Today I’d like to share with you two quotations. One is from Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader whose legacy we honor today. The other is from someone who considers himself the leader of a human rights movement that follows in the footsteps of King.
The first quote:
Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
The second:
[Name redacted], I hope you are looking forward to our date. I certainly am. … [I]t is clear that you have gone to great lengths to keep your image off the internet.
Nice try.
Is that a threat? No, it is a promise. Big difference.
As we have been saying here for years, the time for collegial, polite discussion and negotiation with these piles of refuse is over. …
We have people working on securing her image. Meantime, $100.00 to the first person who gets us a clear image of her which we can verify. Something large and clear enough to be used as a feature image is preferred.
As you have probably gathered, the first quote comes from Dr. King. It’s from his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, in which he sets forth a powerful argument for the transformative power of nonviolence, which, as he notes, “nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.”
The second quote comes from Paul Elam of A Voice for Men. I’ve taken the liberty of redacting the name of his target.
Yes, this self-described “humanitarian” is launching yet another campaign of doxxing and intimidation aimed at an ideological enemy who just happens to be female. And once again, as he so notoriously did several years ago, Elam is offering a bounty for the personal information of one of his targets – in this case a clear photograph of her face.
It’s a strategy that draws not on the tactics of Martin Luther King but on those of his enemies – in particular the Ku Klux Klan, which in the 1960s posted “wanted posters” featuring the faces of civil rights activists, including King himself. Some of those whose faces appeared on these “wanted posters,” most famously King himself, were later murdered.
In more recent years, anti-abortion activists have posted similar “wanted posters” featuring the pictures and addresses of doctors who perform abortions – some of whom were themselves later murdered.
Now AVFM has taken up this classic technique of intimidation.
Last year, AVFM activists – including the site’s “activism director” Attila Vinczer — posted hundreds of wanted-style posters of feminist philosophy professor Adele Mercier on and around the campus of Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario. The year before, a Men’s Rights group in Edmonton closely associated with A Voice for Men put up similar posters targeting Lise Gotell, the chair of women’s and gender studies at the University of Alberta.
We can only assume that Elam has a similar campaign in mind for his latest target.
So what are Elam’s charges against this new woman to hate?
According to him, the woman, a professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, accused AVFM activist Sage Gerard (aka Victor Zen) of “demonstrat[ing] a desire to kill women” in a complaint she filed with the KSU administration.
Elam has posted the complaint on his website. Her name appears nowhere in the complaint, nor does anything about Gerard wanting to kill women.
[ Clarification: Elam has now posted a separate campus police report about an incident in which Gerard came to the office of the Interdisciplinary Studies department requesting to see the professor; the police report contains her name as well as notes from the officer saying that “she has seen the cartoons, videos and blogs online and believes Gerard demonstrates having violent fantasies about hurting and murdering women.” ]
This anonymous complaint, along with another complaint about Gerard, were evidently triggered by a video Gerard posted last year of a late-night “sticker run” he made on the KSU campus.
The video, which Gerard filmed and narrated on the fly, is more than a little creepy. In it, Gerard describes his preparations for his “activism” as if he were launching some sort of covert operation; at one point he talks about hiding his stickers in the sleeves of his jacket. As he heads out the door to start his stickering, he announces “let’s go fuck with people.”
Gerard clearly sees what he’s doing as a deliberately provocative act. He talks about putting AVFM stickers in places “where they cannot be ignored” and about his desires to “push the boundaries” by plastering them in places they’re really not supposed to be put – most notably in a women’s bathroom where, thankfully, no women were present.
Weirdly, given that he later posted the video on his YouTube channel, Gerard also took steps in the video to conceal his identity and cover his tracks, wiping his fingerprints off of some of the stickers after pasting them in a bathroom. Later, apparently wanting to look as much like a serial killer as possible, he dons latex gloves.
At one point, Gerard jokes about how he’d like to paste one of the stickers over the mouth of a feminist to shut her up.
