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Read the full article at Harper’s Bazaar.
“According to Nancy Jo Sales, an author and journalist who spent years interviewing girls ages 13-18 about their relationships with social media, one of the barriers to having a productive discussion about the unhealthy nature of such relationships is the relatively modern notion that selfies, nude pictures, and lip enhancements are an expression of personal empowerment, or feminism. Sales told me that some of her subjects seemed to have been so conditioned by advertising and media to believe that sexualization equals feminism, that simply asking whether the constant adjustment of their appearance using editing software (then looking in the mirror and seeing the un-retouched image) might be bad for their self-esteem, sometimes left them upset. “Some of them think that even raising the question is being sexist. That’s the dirty little trick of this messaging. Anyone who questions whether sexualization is feminism is ‘sexist’.”
‘Empowerment’ – ugh!
A quite comprehensive list. Female erasure is a serious problem in our society and we should move to ensure that the rights of Women are preserved.
“Here is a list of the Human Rights of Women that so-called Transgender Rights are eliminating. No one is saying Trans folk should not have rights, but what IS wrong is that trans activists are denying and destroying the Human Rights of women—and children who have no voice at all. Read this list—and wonder. And then, get angry . Here is the list , prepared by Gallus Mag, a blogger and writer in the women’s community…
Removing the legal right of women to organize politically against sex-based oppression by males
Removing the legal right of women to assemble outside the presence of men
Removing the legal right of women to educational programs created for women outside the presence of men
Eliminating data collection of sex-based inequalities in areas where females are underrepresented
Elimination of sex-based crime statistics
Eliminating athletic programs and sports competition for women and girls
Removing the legal right of women to be free from the presence of men in areas of public accommodation where nudity occurs
Elimination of grants, scholarships, board and trustee designations, representative positions, and affirmative programs for women
Removing the legal right of women to create reproductive clinics, rape crisis services, support groups, or any organizations for females
Eliminating media and all public discourse specific to females
Removal of the right of journalists to report the sex, and history, of subjects
Eliminating the legal right of lesbians to congregate publicly
Elimination of lesbian-specific organizations and advocacy groups
Removing the legal right of women to free speech related to sex roles and gender
Elimination of the legal right of women to protection from state-enforced sex-roles (appearance/behavior/thought)
Elimination of the legal right of girls to protection from state-enforced sex-roles in public education
Elimination of the patient right of dependent females to hospital/facility bed assignments separate from males
Elimination of the right of dependent females to prefer female providers for their intimate personal care requirements
Elimination of the human right of female prisoners under state confinement to be housed separately from male prisoners” (from here)”
“There has been little acknowledgement of the way in which trans politics demands far more of women than it does of men, perhaps because this would require an acknowledgement of the fact that male/female remains as much, if not more, of a dominant axis of oppression as trans/cis. Why aren’t we claiming that “men” needs to become a more inclusive category? If men can get pregnant too, why aren’t men’s rights activists campaigning for abortion rights? Why does pregnancy become a de-politicised “people’s” issue while testicular cancer remains a men’s issue? If sex is irrelevant, why are female people always the ones expected to cede linguistic and physical ground?
Pregnant with my third child, I faced more than one self-righteous male informing me that “biological sex is a construct.” The arrogance of this is staggering. Every single human being on this planet exists because of the reproductive labour of female bodies. Around 830 women die every day due to preventable pregnancy complications. The world is missing an estimated 90 to 100 million women due to the extermination of female – not feminine – infants. In such a situation, to boldly declare that you “see no sex difference” reveals both ignorance and privilege. We’re back to the idea that female people cannot be credible witnesses to their own lives.
If men were genuinely invested in supporting trans women, there’s an obvious thing they could do: stop pretending it is inevitable for “masculine” men to respond with violence to the idea that those who wish to socially transition to womanhood remain biologically male. As feminists have been arguing for decades, maleness and femininity can coexist. If the thought of that makes some men violent, then the problem lies with how men see maleness, not with feminists refusing to treat womanhood as a catch-all category for anything men don’t want to be.
Andrea Dworkin suggested when it comes to justifying misogyny, the right has religion while the left has nature. Trans politics has offered up a suitably postmodern amalgam of both. Are we dealing with scientifically verifiable proof of the “gendered” brain? Or with some mystic, soul-like essence known as “gender identity”? In many ways, it doesn’t matter which, as long as both are reinforcing a male view of how masculinity and femininity work.
I am tired of men posing as more open-minded than feminists, when in fact they’re behaving in the exact same way men have always behaved towards women. If you’re a male person telling a female person to be silent about her experiences of gender and power, you’re not only doing feminism wrong, you’re exemplifying the very values you claim to undermine.”
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Mystro
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