On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine’s COMMON SENSE1 was published and immediately became a phenomenal success with an estimated 120,000 copies sold in the first three months, in a population of around 2.5 million. It’s message — calling for an end to authoritarian rule by the English king -- was incendiary. It is with that spirit that this piece is written, not with the aim of separation, but with the honorable intent for reconciliation among Green Party colleagues. As that document published nearly 250 years ago put it: “a long and violent abuse of power is generally the means of calling the right of it in question”.
Roughly a year and a half ago, The Georgia Green Party (GaGP), after serious study of the international Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, endorsed2 it as an extension of the long-standing Green value of feminism. This was the act of an autonomous state Green party with no binding effect whatsoever on any other state party or the national party. It was a clear affirmation of the moral and political right of women to have their own organizations and private spaces, apart from men.
This sovereign act provoked an attack by the National Lavender Caucus (NLC), or at least by a few of its most vocal members. Long-standing practice among the left is to counter with a position paper of critique and rebuttal. Instead, NLC demanded3 a retraction and apology, as if this was a heretical mistake on the part of Georgia rather than principled political position. They demanded that those in Georgia who were responsible undergo “re-education” about the trans issue. Quite understandably, Georgia said “No” to this idea, and countered with an offer of its own4: engage in a party-wide discussion to clarify positions in a comradely manner, come to consensus where possible, and then agree to disagree on points where no agreement can be reached.
This proposal was ignored by the NLC, which then escalated into advocating to expel5 the entire Georgia Party from membership in the national party. Alarmed by this unprecedented attack on Party integrity, a group of Green Party members organized Dialogue Not Expulsion (DNE)6, which, as the name indicates, calls for party wide dialogue and opposes expulsions for political disagreements.
The capture of our party by gender ideologues now threatens to frack the Green Party. Whether or not that is the objective of the Lavender Caucus, it will be the result. The NLC uses insults and censoring to stop members from speaking out about this critical issue. They refuse any and all dialogue within the party, undemocratic as that is for a political party. One of our Four Pillars is democracy and as Thomas Paine pointed out, without free speech there is no democracy.
Those of us advocating for open and rational discussion have tried to find a party forum for discussing these issues, but the NLC and its supporters prefer to censor7 and ban those holding dissenting opinions from participating in discussion.
The NLC seems, in pursuit of their aims, to have forgotten the centuries-long oppression of women! Within GPUS, it is not the trans population who have been subjected to withering scorn, ridicule and exclusion, but the women who have objected to the expectation that they affirm the mantra that genetically-male people are women! Would you believe that at least two such women have been evicted from—get this—the Women’s Caucus?8 The women’s caucus went on to issue a warning to a third member9 for promoting an event10 by her state party organized in recognition of the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
We who support feminism as a justified response to a long history of patriarchy, are now expected to accept the biologically absurd notion that “transwomen are women” (TWAW) and that “transmen are men” (TMAM). We are even told our national platform says so, though it says nothing of the kind. We are asked to accept that our platform can be amended by fiat, supported by acts of bullying, harassment and the silencing of opposition, rather than through the democratic mechanism laid out in the party’s platform revision process.
Yet advocates for these mantras are unable to cite a single male-born person who has the capacity to menstruate, or a single female-born person who can emit sperm. Like the little boy who pointed out that the “emperor has no clothes,” we call these dicta preposterous. We are chastised if our respect for the English language and grammar leaves us inclined to refer to all people using appropriate sex-based pronouns. We find compelled participation in the preferred pronoun rituals to be oppressive as well as regressive.
We are expected to accept that it is just fine for male-bodied persons to unfairly compete against girls and women in athletic events, to take our sisters’ rightful place on the podium, along with their medals, scholarships and other opportunities set aside to promote women’s participation in sports. We say no!
At a time when there are very real and escalating threats to the survival of life on Earth, we find it absurd that we are distracted by having to take time to protect the significant gains of the women’s liberation movement. We see this threat as driving a regressive agenda for the entrenchment of a patriarchal world view.
