What, radical feminism sneaking into the Sunday Disservice? When will it stop? :)
A conversation gleaned from Stardate Whenever –
“I was chatting with one of my managers and he told me he does drag performance and identifies as genderqueer. Which, you know, obviously I disagree with that terminology.
He had just been reprimanded at work for wearing makeup. In the same day that I was reprimanded for not wearing makeup.
And I just kept thinking about how while we framed it differently politically, we both were pissed that we were not allowed to do something because of our sex.
What was interesting is that he framed it as an invalidation of his identity whereas I framed it as an enforcement of my oppression. In my opinion, that is the big difference–I framed it as an oppressive system which people of my sex face, he framed is as a system he had not been allowed to opt out of. So it was the difference between an individual mindset and one of collective action.
Which of course became even more obvious when he explained to me the reasons why I *should* wear makeup to work.”
See the problem? The idea that your ‘identity’ is infringed upon and therefore the battle must be to change the rules within the system so you can validate your choices. The individual battle serves only the individual and as a by-product of the individual struggle the overall system is reinforced.
Is the quality of the choice ever examined? Is the nature of the system ever examined? Nope Nope Nope. The battle for individual identity choice is necessarily framed as making advancement within the oppressive framework of the gender hierarchy, thus to be affirmed in your choice, is simultaneously affirming the validity of the system. The status-quo is not threatened.
In this case the role of gender in society is the overarching problem for both people. Gender is an hierarchy, constructed and designed for use in society to keep one class of people favoured and the other class oppressed.
The battle that should be fought, and is being fought by radical feminists, is not for getting a better a ‘choice’ within a shitty system, but for the destruction/rollback/replacement of the toxic system itself.
Not seeing or feeling the empowerment of sexwork prostitution? Me either.
Tatsuya Ishida has been fearless as of late critically examining the ill effects of prostitution and human trafficking in our society. Go to sinfest.net to see the whole series.
The following is an exchange on tumblr between littlepumkinprincess and auntiewanda. I have changed the formatting a bit for the sake of readability, but their words and ideas remain the same. Many of the arguments that occur between gender critical feminists and trans-advocates play out in this exchange. It is certainly not an exhaustive collection of all the point/counter-points that exist but rather it illustrates a cross-section of what many interactions happen to look like.
Discussions of this nature tend to be controversial, so a reminder here to please be civil and respectful in the comment section.
“I’m not advocating violence against TERF’s but I am saying y’all need to stop playing the victim when you’re named that because you treat transgender people like shit, you don’t need special treatment because people called you out on that.”
The criteria for “treating like shit” seems to be “not agreeing with”.
And by “not agreeing with” you mean misgendering them, mentally and physically abusing them, excluding them in feminism, denying them human rights.
Okay, saying to a transwoman “I don’t agree you’re a woman” is physical abuse how? And also mental abuse how? Being upset at someone doesn’t automatically mean they’re mentally abusing you.
I don’t exclude transgender people from feminism, I apply feminism to the concept the same way I do anything else, and it comes up sexist.
Also how is not agreeing with someone that they are a thing they demonstrably aren’t a human rights issue? And why does it seem to be a double standard for transgender people? Or is Rachel Dolezal being mentally abused and denied human rights when people say she’s not what she claims?
When you say a transwoman isn’t a woman this leads people to believe it’s a ‘man in disguise’ and they need to protect poor women from them! See: transgender bathroom issues. This is the same belief system that allows people to think that physical abuse is okay, and just because you’re not doing it yourself doesn’t mean you’re not advocating that system.
How is demanding equal rights for genders sexist? Seeing as they’re women, I don’t see how it’s sexist considering feminism is the equality of men and women.
Gender dysphoria has proven that trans people are what they say they are, so idk how you can even say demonstrably. It’s a human rights issue because they’re treated as lesser than: they’re getting murdered at large rates, for example. Rachel is not mentally ill, she does it to cheat a system that’s there to help people who need it. There’s no proven racial dysphoria. Transgender people are genuinely who they say they are. Not to mention many parents try to ‘fix’ it by forcing them to be who they don’t feel they are and it leads to depression and suicide. Even IF you don’t believe them why does that mean you get to treat them like shit? I’m just curious, like you seem to believe just because you don’t agree with their lifestyle means you get to treat them like that when they aren’t harming anyone by living that way. That’s the same shit pro lifers do.
> When you say a transwoman isn’t a woman this leads people to believe it’s a ‘man in disguise’ and they need to protect poor women from them! See: transgender bathroom issues.
The issue with codifying use of “preferred” bathrooms, changing facilities etc. into law is more if the only criteria for a biologically male person to gain access to a female designated facility is for him to say “I am a woman” you’re exposing women to increased risk of predators.
Such as in the Christopher Hambrook case where a serial rapist gained access to two women’s shelters for prolong periods of time and sexually assaulted two women (that we know of) and all he had to do was claim to be a transwoman and they could not legally turn him away.
Plenty of transwomen who “just need to pee” already do so, are in and out of the women’s restroom with no issue. Why the hell should a legal loophole be created for predators to exploit?
> This is the same belief system that allows people to think that physical abuse is okay,
That’s a pretty big leap in logic there.
> How is demanding equal rights for genders sexist? Seeing as they’re women, I don’t see how it’s sexist considering feminism is the equality of men and women.
Transgender is a sexist concept in that it that operates on the belief that the socially constructed gender roles for the sexes are inherent to the sexes.
> Gender dysphoria has proven that trans people are what they say they are
How? People sincerely believe things that aren’t true all the time.
