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Welcome to part 2 of my in depth exposition on why I don’t want to have children.
I. Intro + Stage 1: Initial Shock
II. Stage 2: The Demand for Answers part A
III. Stage 2: The Demand for Answers part B
IV. Stage 2: The Demand for Answers part C
V. Stage 3: The Rebuttal + Wrap up
In our look at Stage 1, I dismantled a number of reactionary outbursts I commonly encounter when first telling someone I don’t want children. Now we move on to:
Stage 2: The Demand For Answers
Somewhere in their psyche, The Breeder knows that their initial dismissal is not sufficient to explain this aberration before them. Best case scenario, they recognize that us non-breeders don’t deserve the negative labels they reflexively threw on us. In any case, this oddity demands further understanding. How could it be that anyone could go through life not wanting kids? It’s unfathomable! “Tell me,” The Breeder cries, “tell me why you THINK you don’t want children. Perhaps if I get to the root of this delusion, I can educate you and bring you back to the path of reproductive righteousness.” Ok, no one has actually said these exact words to me, and sometimes the person is genuinely curious. However, the power The Breeder has over our culture is immense, and I feel this kind of intention quite often. Regardless of their personal level of self-righteousness, I am almost always asked why.
At this point I usually pause.
I think The Breeder, primed by their initial shock reaction, often takes this to mean that I haven’t thought this through or I’m not certain in this conviction, or some such weakness in my position. This is not the case. I pause because I don’t know where to begin. There are just so many reasons not to bear children. So many, in fact, I’ve divided this stage into three sections. During actual conversation, social conventions coerce much filtering and omitting, but not today. Unreservedly and with filters down, here I will lay them all out: great and small, these are the reasons I never want to reproduce. Now, in part 1, lets look at my purely personal reasons to just say no.
Babies Are Ugly, They Stink, And They Don’t Shut Up
As you might imagine, I don’t usually open with this one. However, it is the most basic and simple of my reasons, so for the purposes of this post, it makes sense to address this first. Now I’m well aware that The Breeder is oft to say things like ’Your newborn is so cuuuuuute’, or ‘it’s absolutely precious/darling’ (in the interest of civil discourse, we can pretend for the moment that I’m using the pronoun ‘it’ purely in the interest of sex neutrality) or ‘Isn’t it a beautiful baby?’.
No. It isn’t.
Babies are unnerving, preformed skin sacks filled with lumpy mush. Their heads are disproportionally large, their eyes bulge, and it creeps me out. “But that’s what a developing baby is SUPPOSED to look like” cries out The Breeder. Well, no kidding. I know that. But just because nature is designed a certain way does not necessarily make it good or beautiful.
Here is a picture of a mother centipede guarding its young. That’s what it’s supposed to look like. Is it cute? Is it beautiful? Hell no! It is the stuff of nightmares. And so it is with babies. *shudders* So why do so many otherwise reasonable people gush over such obviously hideous creatures? I believe it to be a combination of things.
First, there is simply massive social pressure. The Breeder is everywhere continually gushing that babies are cute and precious and lovely and wonderful and overflowing with such adorableness that everyone simply must feel the same compulsion to hug them forever and ever and ever. To deny this when confronted with an ugly baby would amount to denying a huge chunk of our cultural ethos. Any dissenting viewpoint is immediately punished. Cognitive dissonance kicks in and people make themselves believe that the baby is cute.