If certain boys and men feel more comfortable presenting as ‘feminine’ in terms of dress and mannerisms, we have no problem with that, and the same applies to girls and women who opt to present as more stereotypically ‘masculine’. Do what you want to do, but don’t expect us to affirm what science tells us is utter nonsense. The issue can be described as conflating the reality-based, biological concept of sex with the subjective concept of gender identity built on circular definitions. We hold that changing one’s clothes or chemically and/or surgically altering one’s body does not change one’s sex, and we refuse to pretend that it does.
To be clear, we oppose the harassment or mistreatment of anyone for their nonconformity to sex-role stereotypes, and that includes those who identify as transgender. (Per feminist analysis, we understand ‘gender’ as sex-role stereotypes, imposed and maintained by patriarchy in a hierarchal manner to keep women oppressed.) We stand with our lesbian sisters11 and gay brothers12 as they, in ever-increasing numbers, struggle in the current political climate to reassert the boundaries of their sexual orientation13 as same-sex (as opposed to same-gender) attracted. We reject the preposterous notion that a penis can be female or that a vulva can be male should the holder of that organ deny the reality of their sexed body. We reject as well the co-option by gender ideologues of the lived experience of people with intersex conditions, in support of the unsubstantiated theory of sex as a spectrum14.
Where gender nonconforming / gender confused children are concerned, we support those medical practioners15 who advocate a ‘watchful waiting’ approach, which involves active therapeutic support. We consider the practice of immediately ‘affirming’ a child’s professed gender identity, setting him/her on a path of life-long medicalization and disfiguring surgeries, to be in the realm of criminality16. We are highly concerned with the institutional capture which seems apparent in these recent changes to long-standing child safe-guarding practices. We reject the notion that children are capable of informed consent for such life-altering procedures17. We are disturbed with the assault on scientific process and academic freedom18 which has demonized practitioners, undermined ethical standards, and threatened livelihoods, all at the behest of a well-funded medical industrial complex that profits from disassociating us from our sexed bodies.
We suspect that this bizarre trend, with its links to powerful billionaires19 and Big Pharma20, is part of a corporate driven neo-COINTELPRO operation specifically designed, as it was in the sixties and seventies, to disrupt even our Green Party’s relatively weak challenge to the corporate agenda killing our democracy and our planet. We do not make this accusation against any individual, but rather gender ideology itself. Whether or not government forces are directly involved in sowing these divisions, the impact on our Party is just as deadly.
The trans agenda has been described as a ‘mens sexual rights movement’21 and has demonstrated that at its foundation is hostile to feminism and its empowerment of the female sex; and therefore is hostile to basic Green conceptions of social justice. As manifested in our party, these attacks have proven the NLC to be in opposition to our commitment to grassroots democracy. Efforts of the NLC and its supporters to silence debate on the issues raised by the Georgia Platform amendments are profoundly authoritarian. The reframing of disputes on matters of policy as an expellable offense with a complaint before the Accreditation Committee, targeting a twenty-plus year member of the national party, undermines a democratic platform revision process and transforms a small-d democractic Green Party into a sectarian cult. It is corrosive of respect for diversity – we accept trans identified people, but the fanatics among the NLC refuse to accept us. It is corrosive to our party’s commitment to peace and non-violence, and the anti-imperialism derived from that value, so objectively gender ideology within the Green Party is in service to the empire we oppose.
What is demanded of the “adults in the room” is that we have a discussion as to how best to integrate those with a trans identity into society in a way which protects their human rights, but does not undermine the gains which women have made. The current cult of gender ideology is a major step backwards on that trajectory. The NLC leadership has shown itself to be uncompromising in their intent to drive those of us who affirm reality – with compassion – out of our political home. If they succeed, it will cause the demise of the Green Party of the United States. Any shell that remains will be a mockery of an alternative to corporate two-party oligarchy. It will be a toothless imitation of the Democrats, who have already sold their ability to impact public policy to the trans-billionaires. Conceived in a commitment to radical democracy, the Green Party will die, while grasping at a liberal and misogynist ideology deemed more important, apparently, than its founding mission of human liberation, an end to imperial aggression and turning human civilization back from its race to ecological collapse.
