“Transphobia Will Not Be Tolerated”: AF3IRM’s Hidden Tolerance for Transmisogyny
This essay was co-written by trans and queer sex working women of color with former ties to AF3IRM. Recently, @PurpleRose0666 and others have faced threats and slander from AF3IRM for speaking out against the way their organization harms trans and sex working women of color. For the full context, see this timeline of AF3IRM’s carceral discourse on sex work.
AF3IRM has long claimed to be a trans inclusive feminist organization, accepting trans women into their women-only membership across all ten chapters in six U.S. states, and increasingly trumpeting their support for trans rights. However, the organization has a long history of transphobic behavior and alliances that call these claims into question. Over the history of their existence, any critique in this area is met with hostile denial instead of attempts to improve. Most recently, our criticisms regarding their problematic behavior have been met with gaslighting and baseless accusations of a grand conspiracy, instead of accounting for their mistakes.
This isn’t an accident; AF3IRM has long been happy to benefit from the emotional labor and activism of trans women as long as it is politically expedient, while throwing them under the bus when asked for substantive changes towards trans rights. In particular, AF3IRM’s crusade to abolish all sex work consistently trumps any dedication to trans women’s liberation. Despite their public claims, trans exclusionary language and partnerships have long characterized their behavior. While disagreement with their beliefs on sex work are not tolerated by AF3IRM, they allow transmisogyny to proliferate just beyond public view.
While a genuine transformation within AF3IRM may be long in coming, transparency is urgently needed. Queer people and our allies should be trusted with the complete information they need to make decisions about which organizations to join or collaborate with. Most critically, trans women of color deserve better than superficial lip service and conditional welcome into a feminist sisterhood where their needs are not prioritized.
Transphobia Will Not Be Tolerated…In Public
At first glance, AF3IRM appears to be a trans and queer inclusive, intersectional feminist organization. You don’t need to look far to find enthusiastic statements that “trans women are women” and that “transphobia will not be tolerated.” In recent years, they have increased their attention to queer women’s issues. One of their most significant victories include working with the Hawai’i State Commission on the Status of Women — whose Executive Director, Khara Jabola-Carolus, also founded AF3IRM Hawai’i — to pass legislation replacing “sex” on driver’s licenses with a self-determined “gender designation” of M, F, or X. They have also participated in the campaign for #JusticeForJenniferLaude, writing protest statements and hosting a documentary film screening about the Filipina trans sex worker who was murdered by US marine Scott Pemberton in 2014. Ninotchka Rosca, founder of AF3IRM and award-winning novelist, has featured trans characters in her stories. Recently, AF3IRM has heavily circulated the writing of Esperanza F., a trans Latina member who advocates against full decriminalization of sex work after experiencing trauma in the sex trade.
However, these instances of trans allyship cloak the fact that at the core, AF3IRM has only ever been trans inclusive in name. Despite their rhetoric, trans membership and visibility remains low, and rampant transphobia characterizes their leadership behind closed doors. Despite calls for accountability regarding trans exclusionary rhetoric over the years, they have made superficial cosmetic changes to their image quietly, without ever acknowledging that they have ever done anything differently, discrediting the emotional labor of trans women and allies whose contributions have not been recognized. With this in mind, their outward expressions of trans inclusivity are not only slap in the face to trans people and their loved ones, but are downright dangerous.
Transphobia Will Be Tolerated…In Private
In Chicago in June of 2018, Ninotchka Rosca, the founder and ideological matriarch of AF3IRM, addressed an exclusive, invite-only group of about seventy radical feminists attending the Women in Media Conference organized by Women’s Liberation Radio News (WLRN). Among the other speakers — white, trans exclusionary, sex worker exclusionary radical feminists — were Meghan Murphy, Julie Bindel, Sheila Jeffreys, Gail Dines, and the founders of WLRN, an online radio station founded for the purpose of giving trans exclusionary feminists a platform.
