Concerned Women for America, American College of Pediatricians Family Research Council. You know, a whole bunch of really just awful names,

and they're, oh, yeah, the idea was involved in that one. Yes, it's really the Rose Gallery of all of the people who were anti gay marriage until we've still are but have downplayed it. And yeah, all people who let the anti game marriage campaigns, all of the sort of weird

right wing pseudo medical bodies. The next thing I wanted to ask about is what's been happening in the last couple of years with the fusion, because I mean, so you already have your your alliance between the Turfs and the Evangelicals, but in the last couple of years we've seen a I don't know if if full scale is the right term to use for it. But we've seen a merger of this with Save the Children in Q and ON stuff, and I'm wondering if you can talk

about that that's okay. So that's an interesting one because like I've I've been digging into the timeline of this stuff extensively. It's like I've got hundreds un rates of listings trying to figure out where different cases are coming from and trying to understand like the phases. Right, So you've you've got like the formation, the solidification, and then the escalation, and we're kind of in the escalation stage

right now. But so one of the things that I started to notice is that elements of this crossover, like the cross pollination that was happening, actually predated certain key events that we now now are affiliated with Q and ON. Right, So if we think about the actual like development of Q and ON itself, So you've got the pizza Gate thing that was happening in like October two thousand sixteen.

I believe that was, um, you know, right before Trump was getting elected and you know, kicking up some stuff about like you know, Hillary Clinton's emails and stuff like that to go up against her election campaign in opposition to Trump, and then you know, folding in the harassment towards um comment ping Pong to the point where like Edgar Madison Wealth shows up at comment Ping Pong in December of two thousand sixteen with an a R fifteen style rifle and starts, you know, firing off his shots

and stuff like that. Right, and so eventually, um, most people know that the timeline of the Q and on drops happening around like October two thousand seventeen. Like if you look up the original like the first known Q drops, I believe that was like October two seventeen on four Chan.

But the thing is that if you look at references to save the Children or save our Children on like Twitter, the hashtags, and you're also looking for transphobia related stuf up, you can actually start to see that crossover happening before the original que drops happened, Right, Yeah, I found I found tweets that were connecting trans inclusion education in schools to pedophilia and using the save the children hashtag. In August of two thousand seventeen, the que drops hadn't started yet.

So and this is something this pattern continues to happen, right, There were also multiple UM you know, tweets or Facebook posts or whatever that would start to use things like save the Children, Save our Children, wake Up America, and stuff like that before you would have the big scale takeover by Q and on when things were starting to get really popular, because the save the Children thing really went viral in the summer of but you could still

see elements of it before that point. Repeatedly out. Another early instance of using both save the Children and Wake Up America hashtags started happening on UM April. I believe that is a two thousand nineteen and bear in mind wake Up America UM is a hashtag that's not only used by Q and on proponents UM in relation to the whole like accelerationism. I'm trying to yet deep state stuff UM, but also like Aaron Brewer, one of the people that was involved in some of the clinic protests harassments,

was using that exactly. No, it wasn't just It was wasn't just Brewer, it was like both brew It was that was the clinic protest that involved both UM partners gilthicalk RPC, which Brewer was remember like one of the founders of at the time and one of the leaders of and Joey Bright's like can't I get a witness? Like they teamed up to stage a bunch of clinic protests that they used wake up like wag of America with one of the slogans that they used in one

of the hashtags to to to make sure we're getting this. Uh, these are protest against clinics that offer gender firm and care. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah that um yeah that happened that one, so yeah, the way Up America one was in um felt like City,

New York City and l A. Yeah. And they also, I mean speaking of us, they also have used the slogan pulled back the curtain um, which has also been used by uh like anti choice activists, Like that was I remember, like like finding like they used pulled back the curtain a lot to be like they what they mean is like they're like exposed the evil gender industry. But like there's other this like um anti abortion group. I'm blanking on which one off the top of my head.

But they also used that um pulled back the curtain to go after planning parent it yeah, which I think is like probably like that doesn't in for a direct connection, but it seems like that's too much of a coincidence in one of the one of the things that I really want to stress about this called like what I call tan on thing, is that like the seeds for this, the cross pollination that we are seeing happening between the gender critical movement, Pizza Gate, and Q and on, like

these were already in place before Q and On formally developed as its own phenomenon. This keeps happening. It's you can't really like figure out where one particular type of rhetoric is necessarily coming from in terms of its source, because it just keeps going back and forth repeatedly. People are acting like they're coming up with a lot of the same ideas together because in the end, in the end,

they are of the same routs. They are in fundamental agreement with each other, whether they're calling themselves different names.