His behavior in the video and in his interactions with others on campus, as well as his affiliation with AVFM, clearly rattled some on the KSU campus. The anonymous complainant to the KSU administration suggested that Gerard’s actions were creating a “hostile work environment” for some faculty and staff and making students fear for their safety.
Elam has posted the actual complaints, which, in what seems to be a pretty clear violation of privacy, were sent to Gerard with the identity of one of the accusers laid bare. Here’s the anonymous complaint that Elam has attributed to his current target:
Among other similar offenses by the same individual, a KSU student (Sage Gerard) posed as a custodian and entered the women’s bathrooms on campus, placing stickers intended to intimidate women. … Gerard’s behavior indicates contemplation of violence against women (he posts art depicting guns pointed at women’s symbols, as well as other violently anti-feminist themes). His behavior has created a hostile work environment for multiple KSU employees who do not only fear intimidation and harassment, but actual physical violence against themselves and their families. KSU students have also expressed real fears for their own physical safety on campus . . . I do not feel safe on this campus. As an advocate of women, I feel strongly that I am at real risk of becoming the target of violent retaliatory actions perpetrated by Sage Gerard and the organization sponsoring him, A Voice For Men.
Emphasis mine.
The KSU administration investigated these complaints, and concluded that Gerard was not responsible for creating a hostile work environment, and that his speech was protected under the first amendment. The complaints were dismissed; no charges against Gerard were even filed.
He was asked to stay out of women’s bathrooms in the future. And the KSU counsel who prepared the report also had this suggestion:
We do recommend that Mr. Gerard continue to refrain from further contact with the persons who made the hotline reports (or those who Mr. Gerard believes may have made them), to avoid any real or perceived retaliation. In addition, we recommend that Mr. Gerard refrain from further contact with the members of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department to avoid escalating the situation to the point that it becomes a hostile environment in the legal sense.
That’s right. Gerard wasn’t charged with anything. He faced no sanctions. He was simply asked not to contact those on campus he was making uncomfortable.
But apparently this “no contact” request is so offensive to Gerard and his AVFM comrades that they have decided to launch the very retaliation campaign that the KSU complainants were afraid of. Thus, once again, proving their critics have been right to label them a hate group in the first place.
AVFM’s new target joins a long list of women (and a few men) who have been doxxed and/or harassed in retaliation for their “crimes” against Paul Elam’s delicate sensibilities.
Elam started off this parade of harassment shortly after this site started by attempting to get a woman fired from her job at a women’s shelter for a comment she made here in which she wondered aloud if Elam had a criminal record.
Since then, Elam and his AVFM cronies have:
Started Register-Her, a fake “Offenders Registry” designed to vilify and intimidate women. (The site is now in the hands of AVFM defector John Hembling.)
Gleefully participated in the unending harassment of a Canadian feminist that one AVFM author dubbed “little red frothing fornication mouth,” for her crime of … arguing with some AVFM activists at a demonstration once. Unflattering images of “Big Red” at that demonstration have since been plastered all over the internet; she even has a page devoted to her on KnowYourMeme.
Launched a years-long harassment campaign against feminist writer Jessica Valenti. Starting with a 2011 post in which Elam himself attacked her as a “stupid, hateful bitch,” the hate campaign has moved on to labeling her a “child abuser,” posting her personal photos on AVFM without permission, putting her on Register-Her.com, and libeling her by making up inflammatory quotations and attributing them to her. (AVFM’s “social media director” and serial quote-fabricator Janet Bloomfield was evidently permabanned from Twitter for her persistent harassment of Valenti.)
Supported GamerGate’s harassment of cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian, with AVFM’s PR whiz Bloomfield doing her part by blatantly libeling her on Twitter.
Launched a campaign of vilification against a Chicago-area “mommy blogger” for writing that she felt uncomfortable with the idea of a male day care staffer taking young girls to the bathroom.