Among the harmful ideas proliferated by these speakers include:
“When men claim to be women…and parasitically occupy the bodies of the oppressed, they speak for the oppressed.” Trans rights is “[one of many] internet exploited sexual fetishes that try to make themselves a rights movement.” Misgendering trans women by referring to them as men is “fundamental to women’s liberation.” (Jeffreys)
“I don’t have a problem with men disposing of their genitals, but it does not make them women, in the same way that shoving a bit of vacuum hose down your 501s does not make you a man.” (Bindel)
“If you want to talk ‘gender’ and discrimination, I’m inclined to ask why a male is more comfortable making women and girls feel unsafe rather than making a few men take a second glance because the dude next to them at the urinal is wearing a skirt.” (Murphy)
In short, WimCon 2018, at which the AF3IRM founder spoke, was a “who’s who” of most of the most powerful sex work and trans exclusionary radical feminists in the world. If any topic earned more ire and contempt from the speakers at WimCon 2018 than sex work, it was so-called “transgenderism” or “gender ideology.” Indeed, in Meghan Murphy’s welcome speech for that conference, she said:
“This movement needs you, and it needs women like you… We’re failing women who feel alone, who feel afraid to speak up, because they think that they’re the only ones who feel troubled by all this gender identity nonsense, or by the sex trade, or by porn, or by the fact that there was a male dominatrix advocating ‘sex work’ speaking at the Women’s March in Vancouver. Like, things are so crazy right now and it’s happening so quickly. And by allowing the left and liberals to pretend as though there’s only a couple of us crazy ‘transphobes’ or like ‘anti-sex bitches’ or whatever, rather than thousands of women who believe that sex is a real thing, and that men can’t become women simply by saying so, we’re losing this fight, and we’re losing our rights.”
(Meghan Murphy, WimCon 2018)
Considering the nature of this gathering, you may expect that if a self-proclaimed trans inclusive feminist like Rosca could even stomach speaking alongside people who believe that gender identity is “nonsense” and trans women are men — thereby promoting policies that cost them their lives — she might address this deadly bigotry. Instead, within the first few minutes of her speech, Rosca “broke the ice” by encouraging the audience to laugh with her at trans women’s bodies:
“Those of you that work in media understand that crafting the language is a very urgent task. And those of you who have encountered these weird terms [like] ‘my female penis’… (pauses for audience laughter)… I’m like, I studied English for decades! (audience laughter) To be confronted by something like this! (more laughter) I’m like, I was talking to a Filipina who’s lesbian, and she was like, really you had to get into this thing, because they’re proposing stuff like “female penis,” and she said, ‘NO! What is that?!’ (laughter)”
(Ninotchka Rosca, WimCon 2018)
While ridiculing the concept of a female penis is indefensible enough, doing so in front of an audience of some of the world’s most influential anti-trans campaigners is destructive. Provoking audible amusement from the audience, Rosca joked about the “female penis” no less than four times during her talk. Coming from a woman who leads a “trans inclusive” feminist organization, such rhetoric is baffling. Rosca has been deeply involved in the discourse surrounding #JusticeForJenniferLaude, signing AF3IRM’s letters regarding this topic and speaking out against her murder in Philippine media. Now that the murderer Scott Pemberton has been pardoned and released, Rosca is again taking up the banner for Jennifer Laude alongside AF3IRM. So why does Ninotchka Rosca, AF3IRM founder and active leader, propagate the dehumanizing ideology that led to Laude’s death?
