Wow, what a chapter! Like Cowbee said, the majority of it was just Les hammering down again and again that solidarity is a necessity for a successful movement. But there were some parts that made me drop my jaw:

We must challenge the misconception that transmen are automatically typecast as masculine and so their partners must automatically be feminine women. The entire range of gender expression can be found in the transmale population, including androgynous and feminine men, and drag queens.

The idea that trans men can be feminine or even be drag queens is even today a really progressive view. The fact that this book was written in the 90s just amazes me over and over again.

spoiler

For example, when the second wave of the women's liberation movement in this country challenged the patriarchal ruling class -thereby threatening the profits they extract from women's inequality - those powers conducted a campaign to discredit the demands of women. Every tool of mass communication delivered a message to men, and to women not yet drawn into the movement, that these uppity women were trying to destroy the "sacred differences" between men and women.

When women urged passage of such a basic, modest piece of legislation as the Equal Rights Amendment, Phyllis Schlafley tried to scare audiences. She predicted that passage of the bill would force men and women to use unisex toilets. If you ask me, I think most people - especially transgender folk - would feel a lot safer and more comfortable if the signs read "Toilet" and the rooms were single-occupancy, clean, sanitary, and had a lock on the door.

Schlafley also argued that, "Equal rights for women will make homosexual marriages legal." Wow, that sounds like reason enough to pass the era! Our trans communities are still defending our already existing same-sex marriages. And we're uniting with lesbian, gay, and bisexual activists to win legal and social benefits for all marriages and all families. Whether or not you personally want to get married, this is a progressive fight against blatant discrimination by the state, like the struggles to defeat racist miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriages.

But in recent years, the women's liberation movement has been slowed by a period of deep reaction, including stepped-up attacks attempting to make a mockery of the gains of the women's, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other progressive movements.

One such perversion of the gains of our movements is the right-wing reversal of the meaning of politically correct. When the movements were in full stride, being politically correct was a good thing. It meant confronting racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, anti-disabled, and anti-worker slurs, attitudes, and actions. It meant using language that demonstrated respect and sensitivity for each other's oppression.

George Bush, and later Rush Limbaugh, waged a divisive campaign to use that phrase against the movements as a weapon. Their ilk asks: "Why do we have to all be so 'politically correct?'" What they mean is why can't they publicly repeat the crude, bigoted slurs they used before these movements challenged them. The right wing has characterized these progressive movements as "oppressors." The message from those in power is: Don't blame us, blame the people trying to change the situation. This is an attempt to thwart the formation of new liberation movements. But these movements are potential allies, not enemies.

If you take this entire part and just replace "women's liberation" with "trans liberation", "Schlaffley" with "Rowling" and "Bush" with "Trump", it would perfectly describe our current situation. I'm not sure if Les wanted to play Nostradamus here, but it strongly reinforces the point sie makes that we absolutely need to have each other's backs. "None of us can ever be free while others are still in chains." is such a great quote.

The women's movement is right — females are socialized very differently and unequally. But the trans movement reveals a more layered and complex socialization process. Does a masculine girl absorb social education about what it means to be a "girl" in the same way as a feminine girl? Does a feminine boy grow up identifying with, or fearing, the masculine boys learning to swagger and take up space? How does a transsexual child or adult absorb the messages of how a "real" man or woman is supposed to act and relate?

I was heartened, for example, to see that transmen and transwomen had created a workshop at this conference to deal with how to work with each other most sensitively. I have heard some non-trans people criticize transsexual women for taking up too much space or being too overbearing because they were socialized as males. It's one thing for transwomen to discuss issues of socialization as an internal discussion in transsexual space. But it's a prejudiced and dangerous formulation for non-transsexuals to make. It's a fast and slippery slide from the rigidity of biological determinism to an equally narrow position of social determinism.

And it too closely parallels transphobic attacks that charge: "Once a man, always a man; once a woman, always a woman." This line of reasoning flies in the face of the fact that consciousness is determined by being. When a man or woman comes out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, they become part of those communities. No one says "once a heterosexual, always a heterosexual." The consciousness of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people changes and develops while living through the oppression, and working with others to fight back. That is true for transwomen, as well.

I wish lib fems would read those 3 paragraphs and really hammer them into their brains. Because it's one thing if TERFs use it in an dishonest way to attack us, but it really grinds my gears when supposed allies copy this shit and use it to other us by forcing a male/female essence on us that just isn't there.

I still have to read the portrait, but even without it this chapter has been the best read I've had in a really long time.