On Being Ashamed of Feminism and its Hypocrisy

[clovehitched]

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.

Comments

[nixwilliams.livejournal.com]

oh, WHAT THE FUCK is this bullshit? . . . i can't read any more of that. gross.

[jennyemily.livejournal.com]

Wow. Where do you find these people? Words fail me. Do we get to claim sexual assualt if we had a sexual relationship with them and they failed to disclose they were bigoted first?

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

Where do you find these people?

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.

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

Blimey - yep, treating an individual like they have a dirty secret is so life affirming I find.

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

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

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!

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?

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

I didn't reach the bottom, but trying is like mining an inexhaustible seam of fail.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Wow. WOW.

People are horrifying.

[nixwilliams.livejournal.com]

well, i've just been surprised all over again at how fucking stupid people can be. wow. i don't suggest reading to the end, unless it's for queen emily (http://community.feministing.com/2009/11/having-sex-while-stealth-is-no.html#comment-314298).

[paulathomas.livejournal.com]

Why?

Because at some level they have absorbed societies homophobia that's why!!

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

Oh hon, I'm still reeling from the abhorrent idea that someone can be stigmatized by sleeping with trans person.

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.

[aesmael.livejournal.com]

Deja vu there. Had to check those links were not posted in 2007, because I could have sworn I'd read the exact same comments claiming 'being lied to is worse than the actual transgression' and so on...

[meepettemu.livejournal.com]

I am reading. And currently amused be the person shouting educational privilege about the use of the word "flounce". I feel I'm going to be very annoyed shortly..

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes, I fell off my seat when I saw that. Hooray for 'your-privilege-is-bigger-than-mine' feminist arguments... ¬_¬

[uisgebeatha.livejournal.com]

I was going to write a long and coherent reply, but instead I shall give you this icon and the phrase WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

>.>

[nixwilliams.livejournal.com]

i think i have fallen in love with your icon. (wtf?!) please to be telling me from whence it came?

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

Icon love!

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

Damn you with your fangled internets speak and your fancy one-syllable words!

[lnr]

I think it's sad if you have to declare you're not with the feminism movement because of the actions of some within it. Obviously that's your prerogative, especially as you're going to notice this sort of thing much more than I do, I just wish it weren't necessary. Still, I am a feminist and I'm not like that, and condemn those who are. I suspect there are many others replying here who could say something similar. I hope that helps just a little.

[sparrowpunk.livejournal.com]

Reading the comments makes me want to proclaim loudly and clearly "I'm not with anybody", but it's pretty hard when I'm under two duvets.

Just... ugh. People make me sad.

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the sentiment and share it to an extent. It seems, especially when I'm having a bout of SAD-induced cynicism, that this stuff is pervasive though, and I grow weary of feeling that the disclaimer, "but not like THAT" to "I'm a feminist" seems to be always necessary.

*GRUMP*

[whisperkit.livejournal.com]

Urgh. The comments on that thread are disgusting.

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

I'm used to comment threads about teh trans being full of fail, but this one seems to elevate the fail to a new and grotesque artform.

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm really getting sick of having to append "...but not THAT sort of feminist" every time.

Feminism has to be for all women, not just abled white middle-class cis ones.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Having 'grown up' as an undergrad in the somewhat gentler feminism of the seventies which seemed to have no trouble accepting who I was becoming, I just find this exclusivist stuff deply depressing. As a historian, I've studied the fascist movements of the twentieth century quite deeply, although they're not my specialist field and I'm beginning to be unable to tell the difference between them and certain brands of exclusivist feminism. I know many wonderful people who are 'not like that' but they still seem not always to be able find it in themselves to vociferously condemn the minority who ARE like that- not to disown what is being done in their name. Remind anyone of religious extremism/ethnic cleansing/racist bigotry does it? Have we really all become so brainwashed by this exclusivist garbage?

Oh and does this mean when my hubby and I get up to no good in bed that I rape him every time? Oh wait, I forgot- straight people are unpeople in this bizzaro world, right?

I guess we just need to bear in mind that these strange people are, in the end an unrepresentative MINORITY, so perhaps we just need to keep a sense of proportion depressing though this stuff is?

[arkady.livejournal.com]

What stood out for me in that first comment thread you've linked to, is the insistence that a transwoman can only ever be a man pretending to be a woman. I mean, WTF?? The amount of fail in those comments can be pretty much summed up right there - the assumption that men will stop at nothing to have sex with a lesbian, even going so far as painful and invasive surgery to physically become a woman just to have sex with one??

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.