Ten days ago a fellow “trans lesbian” talked to Susan Stryker about his plans to tell Irish lesbians what’s what.

The upcoming Lesbian Lives Conference in UCC will see the internationally renowned Susan Stryker giving a keynote speech. I spoke to her in advance of the conference, and, as a trans lesbian myself, I found her insights on trans people’s role at this point in world history incredibly illuminating.

Well naturally. What could be more illuminating than a man telling a man about their “role” in telling women what to do?

We also discussed being a trans woman within the wider lesbian and academic community. “There was Simone de Beauvoir saying one is not born, but rather one becomes a woman and there was Janice Raymond saying male to constructed females, so called transexual lesbians, are rapists trying to infiltrate the women’s community. I knew that I wasn’t that latter thing and Simone de Beauvoir made a lot of sense to me. I had a sense pretty early on as an 18 or 19 year-old that the issue of trans lesbianism was something that was debated within lesbian communities and that there were different positions on it.”

One, that’s not what Beauvoir meant about the not born but becomes item. Two, it’s nice that Stryker knows he’s not a rapist (not that we’re required to believe him) but it’s beside the point. It’s blindingly egotistical to think that saying “I’m not a rapist” is enough to settle all worries about men pretending to be women for purposes of rape.

“And so, as I was with people in loving relationships in my 20’s those questions about when to disclose and how to disclose and negotiating our own genders and sexualities and relationships, it was something that I feel like I did with integrity. I have tried being a public person to talk about issues that come up around trans issues, lesbianism and queerness, the LGBT community and sexual sub communities. To be a trans lesbian in the academic profession, and to bring my academic training to the community I feel I do my best to thread those needles and have good intention in what I do.

Those are words all right, but they don’t say anything. They also don’t make him a lesbian.

Given her insights, I then asked what can be done to combat [rejection of trans dogma]. “I really feel not just trans people, but many people who are in minoritised positions who are the targets of these kinds of ethno-nationalist, reactionary political movements, we all need to really figure out ways to take care of each other collectively, without thinking that state and society are always going to be on our sides.

“In the US context, I turn for wisdom to Indigenous and African American communities who’ve lived under occupation for half a millennium. It’s like, you are 400 years into the afterlife of slavery, how do you live and have joy and find meaning in life? There are cultural resources there. There’s historical wisdom and the experience of those communities that I think many of us who are targeted in different ways could learn from. I think, increasingly not in terms of, how can we win, how do we survive?”

I hope they tell him to gtfo and throw rotting apples after him. A great hulking tatooed white man with an academic job pretending he’s as marginalized and threatened as “Indigenous and African American communities” – how creepy and entitled can you get?