Lest anyone think that Rosca’s recent speech at WimCon 2018 is an isolated exception, she has vented her transphobic views on social media consistently for years, without any criticism from her fellow AF3IRM members (see bottom of page for a few examples). Most disturbingly, Rosca is far from the only AF3IRM leader exhibiting these leanings: there is a longstanding pattern in which AF3IRM leadership have partnered with trans exclusionary activists, organizations, news networks, and publications, without any transparency to their own members or the public. These partnerships do not involve any attempt to question this rampant transphobia, but rather even sometimes promote it, as in Rosca’s speech above. To enumerate all these instances could fill a book, but I will list a few documented examples:
- AF3IRM leaders have given interviews to Meghan Murphy of Feminist Current at least four times in between 2013 and 2018, and AF3IRM has been cited and promoted on this platform many more times. Murphy played a significant role in the conference that Rosca spoke alongside her at, and her publication, Feminist Current, denies and ridicules trans people’s identities. Jollene Levid, founding chair of AF3IRM, described Murphy as her “sister” in a tweet from 2017. At no point in any of these extended interviews did any of these AF3IRM members question Murphy on her active campaigning against the rights of trans women.
2. AF3IRM leaders including Rosca have given interviews twice on WBAI-FM Joy of Resistance, a trans exclusionary feminist radio program with ties to Feminist Current, with the latest occuring in 2020.
3. One AF3IRM member interviewed by Meghan Murphy later posted on social media about attending a DePaul lecture by her, then spoke at the FiLiA Conference in the United Kingdom. Despite claiming a “zero tolerance” stance towards transphobia, FiLiA’s webpage features hateful articles attacking trans people. These include promoting Trans Widows Voices, a platform that celebrates the “bravery” of so-called “trans widows,” defined as women who have “split…from a male partner or husband who believes that he has a gender identity other than man.” This statement not only denies the identities of trans women, but also cruelly implies that a partner who chooses to transition is dead to them. It also serves as the perfect example of how claiming that “transphobia will not be tolerated” is not the same as making it so.
4. Rosca has published multiple articles in the trans exclusionary radical feminist journal Rain and Thunder, alongside Meghan Murphy, Sheila Jeffreys, Janice Raymond, and Gail Dines. The journal also published an article by Gabriela Network USA, the organization led by Rosca which re-named itself to AF3IRM in 2011.
5. In 2019, AF3IRM leaders met with Cathie Sarachild and Carol Giordina of the radical feminist group Redstockings, which has explicitly attacked trans women as well as insisting that male homosexuality is an expression of sexism. In 2013, Sarachild and Giardina released a statement entitled Forbidden Discourse: The Silencing of Feminist Criticism of “Gender”, protesting that feminist organizations are being discriminated against “for asserting the right of women to organize for their liberation separately from men, including M>F (male to female) transgendered people.”
6. Most recently in 2020, Ninotchka Rosca gave an interview to the European Network of Migrant Women, which is a trans exclusionary feminist group which “unequivocally supports and stands being JK Rowling’s position on sex and gender” and publicly misgenders trans women.
There is no indication that AF3IRM spoke out against trans exclusion during any of these instances. In short, it speaks to both AF3IRM’s lack of concern for trans issues as well as the lack of substantial trans involvement in their organizational leadership that AF3IRM has associated themselves so freely over the years with one trans exclusionary group after another.
It is true that AF3IRM members have not explicitly expressed transphobia in every appearance on trans exclusionary platforms, and there are many AF3IRM members who genuinely concern themselves with trans rights. However, catering to transphobic audiences without explicitly addressing these problems belies their claims to support trans women of color. If confronted with these facts, AF3IRM may rightly point out that sometimes it is necessary to organize alongside people we disagree with in order to build strong movements. However, this should never entail sacrificing one cause, such as trans liberation, for the sake of another. If you support trans people, you never put their needs on the back burner so you can curry favor with people who would be offended by this; instead, you advocate for their humanity in every situation.
Transphobia Will Be Tolerated…Especially in the Crusade Against Sex Work
With such brazen acceptance of transphobia taking place away from public view, it is no surprise that AF3IRM publicly links itself to anti-prostitution organizations that maintain an image of “neutrality” yet operate comfortably with deeply transmisognyistic and pro-state leadership. Most notably, AF3IRM NYC belongs to New Yorkers for the Equality Model (NY4EM), a group fighting against full decriminalization of sex work in favor of the “Equality Model” (also known as the “Nordic Model”).
