Daily Archive

Wow.  Patriarchal reversals brought to you by the WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre.

“As a trans-inclusive anti-violence organization, we feel a sense of responsibility to provide a counter-narrative to this trans-exclusionary radical feminism. It’s no secret that there is a long, difficult history between feminism and trans people.”

Local Transactivists lobbied Vancouver city council to defund the Vancouver Rape Crisis and Woman’s Shelter because they had a female only policy.  Sex is a protected characteristic under the Canadian Charter.  Dr. Jones clearly illustrates the problem:

Let’s go through and do a rough line by line response to the highly inclusive blog post put put by the WAVAW.

“This history is rooted in the right wing ideology that queer and trans people and their issues are somehow oppositional to the issues of cisgender women and feminism as a whole.”

There would be less strife and problematic history between transactivism and radical feminism if we could all agree on material, biological reality.  Human beings cannot change sex.  A woman is correctly defined as an adult human female.

Bullshit. – What Radical Feminist Analysis of Gender looks like…

 “[…]  Disagreeing with someone, however, is not a form of violence. And we have a big disagreement.

Radical feminists are critical of gender itself. We are not gender reformists–we are gender abolitionists. Without the socially constructed gender roles that form the basis of patriarchy, all people would be free to dress, behave, and love others in whatever way they wished, no matter what kind of body they had.

Patriarchy is a caste system which takes humans who are born biologically male or female and turns them into the social classes called men and women. Male people are made into men by socialization into masculinity, which is defined by a psychology based on emotional numbness and a dichotomy of self and other. This is also the psychology required by soldiers, which is why we don’t think you can be a peace activist without being a feminist.

Female socialization in patriarchy is a process of psychologically constraining and breaking girls—otherwise known as “grooming”—to create a class of compliant victims. Femininity is a set of behaviors that are, in essence, ritualized submission.

We see nothing in the creation of gender to celebrate or embrace. Patriarchy is a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power, and we want to see it dismantled so that the category of gender no longer exists. This is also our position on race and class. The categories are not natural: they only exist because hierarchical systems of power create them (see, for instance, Audrey Smedley’s book Race in North America). We want a world of justice and equality, where the material conditions that currently create race, class, and gender have been forever overcome.

Patriarchy facilitates the mining of female bodies for the benefit of men – for male sexual gratification, for cheap labor, and for reproduction. To take but one example, there are entire villages in India where all the women only have one kidney. Why? Because their husbands have sold the other one. Gender is not a feeling—it’s a human rights abuse against an entire class of people, “people called women.”

We are not “transphobic.” We do, however, have a disagreement about what gender is. Genderists think that gender is natural, a product of biology. Radical feminists think gender is social, a product of male supremacy. Genderists think gender is an identity, an internal set of feelings people might have. Radical feminists think gender is a caste system, a set of material conditions into which one is born. Genderists think gender is a binary. Radical feminists think gender is a hierarchy, with men on top. Some genderists claim that gender is “fluid.” Radical feminists point out that there is nothing fluid about having your husband sell your kidney. So, yes, we have some big disagreements.

Radical feminists also believe that women have the right to define their boundaries and decide who is allowed in their space. We believe all oppressed groups have that right.”

-Deep Green Resistance – Radical Feminism FAQ

So try a little harder to argue honestly and charitably against your opponents.

“This conflict often shows up in the realm of gender-specific spaces, in shelters and anti-violence organizations. Feminism has been used as a means of spreading hatred against trans people, particularly trans women, and has co-opted the anti-violence movement to implicitly and explicitly exclude trans women.“

No kidding.  Male violence is endemic in society.  Keeping men away from women and protecting hard fought for female only spaces is a priority in effective feminism.  You should try it some time.

“It’s difficult for WAVAW to grapple with this history, especially as feminists doing anti-violence work.“

What part of male violence don’t you get?  That is the root of the problem and thus what much of radical feminism works to change in society.  That is the material reality of the situation, class based male violence against female people.  Idealistic, individual solutions – see pretty much all of gender identity – do not address these systemic issues.  They may be important, but do they are not inherently feminist, and thus do not merit centring in female spaces and effective feminist activism.

“This is especially true as trans-exclusionary radical feminism is alive and well in Vancouver; it’s no secret that we’re working amongst a hotbed of transmisogyny that has a global reach.“

Feminists are rightly calling you on your male-centric, misogynistic approach.  Get used to it.

“One of the things we hear most often is that by making space for trans women in our feminism we will dilute our politics. We hear rumours of trans women taking over and forcing an anti-feminist agenda on us. “

No, this is about Transactivists successfuly lobbying Vancouver City council to remove funding for the ONLY rape crisis centre that is Female only.  Because a refuge from male violence is somehow unacceptable to your ‘woke-ness’ on high.   Every other shelter allows men in, but apparently having a female only option is unacceptable, and your particular brand of handmaiden feminism is the only one that should be funded.

“This is factually incorrect. We know this is incorrect because trans women have never accessed WAVAW in large numbers, despite the fact that we have been expressly open to trans women since 2000.”

Fine and dandy.  How about respecting woman’s boundaries when they prefer not to be around those members of the class of people that rape them?  You prioritize male feelings over female safety and it is a travesty.