Second, such an obvious lie needs help. Evolution predisposes us to be affectionate and forgiving to our young. It could be no other way, otherwise no one would bother and the species would die out. In short, biology messes with us to serve its own ends. Consider a related subject, sexual attraction. Whether it be due to libido, desperation, or pubescent hormonal onslaught, there are countless people right now wanting to get it on with less than suitable mates. Not looking for Mr/Mrs Right, but Mr/Mrs Right Now. We all know this can lead to disastrous life consequences, but sometimes people just cannot ignore biology. They find the closest willing partner and go at it. Kudos to those who make it through and/or avoid all these bad choices, but a quick survey of society will find many who are currently being duped. With case after case of bad hook ups ending horribly, one might wonder why it is that biology would drive us to such actions. The answer is simple. Your biology doesn’t give a damn about your ambitions, your desires, your life plan, or your happiness. All it cares about is that you pass on your genes. Gotta replicate that DNA and keep the chain a goin’. So, sure, that dude may have herpes and it may well be that he would never help raise a kid. But, his sperm is healthy so according to biology, he’s good enough. And sure, that woman might make you miserable for the rest of your life, but she’s willing to accept your seed, so biology says this union is A-OK! For a fortunate few, some are able to keep biology in check just enough to fulfill biological urges while also selecting a partner that has a good chance of making our lives easier and happier instead of harder and sadder. That is, success stories are in spite of biology, not because of it. Biology messes with us. The more we recognize this, the more likely we are to spot its deceptions, the more likely we can assess things objectively, the more we’re able to direct our lives towards things that actually make us happy. When we fail at this, we eat the fatty sugary treat, we skronk the attractive yet otherwise useless/harmful lust-generator, and we’re duped into thinking newborns are cute.
Anyway, about two years in, infants start to actually look like humanoids and could potentially be considered ‘not hideous’, if you’re lucky. But if you recall the title of this section, a child’s vicious assault on our senses is not limited to the visual. Oh no, there are much worse and longer lasting evils. Let us now move on to the putrescent olfactory barrage with which spawn assail their parents.
Poop. Somedays answering the question ‘Why no kids?’ is as easy as that one word. Or I could choose one of any number of expressions that take on a horrifically literal meaning when applied to infant rearing.
I can’t believe the shit that parents have to put up with.
I don’t have time for this shit.
This shit stinks!
Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit!
From ‘The Oatmeal’
As far as bodily substances go, there is nothing more disgusting than fecal matter. Our bodies, built to endure generations of scarcity, use up ever molecule of food that it can. It greedily holds on to every molecule of fat, sugar, and protein to use someday, somehow. Poop is what is left when every good and useful thing is sucked out of our nutrients. It is toxic, disease carrying, foul, odorous waste. And for the first few years of a child’s life, the parent must gather, clean up after, and dispose of piles and piles of this vile excreta.
But that doesn’t last forever, only about as long as the ugliness, right? Wrong! Yes, they will potty train, but then they just move on to Stink Stage 2: Dirty. Young children play in anything and everything and have a strong aversion to bathing. While this is the least nasally offensive of the stink stages, it is the most labour intensive. Mess after mess after mess will have to be cleaned. The second a parent tries to take a break, the stench grows and neighbours start to wonder why you aren’t taking better care of your children. After many years of diligently cleaning the little muck-magnets, they finally grow out of jumping into every mud puddle they come across. Just in time for Stink Stage 3: BO. Bodies are going through changes, hygiene regimens need updating, and kids are slow to keep up. This pungent stage is accentuated by sports activities and the inability to do laundry. A perfect storm of perpetual mephitis. The Breeder holds out, thinking that soon (please! soon) their child will learn how to cope with this pestilence of body odour. This hope is in vain, as evident by Stink Stage 4: Chemical Warfare. Whether it be body sprays, colognes, or perfumes, the teenager answer to BO is often to take a quick swim through a gallon of masking agent. As they walk by, the gas cloud is so thick, you almost have to chew the air instead of breath it. While not nearly as vile as the previous stages, the Chemical Warfare stage poses the greatest physical threat to your health. Once the sprays get to critical volume (and they will), the effects on your respiratory system can be crippling. It isn’t until the kid is ready to leave that some of them manage to smell like sensible human being. However, there are many who are not this fortunate, where the child gets stuck at one of the previous Stink Stages and they go off into the world to subject the world to their offensive stench.
