There’s a debate raging on social media. Are cis women treated differently than transgender women? And why does the topic cause such confusion?
TheGrio’s Marc Lamont Hill spoke to two people who tried to help break down the community at the center of this ongoing discussion.
The following is a transcript of that conversation.
Marc L. Hill: Much of the internet is engaging in conversation about womanhood after comedian Jess Hilarious released a series of thoughts that got backlash for her comments, specifically around the defense of cis womanhood. Her comments came in response to a TikTok video which was posted on Instagram from a trans woman saying cis women don’t own, quote, womanhood or periods.
(From social media clip) OK? You don’t own periods, you don’t own womanhood, you experience both. And both are different for every person. But as a cis woman, it doesn’t belong to you. So you can’t gatekeep it. Like, hello.
That TikTok clip got more than 17,000 comments and more than 18,000 shares on Instagram, including from comedian Jess Hilarious, who called this idea of gatekeeping womanhood delusional.
(From clip of Jess Hilarious) What is the difference between you and someone who has been diagnosed to be mentally insane? The only difference is you don’t have a straitjacket on. Stop talking out your (bleep). Wake up. How are you projecting your anger on real women? Because we are the gatekeepers. We are the gatekeepers for periods. We are the only one that (bleep) bleed, honey.
Jess Hilarious’ Instagram video got nearly 100,000 shares on the platform.
I want to bring in my panel to talk about this: We have Hope Giselle, a trans activist, national organizer and diversity and inclusion specialist. We have Dr. David Johns, the executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition. Hope, I’m going to start with you. I thought about you when I heard Jess’ comments. Can you just give me some context, first of all? I was confused. I saw Jess Hilarious trending, and I watched her video, and she seemed so upset. And it almost felt personal to me. And so I was trying to get the timeline. Did somebody attack her or come for her? I was trying to understand what happened. It’s like she was just responding to someone else’s thoughts. Did I miss something here?
Hope Giselle: I mean, what a lot of folks have missed is the story that Jess has told herself, which is that on several occasions, she’s been assumed to be a transgender person. And her comments in the past, she’s been assumed to be a transgender person by some of the very same folks that are rallying behind her now and talking about the need to preserve Black womanhood and natural Black womanhood. Those were the same people that have also attacked her and her womanhood. And so when we talk about this topic of transgenderism and Jess Hilarious specifically, I think that we are having a very personal conversation that takes a public platform because she has a public platform to be able to then dismantle it and double down on her womanhood by beating up on trans women verbally, which is ridiculous.
Hill: Hope, at the beginning, though, of this sort of thread, as we call it, there was someone saying that cis women were gatekeeping periods, and then some trans women were apologizing on behalf of the trans community for those comments. Help me understand what does it mean to gatekeep periods? Help us break down that thought process.
Giselle: Let me backtrack. That person does not speak for the entirety of the trans community, just like I don’t speak for the entirety of the trans community. And what I think is more important than the statement is the idea that in any other situation, we can name those things, right? We can understand or see Black women being loud or having a certain type of behavior and acknowledge that that’s not all Black women. But for some reason, whenever a trans person says something, and especially when it’s something that’s ignorant or a little controversial, people take that and run with it as the narrative. And I think that we’ve got to start there before we even take that and run with that statement. In and of itself, I’m sorry.
Hill: Agreed. I mean, I don’t even want to get into the person who said it. It’s the idea that I’m trying to unpack here. I think you’re right. When we say people are gatekeeping periods, the idea that somehow cis women are doing that. What do you think of that? And what does that even mean?
Giselle: They’re not. At the end of the day, cis women? Right? Non-binary AFAB people and trans men all menstruate. At the end of the day, it belongs to them. You cannot gatekeep something that is a natural function in your body. And as a large part of this conversation, I think that most trans women would agree that we stay out of conversations about menstrual cycles and uterus conversations and all of those things, regardless of how much people try to drag us back into them when trans men and non-binary AFAB people are the folks that are pushing for more inclusive language like birthing person and all of those things. That has nothing to do with transgender women, yet and still, we are always brought into the issues. And I think that it’s because folks have an issue with the idea of thinking or believing that men have chosen to give up masculinity for femininity, which most people don’t respect, including a lot of the women that have issue and take issue with trans women themselves.