Contrary to AF3IRM’s positioning as queer-inclusive and state-critical, the NY4EM coalition is primarily made up of powerful mainstream nonprofits with ties to trans/sex work exclusionary radical feminism as well as law enforcement:
- Coalition Against the Trafficking in Women (CATW), founded by notorious transphobic Janice Raymond. Laura Ramirez, a core AF3IRM NYC organizer who develops much of AF3IRM’s educational curriculum, is also employed by CATW as its Program Coordinator.
- Sanctuary for Families (SFF), headed by Dorchen Leidholdt, who also co-founded CATW with Raymond. Funded by the government, the Carnegie Corporation, and Michael Bloomberg.
- The faith-based Covenant House, the largest privately funded social services provider in the Americas, an international enterprise of over $90 billion dollars. Infamous for the sex abuse scandal of its founder, Father Bruce Ritter.
- EPCAT-USA, the leading anti-trafficking policy and advocacy organization which collaborates with law enforcement domestically and internationally. According to ECPAT-USA Executive Director Carol Smolenski, “We work with stakeholders throughout the United States including law enforcement, the private sector, legislators and policy makers and other NGOs. Last week, ECPAT-USA gave New York Police Department Commissioner James P. O’Neill its annual Defender Award for the big strides that the NYPD has made in protecting exploited children.”
- Mentari, a “human trafficking survivor empowerment program” whose President was an NYPD detective and investigator for the District Attorney’s office for thirty years.
On March 11, 2019, New Yorkers for the Equality Model organized the #NoBuyerNoPimpState press conference and rally in opposition to the efforts of sex worker rights activists and progressive leaders to fully decriminalize sex work. Representatives from the various member organizations, including AF3IRM, attended and spoke at the demonstration. Consistent with the covert transphobia rampant in many of these organizations, some protestors at the event held a sign reading: “No to sex trade, surrogacy, and transgenderism.” According to journalist Melissa Gira Grant, all the speakers at the event, including SFF, CATW, and AF3IRM, spoke in front of this banner without addressing it or asking them to leave. Later, SFF addressed complaints saying that SFF “stands with LGBTQ+ communities” and they were “unaware” of this anti-trans group’s participation in the event. However, such an “apology” seems empty when considered next to the fact that their founder, Dorchen Leidholdt, has been collaborating professionally with the world’s foremost opponent of trans liberation, Janice Raymond, for at least thirty years. (Leidholdt co-founded CATW and published written collaborations with Raymond.)
Indeed, SFF has a long track record of harming trans sex working women of color. Operating primarily through state funding, SFF was instrumental in launching New York’s Human Trafficking Intervention Initiative, which led to the death of 27-year-old Afro-Latinx trans woman Layleen Polanco. (Polanco’s sister, Melania Brown, has since supported the fight to decriminalize sex work.) As pointed out by Maya Morena, undocumented Latina sex worker activist, Polanco who was killed through medical negligence in solitary confinement at Rikers Island Jail after “being held on $500 bail owing to misdemeanor charges for a prostitution-related offense”:
“The Human Trafficking Intervention Courts fined her, charged her, and demanded she get counseling under threat of imprisonment. Because she couldn’t meet these demands an order was sent…for her arrest.”
Despite outcries from the sex worker community, SFF and their NY4EM coalition with AF3IRM have not only failed to acknowledge their role in this violence, but have exploited Polanco’s memory for their benefit:
Leidholdt has also led stalking and harassment campaigns against grassroots women of color sex workers organizations such as Red Canary Song. In July of 2019, she called the cops on a group of sex workers and survivors protesting in front of Incarnation NY Church, which resulted in @TS_Candii, a Black trans sex worker organizer who leads the Repeal the Walking While Trans Ban coalition, being removed by the cops and further harassed in her own building.
