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The Combahee River Collective is a black, lesbian, feminist organization that was founded in 1974 in Boston, Massachusetts. Barbara Smith, one of the founders, named it after the raid led  by Harriet Tubman on the Combahee River on June 2nd, 1863. The other two founders were her sister, Beverly Smith, and Demita Frazier. The CRC, which operated from 1974 -1980, was a group formed after breaking off from the National Black Feminists Organization.

This week, the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee quietly changed its rules to exclude transgender women from competing in women’s events. The decision cites "safety" and "fairness," but the reality is far more insidious. It’s an endorsement of the same paternalistic myth we’ve fought for decades: that women are fragile things in need of guarding, rather than full participants deserving of autonomy.