Statement on Transphobia and Accountability

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The Feminist Library has been a collective for over 40 years. It began to archive the women’s liberation movement in the UK. Like many other feminist collectives, we have been sustained by groups of women who dedicated countless unpaid hours to ensure that we remained open despite threats of eviction, wrote applications to secure funding, expanded our collections and ran a wide number of events. This is work that is hard and often goes unseen but it is work that has sustained us. We want to thank the countless volunteers and those who have supported us over the years.

As an organisation founded 46-years ago, the Feminist Library has evolved through different periods in the history and political landscape of feminism, as well as through different members contributing to the collective. No individual member of the collective represents the group’s views as a whole and we feel it important to note that we come from different political histories as well as cultural and class backgrounds. However, while the Library has historically sought to encompass a wide variety of different perspectives, priorities, politics and stances, a by-product of this has been that we as a collective have failed to present a united and unequivocal stance on certain issues where it has been most needed. We strive to operate using non-hierarchical modes of organisation and decision-making, ensuring that all members of the collective feel they have an equal stake and claim to the decisions made. Over the past year, we have conducted a number internal “Organisational Culture” meetings amongst members of the core collective intended to address a wide range of issues included but not limited to: changing the external perception of the library, creating clear internal and external accountability procedures in order to hold each other to account, defining the characteristics of the space we aim to create and determining a long term vision for the Library that embraces contemporary feminism’s radical and inclusive thinking.

We understand that in an increasingly hostile conversation regarding trans inclusion from in the mainstream press and certain sects of feminism, it is important for us to reiterate that we are a trans-inclusive organisation and that we stand in solidarity with all trans people in the face of mockery, denigration, humiliation and discrimination with regards to accessing healthcare and other legal rights. We wish to reiterate as members of the collective that we believe that feminism is a political project that works in service of all of us.

Our Organisational Culture meetings led to a number of serious reflections of the library’s responsibility to trans people and our own internal and external failures on this issue. We understand and acknowledge that latent and active transphobia has been a part of the experiences of many of our volunteers in the past and that we were not attentive enough in challenging transphobia when and where it emerged. We understand that these events and instances were not addressed robustly due to a lack of clear, accessible accountability procedures. We wish to put an end to this by making our accountability processes clear and letting our community know about the ongoing conversations and action being taken on this issue. As part of our ongoing conversations, we are developing bespoke accountability procedures that include training for all members of the collective. Our Interim accountability procedures can be accessed hereWe encourage volunteers and members of the community to utilise these procedures.

Our position as a library is properly outlined in our extended inclusivity policy, which can be found below:

The Feminist Library is an intersectional feminist space. We will not tolerate sexism, homophobia, racism, transphobia, nor oppressive language or behaviour based on any structural inequality, including disability, socioeconomic status, sexuality, age, education, religious affiliation or gender expression.

We aim to be inclusive of all feminisms, and particularly welcome those who have historically been marginalised within society as a whole, and within the feminist movement. Our organisation is anti-sectarian, meaning we believe in coalition-building among people with different backgrounds and experiences. Respectful debate, discussion and learning are encouraged, provided all users abide by our community policy. 

We believe the library should be a space of learning, growth, care and community. As such, much time and energy have been put into thinking about the kind of space we would like to create. 

Everyone (trans, cis and intersex), who remains attentive to our community policy is welcome in our space and can volunteer with us. We do not police gender in our spaces. 

At the Feminist Library, we believe that feminism is a political framework that we can use to end all gendered violence and transform the world for everyone. There are a number of different kinds of feminism, we hope our archive shows how feminist thinking is beneficial for all. We understand gender and sex as constructed categories with meanings that have changed over time and are dependent on time periods, geographical location, culture, amongst a range of other factors. We wholeheartedly reject any feminist framework that seeks to define womanhood solely using biological essentialism or any feminism that seeks to re-inscribe rigid ideas of sex. We recognise that experiences of womanhood are diverse and that traditionally, many women, due to other factors such as race and class have also been unable to conform to prevailing ideas of what constitutes a woman. We also recognise that experiences of gender, in general, are diverse – feminism necessarily includes non-binary and gender non-conforming people and always has. Following a long tradition of writings and activism from black feminism, trans feminists and working-class women – we believe that there is not a singular, universal origin point for all women’s oppression across the globe nor should we attempt to find one. Our time is better spent remaining attentive to the dire social, political and economic conditions we experience as women and using feminism as a tool to end these conditions.

As a collective, we want to make clear our internal commitments to tackling transphobia. They are as follows:

– To reiterate our stance and community policy before every single event we hold and incorporate it into training for new volunteers (online or otherwise).

– Not to feature trans-exclusionary groups on our panels or other events at the Library, or allow them to book the Library for their own events. By “trans-exclusionary” we mean groups that promote or implicitly/explicitly support policy changes that directly restrict trans people’s access to resources, groups that do not allow trans people to access their services, groups who use “sex-based rights” as a means of querying and questioning trans people’s right to exist or to access resources.

– That one cannot be a member of the feminist library collective and be affiliated with trans-exclusionary groups.

– To hold events that specifically examine transfeminist politics, the history of trans women in radical organising and to form a public queer/trans reading group. To create a bank of resources and donation page on our website specifically related to trans rights.

– To apply more scrutiny to our fundraising/donations process with regard to this issue.

-To overhaul our archiving procedures to properly reflect contemporary shifts in feminism and create a new collections policy.

– Create a publicly accessible document that clearly states our accountability processes, ethos as an organisation and vision for the future.

– To provide updates about these commitments via Feminist Library Channels.

We want to draw a clear line that marks our internal and external changes as an organisation. The above commitments are merely a starting point that has emerged from our organisational culture meetings which will continue to change as we grow as a collective. We know there is more work to do and commit ourselves to do it over the coming months and years. We want to make them commitments publicly known in their infancy so there is no confusion about our political stance.

Collections:

Archiving feminist histories is no small task. Because feminism is a political framework with varied and competing demands, goals, aims and methods our collections contain a wide survey of material. The archives we house contain gaps, omissions and contradictions because it is impossible to tell a singular feminist story. We are working towards remedying the gaps in our collection and welcome a wide range of donated material in line with our community policy especially in relation to black feminism in the UK. Feminism’s strength is its plurality and we strive to ensure that our collections reflect this.

We acknowledge that archive and library collections, and the processes of acquiring, cataloguing, and providing access to material, are not neutral. We believe we can record and preserve the discourse around oppression and the struggle for rights without including literature that is published with the intent to cause harm. We are developing a Collection Development Policy that includes a commitment to critically reflecting on our methods and the systems we use and will make this publicly available.

Transformative Justice:

At the Feminist Library, we use the principles of transformative justice to rectify harm. This means that we aim to resolve disputes, disagreements and instances of harm without involving the police, the courts or legal routes. Instead, where possible, we will seek to enact a process that takes into account the specific needs of both parties and could include: mediation, intervention of varying degrees and the creation of a clear list of action/steps necessary to repair broken relationships. We believe in the capacity of members of the collective and volunteers to change and respond with humility and respect when asked to enter an accountability process and will exhaust all other possible routes in order to prevent the breakdown of accountability processes.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, we are always open to comments and feedback on our efforts.