After 20 years of existing on the Laurier campus, the WLU Women’s Centre has changed its name to the WLU Centre for Women and Trans People*!
Why a name change? Well, because calling it "The Women’s Centre" just doesn’t describe our demographic anymore. After a lot of discussion last year, we’ve made the decision to become a "trans-inclusive space".
What does that mean? Practically, it means that if you’re trans and don’t identify as a woman, but are passionate about fighting gendered oppression or just want a safe space to spend time in, you can now volunteer for the Women’s Centre! By expanding the demographic we serve to include all trans people, we hope to become a(nother) safe space for trans people at Laurier that is a bastion of trans rights, advocacy, and activism. We are working on making trans-positivity a grounding principle of our organization, and are committed to creating a safe and positive environment for trans folk to volunteer and be authorities within our space.
Why did we make this change? Lots of reasons:
The feminist movement has a history of excluding trans people, a history that we don’t want to be a part of. Many "woman-born-woman-only spaces" have historically excluded (and some still do exclude) trans women by reducing them to their biology and accusing them of trying to infiltrate spaces to which they didn’t belong. Trans men were (and are) accused of pandering to the patriarchy and being overwhelmed so badly by their internalized misogyny that all they could think to do was grab at any male privilege that they could. Non-binary trans people were (and are) usually ignored or dismissed altogether. In light of this oppressive history, many feminists today (cis and trans alike) work hard to try and make up for some of this discrimination by working to unlearn and stop teaching these restrictive understandings of sex and gender, and truly understand where we all fit into the complex web of power, privilege, and oppression that is gendered oppression. We’d like to engage in this work at our Women’s Centre.
Sexism and cissexism are really closely connected forms of oppression, and it doesn’t really make sense to talk about and address them as though they are completely separate systems. Both systems of thought argue that "male" and "female" are rigid, non-overlapping, mutually exclusive, "opposite" categories, and that the only "real" women are female, feminine, and attracted to men, and the only "real" men are male, masculine, and attracted to women. This system of thought is the cause of a great deal of violence and oppression in our society, and means that we can’t end sexism without talking about cissexism, and vice versa.