We call on all Greens of conscience to speak out and let members of the National Committee know that differences of opinion on issues of sex and gender should not result in expulsion or dis-affiliation. Rather, the Green way of grassroots democracy demands open and respectful discussion and debate, and a tolerance of diversity of opinion. Demanding unquestioning adherence to rigid dogmas is the practice of authoritarian regimes, not the kind of society Green Party members hope to create. Our Green values also require that we take seriously the concerns raised by many feminists around the world that the erasure of sex while sexism persists is not in the interests of the female half of humanity, nor of any man who understands that our own liberation depends on the liberation of women.
If any member or state party is expelled from a Green Party for gender-critical ideas such as those given above, we call for formation of a nationwide organized public tendency to defend democratic process; to explain the reality of sex and gender; and to address the fracturing of the Green Party of the United States. Expulsion of the Georgia Green Party would constitute a harmful split of the national party requiring an organized public Green response. Disintegration of the Green Party via purges could be addressed by Green organizing outside that crumbling structure.
This article is a collective effort and due to harassing behavior on the part of certain activists (far from all) in the trans agenda domain, we decline to be personally identified. Accordingly, we sign ourselves,
Thomas Paine, Jr.
END NOTES
1 http://americainclass.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Common-Sense-_-Full-Text.pdf
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8i2WJDnlRU
4 http://georgiagreenparty.org/reply_to_dario_hunter_invitation-final_signed/ http://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/documents/Georgia_Party_Responds_to_Invitation_from_Lavender_Caucus
Full text: http://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/Reply_to_Dario_Hunter_invitation-final_signed.pdf
5 NLC Complaint filed December 23rd, 2020 with the Accreditation Committee of the Green Party of the United States:
http://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/documents/national_lavender_green_caucus_files_complaint_with_accreditation_committee_to_disaccredit_georgia_green_party
But see also, this video published only seven days after the Georgia party’s Bonaire Convention which amended its platform to endorse the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights and cited above in footnote 3.
6 http://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/
7 http://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/internal-democracy-threatened/women-silenced
8 First, a first hand account of that expulsion by the women silenced by a caucus required by the rules to “Be open to and reflective of natural members of the Identity Caucus” http://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/internal-democracy-threatened/women-silenced/feminists_removed_from_green_party_national_womens_caucus ,
followed by an open letter by these women to the co-chair of the caucus:
http://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/internal-democracy-threatened/women-silenced/Open-Letter-to-Ann-Link-Co-Chair-of-the-NWC ,
and also an account of their expulsion published on a site for feminist news and commentary:
http://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/media/4w/Green_Party_National_Womens_Caucus_Bans_Feminists_from_Discussion
10 The event featured three well known feminists and pro-feminist leaders and writers with first hand experience addressing men’s violence towards women.
https://georgiagreenparty.org/join_us-ending_mens_violence_against_women_with_this_generation/
11 “The #LesbianMeToo project is a continuation of our previous work condemning the sexual violence done to lesbians in LGBT circles and the cotton ceiling. But it goes further than that to include all instances of sexual violence against lesbians from harassment to corrective rape.”
https://lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/03/lesbianmetoo-the-lesbian-victims-of-sexual-violence-will-now-be-heard-reports-jo-bartosch/
13 https://lgballiance.org.uk/
14 The Dangerous Denial of Sex “Transgender ideology harms women, gays—and especially feminine boys and masculine girls” http://archive.is/puTGy
15 For example, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine https://segm.org/
16 https://www.transgendertrend.com/gender-affirmative-affirmation-approach/
18 Kathleen Stock, The sinister attempts to silence gender critical academics
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-sinister-attempts-to-silence-gender-critical-academics
19 The investigative research of Sue Donym and Jennifer Bilek have shed much light on the matter in their efforts to follow the money.
See generally many articles on Ms. Bilek’s blog, available at:
https://www.the11thhourblog.com/
and particularly this article by Sue Donym: Inauthentic Selves: The modern LGBTQ+ Movement Is Run By Philanthropic Astroturf And Based On Junk Science
https://suedonym.substack.com/p/inauthentic-selves-the-modern-lgbtq
20 This article discusses how “Favorable government policies and global rise in awareness drive the global sex reassignment surgery market”
https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sex-reassignment-surgery-market.html
21 Enforcing men’s sexual rights in international human rights law-We Need to Talk Event London-Sheila Jeffreys June 2018
http://drradfem.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/sheila-jeffrey-Enforcing-men.pdf