Noise follows a similar pattern of trading one headache in for another. It starts with the screaming and crying, day and night, robbing The Breeder of much needed sleep. As it grows, the screaming and crying reduces slightly, but only to make room for all the whining. Whining continues to take over the audio landscape, growing until the crying and screaming disappear entirely. Except, of course, the (hopefully) occasional tantrum where the ungrateful teen goes on about how “I hate you! You don’t understand anything! I wish you were dead! You can’t tell me what to do! I didn’t ASK to be born! AHHHH!” and you realize just how little the child has progressed from infancy.
They are Expensive
I don’t get the spending habits of many people in our commercial society. The need to constantly acquire ’stuff’ makes no sense to me. Personal debt is a monumental problem and many who suffer the worst from this problem seem to be the most blind to it. I have a pretty simple rule that serves me fairly well. If I can’t afford it, I don’t buy it. And I know I’m in no financial situation to handle raising a child. The expense is mind-boggling. Spawn need to be fed and clothed. Like, every single day! That adds up. Then there are the toys, the babysitters, the daycares, the diapers, the cribs, the car seats, the camps, the sports equipment, the piano lessons, the replacing of all your stuff that they will destroy, the dental braces, the glasses and contact lenses, the blu-ray of the most annoying child songs on the planet on repeat, the replacing of all the other people’s stuff they will destroy, the gas to get them to all these costly activities. The list just grows. And so does the child, making each item on that list more costly each and every year. Recent estimates put the cost of raising a child to 18 years old at $250,000. You might be thinking, “Gee, that sounds like a lot”, but you’d be wrong. It isn’t ‘a lot’. It is a gargantuan, astronomical, and unfathomably large sum of money. A quarter MILLION dollars. There are parents all over the place who cannot afford a family, yet they breed anyway. Again, the results are apparent to anyone who looks. So many children growing up in poverty is no way have a happy society.
They are Annoying
Of course, there’s the easy examples. There are legions of parents all at the edge of their patience at any given moment. Dealing with misbehaving and acting up rugrats is both infuriating and exhausting. The Breeder doesn’t even try to deny this one. I’ve heard, time and time again, the totally not-serious (but kinda is), definitely joking (sorta) exasperated outbursts of parents wanting to kill their kids. As it’s a given, I should be able to leave it at that. I shouldn’t have to mention it at all, except that The Breeder has a near Orwellian ability to instantly forget this. Masters of Double Think, they switch from tearing out their own hair in aggravated frustration to revering their brood with enamoured awe in an instant.
But it doesn’t stop there. Even when children are being good, doing what they’re supposed to do, they can be incredibly irritating. Playing children are noisy, unskilled, and require much assistance. Inquisitive children are slow, easily distracted, and pestering. And there’s nothing to be done. Indeed, the proper thing to do is to encourage this type of behaviour. It is better for everyone if they do as much of these things as they can. But to actually endure the process can be beyond aggravating. This is definitely one of the many situations where being an uncle or an aunt is far superior to being a parent. In small doses, when the right mood hits, it can almost be fun to experience a happy child doing happy child things. But it doesn’t take long for it to wear thin. In this instance, I feel parental pride is a defence mechanism. By celebrating every little bit of progress, The Breeder can be distracted from how loud and tedious it all is. How else could they endure?
The Breeder might, upon hearing these first reasons, jump back to some of those initial reactions and think once more that I’m being selfish. However, this presumes that bearing children and enduring all these negatives is somehow a social good. In part B, we will look at how this simply isn’t the case.
Being anti-woo and anti-religion, there are a plethora of conversations that I have over and over again. No, just because he/she/it is invisible does not make appeal to authority valid. Yes, you have to back up your claims with empirical evidence. No, your personal experience doesn’t count. Yes, billions of people can be wrong.
However, there is one topic over which I’ve had to defend my position more times than in all those woo and religious debates combined. I’ve had my views on this topic attacked, ridiculed, and/or dismissed by friends, family, teachers, acquaintances, and strangers alike. It doesn’t seem to matter about their national, cultural, socio-economic, or educational background. People of all sorts are eager to get in line to tell me I’m wrong. Note, I did not say my views were actually addressed by anyone, but more on that later. The point is, I’ve had to repeat myself quite a bit and it’s high time I had a resource to shoo all the naysayers to. So here it is, my most contentious, controversial, and debate inspiring position:
I don’t want to have children.