> so idk how you can even say demonstrably
It’s pretty easy to prove which sex someone is.
> Rachel is not mentally ill, she does it to cheat a system that’s there to help people who need it
Rachel Dolezal claims she’s always felt like she’s black, ever since she was a child. She identifies as black, she says what she does isn’t blackface. She says whiteness doesn’t describe her. So is she mentally ill or is her identity authentic? I mean she managed to become head of a local NAACP branch before she was discovered to be transethnic.
> Not to mention many parents try to ‘fix’ it by forcing them to be who they don’t feel they are and it leads to depression and suicide.
And many parents try to “fix” it by only allowing their children to play with or wear things stereotypically associated with the opposite sex after they take their kid to a therapist who tells them their kid is actually the opposite sex in their brain, which is something completely unproven.
> I’m just curious, like you seem to believe just because you don’t agree with their lifestyle means you get to treat them like that when they aren’t harming anyone by living that way.
And what am I supposed to do? Lie about my viewpoint? Say “oh yes dear, you’re absolutely a woman, never mind you’re offending me with the stereotypical sexist ideas you have of what a woman even is.”
[Found on Not Your Safe Space]
The Feminist Current is a bastion of “not the fun kind” of feminist discourse – Meghan Murphy steps up with this bold article and describes the challenges that women face when fighting for the radical notion that feminism should centre women in its practice.
“Women who challenge discourse around “gender identity” have been largely isolated on the front lines for the past decade. Liberal feminists and progressives have chosen identity politics over feminism many times over and this is no exception. Those who are not invested in women’s liberation are well aware that the power they seek cannot be gained from supporting the independent women’s movement, and most haven’t bothered to think hard enough about the roots of patriarchy to understand what it is we are fighting in the first place. But even many of those whose politics are otherwise rooted radical feminist principles have felt afraid to publicly question the dogma of gender identity discourse. We are only too aware that refusing to accept and parrot back commonly accepted mantras places you on the wrong end of a modern witch hunt.
I don’t deny that I felt afraid, for many years, to take a firm position on discourse surrounding gender identity and trans politics, despite my opinion that women-only space and organizing is central to the feminist movement and to supporting women recovering from male violence.
In fact, for many years, I wasn’t quite sure what my position was, and worried that speaking out against the naturalizing of sexist gender roles that has come hand in hand with support for what is called “trans rights” would distract from my fight against the sex industry and violence against women. Punishments for questioning trans politics include losing one’s job, censorship, blacklisting, being physically and otherwise threatened and attacked by transactivists, and social ostracization — all things that prevent women from speaking out. (I have suffered many of these punishments already, of course, for failing to toe the party line and for allying with women labelled “TERF” or “transphobic.”)
We live in a time wherein basic feminist ideas have become unspeakable, while anti-feminist slurs and smears are widely accepted and even celebrated by those who claim to be social justice activists and progressives.
Regardless of the risks, I cannot, in good faith, support the neoliberal, individualistic notion of “gender identity” — not as a feminist who understands how patriarchy came to be and continues to prevail or as a leftist who understands how systems of power work. I do not wish to be silent in the face of regressive and anti-feminist discourse, because I know that my silence does not help empower other women to speak out. I do not wish to abandon my sisters who have already suffered immensely for speaking out.”
-Megan Murphy
Go read the rest of this article at the Feminist Current, it is an important powerful work.
Insightful essays not your bag? A window looking into current events as they happen, and not how the handlers say they happen a bit too much? Then don’t subscribe to Tom’s Dispatch.
This excerpt from ‘Bombs Away’ by Tom Engelhardt
“1. Success and Failure: Without a hint of exaggeration, you could say that, at the cost of $400,000 to $500,000, al-Qaeda’s 9/11 air assault created Washington’s multi-trillion-dollar Global War on Terror. With a microscopic hijacked air force and a single morning’s air campaign, that group provoked an administration already dreaming of global domination into launching a worldwide air war (with a significant ground component) that would turn the
Greater Middle East — then a relatively calm (if largely autocratic) region — into a morass of conflicts, failed or collapsed states, ruined cities, and refugees by the millions, in which extreme Islamic terror outfits now seem to sprout like so many mushrooms. This, you might say, was the brilliance of Osama bin Laden. Seldom has so little air power (or perhaps power of any sort) been leveraged quite so purposefully into such sweeping consequences. It may represent the most successful use of strategic bombing — that is, air power aimed at the civilian population of, and morale in, an enemy country — in history.
On the other hand, with only a slight hint of exaggeration, you might also conclude that seldom has an air campaign without end (almost 15 years and still expanding at the cost of untold billions of dollars) proven quite so unsuccessful. Put another way, you could perhaps conclude that, in these years, Washington has bombed and missiled a world of Islamist terror outfits into existence.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda was the most modest of forces with militant followers in perhaps the low thousands in Afghanistan and tiny numbers of scattered supporters elsewhere on the planet. Now, there are al-Qaeda spin-offs and wannabe outfits, often thriving, from Pakistan to Yemen, Syria to North Africa, and of course the Islamic State (ISIS), that self-proclaimed “caliphate” of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, still holds a sizeable chunk of territory in Iraq and Syria while its “brand” has spread to groups from Afghanistan to Libya.
Minimally, the U.S. air campaign, which has certainly killed enough terror leaders, “lieutenants,” “militants,” and others over these years, has shown no ability to halt the process and arguably has ploughed remarkably fertile ground for it. Yet in response to the next terror outrage (as in Libya recently), the bombs continue to fall. It’s a curious record in the generally disappointing annals of air power and well worth considering in more detail.”
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