WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GENDER POLITICS' WAR ON WOMEN, THE FEMALE SEX AND HUMAN RIGHTS

ANTHOLOGY CONTRIBUTORS

IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

LANE ANDERSON

Exiles In Their Own Flesh: A Psychotherapist Speaks

Lane Anderson (a pseudonym), is a practicing psychotherapist who has worked extensively with “trans teens” and their families. She shares with us her clinical insights into her clients, adolescent psychology, and the impact of the transgender phenomenon on our society as a whole.

TEMPLE ARDINGER

“Neighbor Boy”

Temple is a bisexual feminist witch. She is active in protecting female sovereign space and women's right to discuss and name our experience of womanhood. She shares the story of her journey from “daddy's girl” to “neighbor boy” and how finding her connection to Goddess and working within women-only circles helped heal those wounds.

RUTH BARRETT

The Attack On Female Sovereign Space In Pagan Community and Eve Was Framed

Ruth Barrett is spiritual feminist clergy (ordained elder Priestess), seasoned ritualist, and educator in the Dianic tradition where the Goddess and the female body is the central religious metaphor. Rituals exclusively celebrate the female life cycle and support healing and liberation from gender oppression. She is also an award winning pioneering goddess-centered musician/singer and author of Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries – Intuitive Ritual Creation (3rd Edition, Tidal Time Publishing, 2018), and has contributed to several anthologies, including Foremothers Of The Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries (Taneo Press, 2015). Ruth has provided rituals, classes, and conferences held in sacred female-sovereign spaces for women and girls for four decades. www.guardiansofthegrove.org and www.dancingtreemusic.com.

CATHY BRENNAN

Ground Zero: The Clash of Gender Identity Protections and Women's Space

Cathy is a feminist activist, blogger of Gender Identity Watch, and attorney. Her essay explores how overbroad gender identity protections are negatively impacting the most vulnerable Women and Girls in our society - women who are incarcerated, girls who are housed in foster care or other protective facilities, homeless women and girls, and women and girls seeking support after sexual violence. It will detail legal developments that infringe on female bodily autonomy and discuss how such laws violate international human rights standards.

DOMINIQUE CHRISTINA

The Period Poem

Dominique is a National Poetry Slam Champion, two-time winner of the Women of the World Slam Championship, and author of the poetry collections: The Bones, The Breaking, The Balm published by Penmanship Books, and They Are All Me by Swimming With Elephants Publishing. Her third book, This is Woman's Work by SoundsTrue Publishing received starred reviews in Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly. Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post and Upworthy and can also be found in numerous literary journals, magazines and anthologies.

CRASH

Reclaiming Female/Speaking Back

Crash is a radical butch dyke and aspiring farmer. She tries to draw insight from what she’s lived through and writes to help other women, especially those healing from trauma, dysphoria and dissociation. She blogs at crashchaoscats.wordpress.com.

ALIX DOBKIN

The Erasure Of Lesbians (with Sally Tatnall)

Alix is a lesbian-feminist activist and musician. After a folk singing career in the 1960’s, ALIX DOBKIN became a feminist, fell in love with a woman, and produced the groundbreaking 1973 “Lavender Jane Loves Women.” Six albums and one songbook later Alix was a 2009 Lambda Literary Award finalist, MY RED BLOOD: A Memoir of Growing Up Communist, Coming Onto the Greenwich Village Folk Scene, and published Coming Out in the Feminist Movement.

MAYA DILLARD SMITH

Federal Court’s Denial of Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Directive A Win for Everyone

Maya is a civil and human rights activist, legal scholar, political strategist, and news commentator. She is the Founder of FindingMiddleGround.org. and former Chief Executive of the ACLU of Georgia. Equipped with a degree from the UC Berkeley as a teen mom, a Master’s from Harvard at age 23, and a law degree from UC Hastings while raising three daughters, Ms. Dillard Smith is a nationally recognized voice on controversial issues with a demonstrated track record of working with strange bedfellow, often acrimonious stakeholders across the political spectrum to problem solve value-based solutions for all.

