content warning, I’m going to be glib and talk about misogyny and transphobia in a joking manner - I don’t mean to harm anyone, and I don’t want to upset anyone.
OK hear me out: trans-exclusionary radical feminists, at least the actual radfems who are often middle-aged and still stuck in second-wave feminism, should love gender-affirming care … doesn’t it do exactly what they would love to do to men? Like, a lot of these women are cultural feminists, they essentialise men and women and view women as superior and men as inherently violent, oppressive, and bad. At least that’s been my experience.
So, for example, if a man wants to suppress testosterone and take estrogen, shouldn’t TERFs’ fear about violence from men and the (admittedly simplistic) narrative that testosterone is responsible for that violence and aggression motivate them to embrace enabling as many men as possible to suppress their testosterone and chemically castrate themselves with estrogen?
Even if they don’t believe that makes the man a woman, shouldn’t they believe it’s an improvement?
It just sounds like a revenge fever-dream concocted by second-wave lesbian separatist: a woman goes about secretly injecting abusive men with estrogen to calm them down … it just sounds like a revenge fantasy they would be into.
The plot of The Gate to Women’s Country literally centers around this fantasy of castrating men to make “good” men.
And if that’s not compelling, I know they love the stories about chopping off dicks - come on, if they really believe trans women are a bunch of men, shouldn’t they support access to gender-affirming care like vaginoplasties that do exactly that?
TERFs should support gender-affirming care even if they don’t believe trans women are women. If men are the enemy they should be the biggest fans of chemically castrating and cutting the dicks off men.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I think I get what you’re asking a bit. “If gender is entirely up to interpretation, why does it have to exist at all?” You can let me know if I’m misunderstanding you. My response to that is more or less that we don’t live in a world without gender. Gender identity is something that is formed in early childhood, and most people would be very resistant to attempts by others to get them to abandon gender entirely. It’s just not that simple unfortunately. I think gender liberation, as in like allowing everyone to self-determine their gender, is functionally doing the same thing without asking people to discard it entirely. Being a woman has deep meaning to me, powerful feelings about who I am and who I was growing up. Being a woman is for me an act of self affirmation and resistance of assigned gender.
My partner for example does identify as agender. They just dislike most gendered labels being applied to them and feel most comfortable letting it go entirely. That is absolutely valid too. Theres no right or wrong way to perform gender, nor is it wrong to feel like gender itself is incompatible with our own self perception. Gender liberation is just denying attempts to assign gender and allowing everyone identify their own gender.
You understand me well, the problem is that i identify as a woman and i stubbornly refuse the non binary/agender whatever. Im a woman, i just dont think it means much so i very much resent being told that it means something and trans certainly seems like it’s meaningful. Anyway, you get me :)
And yeah I think it’s fine for your own identity to be entirely separated from what is socially constructed as conventionally feminine. Butch women and femme women and androgynous women are all still women. For all those people their own definition of womanhood is different.
As for non-binary people, this community is for them too and I’ll ask that you respect their identities too. Here is an article that does a good job explaining the basics of non-binary identity. I’d ask you to keep an open mind and consider that your perspective on this might not be entirely informed. Non-binary/third gender people aren’t a new phenomenon by any means. The wikipedia page for third-gender has a history section that talks a lot about non-binary gendered people throughout history (it goes back to the beginning of recorded history). We’ve often been sold a lie that people and cultures have always had the binary male/female dichotomy. This is just simply not true and is a form of western erasure of other cultures.
I’m aware of the third gender people and personally identifying as a woman was not intended as a repudiation of that. I repudiate noones identity. That is anathema. I am only trying to assert my own which is defined in a now out of date way. Im trying to get you all to understand why it can be a bit confusing to accept that trans women are women, but it doesn’t mean hate. It takes a broader definition of woman, and thats hard when your definition of woman is meaningless chromosomes. Again, i affirm that trans women are women and welcome trans women into all spaces hitherto assigned to women.
Sorry, I mistook what you had said as saying that you don’t accept non-binary/third gender people’s identities. I’m glad that you respect them as well.
I can definitely understand how gender liberation can be confusing from a cisgender perspective. Not everyone is actually willing to listen to us when we try to explain our experiences to them. It’s a minority of a minority who will hear us out and engage in constructive conversation with us. Our entire community is subject to a lot of violence on a regular basis. We are very protective and insular out of necessity for that. Hate is presumed because, in the vast majority of cases, it is also there. In this case, it wasn’t.
I have watched the trans hate as the canary in the coal.mine but also just as weirdness. When i was a kid trans was a medical curiosity, not a moral outrage and to see the change is eminent proof of societal madness. However i feel about femaleness or transness or my own very personal confusion I will never forget that trans people are people and their rights must be protected. The protective instinct is 100%, justified. I hope that whatever our differences you can at least know that i will stand for trans rights.