Along with an assortment of white supremacists and online assholes, joined in a hate campaign against a young woman wrongly accused of trashing applications from white guys as a staffer at a college admissions office. Elam declared the woman, by name, to be a “warped by ideology” with “deep seated prejudices that guided her unscrupulous actions.” The blog was a hoax, and the woman Elam so eagerly vilified had nothing to do with it.
Published an article falsely accusing a male feminist blogger of being a “confessed rapist,” because, as Elam puts it, “karma is a BITCH.” (AVFM’s defense? It was being “satirical.”)
Accused a former AVFM staffer, with no evidence, of absconding with money donated for a men’s shelter.
Attacked feminist and skeptic Rebecca Watson on numerous occasions, including a post from Elam in which he used the term “whore” several dozen times.
And of course AVFM has accused me of everything from starting Reddit’s terrible BeatingWomen subreddit to somehow faking my site’s traffic stats on Alexa. (AVFM has never even bothered to provide “evidence” for any of their various accusations against me, perhaps because none of them are even remotely true.) Elam has posted bizarre sexual fantasies involving me, called me a pervert, and publicly suggested that I kill myself. One of AVFMs most, er, enthusiastic activists once left me a creepy, threatening voicemail at 1:38 AM. And AVFM “activism director” Attila L. Vinczer has tried to dox me, with somewhat comic results.
This isn’t even close to an exhaustive list of AVFM’s assorted retaliatory campaigns against feminists and other critics.
AVFM has made it very clear to the world – through its actions and its rhetoric – that if someone starts putting up AVFM posters or stickers on your campus or in your neighborhood, you have every reason to worry.
AVFM is not a civil or human rights group by any stretch of the imagination. It is a hate group, plain and simple, less akin to Martin Luther King Jr. than it is to those who so stubbornly fought against him.
NOTE: Here is Sage Gerard’s (aka Victor Zen’s) video of his sticker “activism.” You can probably see why people found it a little unsettling.
No, I don’t think black women–or any women of color–have privilege over white women. I also don’t think that comparison is fair or accurate in context of the discussion.
Because the basic argument I’m getting here (and correct me if I’m wrong) is that, unless you’re privileged along every axis, everyone is on the same footing. Is that so?
No. If several women are stood in the same queue for the toilet it doesn’t matter your colour. Maybe I’m lucky to have not ever been in an environment that might dictate toilet habits. Also, I wouldn’t mind using the ‘wrong’ toilet so I find it hard to accept toilet usage as a cause of oppression.
I think the argument is that privilege/oppression is not a single axis, where different attributes put you higher or lower, but a multidimensional thing where some groups have more privilege/less oppresion in some situations but in other situations it would be the reverse.
At least, that’s how I’m understanding it.
Also,
http://www.petguide.co.nz/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/angry-kitten.jpg
So, deal with it.
Katz, I feel like this is getting in to dangerous territory again. It’s my fault for engaging. I am going to back off.
This is the inherent problem with trying use intersectionality to curate speech. It just devolves into constant appeals to authority based on identity, rather than the speech or behavior itself. And it creates an authority where one group of women always has license to speak over and shout down another.
With apologies in advance for appearing to speak for her, I think marinerachel’s point about chromosomes was a really good one and very illuminating.
In general, I agree with Friday Jones that the focus on a discussion of chromosomes as some kind of interrogative tactic, even if it weren’t laced through with transphobia, would still be rude, antagonistic, and inappropriate. In the analogy to racism you propose, I see it as asking someone if they are quarter black or a sixteenth black, or if its on their mother’s or their father’s side. Sure, they could tell you if they wanted. If you were their doctor it would be absolutely relevant, or if you were their partner and looking to have kids, it would be necessary because genetic heritage entails some risk for future generations. But to interrogate someone on an internet forum? Not in any way cool or appropriate.
