Trans group 'BASH BACK' targets Brighton Centre - FiLiA has “blood on their hands”

'BASH BACK', a "trans-led direct-action project", has targeted the Brighton Centre ahead of this weekend’s FiLiA Conference to “to prove trans people will not be intimidated”, adding FiLiA should “expect retaliation” if they continue.

The group, which accuses FiLiA of having “blood on their hands”, smashed windows and sprayed pink paint on the building in protest at the “anti-trans views expressed by FiLiA attendees”.

A spokesperson for 'BASH BACK' said: “Despite presenting itself as a feminist conference with ‘zero tolerance […] for transphobia’, FiLiA plays host to some of the most vicious transphobia in modern pop-politics.

“The conference’s notable alumni include JK Rowling and Maya Forstater, and this year feature bigot-provocateurs such as Julie Bindel, LGBAlliance and Transgender Trend, as well as Jenny Wilmott, director of Scottish Lesbians - one of the groups responsible for this year’s segregationist and transphobic Supreme Court ruling.

“Speakers at FiLiA claim to advocate for ‘protecting women’s spaces’ and ‘sex based rights’ but routinely advocate for the erasure of women’s bodily autonomy and self determination. Their vile and hateful rhetoric that seeks to exclude and erase us leads to the same kind of discriminatory violence that kills hundreds of trans people every year. 

“Far from outsider radicals, the bigots at FiLiA are backed by billionaires like J.K. Rowling, fundamentalist Christian groups, and the Labour government itself. This is the norm, and we will rise against it. To save ourselves, to save our community. To fight for our right to exist.

“Bindel, Wilmott and FiLiA itself have our blood on their hands, and for years they have sought a stage to gloat about it. This year, we will not allow them the privilege.

“'BASH BACK' recognises the speakers at FiLiA as neither radical nor feminist, and, like the suffragettes and radical queers before us, that the only path toward liberation is through action.”

The 'BASH BACK' spokesperson added: “To the organisers of FiLiA we say this: If you expect to continue in your trade of transphobic hate, if you expect to continue in your queerbashing and transmisogyny and call it ‘feminism’, then expect resistance, expect retaliation, expect us. Paint washes off, but blood never does.”