I think that's that's worrying to me in a lot of ways, partly because you know, I mean, this has always been something where if you look at the rhetoric that these people are spreading, it's like it's explicitly extermination ist, Like it's it's you know, like they they're they're storychiatric terrorists, like in search of a like a quote unquote load wolf, and in a lot of you know, and in the in the seventies, I think they were there's there's a

lot more explicit violence that these people are doing directly, and now they're kind of like they're they're they're trying to find people who will do their already work for them, and there are places where they found them already. We've seen this in Mexico and in the US. The people who they seem to be recruiting are people who are extremely dangerous. We've we've seen q and on people have

killed enormous numbers of people. Um, you know, we've there's a long history of of abortion clinic bombings and people getting assassinated for that. I mean, I think, you know, one of the connections that I've been sort of like looking at is the extent to which this stuff is

connected to the Atlantis shooting. Because if you if you look at the stuff, the Atlanta shooter believes it's you know, like he's in this like in the same sort of Christian patriarchal project, and his thing is specifically about sex workers. But hey, look if you look at yeah, but not

particularly Asian sex workers. And you know, if if if you if you look at the anti trafficking groups, you look at the Christian anti trafficking groups, and you look at the vent diagram with them and the Turfs, it's like, oh, and people are involved, yeah, particular world, and yeah, there's there's this kind of vice closing in on trans people were on the one hand, you have these people attempting to employ the violence of the state, and on the

other hand you have this sort of story giatric terrorism, where are attempting to incite violence by sort of individuals. And then also I mean, I think I think there's you know, there's sort of there's sort of two forms of this, right there's the explicit people who are explicitly like quote unquote political right of you have your sort of like ideological street fascist. You have like you know, you have your people with baseball bast covered and barred wire.

But then you also have the stuff that's been fueling antiation violence where it's not necessarily like you know, there is this is an organization that like Hayes Asian people, it's we will just sort of passively increase the rhetoric until the level of violence increases. Yeah. Yeah, it kind of got like you've got the street fash and then

you've got the intellectual fash. Yeah. Well, and and I think but I think also there's there's another like if it was just those people, I think it'd be less bad.

But but there's also just the way in which just random people who are encountering this become very quickly radicalized and it becomes part of sort of I mean, in church, roubic violence has always been part of the sort of background violence in the same way that anti black and to I mean, you know, okay, the level of anti black violence is much higher, but like the level of violence against black trans people in particular, and the level of anti asition violence we've been seeing that has just

sort of it's just a part of the background violence of American society, and that the levels of those things, the more this rhetoric gets circulated and the more this activism happens, that background level of violence increases, And that to me is also terrifying because it means like it's not just sort of like fascist that you can track,

it's just someone on the street. Yeah, and like yeah, they're just sort of like trying to like like associate like well, I mean a lot of the like yeah that like people like like Feli and Aaron m Alex their and the Gender Mapper and Joey Brands uff like that, like they're they're hardcore like elimination as like they're like

they're over and over. There could be no compromised. And I would also especially like anti fascist networks to pay more attention to it, as you know, the solidarity with trans people is just as important as solidarity with like racial and ethnic minorities when it comes to combating fact, right, especially since like there are a number of us that are in multiple categories, so like let's all work together and try to like you know, be proactive about combating

the threat. Right. So my my tan on Um collections, I guess like I only have two reports on it so far because getting into the full detail is just it is a lengthy project, and I keep getting distracted

by by the conversion therapy stuff. There's so much stuff to research, and there's like we're like two people and and yeah, anyway, so ever, in terms of finding that like the original kind of like broader views of tn on both like what it is in terms of like the one oh one kind of stuff, and also like the timeline of where it came from. You can find

it on Health Liberation Now dot com. We have a little tap there that has like analysis and then if you go down to key issues, you can find a tn on tag there right and it'll have that stuff in there. This has been a thing that throughout this entire series, which is that most of the information on this stuff has been compiled by a very small number of trans people, and that cannot stay the states of this because there are just not enough trans people and

they are extremely overworked. Yeah, and if that's a project that you can take up, please do that, Yes, please, yes, hands on deck, I'll hands on back. Yeah, because the seriousness of this is such that if you want there to be trans people living in a way that does not actively destroy them, you have to act now. Yeah. Basically, yeah, this has been It could Happen here a product of cool Zone Media. Suppress your local turfs before it's too late, Goodbye.

It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zone media dot com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.