Event #4: Bread & Roses for All, and Hormones Too

It should come as no surprise that transfeminist demands are not so different to the demands of cis-centred feminism. Trans women, just like cis women, are in desperate need of the expansion of their rights regarding their bodily autonomy, access to healthcare, and reproductive justice. Despite what you might have heard trans and cis feminist struggles are in fact interwoven and share the same antagonists. In both cis and trans experiences, health is always a broader concept than the crudely medical. Whilst trans health and wellbeing can and does incorporate hormone therapy, gender confirmation surgeries, provision for biological reproduction impeded by these processes, and so on; it also extends to protection from violence, homicide and suicide, and material action to make all trans lives more livable and foster the conditions for their flourishing. Cis and trans women, along with all trans people who experience misogyny, must strike together for bodily autonomy and reproductive justice for all.

In this meeting we will discuss the interwoven nature of our struggles. How the struggles for abortion rights relates to trans struggles for healthcare provision and other reproductive rights. The difficulties faced by trans women seeking to establish networks of solidarity both within and beyond state-provided infrastructures, and how these affected by structures of oppression such as race, class, immigration status and ability. How trans people are creating autonomous communities of care; how they are meeting their material needs in a world where they are so often denied, and how broader feminism learn from and contribute to these practices.