For the past week or so there has been a twitter hashtag that generated some attention. The hashtag in question is #sharedgirlhood. Trans* women (both white and of color) brought attention to the fact that the hashtag was being promoted by a known transphobic feminist, Victoria Brownworth. Brownworth went on to defend herself claiming that there was nothing exclusionary in the hashtag, a statement that, taken at face value, could be true (in the sense that the hashtag could be used in an inclusive way to share experiences both from trans women’s childhood and cis women’s childhoods). However, it is Brownworth’s past as a known TERF that, rightfully, rendered the hashtag suspect.
Then she wrote a long piece about how she was being silenced and attacked by “mean people”. She called it “my hashtag” and went on about how “it went viral”. However, Brownworth is being historically deceptive in her piece. The hashtag is certainly not “hers” and it was, in its inception, created by a known transphobic feminist as a tool to “school” a Black woman who wrote about her experiences as a young Black girl.
Here are the archival links (with relevant screenshots because I don’t trust them not to delete all this information).
First appearance of the #sharedgirlhood hashtag back in May. The creator, smashesthep, a known TERF whose blog is a collection of violent rhetoric against trans* people.
The piece she “objects” to is this one, written by Mia McKenzie and posted at Black Girl Dangerous. The hashtag in question, a mechanism to “school” a Black woman about the “correct” way to convey her experiences.
Notice the second tweet, also adding to the “schooling” of Mia McKenzie by claiming that the “shared girlhood” should be considered “above” race and/ or class. A true moment in white feminist intersectional thought and praxis (yes, the action of sending that tweet for all to read is also a form of praxis)
On the same day, smashesthep posted this on her blog:
The comments in that piece are a collection of white feminist dismissals of the experiences and knowledge produced by Black women and other Women of Color (included, but not limited to, pointing to how Native American women “aid men” in oppressing women).
And all these tweets started to materialize (all of them still available at smashesthep’s TL for anyone who’d want to check)
There are more at the link, I’m just offering these ones as examples.
So, let’s set the record straight: #sharedgirlhood was not started by Victoria Brownworth as she claims. She merely took it from someone else who did start it as a racist mechanism to “show” a Black woman the “correct” way of talking about her experiences. That both the person who originally started the hashtag and Brownworth have a documented history of transphobia and cissupremacy is more proof about the intentions behind this hashtag.
#sharedgirlhood: the hashtag started by transphobic, racist TERFs to teach the rest of us.
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