| VGPolyglot said: So, you're a TERF? I admit I was hoping for that not to be the case. While yes, societal expectations do make people feel uncomfortable with their preferences, I do believe that gender dysphoria is a thing. Eliminating transsexual women from feminism is ignoring some of the most vulnerable women, how are they going to feel accepted if even those that promote equality of women don't want them? |
(For those who aren't familiar with the hate term just articulated, "TERF" is online shorthand for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist; a label embraced by exactly zero radical feminists.)
Radical feminism is not exclusionary of "trans-women", it is exclusionary of men. The fact that we don't embrace a revisionist definition of womanhood that proclaims men the most oppressed women, gives them the right to define and run our movement for us, access our private spaces, and guilt-trip us for having female bodies does not make us hateful or more exclusionary than a women's movement should be, it makes us cognizant of our interests as a class and of the need to develop our class consciousness on our own terms.
The oppression of women began as a quest by men to control our reproductive functions. It has always been about controlling our bodies first and foremost. That's why the discrimination against women has alternatively been referred to as sexism: because it is based on hatred of our sex (perhaps for its exclusive reproductive capacity)! When we reach the point that the female body, in spite of its historical exploitation, objectification, and abuse by men, becomes seen as a form of privilege that we have to apologize for possessing, is that really even feminism anymore?
Let me give you a concrete example of what this looks like in action. At the 2017 Women's March, which was essentially a protest of the inauguration of a self-confessed rapist as president, the pussy hat, as it became known, became an iconic symbol of the event. It was an allusion to Trump's "grab 'em by the pussy" remark from the Access Hollywood video that we've all seen by now. At this year's Women's March, however, pussy hats were banned. (Some women wore them anyway, but the ban is the point here.) Why? Because identifying womanhood with the female body was deemed "transphobic". To put that another, perhaps clearer way, we were banned from protesting sexual violence against women by the President of the United States at a women's march because men were offended by the idea. I mean you never know: maybe when Trump said "grab 'em by the pussy" he was referring to "women" with penises. What's more, organizers were obliged to give men platforms at this year's Women's March if they claimed to be women. And how did they use their platforms, you ask? They used them to call for such things as the legalization of pimping and the de-funding and blacklisting of rape crisis centers; proposals that, shockingly, were met with boos from the roughly 85% female audience.
Anyway, let me ask you this: What of the women you are denying the womanhood of by implication here? The biological females who have redefined themselves as men, perhaps in order to be socially permitted to retain romantic/sexual interest in other women? Does that make you exclusionary?
Of course dysphoria is a real condition. It is, however, a conditioned one, in my observation; one that should be addressed, not just conceded to as a biological inevitability.