CATW’s record in the treatment of trans women and sex workers is as reprehensible as SFF’s. Janice Raymond, CATW founder, former Executive Director, and Board Member until just this year, has written some of the most hate-filled texts about transgender people, most notably The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (1979). Among the vile sentiments propagated in this book, Raymond declares:
“The problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence…Transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves…Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive” (Raymond 1979).
Through her ruthless campaigning over the course of the past several decades, Raymond has caused immense suffering to the transgender community, including targeted outings and harassment of individual trans women, as well as blocking healthcare and public resources that affect the community as a whole.
Raymond and Leidholdt are not the only trans antagonistic leaders who shaped CATW as an organization. Sheila Jeffreys, another trans exclusionary feminist who also spoke at the WimCon conference alongside Ninotchka Rosca, has also held a major leadership role at CATW.
Furthermore, Taina Bien-Aime, current Director of CATW and founding co-chair of World Without Exploitation, also sits on the board at SPACE International alongside Julie Bindel, who spoke at WimCon 2018 alongside Ninotchka Rosca and writes about “the madness of men identifying as women”. In response to Kate Zen’s letter “Dear Esperanza”, Bien-Aime took to social media to accuse Kate of “foster[ing] vicious online attacks” against Esperanza F. Far from vicious, Kate’s essay is a heartfelt narrative about the problems with AF3IRM’s stance on sex work which expresses deep empathy for Esperanza as a fellow trauma survivor.
Bien-Aime’s readiness to target Kate with baseless accusations, especially after weaponizing some of Kate’s most personal traumas against her in a condescending Tweet, speaks to CATW’s lack of compassion and sensitivity towards the women they claim to help. Further, claiming to stand on the side of trans women of color while collaborating uncritically with people like Julie Bindel, Janice Raymond, and Dorchen Leidholdt makes one wonder if this allyship only exists when politically expedient, but disappears in the boardroom.
Although CATW International is careful to avoid the subject of trans issues, some international locations of CATW are openly hostile to transgender rights. For example, CATWLAC — CATW’s headquarters in Latin America and the Caribbean — is a signatory to the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, co-authored by Sheila Jeffreys, which combats “organisations [who] have been quietly trying to replace the idea of biological sex with the idea of ‘gender identity’ in human rights documents; and to include men who say they have a female ‘gender identity’ in the word ‘woman’.”
Despite the odious record of their fellow NY4EM member organizations, AF3IRM not only continues this collaboration, but multiple members have spoken on their panels or work for them professionally. Esperanza F., mentioned earlier regarding her writing for AF3IRM, has spoken alongside a representative from SFF for a panel hosted by World Without Exploitation, a coalition of organizations including CATW and SFF. In 2002, Ninotchka Rosca spoke at a panel hosted by Dorchen Leidholdt when she was the Executive Director of CATW. And as mentioned previously, Laura Ramirez, AF3IRM core member, works at CATW.
Why does it appear so natural for AF3IRM to cozy up to covertly and overtly transphobic actors like CATW and Meghan Murphy? Would AF3IRM nonchalantly associate with organizations who openly facilitate violence against cisgendered women, even if they did happen to agree on a particular issue, such as MRA organizations? The answer is clear — and should prompt any trans or trans-allied AF3IRM members to question whether this organization deserves their trust and labor.