This really should be of no concern or interest to anyone outside my closest of circles. However, people are usually quite good at interfering with things that are none of their business, and The Breeder is by no means an exception. I repeatedly find myself up against a barrage of criticism and sometimes even hostility in my dealings with The Breeder. These uncalled for throw-downs usually follow three stages, each of which has their own series of common arguments. Of course, depending on who I happen to be talking to, some of these arguments will end up in different stages. And of course, there are variations in attitude, civility, willingness to listen to me, etc. But there is an undeniable and eerily strong pull to the mean when dealing with The Breeder. Society has given everyone the same grab-bag of prepackaged pro-procreation propaganda which most accept without question. As predictably as The Believer will throw out talk of “first causes” and “sources of morality”, The Breeder will devoutly spew out the same arguments from that grab-bag repeatedly, bleating out The Breeder’s maxims over and over again. Each individual will have their own spin, their own prioritisation of arguments, but the core remains the same. Read the rest of this entry »
I am playing catch up with the recent dust-up around the choice of tactics used by Antifa in the United States in it’s struggle against the proto-fascist elements energized by the current Republican Administration led by Trump. There are several sources in this brief overview, first from a academic journal to help with the context of state violence, then a rough sketch of the position taken by Hedges and Chomsky, and finally the reply found in Counterpunch. The last article from Counterpunch, is a retort to Chris Hedges, a voice on the credentialed left who has taken a stance against the violent tactics used by Antifa.
We’ll be visiting Hedges’ article (and criticism)on Truthdig in a later post, but for now, examining the question of violence and how it is used, and by who it is used by in society provides a stepping stone toward providing a more nuanced entry into this debate. To better understand how (in just one way) the state uses violence to arrange society we turn to an article written by Carol Nagengast, in the Annual Review of Anthropology titled Violence, Terror, and The Crisis of the State (p. 24):
“The state must be a state of mind that divides people into the purified and honest who do legitimate work and a politically suspect or criminal,
deviant underworld of aliens, communists, loafers, delinquents, even thieves, killers, and drug lords who do not. The violent dissident must be positioned
and repositioned as necessary, “in a negative relationship with middle-class rational masculinity, a model that ensures a relationship of dominance and
subordination … by locking the two into a mutually defaming relationship”(16:15,21). In the United States, the presumed idleness of the unemployed, the poverty-stricken, the drug user or gang member, the single parent, gay man or
lesbian woman (all the latter with overtones of promiscuity and contagious disease) is also seen as violence against the social body. It cannot be just any
old work; it must be work that contributes to what dominant groups have defined as the common good (153).The hegemony of respectable culture and good taste and the denigration of what is represented as the disgusting, degenerate, worthless, criminal lower
parts of the social body is so strong that, according to a poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News in September 1989, 66% of those surveyed
favored random searches of peoples’ houses, cars, and personal belongings, even if the police had no suspicion of any wrongdoing. Seventy-two percent
said they approved of censorship of any film depicting illegal drug use. People have been so inoculated with the fear of evil and with the myth of an essential
relationship of repression to the cure of society, that they are willing to give up some of their own rights for what has been defined as the good of the social
body”
The questions the fascist/antifa situation embodies goes back to the genesis of why we have states in the first place and the techniques used (see the myth of the relationship between the use of repression to cure soceity) to maintain order in said States. The use of fear to discipline society is nothing new, case in point, consider the the fear cultivated in the buildups to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The use/misuse of fear as a cultural motivator in Western society is being replayed yet again on the national (within the US) instead of international stage. Looking toward answering the question of who gets to legitimately use violence in society with regards to the fascist/antifa question Noam Chomsky opines:
