Reduxx, Feminist News and Opinion
written by Genevieve Gluck
Wednesday October 5, 2022
A group of feminists marching for women’s rights in Paris last week were physically assaulted by trans activists who tore up their signs and hurled slurs at them for being critical of gender ideology.
On September 28, a march was organized in Paris to support reproductive freedom. Two grassroots feminist groups, L’Amazone and Osez Le Féminisme, attended the demonstration to represent women’s sex-based rights, but their participation quickly drew hostility from the trans activists present.
The day of the march, footage was uploaded to Twitter by L’Amazone showing trans activists surrounding them and screaming while trying to rip their signs away.
Both groups have experienced past incidents of verbal and physical assault at the hands of trans activists for their opposition to the sex industry and their emphasis on the importance of biological sex as it pertains to women’s rights.
Désirée, an activist from L’Amazone who attended the protest, told Reduxx that the trans activists had apparently been actively asking around for her organization in order to target them for abuse.
After locating the women, trans activists managed to successfully steal some of their signs and destroy them. In one video taken by L’Amazone, a trans activist can be seen slapping the phone out of a woman’s hands as she attempts to record the incident.
Police and march security who were monitoring the events unfold refused to take action, even after Désirée approached and pleaded for help, something she says “shocked” her.
Surrounding the women, trans activists screamed “men can have abortions” in apparent retort to both groups’ opposition to gender ideology. They also yelled “TERFs get out,” and “stop transphobia!”
During the attack, one women’s rights advocate sustained a broken finger as she was grabbed and shoved.
After L’Amazone released footage of the violence and hostility their members had experienced, march organizers released a statement addressing the incidents. While it said it “condemns the violence,” it also lashed out at the women who had released footage showing police and security services doing nothing to protect the women being targeted.
Désirée responded with disappointment to the comments, stating: “Instead of clearly denouncing the aggression against us, they talk about the fact that we criticized their security service. The real problem is that we were systematically attacked during the march by the trans activists, and instead of defending us and naming our abusers, they incriminate us,” she said.
“Gender ideology hurts women. We can’t speak about our struggles without being harassed or insulted. We can’t even speak about our sex-based rights. We have to deny our womanhood because some people’s feelings might be hurt,” Désirée explained.
Désirée says that she recognized some of the attackers as individuals who had assaulted her organization on a separate occasion. Days prior to the September 28 incident, L’Amazone members were harassed by trans activists while demonstrating in support of Iranian women and their fight against compulsory hijab laws.
During a protest against sex trafficking held in Paris on International Women’s Day earlier this year, members of L’Amazone, as well as Osez le Féminisme and Résistance Lesbienne, were reportedly assaulted seven times in the span of 20 minutes.
That same day in Brussels, trans activists distributed leaflets explaining how to recognize “TERFs,” identifying them as women who promote “whore-phobic rhetoric.” The leaflets advised readers to “avoid discussion,” stating that “identities are not up for debate.”
The incidents echoed those of International Women’s Day in 2021, with violence directed at women demonstrating against the sex trade.
During a protest organized by the Coalition Against Pornography and Prostitution (CAPP), trans activists carried out a premeditated assault on the small group of women who had congregated at the Place de la République in Paris. The opposing activists, who referred to themselves as a pro-trans Antifa collective, hurled eggs at the women while chanting, “One TERF, one bullet, social justice.” Many of the women assaulted were survivors of sex trafficking.
Anissia Docaigne-Makhrova, a member of L’Amazone since its inception, spoke to Reduxx on how the situation for women’s rights campaigners has worsened this year.
Docaigne-Makhrova recalled that after last year’s attack, notable feminist figures and organizations publicly defended the women who had been abused. But following the incidents last week, no such support has emerged, and those directly involved with the organizers of the march were actually complicit in the hostility.
“Last week, the organizers of the demonstration took the side of the attackers. One of the women from the organizer’s event attacked us. She violently stole my sister’s phone while she was filming.”
Docaigne-Makhrova places a portion of the blame on France’s largest feminist organization, Nous Toutes, for publicly denouncing women critical of gender ideology as “TERFs.”
At the beginning of this year, Nous Toutes announced that the organization would no longer provide data on domestic femicides due to concerns over the sex-based data being used by “transphobes.”
Despite being founded to provide information on femicides, Nous Toutes recently condemned a volunteer women’s rights group, Féminicides Par Compagnons ou Ex, for accurately reporting that no trans-identified males had been murdered by domestic violence in France in 6 years. The comment was made in response to an inquiry asking why they had not released any femicide data on trans-identified males.
Nous Toutes condemned the anti-femicide organization for reporting on the lack of murders, stating that the information was “oppressive” and “otherwise illegal.”
When asked if she believes the statements made on social media by Nous Toutes resulted in increased threats and intimidation, Docaigne-Makhrova responded: “Absolutely. They helped expend the hatred towards feminists. Nous Toutes has made several public statement against ‘TERFs,’ allowing people to insult, threaten and assault us during demonstrations.”
Recently, street graffiti which wishes death on women branded “TERFs” has been documented in public spaces, including in the Paris subway.
L’Amazone was founded in 2020 by prominent French women’s rights activist Marguerite Stern in an attempt to break away from the trans activists who had overtaken her previous feminist collective, Collages Contre les Féminicides.
The collective, which Stern began in February 2019, consisted of street murals aimed at raising public awareness of sex-based violence against women.
But by January 2020, Stern’s project had been “hijacked” by gender ideology. Stern then created L’Amazone has endured countless death threats and members of L’Amazone have been singled out for abuse by their critics.
L’Amazone‘s street murals have been targeted by trans activists for destruction.
In July, a tribute to babies murdered by child abuse made by L’Amazone artists for a documentary on shaken baby syndrome was vandalized by trans activists. When asked why they were destroying the piece, the activists stated it was because it was made by “transphobic feminists.”
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