Threlizdun wrote:Mostrov wrote:I'm not particularly interested in non-traditional gender roles because of my complete lack of comprehension of social dissent in this regard or indeed the concept of self-expression. Insomuch that there was no question of me getting married and having children (much less sexuality or gender), as much as a matter of too whom.
Why do you feel you have no choice in this matter?That attitude of assuming there is a universal female experience and that transwomen can't experience it is the problem. Every woman has a different experience based on the circumstances they find themselves in. Women in general can expect more oppression than men, but how they experience it is unique. Trans women may expect more oppression than cis women, but how each individual experiences it is still unique. Trans-exclusive "radical feminists" are neither radical not feminists. There is nothing radical about excluding trans people, and there is nothing feminist about refusing to assist in ending the oppression of women. Cissexism, sexism, racism, ableism, classism, and heterosexism are all factors working to cement oppression, and all must be combated if one truly wishes to stand for female empowerment. Liberating only a small subset of women is entirely different than standing for the liberation of women in general.Chessmistress wrote:
"A lot of horror stories" is really exaggerated, but let's say every rose has its thorns...http://www.afterellen.com/books/412271- ... stic-abuse
and that bullshit like somebody who touches the opposite sex must be forever tainted is actually not common, but, still, it happens.
What's wrong about TERFs? TERFs are not about hating transexuals, it's about assuming they cannot fully share our experiences (and note, I'm not comparing transexuals to males).
Indeed, one of the things that went furthest to reconciling me to be at least... open... to feminism was this passage from Andrea Dworkin's RIght Wing Women:
"[...] The crimes committed against women because they are women articulate the condition of women. The eradication of these crimes, the transformation of the condition of women, is the purpose of feminism; which means that feminism requires a most rigorous definition of what those crimes are so as to determine what that condition is. This definition cannot be compromised by a selective representation of the sex class based on sentimentality or wishful thinking. This definition cannot exclude prudes or sluts or dykes or mothers or virgins because one does not want to be associated with them. To be a feminist means recognizing that one is associated with all women not as an act of choice but as a matter of fact. The sex-class system creates the fact. When that system is broken, there will be no such fact. Feminists do not create this common condition by making alliances; feminists recognize this common condition because it exists as an intrinsic part of sex oppression. The fundamental knowledge that women are a class having a common condition— that the fate of one woman is tied substantively to the fate of all women—toughens feminist theory and practice. That fundamental knowledge is an almost unbearable test of seriousness. There is no real feminism that does not have at its heart the tempering discipline of sex-class consciousness: knowing that women share a common condition as a class, like it or not."
It is women's common condition in the present that binds us. Not the past. Not our attitudes, our tastes, our beliefs, or any of the divergent things about us as individuals. The barriers that remain in society, the things that afflict us as women because we are women, that's the thing in common.
