TERFS
At the time of London Pride, when a small number of lesbians placed themselves at the front of the parade to object to what they consider the lesbophobic character of contemporary trans activism, had been reading Lillian Faderman’s autobiography Naked in the Promised Land. In the 1960s Faderman’s then girlfriend, Nicky, a butch writer, was arrested. She was broke, and Faderman had advised her to femme up and go look for a job. A police officer mistook her for a trans woman, and took her in.
Looking at the handful of women who protested London Pride, wondered at how women who all their lives have experienced discrimination because of their ‘failed’ status as women – their failure to be straight women – could agitate for state codification and conservation of ‘womanhood’.