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Feeling so very disappointed right now.
Until feminism as a movement stops being mainly an exercise in navel-gazing for middle-class, educated, white cissexual women, until those professing to be feminists stop holding up bigots like Raymond, Greer and Bindel as icons because they're getting damp over some paragraph they once wrote, until the movement at large takes itself seriously enough to apply its supposed principles to cover all women, and all cases where the powerful oppress the powerless, regardless of sex, gender, race, education, class, income, etc., until someone can make a post about trans people having sex on a supposed feminist discussion board without commenters claiming that a trans person (and you know they mean trans woman) having sex without disclosing their medical history is non-consensual sex (i.e. rape) which should be prosecuted, and having half the people in the discussion sharing a similar sentiment...
...until then, I'm going to proclaim loudly and clearly, "I'm not with them."
By the way, did you know that teh tranz is just like an STD? You can probably even catch it from a snog!
(Also, I think that interpreting "the emotional strain caused by the non disclosure is actionable, and so should it be when one hides the fact of them being trans" as "it's OK to kill trans women after fucking them" is probably not that much of a stretch, as you know, that does actually happen quite a lot).
Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/214250.html - you can comment here or there.
Until feminism as a movement stops being mainly an exercise in navel-gazing for middle-class, educated, white cissexual women, until those professing to be feminists stop holding up bigots like Raymond, Greer and Bindel as icons because they're getting damp over some paragraph they once wrote, until the movement at large takes itself seriously enough to apply its supposed principles to cover all women, and all cases where the powerful oppress the powerless, regardless of sex, gender, race, education, class, income, etc., until someone can make a post about trans people having sex on a supposed feminist discussion board without commenters claiming that a trans person (and you know they mean trans woman) having sex without disclosing their medical history is non-consensual sex (i.e. rape) which should be prosecuted, and having half the people in the discussion sharing a similar sentiment...
...until then, I'm going to proclaim loudly and clearly, "I'm not with them."
By the way, did you know that teh tranz is just like an STD? You can probably even catch it from a snog!
(Also, I think that interpreting "the emotional strain caused by the non disclosure is actionable, and so should it be when one hides the fact of them being trans" as "it's OK to kill trans women after fucking them" is probably not that much of a stretch, as you know, that does actually happen quite a lot).
Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/214250.html - you can comment here or there.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 10:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 10:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-11-05 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 10:30 am (UTC)They're walking around, everywhere, right now.
And you know what the scariest thing is? These aren't the sort of people with a Daily Mail mentality - if they're on that site, they're gonna be more of a Guardian/Indy mentality. These are the nice ones.
And in answer to your rhetorical question, apparently not, because we're the ones who evoke disgust and loathing in any right minded person, apparently, not them. The world is truly upside-down.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 10:35 am (UTC)Going back to the original article - I thought this was well put:
"When you say that trans people are obligated either to be celibate or to come out to their sexual partners, you're suggesting that trans people should either disappear on their own or identify themselves so that they can be ignored, all for the benefit of transphobic people who would prefer it if they simply didn't exist.
You're telling transgender people to participate in their own oppression."
Which bit of that did the commenter not get?
They're using the same argument a BNP idiot might use on someone like me - anyone who is a descendant of a black person should declare it incase we gets hurt! It's so obvious that's a racist statement to the extreme. Using that same argument to ask a trans person to disclose - is transphobic. End of.
*hugs*
Edited for spellingez
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Date: 2009-11-05 10:39 am (UTC)Yes.
The thing that boggles my mind about all of this is the way so many of them seem to feel there's some sort of essential difference involved which makes, e.g. a post op trans woman who a man fancies and sleeps with be an enjoyable experience if and only if that man doesn't know she's a trans woman. If he does know, then it turns from being "a good shag" into a deeply traumatic experience which will leave emotional scars for life.
Why?
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Date: 2009-11-05 11:07 am (UTC)People are horrifying.