Trans Identities Will Be Weaponized…Against Trans Women
The truth is that the highest leadership of AF3IRM believes fervently in the currency of trans identities to achieve political ends. They are so convinced that trans identities are political weapons that Rosca describes trans women who disagree with AF3IRM about sex work as an “army of trolls” who only “claim to be trans”:
“Most recently we noticed the attacks on our opposition to the sex trade have been led by persons who purport to have a trans identity. That this happens to every chapter of AF3IRM — and we have chapters in Hawai’i to Los Angeles all the way to New York — that each chapter is being confronted by people who claim to be trans — it is not an accident. We think this is the deliberate creation of an army of trolls, the way that Cambridge Analytica created these trolls for [Trump].” (Ninotchka Rosca, WimCon 2018)
Threatened by the fact that many trans women — whose community disproportionately holds lived experience in the sex trade due to socioeconomic oppressions — hold different views on sex work, they invent a story that allows them to brush these women aside as trolls and liars. Instead of appreciating that individual trans women across the country have been expending emotional energy criticizing their local AF3IRM chapters out of genuine concern for our communities, AF3IRM invalidates us wholesale.
Finding that criticism from the trans community poses a major obstacle to their agenda to abolish sex work, it is no surprise that AF3IRM has begun to increase their attention to trans issues. In this manner, they position themselves as the “real” allies, while framing trans and sex worker organizations fighting for full decriminalization as “transphobic.” Cynically believing that sex worker’s rights activists are weaponizing trans identities against them, they begin to adopt this approach themselves.
This sort of response to @PurpleRose0666’s critiques makes complete sense when you understand that AF3IRM leadership propagates the conspiracy theory that an “army of trolls” who “claim to be trans” has been hired to smear them.
There are also more subtle ways they preempt accusations of transphobia. On the en(gender)ed podcast, Laura Ramirez of AF3IRM and CATW states:
“A lot of folks…who describe themselves as sex workers…use the term ‘sex work,’ which was politically created to sanitize the system of exploitation, and they’re using this to sort of give credence to the fact that trans women are overrepresented in the trade. But this can’t be the case. The fact that trans women are overrepresented in the sex trade doesn’t mean that the sex trade is inherent to trans women’s existence…It’s really unfortunate because a lot of trans women who are in the trade say they are in the trade because they don’t have housing. Or they need access to healthcare. These are all systemic problems that we shouldn’t say then to trans women, the rite of passage for you to live your truest and best self is to be raped by a stranger.”
(Laura Ramirez, AF3IRM & CATW, en(gender)ed podcast)
This concern over the systemic problems of trans women is hypocritical considering that Laura Ramirez’s boss, Janice Raymond, successfully lobbied for the revocation of trans healthcare access in the 1980s. In fact, as previously stated, Janice Raymond’s early activism entirely centered around the belief that “problem with transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence” and worked to exclude trans women from any and all social institutions.
Naturally, no trans sex working woman of color believes that they should be forced into the sex trade as a “rite of passage,” and we have been the most vocal in advocating for our own basic rights and access to resources, so there is no need for outsiders to explain queer women’s experiences. This misapplication of sex work as a “coming-of-age” comes not from trans sex worker activists, but from trans exclusionary radical feminism. Ramirez’ words echo those of Janice Raymond from 1979 in The Transsexual Empire:
“Although prostitution is described as an economic necessity for most transgendered individuals, there is also the admission that it is part of the discovery process that a transgendered woman may go through. Some of it is acting out fantasies, obsessions, or compulsions. It’s a sort of coming-of-age, a part of the transition, an identifying and validation process. So we have here, an idealizing of sexual exploitation and prostitution in the name of transgender transformation, identity, and maturity.”
(Raymond, 1979, p. 25)
Though Ramirez frames her statement with concern for trans women, unlike Raymond who sees them as male deviants, her ideas stem from the same lineage — no surprise, considering she is employed by an organization founded by the very same Janice Raymond. While Ramirez is correct about the socioeconomic factors that lead trans women to engage in sex work, it is the trans exclusionary radical feminists like Raymond that she has learned from — such as Ninotchka Rosca, Meghan Murphy, and others who think the “female penis” is a hilarious joke — who directly proliferate these problems.
