By Sarah Lantz and Kerryn Williams
MELBOURNE — The first organising meeting of the 1999 Network of Women Students Australia conference was held at the RMIT on August 21.
One of the first agenda items discussed was the question of whether or not transgender women could be members of the NOWSA organising collective.
The student organisation Left Alliance used radical feminist arguments to demand the exclusion of transgender women. They argued that, because transgender women were born as men, they are not real women; that their inclusion in "women's space" corrupts and oppresses that space; and that these women have led a life of male privilege so cannot relate to women.
A motion put by the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, called for the inclusion of transgender women in the NOWSA conference and the conference organising collective. Three-quarters of the 45 women present voted against the motion. No transgender women were present.
Emma Murphy from the DSP said: "Transgender women are marginalised and excluded from mainstream society. For this to be also occurring in a feminist organising collective perpetuates that sexism. With that decision, the collective alienated transgender women and colluded with those who support traditional female roles and police the gender boundaries.
"Being born a woman does not automatically guarantee support for feminism or women's liberation, and some of Left Alliance's arguments could be used to exclude any number of women on the grounds that their political affiliation, ethnicity, sub-culture, sexual orientation, and so on makes other women 'feel uncomfortable'."
The arguments put forward by Left Alliance discount people's political positions, focusing instead on their biology. Yet transgender women who support the aims of the women's movement, who understand that existing gender relations are oppressive and who experience oppression, both as women and transgender people, should be actively included in feminist organisations and activities.
The NOWSA collective did acknowledge that transgender women suffer oppression — "transgender oppression". But Left Alliance's strategy for struggling against this oppression was for transgender women to organise separately.
Resistance's Kerryn Williams responded: "Autonomous organising by women plays a crucial role in building a confident, active feminist movement which can win its demands, but it is not an end in itself.
"The oppression of women and transgender people in this sexist society can only be ended by a movement which is strong enough to change public opinion and force changes in laws and government policy. Such strength requires alliances of all those who oppose sexism, not expulsion and exclusion."
One wonders how the NOWSA collective will identify transgender women so as to prevent them from participating.