Hill: David, as you advocate on a national platform, and really international platform, for LGBTQ folk, how do you think about this question of cis folk feeling like their identity is being erased? Because that’s one of the narratives we keep hearing in this conversation, you know; I hear people say, I care about trans women, I want to protect trans women. I love trans women. But I, as a Black woman, also want to address issues that are particular to cis women or particular to my womanhood. And I don’t want to disconnect things like my period from my womanhood, my pregnancy from my womanhood, and some of the language that’s inclusive in some ways ultimately erases us. What do you say to those people?
Dr. David Johns: Yeah. What I say to Black people who are fearful is that, that is by design. It is the anti-Blackness and the white supremacy of all of this, for me. None of us — those of us who want all Black people to be free, who understand the lesson and teaching of Fannie Lou Hamer that none of us are free unless and until all of us are free — are asking Black people to give up anything other than these mindsets which suggest that these are fights for us to be having. All of this reeks of white supremacy. The idea that we are defending gender constructs that are the result of colonial enterprise, the raping of African ways of being, the erasing of the fact that we have always existed in beautifully diverse ways is the design of white supremacy. And it’s a reminder that you don’t need to have white overseers or live on a plantation when some people, some members of our community, think it their right to police the ways that other people show up and take up space and try to live their lives freely.
The question that I continue to ask myself is not the symptom. I understand the symptom of this. The root cause is white supremacy. We all benefit from what my friend Stacy Battle calls white supremacy we have, we have as what’s the goal? What is the goal that people who are committed to defending these rigid gender constructs that were never designed to contain us, especially are we could be having important deep conversations about the challenges facing so many of us. Just this week, we see the Florida Department of Education try to legislate teaching of African-American history in ways that suggest that we profited, have benefited from enslavement, or that we all participated in it, so everybody’s equal. We could be having conversations about the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, which is quickly approaching us, which included Bayard Rustin, a Black gay man or same-gender loving man, and the fact that so many of us wake up every day wondering what rights are people going to take away from us, in addition to the way that we are being attacked. And I want us to focus on the fact that Black people are dying. We should all be working together to attack the systems rather than attacking each other. This honestly feels like a battle royale. What Frederick Douglass wrote about in the narrative of a slave. For folks who don’t know the reference, it feels like all of the white supremacy is watching us in an orchestrated, a Zeus network moment of combat. We should not be fighting each other. We should be fighting the systems that are designed to prevent us from being free, all of us being free.
Hill: Hope, I got about a minute left. I want you to help me make sense of this. You know, we hear Jess Hilarious. How do we respond to a moment like this? Help us understand how to respond. Should we be critiquing her? Should we be calling her in? Should we be showing solidarity by writing think pieces in video? Should we ignore it because it’s so harmful? Should I be interviewing her and trying to challenge her, or should I not give her a platform? I know, I’m not trying to put the weight of the world on you, but I would like some insight to how what allyship looks like, what you need.
Giselle: Well, first we need accomplices, not allies. We need people that are going to be in the paint with us. And secondly, I think that we need to understand that we can all disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement causes me oppression. And one of those things that I think that should be done is that there should be space for those conversations to happen without disrespect. We can all talk about things that we disagree about without having to make the other person feel like they’re less than human while doing so. And I think that that’s where folks missed the mark on this conversation. Trans people do not have the global appeal to oppress or take over or erase anyone. We’re point-five of the population. And the more that people understand that, the easier it will be to have this conversation.
Learn more about “the battle brewing between cis and transgender women” from the clip above, and tune into theGrio with Marc Lamont Hill every weeknight at 7 pm ET on theGrio cable channel.
TheGrio is FREE on your TV via Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku and Android TV. Also, please download theGrio mobile apps today!