“As for Antifa, it’s a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were,” Noam Chomsky told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant.” Many activists affiliated with the loosely organized Antifa movement consider themselves anarchists or socialists. They often wear black and take measures to conceal their identity. Chomsky said, “what they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and [the movement] is generally self-destructive.” “When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it’s the toughest and most brutal who win – and we know who that is,”
So, it would seem that Chomsky and Hedges, who cites this interview, believe that the antifa use of violence is not the correct course of action. The counterpoint to their assertion comes in with
“One crucial question in this regard is why the conversation about violence that is continually re-staged in the media overwhelmingly focuses on tactics of resistance by the underclasses. Among those who are vociferously proclaiming a pure form of “non-violence” as an unquestionable moral principle, who of them is arguing that this principle should be applied to the corporate state and all of its imperial endeavors? Alongside the countless statements reprimanding anti-capitalist activists for street scuffles, where are the articles calling for the dismantling of the military-industrial complex, the dissolution of the police force, or the abolition of the prison system? Why isn’t the debate around non-violence centered precisely on those who have all of the power and all of the weapons? Is it because violence has actually worked successfully in these cases to impose a very specific top-down agenda, which includes shutting out anyone who calls it into question, and diligently managing the perception of their actions? Is violence somehow acceptable here because it is the violence of the victors, who are the ones who presume to have the right—and in any case have the power—to define the very nature of violence (as anything that threatens them)?
Clearly, the fetishization of non-violence is reserved for the actions of the underlings. They are the ones who, again and again, are told that they must be civil (and are never sufficiently so), and that the best way to attain their objectives is by obeying the moral dictates of those above. Let us recall, in this light, James Baldwin’s powerful statement in the context of the black liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s: “The only time non-violence is admired is when the Negroes practice it.”
So, what is the answer here? How effective will violent leftist action be, and will the backlash further empower state repression? Will the backlash continue to inoculate the citizenry with fear of violent ‘leftist violence’ thus justifying an increase in state use of coercive and repressive force against the left even though the initiators of said violence (aka the proto-fascist/nationalist Right in the US) are ultimately responsible for the situation in question?
Another interesting snippet from the conversation over at VW’s:
Arbourist: “Humans, like most mammals are sexually dimorphic.”
VW: This is a discriptive label we use in an attempt to best explain what represents the majority or general experience. That’s not my opinion – it’s a fact. Sexual dimorphism in humans is not a law, and it’s not even true for every individual, is it?”
Arbourist: A man expressing typically feminine traits is still a man. ”
VW:Yes, of course. And a man who feels they were assigned the wrong sex and therefore gender at birth, based on nothing more than casual observation of their external genitalia, now has the freedom within many of our societies to become a woman.
I just happen to be reading a short essay called On Language and Erasure by Hypotaxis and this passage jumped out at me”
“But since this is a post about the notion of “erasure” and “thought policing,” I wanted to point out a couple of excerpts from the article – which was, in fact, written by a female:
Sex is based on the body, but biology is a branch of science and science is also a social construct and really what I’m saying is that your sex is essentially a label a very educated person slapped on you at birth using as many contextual clues as they could garner at the time about your DNA. Sex is not immutable or unchangeable or somehow “intrinsically” defined by our bodies; it’s more that science and medicine have put words in place to define sex and thrust it upon us – and that they’re often inadequate at capturing the full spectrum of diversity swimming around in the big ol’ sea . . .
This is the kind of bullshit, circuitous, narcissist-logic, swamp of nothingness fuckery being sold to women on behalf of males who would prefer we not acknowledge reality. The attempt to convince women – or anyone for that matter – that science is a “construct,” in the same way gender is a “construct,” in a world where most are bat-shit insane idiots because we are no longer allowed to express a rational thought, is dangerous. And how is this any different than the crazy people who run around denying evolution? Or climate change deniers? The incentive for Creationists to deny evolution, and for those who deny climate change is the same as the incentive for the trans/queer/gender worship lot who claim science is merely a construct: the scientific principles inconvenience them, hurt their feels.
