A Statement of Trans-Inclusive Feminism and Womanism: Update

[Content Note: Transphobia.]

Yesterday, I wrote about being a signatory to A Statement of Trans-Inclusive Feminism and Womanism, a document signed by a collective of trans*, cis, binary-identified, and/or genderqueer activists, writers, and academics committed to practicing trans-inclusive feminism.

Earlier today, I asked one of the organizers of the statement and signatories for an update, and this was her response, which I am sharing with her permission:

This is a link to our follow-up statement, which lists the approximately 60 additional signatories (both individual and organizational) who asked to be added between the time it went live at about 4 pm EST yesterday, until I went to sleep at about 3 am this morning. The overall total as of that time was 161 signatories (153 individuals and 8 organizations) from 13 countries.

Another 60 or 70 people (or more; I haven't checked in the last hour!) have made requests just since last night, but we have to go through them first before we add any of them – a lot of people just write and say "please add my name" without explaining how they want to be listed, so we have to email them. Our plan right now is to add one new post at the end of every day, listing all the new signatories for that day, as long as they keep coming in at this rate. We also have a link at the end of the original post to the follow-up post, so people can read all the signatures if they want to.

There also appear to have been well over 100 supportive tweets.

The pushback has started; the party line appears to be that the whole thing is a pack of "libfem lies," and several people have demanded proof, with citations, that anti-trans radical feminists have ever engaged in violent rhetoric against trans women. We allowed one example of that in the comments to the original post, and responded in the comments (as did Flavia Dzodan), but aren't approving any further comments of that nature. These people have the entire Internet to say what they like, but we're not going to allow that kind of debate and derail in our space.

So the bottom line is that we are blown away by the degree of support so far. We never expected it!

So awesome. Please note that if you would like to add your name, instructions on how to do that are in the introduction here. Also, per the above email, it would be helpful to include how you would like to be listed—name and title (see the other signatories as examples)—to help save the organizers some time and additional work.

Keep the support rolling! Let us overwhelm the TERFs with support for trans-inclusive feminism and womanism!