clovehitched (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clovehitched) wrote2009-11-05 09:58 am
clovehitched) wrote2009-11-05 09:58 am
On Being Ashamed of Feminism and its Hypocrisy
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.
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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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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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Because at some level they have absorbed societies homophobia that's why!!
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That somehow it importunes your own sexuality???? So this means you do NOT have it within you to honour and validate another individual's identity, and therefore you have been 'tricked' into sleeping with someone you now consider to be the same sex as you, then you are also homophobic, which means that you've suddenly done something GAY, threatened your own identity, questioned your own validity as human being and your emotional scars no doubt come from your own fucked up-ness going PHOOM!
I mean I knew I knew this. But it just doesn't square in my head, it's so illogical. And I simply don't want the massive PARADIGM SHIFT it would take to even get close to understanding how someone can deny another's identity in order to embrace victim-hood.
However, the thing I WISH beyond all wishing is how to instigate the human thinking and feeling paradigm shift in another person without resorting to violence.
Sorry I got all ranty - I knew it was a rhetorical question really, stuff just came out.
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...when I was sixteen. Then I grew up and dealt with my shit. I wonder how mature, sexually and emotionally some of the commenters there are. Regardless, if they're going to carry on with childish "urgh, girl/boy/trans cooties!" into adulthood, the very least they could do is to keep it to themselves, and realise that the onus for adapting to their unreasonable phobia in a sexual encounter is on them, and them alone.
If anything, if they're that squeamish about their bedroom activities, then they're probably a really crappy lay (being all prissy under the sheets - probably baulk at handcuffs) and disclosing their prejudices to *all* their prospective sexual partners must surely be the decent thing to do. It's only kind.
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IOW, it really isn't your business unless you are bloody close and then whether you want kids is more important anyway.
FAIL! I think is all I can say.
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