“But if Jesus didn’t live with dinosaurs then . . . then . . . then FUCK YOU EVOLUTION ISN’T REAL!”
“But if my gas chugging SUV that I really, really like is bad for the environment then . . . then . . . then FUCK YOU CLIMATE CHANGE ISN’T REAL!”
“But if my penis isn’t part of female anatomy and I really, really would like to be a girl then . . . then . . . then FUCK YOU BIOLOGY IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT!”
Gender Studies is anti-intellectualism dressed up in academese for the benefit of males. Period.
And yes, science and medicine have put “words in place” to define things. Scientists and doctors use words particular to their disciplines, they have language that means specific things like “molecule” and “cancer” and “female” and thank fucking god for that. A doctor’s job is not to acknowledge every special nuance of your unicorn self. A scientist’s job is not to placate your fragile feelings.
Reflected in the Autostraddle is also the way in which trans/queer/gender-speak has reframed true feminism – now considered “radical” – to be “trans-exclusionary” (i.e. does not prioritize males/make religion of gender). Radical Feminists – referred to in the modern gestalt by the pejorative “TERF” – are those who are concerned with the welfare of women and girls, who are interested in the liberation of women, the end of gender, and the dismantling of patriarchy. Trans/queer/gender studies speak has appropriated the word so that it means, “don’t be mean to males”; trans/queer/gender studies has taken the tools of the oppressor – gender roles, pornography, prostitution and called them “empowering.” Trans/queer/gender studies folk work tirelessly to ensure women cannot speak truthfully about their lived realities, for fear it might alienate males.”
What twinged the comparison for me during my conversation with Violet is what seems to be the willingness to slip into a very liberal relativist reading of facts that do not agree with her position on human sexual dimorphism. The strategy seems to be to get away from facts and go to the idea that everyone has their own equally important set of facts and the disagreement between these two ‘world views’ is where the argument should be – as opposed to actually arguing the original fact based argument.
It makes so hard to find any sort of common ground when everything seems to be relative and words mean different things to different people. :/
Post Modernism keeps coming up at the root of many debates on contentious issues. Gender identity politics one of the area where the influence of post-modernism can be seen. This quote from Tildeb on Violetwisp’s blog is part of his critique of a segment of the left side of the political spectrum what Tildeb calls the Regressive left. The claim is as follows:
“My claim is that there is a strong and growing element in the Left that is regressive, that operates by actions and sentiments that a anti-liberal in principle and demonstrate actions that are anti-Enlightenment in value… not least of which is saying that they do so on behalf of liberal principles and Enlightenment values but then actually committing the opposite. Furthermore, I claim the tactics used are fascist, that bullying and intimidation and violence and disruption and demonization are gaining wider and broader social acceptance… especially by people who should know better. In addition, from these sideline observers who should know better than appease and apologize for these hypocritical illiberals comes a kind of Fifth Column, people who go along, who do not soundly condemn, who rationalize excuses on behalf of others, who partake in the illusion of supporting ‘correctness’ by incorrect means and use a form of apologetics for Really Bad Ideas championed by the more militant advocates who presume they are defending victimized groups by these fascist methods.”
Many women are experiencing this phenomena vis-a-vis liberal feminism allied with trans-activism. Females are routinely branded by the regressive left as TERFs for expressing a need for female only spaces, expressing their sexual preferences and defending the necessary boundaries they set in society in order for them to be safe. The function of the term “terf” (trans exclusionary radical feminist) is to silence, shame, and coerce women into accepting men into their spaces and their feminism. It has been a fairly successful campaign, but women are slowly seeing the downsides of a version of feminism that centres around the needs of males, having their peak trans moments and rejecting liberal feminism because essentially, it isn’t about women and their struggle for emancipation from the patriarchal structures of society.
Tildeb isn’t directly addressing feminist concerns, but this next portion of his comment illustrates exactly the issue with the regressive left’s take on reality and how it affects their argumentation.
