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Twitter usually isn’t the best place to find valuable insights into complex topics and ideas. I do like to be proven wrong though, and that was very much the case when I saw this thread by “H”. This person precisely identifies a several key points where the ideology of transgender has gone markedly afoul. Much has to do with the correspondence between their activism and narcissistic male entitlement.
Common threads do exist between feminism and the trans movement. The current focus though of putting the validation of (usually) men’s gender-delusions ahead of female rights makes progress in this area difficult at best.
The struggle against the Patriarchy must be grounded in a material analysis of the societal situation. The means of reproduction in society is the material basis for the patriarchal oppression of women.
“Women throughout history have been erased from their own reproductive processes: shame, laws, and violence put others at the centre of these
events. Doctors, doulas, midwives, and other health care practitioners often put their interests above the birthing woman’s, deciding what is best based on their own political, scientific, or social agendas. And now, the very people who were fighting for woman-centred care have turned their backs on the birthing woman and are erasing her from their language. Even if high-quality, best-practice, evidence-based, respectful care were available to women, it is not in our best interest to agree to our own erasure, no matter how much we want to please, make good, and comply.
As a birth attendant, I’ve witnessed women being pinched, prodded, and poked against their will. In Canada, where socialized medicine is our norm, I’ve seen a doctor stand between a woman’s legs and yell that she had to pay $1600 in cash before he would “deliver” her baby. I’ve witnessed unnecessary surgeries: caesarean sections for no reason, and episiotomies for the sake of training students. I’ve even seen an extra tight perineal repair done with a wink to the husband. I’ve watched while intelligent, educated women are convinced that their babies are too big, too small, or badly positioned. I’ve heard countless stories from women who told me that their cervixes didn’t open, their vaginas were too small, and their uterine contractions were ineffectual. I’ve heard women told that if they don’t agree to interventions like inductions, amniotomies, or epidurals, their babies will die. I’ve seen countless women try to convince medical staff that their pain medication wasn’t working, in vain. I’ve seen other women tell staff they would be giving birth soon, but be ignored. When a woman is held down, made to do things she doesn’t want to do, threatened, or ignored when she is giving birth, that constitutes abuse.
The struggle for woman-centred maternity care is far from over. I have attended the births of some of the wealthiest families in my city, and I have provided maternity care for migrants fleeing the war in Syria. I have watched refugees from Congo being abused in a hospital birth room, and I have witnessed a scientist arguing in vain against the bad science her doctors employed to convince her of their unnecessary protocols. The common thread that runs through all of these stories is abuse. Medical professionals abuse birthing women every day, all over the world, because they are female.
Women are not oppressed and abused because they like pink, wear high heels, or aren’t good at math. These are societal myths about what it means to be a woman. We are oppressed because it is in the interest of patriarchal society to keep us oppressed. The root of patriarchy is control of the means of human reproduction, and women’s bodies contain the means of reproduction, therefore patriarchal capitalism needs to control them.
The struggle against patriarchy must be led by those who own the means of reproduction: women. If we obfuscate reality by saying that, actually, it’s not only women who give birth, we lose our focus, in terms of the feminist movement, and risk losing the small triumphs we have achieved in our struggle for woman-centred childbirth.”
The central feature of patriarchy is Men’s relentless efforts to control women’s sexuality and reproduction:
“For females to be subordinated and subjugated to males on a global scale, and for males to organize themselves and each other as they do, billions of female individuals, virtually all see life on this planet, must be reduced to more-or-less willing toleration of subordination and servitude to men. The primary sites of this reduction are the sites of heterosexual relation and encounter – courtship and marriage-arrangement, romance, sexual liaisons, fucking, marriage, prostitution, the normative family, incest and child sexual assault. It is on this terrain of heterosexual connection that girls and women are habituated to abuse, insult, degradation, and girls are reduced to women – to wives, to whores, to mistresses, to sex slaves, to clerical workers and textile workers, to the mothers of men’s children”
And on patriarchy being the bedrock of oppression:
“Without (hetero)sexual abuse, (hetero)sexual harassment and the (hetero)sexualization of every aspect of female bodies and behaviours, there would not be patriarchy, and whatever other forms or materializations of oppressions might exist, they would not have the shapes, boundaries and dynamics of the racism, nationalism, and so on that we are so familiar with.”
Both selections from The Willful Virgin.
Megan Murphy last night at the Vancouver Public Library:
“Despite what transactivists claim it is not illegal to understand that biological sex is real and that it matters which is essentially what I and other women have been smeared, censored and no-platformed for saying . It’s also not illegal to understand that a woman is an adult human female. It’s not illegal to defend women’s transition houses and to argue that when women are escaping male violence they should have access to spaces that make them feel safe where they can speak to women who understand what it’s like to grow up female in this world and where they can be assured that they won’t be made more vulnerable by having to share a room with a man.
It is not illegal to understand that male bodies and female bodies are different and that women and girls have the right to compete in sports under fair terms against other women and girls not against men who, in most cases, would have an unfair advantage…
It’s not illegal in Canada for lesbians to limit their choices in intimate partners to women only and to refuse sexual partners with penises.”
— Meghan Murphy (Excerpt from speech at Vancouver Public Library)
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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