However, when you go to the extent that no discussion of chromosomes at all is appropriate because trans women have the authority to shut down that avenue of discussion for all women at all times, then you are explicitly silencing someone like marinerachel, for whom the discussion of chromosomes is relevant both personally and professionally. A hierarchy of authority based on intersectionality says that a trans woman gets to speak over and silence a scientist speaking in good faith (with a long record of comments that provide evidence for that good faith), or an intersex woman (or man) who wants to speak from their personal perspective about an issue of concern to them.
So I think the key is not to reify current structures of oppression by inverting them into privileges, but to focus on actual speech and behavior. We don’t need to push people to the wall to agree that chromosomes are either irrelevant or the holy grail of something or other. We can say that regardless of people’s beliefs, interrogating someone over their chromosomes is an asshole behavior and won’t be tolerated, but speaking respectfully about some issue related to chromosomes might be vitally relevant to a feminist who is intersex, and in that case, we might expect that someone uncomfortable with the conversation might go to another thread.
I mean, we interact with trolls and welcome them sticking around so long as they respect the rules of behavior, but we can’t find a way to have conversations with people who are actually on our side? How can that work?
@gillyrosebee,
*applause*
“I’m not feeling good about conversation being policed by a man.”
Imagine how any trans women must feel, reading a bunch of cis women (including me) debating over whether or not calling behaviour transphobic is a silencing tactic and talking about how “we” can’t allow “any group of women” to “shout down” other women.
“I know people don’t like to hear this, but supporting some trans women silencing and excluding cis women isn’t elevating trans people; it’s deferring to male privilege.”
The extent to which trans women have male privilege at all is highly debatable and, you know, probably NOT SOMETHING CIS PEOPLE SHOULD DECIDE.
“Katz, trans women have the privilege of not worrying about becoming pregnant. Can that be considered a privilege?”
Does it outweigh the danger of a man flipping out and killing them because they “used to be men”?
“So I’m privileged to use the bathroom with the longest queue without being questioned. I’m also privileged enough to become pregnant due to rape. Win win…”
Congratulations, here’s your gold medal.
Christ.
“cis women and trans men have female oppression, which trans women don’t have.”
Okay, Alex? This sounds a LOT like you’re saying trans women aren’t women. I’m a cis woman and my knee-jerk reaction was to be a lot harsher here, until I realised you had probably clumsily defined “female oppression” to mean “owns a uterus” earlier in the thread. This is why trans women go off and get angry, because they hear shit like this (i.e. how they “aren’t real women” all the damn time, and then a bunch of cis women wring their hands about how “transphobic” and “TERF” are silencing tactics and slurs. How the fuck are they meant to call us on our shit when we forbid them to use the tools for doing so?
Woman oppression = told we’re weaker than, not as smart as, not as hardworking as, men, get paid less, judged more, objectified, catcalled, less speaking roles in movies and TV, etc.. All women share that, cis or trans. No, I am not saying trans women aren’t really women.
Female oppression = limited or outright lack of reproductive rights, not taught about own anatomy in sex ed or how to enjoy sex, subjected to FGM, assumed that menstrual cycle means we shouldn’t be taken seriously, etc.. All biologically female people are affected by this, men or women. I am saying that trans women don’t experience this.
I hate to get involved in what could turn into yet another thread of doom, but the whole notion of trans women having privilege is reminding me of the MRA claim that women have privileges aka the “pussy pass” I don’t feel good about seeing this on what is normally a site for people who passed social justice 101 a long time ago.
“Female oppression = limited or outright lack of reproductive rights, not taught about own anatomy in sex ed or how to enjoy sex, subjected to FGM, assumed that menstrual cycle means we shouldn’t be taken seriously, etc.. All biologically female people are affected by this, men or women. I am saying that trans women don’t experience this.”
Alex – I got that at the last minute. I did. But it’s probably better to pick a different name for it, or even just state what you mean in long form like you did just now, you know? Because if you use “female oppression” as shorthand for “reproductive health bullshit that goes with physically having a uterus”, people may assume you mean female as a synonym for woman.