“The point I keep raising is about the use of anti-liberal methods done in the name of liberal principles and then excused by those claiming to support liberal principles. Also, I keep raising the point but face significant reticence. from those I accuse of hypocrisy, of using a double standard, of going along with a very Post Modern framework and language not just about groups and power but this idea that everyone owns their own facts, their own truths, that any action illiberal intolerant action undertaken in defense of the victimized groups is somehow justified as well as exempt from legitimate criticism.”
Everyone can’t have their own set of facts and truths and have the naive expectation that others will go along with them. Your deeply subjective personal thoughts and feelings are precisely that – *your* thoughts and feelings; expecting others to fall in line with your subjective whims is not only unreasonable, it is not how the world works. Interfacing with society involves a give and take and mutual understanding of how the world works. We teach children that their own desires and perspectives must be tempered with input from reality – they cannot have all the things, nor do things work precisely the way children think they should. As children mature their outlook on the world becomes more nuanced and the interaction between their personal selves and the world begins to even out and the interplay between individual and society establishes itself into a generally beneficial mutual relationship.
The right to swing ones arms around is limited by the presence of others who may not want to be hit with said arms. In other words feel free to exercise your freedom as long as you’re not infringing on the rights of others. The same can be said of your subjective thoughts and feelings on gender and how your present yourself to the world. By all means, identify however you wish. That is your right, and I fully endorse an individuals right to do so.
But, your self-identification ends with you. There should be no expectation that others have to take your subjective self-declared identity at face value. So, if you happen to be male and identify as a woman fine. But the expectation that others *must* treat you as a woman goes against the conception of rights we have in a liberal society. Others may have different views on gender and identity and they have the exact same rights as the person who happens to be a male identifying as woman.
The problem is that people who do not go along with the self-identification of others are unjustly maligned, harassed, and their views marginalized by the current liberal feminists/transactivist movement. People who believe that the social construction of gender is harmful and should be abolished have their views routinely mislabelled -phobic or bigoted when really they are just stating their opinion (of course, being backed by fact and observable reality is nice too).
So, let’s try and further the bounds of the debate and see where it takes us.
A big thank you Tildeb for clearly putting into words some of key points of the post modern gender identity debate and the surrounding controversy.
Well, quite the list if you happen to be interested in what Feminism is about. Here is what the GAG group thinks should be forbidden in a library for Women.
Books to remove:
Admission Accomplished – Jill Johnston
-Against Sadomasochism – Robin R. Linden, Darlene R. Pagano, Diana E. Russell, Susan Leigh Star
-Amazon Odyssey: Collection of Writings – Ti-Grace Atkinson
-Buddhism after Patriarchy – Rita M. Gross
-The Female Man – Joana Russ
-Female Sexual Sl*v*ry – Kathleen Barry
-Feminism Unmodified – Catharine A. Mackinnon
-First Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening Susan Murcott
-Gyn/Ecology – Mary Daly
-The Idea of Prostitution – Sheila Jeffreys
-The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade – Sheila Jeffreys
-Intercourse – Andrea Dworkin
-The Lesbian Heresy – Sheila Jeffreys
-Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women – Geraldine Brook
-Not a Choice, Not a Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade – Janice Raymond
-Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography- Of Women Born – Adrienne Rich
-Pornography: Men Possessing Women – Andrea Dworkin
-Radical Acceptance – Tara Brach
-The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism – Janice Raymond
-Women As Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women’s Freedom – Janice Raymond
Well, looks like my reading list just got a great deal longer.
The idea that feminism is the movement to liberate women from patriarchy (a notion lost to much of the befuddled third-wave) is finally beginning to (re)gain some traction as more women see what the unctuous morass of neo-liberal identity politics inflicts upon their mass movement.
“It saddens me to see the inclusive liberal feminism I grew up with reduced to a grab-bag of competing victimhood narratives and rival community-based but essentially individualist identities jostling for most-oppressed status. We need a better reaction to the election of a man who cynically responded to the center-left’s fragmentation by celebrating his own angry populist’s definition of white identity. Can’t we rise above the sniping about “privilege,” “white feminism,” “intersectionality,” and hierarchies of grievance in the face of Trump and the dangers he poses to the American and international liberal world order and women everywhere?