GALLUSMAG (PSEUDONYM)

Into the Mind of Kosilek: Grace’s Daughter – A Book Review Transgender Rights: The Elimination of the Human Rights of Women

GallusMag is the author of GenderTrender, a website focused on trends in gender and the most popular long-running gender website in history. One reviewer called GenderTrender "The motherlode of gender-critical analysis and opinion." Gallus Mag is a working class butch lesbian who spends her days moving boxes from one location to another when not minding the blog in her spare time: Gendertrender.wordpress.com

ELIZABETH HUNGERFORD

Female Erasure, Reverse Sexism, and the Cis Theory Of Gender

Elizabeth Hungerford is a feminist writer at sexnotgender.com and ehungerford.com. She is also the co-founder of a public discussion group about the contentious politics of gender. As an attorney, she is particularly interested in class-based analysis of gender, identity, women-only spaces, and the philosophical contradictions created by protecting "gender identity" as a matter of law.

SHEILA JEFFREYS

“Transgender Equality Verses Women’s Equality: A Clash Of Rights? Written Evidence Submitted To The Transgender Equality Inquiry

Sheila Jeffreys has been a feminist activist in UK and Australia for more than forty years. She is the author of nine books including Gender Hurts: a feminist analysis of the politics of transgenderism, (2014, Routledge). She is a Professorial Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne and now lives in the UK. Jeffries submits on evidence to the transgender equality inquiry.

NEDRA JOHNSON

The WANTED Project

Nedra Johnson is a touring singer songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, blogger and podcast producer living in New York City. Her work, whether music, writing or podcasting centers women and our fight for autonomy. Her WANTED Project Podcast series seeks to connect women who are often made invisible by lack of conformity to the social expectations and limitations forced upon women. http://www.wantedpodcast.com

NURIDDEEN KNIGHT

An African-American Woman Reflects On The Transgender Movement

Nuriddeen Knight is an alumna of Teachers College, Columbia University, where she earned an MA in psychology with a focus on the child and the family.

MARA LAKE (PSEUDONYM)

The Undoing Of A Unique Sisterhood

Mara Lake is a spirited professional wombyn committed to confronting issues of systemic inequality and co-creating win-win solutions. For wombyn everywhere she stands up for their fundamental right to privacy in all matters and supports the right of wombyn to make individual choices for their lives. In this personal essay she offers a pristine analysis of the troubling impacts of a biological male’s legally entitled intrusion upon an established wombyn’s community.

JULIA LONG

Transgenderism And Power Of Naming

Julia Long is a lesbian feminist who has been active in the women's movement for a number of years, particularly in campaigns against all forms of male violence: she loves protests that involve lots of feminist singing and chanting! She is committed to women-only organizing, and to helping to support and rebuild lesbian feminist community, culture and politics. She believes that a visible lesbian feminist community is vital to the survival of all women, and considers herself fortunate beyond words to have attended the final Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in 2015. Julia currently teaches Sociology at Anglia Ruskin University.

VAJRA MA

The Universe Is Her Form

Transcending ‘movements’ and ‘waves’, Vajra Ma is the leading exponent of women’s womb awakening in Feminist Spirituality. Based in her work with women’s subtle bodyknowing since the mid-1980’s, she originated the devotional moving meditation The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power®, the core practice of her mystery school and Priestess lineage Woman Mysteries of the Ancient Future Sisterhood®. Vajra Ma is author of From a Hidden Stream: The Natural Spiritual Authority of Woman and is published in numerous anthologies including Foremothers of the Women's Spirituality Movement. She is an ordained Dianic Priestess of Women’s Mysteries with Temple of Diana, Inc.

PATRICIA MCFADDEN

Why Women’s Spaces Are Critical To Feminist Autonomy

Patricia McFadden is a sociologist, activist, and radical African Feminist/Scholar, born in Swaziland. She lives and works in Zimbabwe as well as at the level of the regional and global women’s movement (She considers the Women’s Movement her home), and also conducts gender training for the United Nations system. She works particularly in conceptualising gender within the African context; making the distinction between Gender as a construct and Feminism as a political ideology/stance. She also works in Sexuality and Reproductive Rights/Health, and more recently she has been focusing on issues of citizenship and relations of property between African women and the state. Dr. McFadden was awarded the 1999 Hellman/Hammett Human Rights Award, an award that recognizes the courage of writers around the world who have been targets of political persecution.

