We are told, especially if we are women, that the answer to loneliness and frustration is to find that one, ideal partner who will fulfil all our emotional, financial, domestic and sexual needs. We are told this even though we know full well that it doesn’t work out for a lot of people. Almost half of all marriages end in divorce.
- Laurie Penny, ‘Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults’
You can’t “take back radical feminism” from TERFs and SWERFs. It’s not like they’ve co-opted anything.
If you take the trans-exclusionary and anti-sex work attitudes out of radical feminism you still have a whole lot of either bioessentialism and/or gender essentialism, which is an integral part of radical feminism, and also still harmful.
The trans-exclusionary and anti-sex work attitudes are not some perversion of an otherwise good ideology. They’re the very obvious, very natural conclusion of an ideology which starts with the basic premise that Men will ALWAYS try to oppress Women; that this is natural and due to biological instinct to control sexual reproduction.
That’s the basic argument, right there. That systemic oppression FOLLOWS individual oppression and that ALL oppression comes from a single basic form: People with penises terrorizing people with vaginas because they want - as a matter of “instinct” which radfems argue cannot really be overcome - to make sure they have more babies and therefore their genetics win the evolution game.
It’s a simple argument that almost makes sense if you squint at it. It sounds scientific. But it’s also dangerously wrong, and it can only lead to the kinds of conclusion we’ve already seen.
If you believe that testosterone makes someone literally evil, and less of a real person…That’s always, always gonna end up in a bad place. And you cannot separate radical feminism from that, because that is the very basis of it.
also it’s worth noting that gender essentialism Is the “trans inclusive” version of radfem rhetoric, and it’s Fully been used to point that rhetoric at trans people.
trans women are pressured to hate themselves if they haven’t transitioned and to hate their “masculine” features, and trans men are demonized For transitioning and for their identifying with masculinity at all.
we have a situation where trans people will say with their whole chest that testosterone makes you Worse As A Person By Default totally unironically and not at all realize that they’re spouting radfem rhetoric verbatim because they’re saying it about trans men and they don’t believe that people Can Be victimized for being men.
the problem with radical feminism isn’t that it’s pointed at the wrong target, it’s that the ideas it’s made up of are fundamentally harmful No Matter Who The Target Is. and our communities are Going to be vulnerable to radicalization and lateral aggression Until we recognize that and make an active effort to change.
today is my birthday every year I wish that women will be free maybe one day, that will be until then I am grateful for the women that fight every day to make that happen I love you Thank you
Something I find disappointing about both in-person and online feminist circles is that women are often so afraid of being seen as “gossips” that they fail to identify, name, and discuss red flag behavior in their circles.
Ignoring concerning patterns of behavior and failing to communicate with each other — or worse, shutting down those who DO vocalize concerns by calling it “gossip” — is how missing stairs become fixtures in your community. Looking the other way and refusing to acknowledge troubling patterns in your feminist circles is a safeguarding failure. It’s a huge disservice not only to the women currently involved in your community, but also to the women who have yet to find it.
For International Women’s Day, us radical feminists in Uruguay held an activity called #EscapaDelCorset, inspired by Korean radfems’ #EscapeTheCorset movement, where we shaved our heads, destroyed our makeup and burnt oppresive pieces of clothing such as bras, as well as our abusers’ names.
wow this post is suddenly getting a lot of love!! i’m suddenly missing my shaved head - this was in march 2020 and it’s grown so much since then. i might do it again when summer comes. thanks for all the lovely comments :)
ps if you’re thinking about shaving your head, this is absolutely a sign
I’m looking for 3-4 other feminist writers/artists/graphic designers/creatives who want to start an online feminist magazine—nothing crazy just publishing more formal pieces in a space other than tumblr. My goal is for writers to be able to list this project as an official byline. If you are interested please send me an ask and share this post!