Well, uh, I’m not going to use “uterus-havers” or “vagina-owners”, so…I really don’t know what to call it. And I *did* separate female from woman, several times. Sorry it wasn’t clear. :/
The language problem I see the most is that “woman” and “female” are generally used in conjunction, so that “female” is the adjective form of “woman,” and vice versa. This is common English. So when someone says that trans women are not female, for all practical purposes that’s the same as saying they are not women.
This would not be a problem, really (we could just agree that trans women are female), except that there isn’t really a good single word to describe “born with a phenotype that conforms to what has been traditionally assigned the female sex” if “female” is out of the running. “Assigned female at birth” works, but it’s clunky, and most people don’t use it, and grammatically it just doesn’t work in all of the constructions that accept “female.”
This is a long way to say that the claim that trans women are privileged over cis women on the male/female axis is going to be problematic if that’s the way you phrase it. Words matter, and we can’t just redefine “female” to mean something other than “adjective form of woman” and expect that to fly.
I’m not actually redefining female, though. It’s not really and adjective of woman…animals don’t have gender, only biological sex. Female butterflies and dolphins and snakes, etc.. Some people say “woman is adult human female”, but “woman” and “man” are unique to humans and thus gendered because humans have gender. A few years ago, it seemed most people were on board that female sex =/= gender identity of woman. Only the last two years have people been doubling down and insisting that woman and female are one and the same. I can’t get behind that. Because then there are only two options: 1) female means biological sex, which means women are only female humans, which means trans women aren’t included; 2) female is removed from its biological meaning and is thus a gender-identity, which means there is no word for people who produce large gametes, possess XX chromosomes, a uterus and vulva, etc. and are oppressed for it. Neither of those two options sits well with me, and “AFAB” just doesn’t work.
Just gonna throw this out there: please please please guys don’t let this turn into another thread of doom. I don’t think you will, but just sayin’.
If this thread starts becoming doomy, I’m out. Threads of doom are Madness repellant. So … if it seems like someone is starting to get upset, that’s it for me.
Context matters as much as words. It’s fine to refer to mice as males and females, but when people pull that with human beings I am not on board with it. (Well, I’m not on board with referring to women as females. Men can refer to themselves as males if they want to. I won’t do it, though.) If you’re going to try to claim that the words we use to refer to animals can be equally applied to humans, as long as we are talking biologically (more on this below), then I would have to accept “females” as a synonym for “women.” I’m not going to do that. I am going to continue to come down on folks who want to call women and/or girls “females” as though they are animals.
Biologically: what does this word mean? Biology can refer to karotype, or phenotype, or any number of different things. If a trans woman has a complete surgical reassignment and is on estrogen, and is now phenotypically female in every important respect, is she now biologically female? I’m also not comfortable with refer to people as “biologically” one thing or the other, when 1. this word is slippery and ambiguous in everyday usege, and 2. it is painful for trans women and trans men when their gender identity is denied and the slipperiness and ambiguity of the word can be used to deny that identity.
Also a bit of background with me. I do not identify with any gender. My presentation is female, so I experience misogyny, but I am not comfortable referring to myself as either a woman or a man, or with any other gender. This has made me think a hell of a lot about the artificial distinction we make between gender and sex, and how much bullshit it is. I know that there is a school of thought that sex is biological and gender is a social construction, but if that were the case then I should be a woman. I was raised to be a woman, I am treated as a woman, my body conforms with the “female sex” in all apparent ways, and yet I am not a woman. If gender were a pure social construct and sex a pure genetic/biological construct, then I ask you: why am I not a woman? Society has constructed me to be one, and yet I am not one.
I have had a long time to think about this topic, and the only answer I can give is that sex and gender are not separable in the way this very powerful (as in: taught in universities) construction claims. Gender identity has to have biological foundations of some kind. Not in anything visible, like the form a body takes, but something else. There is something inside me that is bucking against this social pressure to identify as a woman.
So. That is where I’m coming from with this. I am not a woman, and I am not female, regardless of what my doctor thinks, or what you might think if you looked at me. I’m not trans either, but I have to conclude that trans people are experiencing something not totally unlike what I experience, and being told that sex = biology is a problem when it’s something in my biology that is keeping me from being a woman.