PATRICIA MONAGHAN (1946-2012)

Mother

Visionary poet and scholar, Patricia Monaghan celebrated the mythic in the ordinary, the spiritual in the mundane, the sensuous in the scientific. Patricia was one of the pioneers of the contemporary women's spirituality movement and author of classic texts in the field of goddess scholarship. Her work focused on spirituality, peace, and environmental issues. Patricia was a Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at DePaul University, and a Founding Fellow of The Black Earth Institute, a think-tank for artists seeking to connect social justice, environment and spirituality. Patricia was honored with a Pushcart Prize, the Paul Gruchow Nature Writing award, and the Friends of Literature award for poetry.

AVA PARK

Female Erasure: A Sampler

Ava Park is Founder and Presiding Priestess of The Goddess Temple of Orange County, founded in 2004, the only brick and mortar goddess temple of its kind in the world, serving as a spiritual center holding sacred space for women's mysteries and magic and "empowering women to lead the world to goodness." She is the creatrix of the new Museum of Woman, a public feminist museum of educational and entertaining exhibits of the hidden history of Goddess veneration on earth. Park is the author of The Queen Teachings for Women ©, "empowering successful, self-actualized women to birth and lead a new civilization for humanity."

FALCON RIVER

The Bathroom

Falcon River is a 60’s vintage Butch woman from the southern United States. In 1978, she helped create and manage a women’s bar called “Mother’s Brew” that provided a feminist library, art gallery, and battered women’s safe space. Falcon was an informant for Baby, You’re My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall, by Marie Cartier, Ph.D., (2013), and The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival: An Amazon Matrix of Meaning, by Laurie J. Kendall, Ph.D., (2008). She is also included in Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, editor Barbara J. Love (2006). Falcon is a storyteller, traditional archery instructor, teacher of magical arts, and co-founder of Temple of Diana, Inc., with life partner Ruth Barrett.

JOAN F. ARCHIVE

(PSEUDONYM)

Mother’s Day: A Story

Joan F. Archive (pseudonym) is a women's studies professor and writer whose work addresses the history of women's struggle for education and legal equality.

MONICA ASENCIO

A Revolutionary Love Letter To Menarche

Monica is a Mexican American environmental feminist, a radical homesteader, co-parent of two teenage daughters, who were one and four when they came into her life, and co-owns a landscape company with her life partner that specializes in helping people grow their own food organically and cultivate for themselves a feeling of connectedness - where their life, and their time, means something real and important.

JENNIFER BILEK

In The Absence Of The Sacred: The Marketing Of Medical Transgenderism and The Survival Of The Natural Child (with Mary Ceallaigh)

Jennifer Bilek is a radical feminist and fine art painter living in NYC whose portraits are in private collections across the United States and Europe. In 2015 she exhibited her work at Art Basel Miami and the Salmagundi Club NYC. In Jennifer's words: "My work is bold and unapologetic. It does not lend itself to being demurely placed over a sofa to blend with the colors of someone’s living room.” Jennifer participated in and wrote about the Occupy Wall Street Movement at the time of it’s inception in NYC and has recently taken up the fight against the corporately fueled politics of Transgenderism and Gender Identity. http://jenniferbilek.com/index.html, http://jenniferbilek.com/interviews.html,
http://www.theupcoming.co.uk/?s=jennifer+bilek.

MARY CEALLAIGH

Radical Embodiment and the Reproduction Of Resistance In The Absence of the Sacred: The Marketing of Medical Transgenderism and The Survival Of The Natural Child (with Jennifer Bilek)

Mary Ceallaigh began feminist social justice activism in the Los Angeles area in the late 1980s. She is a graduate of Pacific Oaks College (B.A. Human Development) and Hygieia College Mystery School. Mary was co-author of NOW's 1999 Resolution To Expand The Definition of Reproductive Rights to Include Homebirth and The Midwifery Model of Care, and has apprenticed with radical midwives both in the U.S. and in Scotland. As a midwifery educator, she has been featured by ABC/NBC News, RTS Swiss National Radio, Radio Ireland, and others. Mary is a certified Kundalini yoga teacher and also practices Vipassana meditation & Ving Tsun kung fu.