Such an approach doesn’t mean ignoring the differing experiences of women, or the history of racism between women, but confronting them empirically and resisting blaming each other for systemic disadvantage. Despite rampant inequality in the U.S., the word “class” doesn’t get a mention in the ‘Guiding vision and definition of principles’ of the march. Yet trans women/youth/migrants receive six references.
Cursory attention is given to the structural inequalities that limit all American women, regardless of their race, religion, sexual or other identities. American women across the board face huge barriers to labor force participation and achieving work-family balance compared to their sisters in Europe and other comparable developed countries. The vision document doesn’t even call expressly for nationally mandated paid maternity leave of at least three months — it describes “family leave” vaguely as a “benefit” rather than a right, in contrast to LGBTQIA human rights.”
It is almost like Ms.Symons is getting annoyed by the fact that the issues that are directly affecting women aren’t being centred in the march by and for women.
Fancy that.
Let’s see some transactivism in action shall we? Elizabeth Harrington, reporting in the Washington Free Beacon writes:
“Transgender activists are upset that the women’s march over the weekend was not inclusive to biological men who identify as women, as the protest presented an “oppressive message” that having a “vagina is essential to womanhood.”
Saturday’s event to oppose the inauguration of Donald Trump was largely a “white cis women march,” with too many pictures of female reproductive organs and pink hats, according to trans women and “nonbinary” individuals interviewed by Mic.com.”
Wow! Are you seeing the benefits of inclusivity? (I most certainly am!) I mean, the feelings of men at a woman’s march should definitely be prioritized as their gender-feels are profoundly more important than the onslaught women and their rights are being subjected to as a class.
“The women’s march had an over-reliance on slogans and posters depicting gender norms, like using pink to represent women and girls, said some transgender activists who boycotted the march.
“The main reason I decided not to go was because of the pussy hats,” said one transwoman from California. “I get that they’re a response to the ‘grab them by the pussy’ thing, but I think some people fixated on it the wrong way.”
“I believe there’s a lot of inequality that has to do with genitals—that’s not something you can separate from the feminist movement,” the transwoman added. “But I feel like I’ve tried to get involved in feminism and there’s always been a blockade there for trans women.”
The ‘blockade’ being that effective feminism is about he liberation of females from patriarchy. If you aren’t female, then this particular movement just isn’t about you. If you would like to show support for, and be an ally and reinforce the Feminist movement – that would be great – but have the common decency to not co-opt the feminist movement for your own agenda.
“Signs that said “Pussy grabs back,” “Resistance is Fertile,” and “Pussy Power” sent a “clear and oppressive message to trans women, especially: having a vagina is essential to womanhood.”
The article explained that transwomen are weary of “trans-exclusionary radical feminists.” “TERFs” are people who “equate womanhood with having a vagina” or feminists who “argue trans women are actually men in disguise trying to infiltrate their spaces.”
I’m guessing that women (and by that term I mean adult human female) are quite weary of having men (for centuries) try to define their reality for them.
Clearly, acknowledging sex-based oppression -in a feminist movement – is quite beyond the pale. Reflecting on the quote above, if one cannot distinguish between the notion of women being nothing but vaginas versus the notion that women have vaginas, then one probably shouldn’t be speaking about woman’s issues in the first place.
Finally, hopefully we can see what the transactivist movement brings to the table –
So ya, it is time for transactivists to acknowledge the fact that feminism is for females (this should not be controversial) and work in solidarity with Feminists toward feminist goals – or start your own movement that centres your own particular goals.
**UPDATE** – Trans solidarity with women? F*ck that noise. Further evidence of the need for a strong cleavage between feminists and transactivists.
http://tehbewilderness.tumblr.com/post/156776500409/did-the-national-womens-march-call-for-pussy
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