I’ve literally been using females as NOT a synonym for women in every single one of my comments talking about on this thread. I can clarify my position, I can reword things, but I cannot help you if you continue to read my words as being the opposite of what they are.
Reproductive rights, being judged for menstruating, getting the wrong list of symptoms for a heart attack, not learning about your own anatomy and all the words for it till adulthood, being subjected to FGM, these are things unique to being a female person. They are not unique to women because “woman” is a gender, a construct. Female is simply the label for people who have an anatomy that causes them to have to deal with much of the above. You are right that it’s not quite the same for other animals. After all, a female mouse, cardinal, or spider doesn’t have to deal with sex-based oppression. Animals don’t have gender, so gender-based oppression doesn’t affect them either. Both affect humans. They are not the same, and I’m not okay with pretending they are because it has to erase one form of oppression, be that trans oppression or female oppression.
And for the record, I don’t *feel* like a woman either. I don’t even really identify as one. My body is female, which is just a fact I accept. Feeling an innate sense of being a woman? No. I don’t know if that makes me genderqueer or agender or whatever. I don’t feel like something other than a woman, though. I just feel like me. And it’s really strange to me that not too long ago, I was having this exact line of argument only it was with trans antagonists on a facebook group. Never expected to be arguing it with the other side.
Gender is biological but sex is a construct? Both are constructs? I really don’t know what this line of thinking is supposed to accomplish. I just want to end all forms of oppression and that’s not going to happen by pretending one of those forms doesn’t exist or is sufficiently covered by two of the others.
k, I’m done.
This seems to have come back around to “cis women don’t really have privilege,” which is still not an okay thing for cis women to decide for themselves. Particularly not when there’s a strong undercurrent of “…because they’re really men.”
I am growing weary of the lengths people will go to insist that trans women should not be given the same consideration we give other marginalized groups.
Well, we’ve certainly come full circle to saying that female oppression is a thing somehow means I think trans oppression doesn’t exist, and saying trans women aren’t biologically female somehow means I think they’re not women. What are words?
I really wish I had something positive to say. I’ve been lurking on this blog since Elliot Rodger, and saw the original “Thread of Doom”. I really care about this community, and haven’t felt confident enough to throw my voice into the mix until recently. Then ThreadofDoom2 came around, and now I feel like it’s a sort of “speak now or forever hold your peace” sort of thing.
I miss kittehserf, and I miss LBT. I’ve long felt like this was one of those random little holy places where both liberal and radical feminists could come together and focus on our similarities and the ridicule of misogynist assholes. Even if people disagreed, it seemed like we could all form solidarity against the greater threat out there, which is *mostly* men who seem to lack empathy for anyone but themselves.
I think one of the best and worst things about feminism is that the people who really care about it hold themselves, and everyone else, up to an unrealistic manner. Then we cannibalize those who dare to make mistakes, and give in to our patriarchal upbringing. I wish that feminism as a whole was more compassionate towards its own members. This is something that has been growing in me for a long time. I think that we all want, so badly, for this world to be utterly equal towards everyone, and that we strive to embody that in all of our actions. And then when we, or someone we know, messes up and steps on someone else’s toes, who has also strived to be “perfect” in their activism or treatment of others, we tend to tear into our allies as harshly, if not more harshly, than our foes.
If we can tolerate trolls, but not members with dissenting opinions who are still, nonetheless, fighting for equality and abolishment of oppressive gender roles, then what kind of group are we? Are we helping the movement by further ostracizing those who don’t fully agree with every belief we hold dear? I think that sometimes, for people who have been abused before, the idea of disagreeing with someone you care about feels tantamount to betrayal, especially when it relates to your own identity. I know I feel that way.