DOUBLE XX HOWL (PSEUDONYM)

Censored Conversations in the Hallways of Academia

Double XX Howl is a published author who inhabits both the center and the margins. She is also a professor navigating the gender discourse wars.

KATHY CROCCO

Pseudoscience Supplants Female Athletes' Olympic Dreams

Kathy Crocco has participated in women’s sports as an athlete, coach, official, and passionate spectator. She has dedicated the last forty years to volunteering with her local Special Olympics organization.

CAROL DOWNER

Females Need Our Spaces For Development Of Feminist Consciousness

In 1972 Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman founded the nation’s first women’s self-help clinic in Los Angeles. Carol and Lorraine traveled the country to spread the idea of self-help, leaving in their wake a network of Feminist Women’s Health Centers from California to Florida. The L.A. FWHC provided the full range of services for women’s needs, including legal abortions, until it closed in 1984. Carol, an attorney specializing in civil law, has edited or co-authored numerous books and articles in the field of women’s health. Recipient of the 2013 Margaret Sanger Award from the Veteran Feminists of America, Carol organizes the website www.Womenshealthinwomenshands.org.

ILA SUZANNE GRAY

Song For Menopause

Ila Suzanne Gray lives in Portland, Oregon where she is working on her fourth collection of poetry. Her poem Then There Were the Wimmin was produced as performance art at the Los Angeles Women's Building. She collaborated with Kay Gardner on the oratorio Ouroboros: Seasons of Life, A Woman's Passage. Her poems appear in in We'Moon Calendars and other pagan, lesbian and literary journals including, Gertrude and Windfall, A Journal of Poetry of Place. She is a mixed media artist, a Dianic, a Buddhist and a Stone Crone. Her profound and unambiguous female aesthetic leaves an indelible impression.

ELSA GIDLOW (1898 – 1986)

A Creed For Free Women

The closing words of this anthology are spoken by English born, Elsa Gidlow, a poet who in 1923 published, On A Grey Thread, the first openly lesbian love poetry in the United States. She promoted alternative spiritualities including goddess worship, and her poetry expressed a deeply physical/spiritual understanding of powerful female realities. In the 1950s, Gidlow helped found Druid Heights, a bohemian community in Marin County, California. She was the author of thirteen books and appeared as herself in the documentary film, Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977). Completed just before her death, her book Elsa, I Come With My Songs (1986), became the first published lesbian autobiography.

HYPOTAXIS

(PSEUDONYM)

On Language & Erasure

Hypotaxis is a radical feminist dyke blogger. Her sporadic musings on gender, feminism, and popular culture can be found at patheticfallacies.wordpress.com.

RACHEL IVEY

End Of Gender: Revolution, Not Reform

Rachel Ivey organizes against male violence and in support of female autonomy. Having taken the long road toward radical feminist ideas, she speaks and writes from experience about the conflicts between radical and liberal conceptions of feminism. She currently splits her time between grassroots and mainstream feminist organizing, and learns much from the intersections and divergences between the two.

LIERRE KEITH

The Girls And The Grasses

American writer, radical feminist, and environmentalist, Lierre Keith is author six books, including the novels Conditions of War and Skyler Gabriel. Her non-fiction works include the highly acclaimed The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. She is coauthor, with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet (Seven Stories Press, 2011) and she’s the editor of The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution (Seven Stories Press, 2012). She’s been arrested six times for acts of civil disobedience. Her writing and lectures focus on civilization’s violence against the planet, male violence against women, and the need for serious resistance to both. www.lierrekeith.com

DR. KATHLEEN “KELLY” LEVINSTEIN

Social Work Professor Speaks Out On Behalf Of Her FtM Autistic Daughter

Dr. Kathleen Levinstein, PhD, LCSW, LMSW is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan, Flint. Among many other accomplishments, Dr. Levinstein was a Heilbein Scholar at the NYU School of Social Work, where she also taught, and has directed and provided clinical services for people with disabilities for many years, primarily in New York and New Jersey. Dr. Levinstein has been a clinical and research social worker for 40 years, and according to the International Federation of Social Workers the only out Autistic PhD level Social Worker, not just nationally but also globally. She worked as a consultant for the Archdiocese of NY and NJ, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and at the nation’s largest insurer authorizing care for Autistics and investigating fraud before beginning life as a full time academic and researcher. Her research and advocacy work includes human and civil rights violations against the autistic community.

SARA ST. MARTIN LYNNE

Yes All Women and

#ApologizeToMichfest

Sara St. Martin Lynne is a blogger and award winning film director and producer. She was an official videographer for the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival for nine consecutive years and is also the creator and curator for Voices From the Land - An Online Collective Memoir of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, a website where over 200 women and girls have shared their Festival experiences. Sara's popular blog fishwithoutabicycle.com is comprised of autobiographical essays all related to her own female experience, spirit, community and resilience under patriarchy.

KATHY MANDIGO, M.D.

My Disservice To My Transgender Patients

Kathy Mandigo is a general physician in Vancouver who has practiced medicine for over thirty years. She has worked in private practice and community health, including many years in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. She also has a Master's degree in Health Care and Epidemiology, and has worked at the Canadian HIV Trials Network, the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, and Health Canada.

JACKIE MEARNS

Gas Mark Six

Jackie is a radical lesbian feminist who lives in Scotland. She came to her feminist consciousness as a survivor of domestic abuse by a transgendered man. Her experience opened her eyes to the myriad ways that women's voices are silenced when they need to tell the truth about their lived experiences, how the very language that women need to define ourselves is being stripped from us, and how the precious bonds between us are being broken as the forces that forbid us to connect with each other in our own spaces grow in momentum. She is committed to raising women's voices in any way she can, and believes that defending women's right to define their own reality and to set their own boundaries is the ground zero of feminism. She says, "Being with a man who insisted that he was a lesbian helped me realize that the only actual lesbian in that relationship was me." She blogs at: https://naefearty.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/one-is-lonely-two-is-a-revolution/

BARBARA MOR (1936 - 2015)

The First Sex: In The Beginning We Were All Female (with Monica Sjöö)

Barbara Mor was an American poet, author, editor, and feminist of the twentieth-century Goddess movement. She became most widely known for The Great Cosmic Mother, (co-authored with Monica Sjöö), a cross-disciplinary study that cites numerous archaeological, anthropological, historical and mythological texts and artifacts as evidence of women’s role as creators and first practitioners of humanity’s earliest religious and cultural belief systems.

PHONAESTHICA (PSEUDONYM)

Transparent: Spitting On Michfest's Grave

Phonaesthetica blogs from the American Southwest, where she keeps an eye out for the same old woman-hating derp disguised as progress. She looks like a salad, but identifies as a meatloaf. When it comes to television, she loves with a love that is more than love; just like Annabel Lee, except without all the chilling wind and sepulchers. She spent four happy Augusts at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

MAX ROBINSON

I Am Not A Waste Of A Woman

Max Robinson is a lesbian living with her girlfriend, her psychiatric service dog, and their four cats in Southern Oregon. She works in group homes, supporting developmentally disabled adults in foster care. Her recent novel, Laika, as well as other works are available at gumroad.com/wearethecatfish and wearethecatfish.com.

KATHY SCARBROUGH

The Difference Between Sex And Gender And Why It Matters

Kathy Scarborough is a scientist, with a B.A. degree in biochemistry and a Ph.D. in physiology with specialization in the female reproductive neuroendocrinology. She was active in local women's liberation groups in the late 70s a member of Redstockings in the 1980s and became an associate editor of Carol Hanisch's publication Meeting Ground in the 1990s. She is currently an editor of MeetingGroundOnline, the webmaster for Hanisch's web site, a dues-paying feminist of Redstockings, National Women's Liberation and Women's Liberation Front. She agitates for other freedom struggles in addition to women's liberation because oppression due to race, class and sex all have to go.

