[CN transphobia, miscarriage]

yesterday, after the shadow secretary for equalities shared a fringe blogpost about a law firm’s bathroom policy, i saw a terf argue that “public toilets” are places of “dignity” because women have miscarriages there. i want to talk about this.

[CN miscarriage] as a woman who has miscarried twice, one of which started in a public toilet, i’m a) pretty disturbed by this deployment of my experiences, & b) interested by the notion of “dignity”.

[CN miscarriage, abortion] my pregnancies were unplanned; the first i only discovered when i miscarried. the second i knew about but had ultimately decided to terminate—a tough decision bc i wanted the child but was incredibly poor & my living conditions weren’t great

[CN blood] because of this, when i finally went to hospital with my bleeding, the staff treated me dismissively. they told me i was lucky: some people actually *want* their babies. i was sent home & told to ride it out, to take no painkillers bc “they make it take longer”

[CN miscarriage, blood] i remember at some point over the few days it took for the process to complete, sitting in a bath for hours bc the warm water helped the pain. changing the water bc it was full of blood. it was 2008: no iphone. i felt completely alone.

[CN blood] NONE of this was dignified. nobody cared. nobody offered me support or counselling or even medical aftercare. a few weeks later i started bleeding in the night & went to hospital: the gyno i saw made fun of my pain & called me “promiscuous” & “hysterical”.

given all this, i profoundly resent the implication that our trans sisters are somehow threats to our dignity. in fact, some of the deepest solidarities i’ve found over this have come from trans friends, who know too well how dismissive & uncaring the medical world can be.

[CN miscarriage] i also find it disgusting how, a day after many ppl shared their own painful experiences of pregnancy loss in the wake of chrissy teigen’s, these bigots choose to exploit those experiences, that pain, for their own hateful purposes. not in my name!

if these women cared a jot about the dignity & safety of those of us who have to go through these things alone & in public/shared spaces, they’d organise & offer their considerable resources to support us & change things. instead they’re policing where ppl piss. pathetic.

the final point is less crucial but i think it’s also important to note the slippage in argument from a blog about a private company’s internal practices to a broad defence of the present system of public toilets. as if that system doesn’t need a complete overhaul anyway!

this to me is the basic truth of TERFism: no positive vision, no transformative horizon: in TERF world, everything stays shit for women, but certain women are excluded from even that shitness. not an inspiring philosophy imo.