I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and have struggled with the thought of taking T in order to feel like my body feels more like my brain does. But in my particular situation, I have polyfragmented DID, and my gender doesn’t stay the same for more than a few hours at a time. I stand nearly 5’1, and weigh very little. I’ve stood in front of the mirror naked and cried for hours at a time, wishing that my internal identity matched my external appearance. There is a very large part of me that, if you gave me a pill right now that would turn me into a passing man, I would take it. Even thinking about it makes me tear up, because I know that no such thing exists. I will never pass as a man.
So from my very personal experience, gender fucking hurts. And when I feel like a “woman” I still don’t feel like I identify as innately “womanly”. I’m too blunt, I like physically aggressive activities, I like to compete, and I like a lot of sex. When I used to live in SF, my buddies would call me a “gay man stuck in a woman’s body.” I took it as a compliment. I wished it was actually true.
So I find it quite hurtful on a personal level when commenters here tell everyone that trans-women have it the worst. I guess there’s no room for me, as a dfab woman who never identified with her own gender and always identified with men. I’m unwilling to give up my female body because it has been my cage since I was old enough to figure out why my teachers were treating me differently from my male peers. To give up my breasts in order to have my voice heard feels like some sort of inverse-Little Mermaid scenario, you know?? I’m fighting for the rights for this body to be accepted as an equal to a male body. I think that putting things into the categories of “masculine vs feminine” harms everybody.
I became a feminist because I cannot stand being stuck in this body; this outer signifier of my incompetence. And yet I love this body. It has withstood multiple assaults, from men who were far larger and stronger than me. It has withstood a pregnancy, and an abortion. It withstood my own period of garish self-cutting, and car accidents, and physical beatings. Today, it withstands multiple sexual assaults as I sell my body in order to keep a roof over my head.
So I am incredibly connected with the femininity forced upon me. And I’m disappointed, and beyond hurt, that so many commenters that I’ve grown to depend on for words of wisdom have managed to turn being a “woman born in a female body” into some hallmark of privilege compared to trans women.
No. I am cis. I am entirely female. I have felt like I was absolutely no different than other boys since I was 4, and I’ve cried over and over again about how they grew to see me as something other than them. My childhod friendships died when puberty hit. My biology is inescapable. The fact that I can get pregnant and then die from that pregnancy is inescapable. My lack of physical strength compared to most biological males is inescapable. I do feel empathy for trans women who are trying to escape the awful cage that is the man/woman division. I know how painful it is. I don’t like to talk about feeling like a man, because it really kills me inside and it’s harder for me to type this when I’m trying just to breathe and not cry.
My womanhood has only ever been a label people have placed onto me without my consent. I don’t want a part of it. The times that I’ve tried to pass as a man, I’ve gotten less respect than most 13 year old boys (which is the age that I look, as a man. I look young for a woman. It’s worse without makeup.) I understand that there are plenty of women who conform more stereotypically to feminine gender roles, and that for them womanhood is easier. It never has been for me, nor for any feminist I’ve met.
I think the real reason we’re all feminists is because we all agree that gender roles are fucking destructive, and it hurts us all. Can we please, please keep that in mind when talking about “cis women vs trans women’s” privilege. And have some open conversation, because I don’t think anyone enjoyed being stuck in a blue or a pink box early in life.
I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings, and if so would love to know where, so I can correct myself in the future. And if there’s a resounding shout for me to leave, I will. I’ve really enjoyed this being a safe space for the people who don’t identify with either side but find themselves confused and in the middle of things, like me. And most of the time, I think every regular commenter here should have an internet award for inter-feminist conflict. Even if I disagree with you, I know that we are looking for the same things in the bigger picture, and that’s more than I can say for the rest of the world and thank you.
Bill Paxton is amazing. He’s been killed by a terminator, alien and a predator.
BTW, I’m actually OK with the terms female and male applied to people in the context of, y’know, discussing our species with regards to sex. What I’m not OK with is, when having a discussion with no respect to biology in which people are referred to exclusely as their sex, particularly when one sex is humanized with “man” or “woman” and the other is referred to exclusively as their sex.