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#that 'there's no queer rights or feminist issue that affects men more than women'
penrosesun · 2 years
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“Well if women tried to oppressively control men’s reproductive choices–”
I’m going to stop you right there. I’m a man. I have a uterus. On June 24, 2022, Amy Coney Barrett, who as far as I know is a woman, ruled that I, a man, do not have a constitutional right to privacy in that uterus. 
This isn’t some gotcha hypothetical. Women in power do oppressively control many men’s reproductive choices. There are women who are literally oppressively regulating men’s reproductive choices right now, in the literal current abortion fight. And that’s without even getting into the many important and related reproductive rights issues besides abortion, such as the forced sterilization of men on the basis of race, class, or disability.
For fuck’s sake, stop pretending this issue is men versus women. It’s not. It’s a far right wing agenda versus everyone who values bodily autonomy of any kind.
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bitchesgetriches · 1 year
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On poverty:
Starting from nothing
How To Start at Rock Bottom: Welfare Programs and the Social Safety Net
How to Save for Retirement When You Make Less Than $30,000 a Year
Ask the Bitches: “Is It Too Late to Get My Financial Shit Together?“
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It’s More Expensive to Be Poor Than to Be Rich
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On Financial Discipline, Generational Poverty, and Marshmallows
Bitchtastic Book Review: Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado
Is Gentrification Just Artisanal, Small-Batch Displacement of the Poor?
Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 1: Healthcare, Housing, and Labor Rights
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The Latte Factor, Poor Shaming, and Economic Compassion
Ask the Bitches: “How Do I Stop Myself from Judging Homeless People?“
The Subjectivity of Wealth, Or: Don’t Tell Me What’s Expensive
A Little Princess: Intersectional Feminist Masterpiece?
If You Can’t Afford to Tip 20%, You Can’t Afford to Dine Out
Correcting income inequality
1 Easy Way All Allies Can Help Close the Gender and Racial Pay Gap
One Reason Women Make Less Money? They’re Afraid of Being Raped and Killed.
Raising the Minimum Wage Would Make All Our Lives Better
Are Unions Good or Bad?
On intersectional social issues:
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Blood Money: Menstrual Products for Surviving Your Period While Poor
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Queer Finance 101: Ten Ways That Sexual and Gender Identity Affect Finances
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Racial justice
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The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander: A Bitchtastic Book Review
Something Is Wrong in Personal Finance. Here’s How To Make It More Inclusive.
The Biggest Threat to Black Wealth Is White Terrorism
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10 Rad Black Money Experts to Follow Right the Hell Now
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Ethical Consumption: How to Pollute the Planet and Exploit Labor Slightly Less
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Season 1, Episode 4: “Capitalism Is Working for Me. So How Could I Hate It?”
Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 1: Healthcare, Housing, and Labor Rights
Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 2: Racial and Gender Inequality
Shopping smarter
You Deserve Cheap Toilet Paper, You Beautiful Fucking Moon Goddess
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Fast Fashion: Why It’s Fucking up the World and How To Avoid It
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genderkoolaid · 1 year
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Ngl i dont really get 'feminist' mens rights activism. Are men hurt by the patriarchy? Yeah... but they benefit from it too, and more than they hurt. Straight people are hurt by homophobia and transmisogyny too, but no one is out here doing 'pro lgbtq rights straight activism'.
So, first of all, while I personally don't know of any queer liberation-based cishet activists, there are plenty of cishet activsts for queer liberation. And honestly, if some cishet people wanted to use queer theory and queer activism as a lens to examine cishet issues in solidarity with queer liberation, then good for them! That sounds like it could be really cool and really helpful for dismantling homophobia, transphobia, gncphobia in cishet relationships/spaces. I think that could be really beneficial for a lot of people, especially cishets who still don't fit perfectly in patriarchal gender roles.
Second of all, and to actually answer your question, I don't feel there's a minimum amount of suffering needed before someone deserves to be helped. I don't see the point in acknowledging that men are harmed by the patriarchy if we aren't going to try to address those harms. Why are these issues used as a rhetorical argument but then actually critically examining them is seen as bad? If we agree that the patriarchy is harmful to men, and that men would, as a group, benefit from it's destruction, why shouldn't we encourage men to seek liberate in solidarity with other genders?It feels to me that at least one reason this is viewed negatively is because it's not punishment-based. It doesn't suggest that men need to suffer or that their suffering is deserved or "their own fault", and it's focused on redemption and connection. If we agree that men are harmed by the patriarchy, why shouldn't men want liberation from that? Do you think that the patriarchy should be dismantled without ever critically examining how men are harmed by it? That kind of thing is what brings more men into gender activism and makes feminism stronger. It helps further collective healing from the damage patriarchal gender roles have done. And on top of all this, I'm not sure we can make any sort of assessment of how much men benefit from the patriarchy vs how much they are harmed, especially since the benefits can vary from situation to situation and person to person. Trans men are men who benefit little to none from the patriarchy, and I can't imagine many of us would appreciate being told that we are helped more than we are hurt by it. There are also many people who were AMAB who live mostly as men, regardless of their actual gender, who are severely hurt by the patriarchy. Some die because of it (through various things, not only issues caused by emotional repression but things like gaybashing, bullying, child abuse, etc.). And personally, I don't feel I can say that none of this deserves active concern and treatment until women's issues are resolved, morally- and I think it's unlikely that women's issues can be perfectly treated in a way completely detached from men's issues. The idea that we can only fight for one struggle at a time is a fallacy. We don't have to "choose" between men's issues or women's. I literally cannot- both affect me personally, and I cannot live in peace without fighting both fights. Even if it weren't personal, I don't want any group of people to be suffering if it can be helped.
Plus, men's issues intersect in the same way misogyny does. I got into men's liberation through transmasc-specific activism, because I realized that so many issues trans men faced intersected with other groups because of a shared antimasculism problem. In the same way that a lot of other issues intertwine with misogyny, and that can't be ignored when studying non-gendered forms of oppression, men's gendered experiences with bigotry matter too. