TERFs + TRANS FEMINIST SUFRAGETTE HISTORY with Clare Tebbutt

The legacy of the English suffragettes is being weaponised by transphobes, with TERFs co-opting the purple, white, and green suffragette colours and claiming that they too are fighting for the rights of women. The life and work of the suffrage campaigner Eva Gore-Booth’s expose some of the massive issues with TERFS arguing that they are part of feminist history. Eva Gore-Booth (1870-1926), the younger sister of Countess Markievicz, campaigned for women’s rights and for workers’ rights alongside her working-class partner, Esther Roper (1868-1938). Eva and Esther eschewed the jingoistic, and militaristic turns taken by many of their fellow suffrage campaigners with the advent of the first world war and instead involved themselves in peace campaigning. Eva was also an editor of the journal Urania (1916-1940), alongside trans woman Irene Clyde, which highlighted and applauded accounts of gender variance, with its motto: “Urania denotes the company of those who are firmly determined to ignore the dual organization of humanity in all its manifestations. They are convinced that this duality has resulted in the formation of two warped and imperfect types. [...] There are no “men” or “women” in Urania.” It is not just that TERFs are ignoring the queer and trans histories of the suffrage campaign: by aligning themselves with the suffragettes as a whole, they are also aligning themselves with those suffragettes who joined the British Union of Fascists and promoted an imperialist vision of 'feminism'. With British TERFs trying to export their transphobia to Ireland, and transphobes maintaining that the Countess would have been on their side, this is a history that demonstrates the imperialism and lack of feminism central to transphobic arguments.