“As a rape crisis center committed to supporting survivors,  we want them to access our services […]”

No one is stopping you.  This is about your support of taking away female only safe spaces for rape survivors.  This is you promoting ideology that actively hurts vulnerable women in the name of inclusion.

“Perhaps the most dangerous thing trans-exclusionary rhetoric does is to erase difference by insisting on some shared experience of womanhood.Kimberlé Crenshaw’s hugely influential theory on intersectionality informs our understanding that people embody different intersecting identities that get compounded under systems of oppression.  For example,  a queer, working class,  woman of colour experiences the world in a much different way than an upper middle class, straight, white woman would. Intersectionality shows us that women across race, class, gender, ability, etc., are more different than alike. To say that all women have a shared lived experience based on biological sex erases these differences and upholds white supremacy, patriarchy, and the status quo.”

What is it with redefinition of feminist terminology?  Can we get back to what Kimberlé Crenshaw theory addresses in context?  Please, and not the queer bastardization that supports your post modern neo-liberal hogwash?

“The term intersectionality theory was first coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989.^[3] In her work, Crenshaw discussed Black feminism, which argues that the experience of being a black woman cannot be understood in terms of being black and of being a woman considered independently, but must include the interactions, which frequently reinforce each other.^[19] Crenshaw mentioned that the intersectionality experience within black women is more powerful than the sum of their race and sex, and that any observations that do not take intersectionality into consideration cannot accurately address the manner in which black women are subordinated.”

On to what Carly Thomsen says:

“I recently asked my students in an upper division Gender and Women’s Studies Feminist Engaged Research course—in which all students are Gender and Women’s Studies majors or minors—a question about that day’s reading we were discussing in class. A student responded with: “It’s all about intersectionality.” My initial question is not particularly relevant, as I have found that students will attempt to answer nearly any question by referencing (the need for and value of) “intersectionality.” I followed up to ask: “What is intersectionality?” My students looked at me blankly. All of my students had been exposed to what they would describe as “intersectionality.” Yet, not one had read the original theory of intersectionality. Not one could accurately describe the theory. Not one had a sense of the genealogy of the term. Not one could think of limits to intersectionality. Some thought that the term refers to moments in which activism and scholarship “intersect,” while others insisted that it refers to the moment when any two or more marginalized identities meet within one person’s life. Not one knew its roots in black feminist theory or critical race theory. I raise this point not because these moments gesture toward some type of feminist pedagogical failure—if only the students learned the material properly!—but because these moments point to the hegemony of discourses of “intersectionality” within Gender and Women’s Studies. In these moments, we can see that, as Ahmed (2012a) suggests, “intersectionality can be used as a method of deflection,” as a way of re-directing attention away from race and racism (195)—and, by extension, from whichever form of marginalization one is working to address—by bringing up other forms of social exclusion. The failure here lies with neither an individual instructor nor student but with a field that has produced so little critical reflection on the limits of “intersectionality” that it figures as that which is largely beyond contest.”

 “Becoming Radically Undone: Discourses of Identity and Diversity in the Introductory Gender and Women’s Studies Classroom” – -Carly Thomsen

The too tl;dr is this.  The primary axis on which females are oppressed is SEX.  Intersectionality describes the interlocking challenges facing women and particularly women of colour, but in no possible reality-based world does it append the category of sex.

“Therefore, as feminists, we cannot speak to a universal experience of womanhood, and we will not exclude trans women by claiming that there is one.“

That is problematic because sex based oppression – female human trafficking, female sex selected abortions, prositution, domestic violence, FGM, objectification, et cetera – all revolve around the sex based axis of female subjugation in the world. Plugging your ears and not seeing this fact especially in service male gender feels is particular abhorrent.

“For those of us who aren’t trans women, we have work to do. Our responsibility as a feminist organization is to push back against transmisogyny in meeting rooms, and in the movement, and right now, we’re re-committing to doing just that.”

Your responsibility as an ostensibly feminist organization is to centre the needs of females in your organization.

Period.

Shame on you for throwing women (adult human females) under the bus in your nebulous quest for ‘inclusivity’.

“The days of complicity with transmisogyny and trans-exclusionary feminism need to come to an end, as more trans women are speaking up and more organizations are willing to listen.”

Transmisogyny doesn’t exist.  Queer theoretical terms often don’t apply in reality, go figure.  The actual problem, male violence and the misogyny that goes along with it needs to be addressed.  Try starting there.

“We need to be vocal and to encourage our friends, family, and colleagues to examine their transmisogyny. We need to stop excusing it under the guise of feminism.”

Falling over yourself to meet male needs is nothing new in society. It isn’t part of meaningful feminist action.  When you’ve worked through your reality problems, please come back and give effective feminism a go.

“Right now, we need to push back against trans exclusionary rhetoric, stop calling it feminism, and remember what revolution we’re working towards.“

Do you even realize the level of newspeak going on here?  You issued this response in terms of the only rape crisis centre in Vancouver that explicitly catered to females and a female only space – losing their funding – and the furor it justifiably caused.  From your high-horse of ‘inclusion’ you are speaking against the choice of women, who chose not to associate with men in a RAPE CRISIS CENTRE.

Read that again.

Take your proclamations drenched in bullcookery elsewhere.  There is feminist work to be done and until you can realign your priorities with material reality, please sod off at your earliest convenience.

Support women in Vancouver go and donate to the Vancouver Rape Relief and Woman’s Shelter here.