So on the one hand, AF3IRM is well-aware of the fact that trans women are overrepresented in the sex trade. Yet on the other hand, they promote the idea that trans women sex workers who criticize them are only “impersonating” trans women, and are part of a grand billionaire-funded conspiracy to stymie them. Furthermore, they misrepresent the beliefs of sex worker rights activists (fully aware that many of them are trans women of color), in order to weaponize their own identities against them.
Ultimately, despite subscribing to ideologies derived directly from second wave white radical feminism, AF3IRM weaponizes trans women’s identities against them by appropriating queer intersectional language. Unlike more outspoken opponents of trans liberation, this allows them to “play both sides” and curry favor with both trans inclusive and trans exclusionary feminists. However, this deception serves no one but AF3IRM’s leadership and their non-profit and government allies.
Our Way Forward: Hold “Trans Inclusive” Organizations Accountable
Contrary to AF3IRM’s claims, the writers of this piece are not billionaire-funded (or funded in any way) and have spent countless unpaid hours doing this research as a labor of love for our queer, trans, and sex working communities. We are individuals, not associated with any organization. Neither do we engage in, or support, cyber harassing behavior such as hacking or doxxing and we condemn any such attacks unequivocally. The same cannot be said for AF3IRM leadership, who have lied repeatedly about their own funding, threatened to dox critics such as @PurpleRose0666 on multiple occasions, and physically vandalized sex workers’ places of employment. This abusive behavior sheds light on their true values.
Some trans or trans-allied members of AF3IRM may find themselves shaken by this piece. Especially if you have found warmth and community in AF3IRM, it may be difficult to reconcile those positive experiences with these deep-seated problems. We see you and know how you feel, because we were once in your shoes. It is possible to love people and hold them accountable — in fact, it is the only way to truly love. It is also your right to say goodbye if need be. AF3IRM’s harmful behavior does not nullify the good that many members have achieved, but neither does the good erase the need for accountability.
We can always hope that AF3IRM will finally confront its own failings as an organization and do the work necessary to work towards genuine trans inclusivity. But more importantly, just as this isn’t the first attempt to hold them accountable, it also shouldn’t be the last. Lest organizations like AF3IRM continue using trans women of color like pawns in a chess game, we have to scrutinize claims of “trans inclusivity,” and stop giving more weight to platitudes than a group’s actual track record. Some people may never change, but queer communities deserve the opportunity to choose our friends wisely.
Afterword 2/26/2021
We are disappointed to see a lack of meaningful response to the many issues brought up in the article. Instead of of a direct response, we see that AF3IRMNYC published an essay, Gender is a Tool of Colonization, describing their support for trans struggles (most of which were cited in the beginning of this article), without providing any accountability for the ways they have hurt our community.
Most notably, it’s quite disconcerting that on the day the Walking While Trans Ban was passed that AF3IRM has claimed that they supported it. To our knowledge, they never once posted support for #walkingwhiletransban even though they were asked to many times by Purple Rose. This repeal was largely led by @TS_Candii, a Black trans sex worker organizer, who was harrassed and stalked by AF3IRMNYC’s partner Dorschen Leinholdt. It is shameful that AF3IRMNYC did not once voice support for @TS_Candii or give her credit for the hard labor she put into this.
We are also concerned about the title “Gender is a Tool of Colonization”, which seems to be a dismissive tactic to queer activists that Ninotchka Rosca has employed for years. We have recently learned that GABNET (the previous version of AF3IRM) used to have a Queer Caucus. However due to the actions of Ninotchka Rosca and other leaders of the org, the entire LGBTQI Caucus of GABNET wrote open letters withdrawing from the organization on Trans Day of Remembrance 2007. It seems there ware many issues but most notably was Ninotchka Rosca speaking on behalf of the LGBTQI Caucus to GABNET leadership to imply that their belief in heterosexism was misdirected and it would be better for them to focus on colonialism and class. It seems that Ninotchka Still hasn’t understood how these actions hurt her queer comrades
Additional Information
