Cathy Brennan

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[Cathy] Brennan, in case the name isn’t met by you with immediate, horrified recognition and a shiver down your spine (as thunder claps and the horses whinny), is one of the most vocal, adamant and bitter of the transphobic wing of radical feminism.
—Natalie Reed.[1]

Catherine "Cathy" Brennan is an attorney[2] in the state of Maryland and a prominent supporter of "trans-critical" radical feminism. Her main accomplishment in this regard is coauthoring a letter to the United Nations, insisting that trans people should not be extended human rights protections.[3] She is also a frequent columnist for Baltimore OUTloud's LGBTQ blog section, which she uses to warn of the coming "lesbian annihilation" at the hands of "the queers" and trans people[4] and stridently argue against legislation protecting gender identity.

She justifies some of her actions, such as the outing of queer youth to their schools,[5] by pointing to the things some people have said in response to her attacks (trivialization of violence against women, e.g). However, she seems completely apathetic about similar behavior among her "intellectual" kin.[6]

Contents

[edit] Fighting for Women's Rights

Brennan, as with other transphobic feminists, seems to believe that the only reason that people designated male at birth would identify as, live like, or transition to females, is because they want to enter female-only spaces and rape. This appears to be the entire premise of her letter to the UN.[3]

No woman would ever exercise agency in a way that Brennan does not approve of. Therefore, people designated female at birth who identify as, live like, or transition to male are necessarily suffering from patriarchy-induced self-hatred.[citation needed]

One of Brennan's favorite hobbies is scouring the internet for naked pictures of transfolk and reposting them on her blog.[7]

Another example of Brennan's attitude to transsexuals is the claim that no trans* people were killed in the Holocaust because the term "transgender" didn't exist at the time,[8][9] a bizarre twist of logic bordering on Holocaust denial. Apparently, she has a strict personal definition of "transgender": "Males who shoot themselves up with hormones and demand others accept them as female".[10]

[edit] Making the second wave even more useless

Building on the radical feminist distinction between sex and gender, she likes to use a distinction between male/female and man/woman, because apparently the insidious trans activists have stolen the term "woman" for their own nefarious purposes. A significant portion of her blog consists of yelling "But you're not female!" at trans women.[7]

She is also a self-identified "gender atheist," describing gender as a religion and equating it with "fashion."[1] Ironically, the analogy between gender and religion has been used by U.S. courts to help extend nondiscrimination rights to transgender people.[11]

She also believes that lesbians who identify as butch "have not understood radical feminism".[12] Presumably this is because "butch" is defined by reference to traditional ideas of maleness, so it supposedly perpetuates gender stereotypes - even while subverting them! In other words, she apparently thinks "though you should definitely have the right to be butch if you so choose, you shouldn't actually call yourself butch".

[edit] Call the FBI!

In June 2012, the feminist group Oakland Occupy Patriarchy began organizing a protest of police harassment of sex workers. Brennan pitched a fit and claimed to have called the FBI on them.[13]

[edit] Hypocrisy re: "harassment"

Cathy Brennan likes to post long lists of how people who supposedly share "her views" on transgender identities have been "attacked" because people disagreed with them or because their Tumblr or WordPress blogs were taken down. This doesn't only include her fellow transphobic radfems like Janice Raymond, but even random media personalities who were criticized online for using the word "tranny." In Brennan's eyes, this is apparently a serious violation of personal boundaries that invites Holocaust comparisons (as she reblogged a post paraphrasing the famous Martin Niemoller poem "First they came..."). Yet, this supposed crusader against harassment does far more invasive things to her critics, like posting the personal information of trans and allied activists on her page while encouraging her followers to harass them, or outing them to their schools. She also regularly trolls lesbian- or queer-women-focused blogs that are inclusive of trans women, even creating sockpuppets when she's been previously banned for her hateful comments such as insisting trans women commenters are men. She has also used language like "retarded" in comments on her blog to describe people who criticize her.

In addition, she also cried harassment and abused her position as a lawyer when a woman (who Brennan and her ilk incorrectly assumed was trans, since they can't comprehend a non-trans lesbian disagreeing with Brennan) said on Twitter that she wanted to spit in Brennan's face. This is apparently much more severe than posting the addresses of people you don't like and encouraging your followers to harass them.

[edit] RationalWiki

Brennan does not think very highly of us here at RationalWiki, writing:

Miranda Martell [nom de plume of User:Blue] is a student ... who likes to harass Lesbians and Females in her spare time by moderating RadFeminist Scorpions and writing for RationalWiki, a known manarchist bro space!
[14]

[edit] External links

Aggravation warning!

[edit] Footnotes

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