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Date: 2009-11-05 12:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-11-05 11:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 11:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 11:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-11-05 11:47 am (UTC)>.>
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Date: 2009-11-05 11:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-11-05 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 12:19 pm (UTC)*GRUMP*
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Date: 2009-11-05 12:16 pm (UTC)Just... ugh. People make me sad.
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Date: 2009-11-05 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 01:24 pm (UTC)I can smell the transphobia way over here and it sickens me - and I'm not even its target.
People like that are why whilst I probably count as one of those middle-class, educated, white cissexual women you refer to, I refuse to consider myself a feminist whist people like that claim the title yet insist on excluding a group of women on the basis of what external genitalia they happened to be born with.
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Date: 2009-11-06 10:46 am (UTC)All hail the mighty Purity of the True Wymyn!
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Date: 2009-11-05 01:30 pm (UTC)fail. massive fail. AND TO THINK SO PEOPLE ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT POST-FEMINISM 'oh we've achieved gender equality so its all good now' JUST WTF.
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Date: 2009-11-05 01:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-11-05 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 02:15 pm (UTC)(seriously, you're right, but some people seem to have difficulty advancing past the "icky girls/boys!!!" phase)
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Date: 2009-11-05 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 05:05 pm (UTC)I hear you on the "not with them" thing. It can be tough for me, as well, to identify as a feminist when they seem to care so little about trans folks.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-06 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 06:02 pm (UTC)Sarah, you are not alone in your frustration, and if I have time, I shall wade into this river of feminist fail and do battle. I must. For someone is being wrong on the internet.
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Date: 2009-11-06 10:50 am (UTC)Well quite.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 06:08 pm (UTC)*you know, a rough guess, so quite possibly wrong
Either way, these are the liberals? The free-ish-thinkers? The ones who aren't told what to do by booming beardy voices in the sky? And these are the ones who are a very small step from telling us to wear badges identifying us? I think I actually prefer honest bigotry to deluded hypocrites claiming that "not-trans" is a morally acceptable sexual preference and not transphobia with a new paint job.
Apologies for the mini rant.
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Date: 2009-11-05 06:27 pm (UTC)This.
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Date: 2009-11-05 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-06 10:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-11-05 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 08:53 pm (UTC)WTF! Some of those comments are really quite dire and at points make me feel rather sick. Please don't give up on the rest of us who think this sort of thing is abominable.
ARGH.
When you get serious *then* you *might* have some degree of right to know this just as with anything else in life but only if it actually matters (for e.g. fertility reasons) in your relationship.
Until you are bloody serious and telling them a lot of personal things you have not the slightest right to know. If they actually lie then, yes, I would be angry but not any more. Certainly not to call it sexual assault. People are very rarely completely open and honest, why should an issue where someone's safety potentially at risk if they disclose should they be expected to???
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Date: 2009-11-05 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-06 10:54 am (UTC)Well, I've got all those checkboxes apart from the cis one - I'm pretty privileged in many ways. Some of the people on that thread seem to be practically revelling in their privilege though. :-(
(no subject)
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From:no subject
Date: 2009-11-06 01:21 pm (UTC)By the way, did you know that teh tranz is just like an STD? You can probably even catch it from a snog!
I will go out this very afternoon, find women who would make very pretty gay boys and snog them a lot. Spread the love!
As for feminism - after getting into a few scraps with the deeply self-hating transmale gender studies graduates who inhabit the murky depths of some of LJ's FTM communities, I'm really starting to develop a deep skepticism for its value, not just for trans people but for reality in general. It really seems to have a deep vein of misandry and to be, as you say, largely an exercise in academic self-congratulation. With all the privileged outlook access to academia implies. Obfuscating your bigotry in politically correct jargon doesn't make it not bigoted.
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Date: 2009-11-13 11:36 pm (UTC)Quite so.
And the academic self-congratulation school of "feminism", I've seen it not just in trans men, but in trans women too (or should that be "tryns wymyn"?)
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Date: 2009-11-07 02:51 am (UTC)