SALLY TATNALL

The Erasure Of Lesbians (with Alix Dobkin)

Sally is a life long activist working to combat racism, sexism, and classism. She is active locally with anti racism work. She works at a local abortion clinic she helped start in the 70s, and attends activities for lesbians over 50 where she raises feminist issues because some lesbians are not feminists. She works to preserve women-only space for women born women and has lived to see too many of the organizations she started in the 70s disappear.

SHARON THRACE (PSEUDONYM)

Destruction Of A Marriage: My Husband's Descent Into Transgenderism

Sharon Thrace is an artist, a software developer and a published writer on the topics of entertainment, politics, and feminism. Her essay details the rapid demise of her seemingly loving, stable 15-year marriage when her husband came out as transgender. She further details the experience on her blog at https://transwidow.wordpress.com.

MARIE VERITE (PSEUDONYM)

The Surgical Suite: Modern-Day Closet For Today’s Teen Lesbian

Marie Verite is the creator of the blog 4thWaveNow (www.4thwavenow.com). She is the mother of a teenaged daughter who suddenly announced she was a "trans man" after a few weeks of total immersion in YouTube transition videos. After much research and fruitless searching for an alternative online viewpoint, this mom began writing about her deepening skepticism of the ever-accelerating medical and media fascination with the phenomenon of “transgender children.” 4thWaveNow has expanded to feature not only Marie’s writing, but that of other parents, formerly trans-identified women, and people with professional experience with young people who are questioning their gender identity.

MARY LOU SINGLETON

Gender, Patriarchy, And All That Jazz

Mary Lou Singleton is a radical feminist midwife, mother, and family nurse practitioner. She has served on the board of directors of the Midwives Alliance of North America and the advisory board of the Stop Patriarchy Abortion Rights Freedom Ride. She is the chair of the Reproductive Sovereignty task force of the Women's Liberation Front.
http://womensliberationfront.org

MONICA SJÖÖ (1938 - 2005)

The First Sex: In The Beginning We Were All Female (with Barbara Mor)

Swedish born Monica Sjöö was a radical anarcho/eco-feminist and Goddess artist, writer and thinker involved in Earth spirituality. She co-authored the classic, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (1975) with Barbara Mor, and the first chapter opens this anthology. Monica’s paintings were inspired by the veneration in ancient cultures of the Great Mother, the Earth and she exhibited throughout Europe and in America. Her most famous work is "God giving birth" (1968) became a feminist icon by depicting God as a Black woman and the human creation as a real birth.

YEYE LUISAH TEISH

Patriarchy In Drag: Sexual Imperialism In Africa, and Delusional Revisionism in the African-American Community

Luisah Teish is an initiated elder and womanchief in the Ifa/Orisha tradition of the African diaspora. She is the author of Jambalaya: the Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals and the Founding Mother of Ile Orunmila Oshun (the house of Destiny and Love). Yeye performs divinations, teaches classes in Spiritual Guidance, and conducts intensive workshops in Women's Rites of Passage, Sexual Abuse Recovery, and Women's Empowerment. She is a ritual theater director and mixed media artist. Her article addresses Sexual imperialism, spiritual culture appropriation/misrepresentation, and the impact of "patriarchy in drag" on the psyche and culture of African American women.

DEVORAH ZAHAV

The Goddess Of Autotomy

Devorah Zahav is a lesbian separatist who blogs at RedressAlert.tumblr.com about her experience of stopping ftm transition, the causes and meanings of dissociation from femaleness, and building paths toward integration and identification with all varieties of female reality. She founded Autotomous Womyn’s Press, publisher of Blood and Visions: Womyn Reconciling With Being Female. She was honored to participate in the final Closing Ceremony of the final Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

ADDITIONAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

to the following quotation contributors:

Ruth Barrett, Cathy Brennan, Karen Cayer, Kathy Crocco, Mary Daly, Therese Hill, and Shiela Jeffreys.