Just saw a post criticizing insular language in movements and someone reblogged tagging it with a phrase that’s only used in the radfem community to criticize trans people. The battle of critical thinking vs confirmation bias rages on. Self reflection is good and makes any movement better
I want to make it clear that I do not stand with Lily Cade. Lily Cade’s statement here does not represent my views, or the views of any gender critical person I’ve spoken with. I am disgusted by this.
well, i believe that sex is innate. it’s determined in utero based in part on your chromosomes and observed at birth. then, males and females are divided into strict, hierarchal social categories called gender roles. that system is called gender. in an ideal world, gender would not exist, and your sex would have no relation to your interests, personality, or mental abilities. your sex should say nothing about you as a person. but right now, females are seen as inferior because of their sex, and feminism was created to liberate women as a class. that means it’s necessary to define what a woman is and that misogyny is not the hatred of femininity, which is a construct, but of the female sex. i also believe that homosexuality is innate. i believe that homosexual people have the right to define themselves by their exclusive same-sex attraction, and should be open about it no matter who it offends on any side of the political spectrum.
does that sound transphobic? i wasn’t playing dumb to trick you, but to point out that i held your same beliefs several years ago. if asked what a terf is, i would have said the same thing you did, that they were transphobic assholes whose ideals were hurting trans women. i first looked at a “terf” blog when i saw someone call lesbians genital fetishists, and i was confused why no one was calling them out for being homophobic except for the “terf.” i realized that lesbians were being demonized for being gay by a group that i thought was progressive. this group thinks that being attracted to only the same sex is narrow-minded. i found i agreed with other “terf” beliefs, some that i didn’t even realize were supposed to be “terfy.”
i’d encourage you to do more than ask your friends to sum up terf viewpoints for you and look into them yourself. send some anons. at the very least, you should know your enemy, right?
It’s a little hard to explain because mostly what I’ve seen is just nonsensical rambling about gender and how trans people are predators. If anyone who knows what the terfs are actually saying besides “grrr trans people bad!” could you chime off?
A terf is a “feminist” who has fundamentally transphobic ideals. They’re quite harmful for trans people, especially trans women, but their ideas also affect the entire lgbt community. I’m sure someone else can put it into better words but that’s the general idea.
Apparently I didn’t phrase it clearly enough last time for some people so! If you are a bigot, yes terfs and truscum this includes you, get! The! Fuck! Off! My! Blog! If you’re racist, homophobic, transphobic, whatever fucking bigotry you can think of, fuck off!!! This place isn’t for you!!! MAPs don’t even fucking look at this blog!!
imagine having someone disprove your straw man this perfectly and publicly
How aggressively, willfully ignorant they are is honestly amazing. People really do hate what they don’t understand.
I get so unreasonably mad when TRAs imply that right wing men somehow like terfs, listen to terfs, wish to work with terfs… right wing men fucking hate feminists. It’s true that some radfems are racist and homophobic and willing to align with the right. And I want nothing to do with them. But you have to be fucking delusional to believe that right wing ideology is compatible with radical feminism. You think right wing men give two squirts of piss about women’s rights and women’s spaces? Look at anything about trans women in women’s sports posted in predominantly male, right wing spaces. They think it’s fucking hilarious. The comments are flooded with things like “lol who cares about women’s sports?” “serves those feminist SJWs right!” “men are better at being women that women are!” they celebrate trans women’s success in women’s sports because they see it as a man infiltrating and putting women in their place, showing those silly feminists what they get for wanting equality and trying to be inclusive. Here is a small selection of comments from one such post on iFunny, which has a userbase predominantly composed of right leaning men
This was only a small selection of countless comments like this. They do not care.
“you don’t need dysphoria to be trans”, “nonbinary ppl don’t owe you androgyny”, “trans butches are beautiful” and “gay transmascs can be feminine” were the turning points opening the gates for all these corny straight fetishists and privileged gender conforming young ppl who want to be quirky and oppressed online to id their way into being lgbt huh….
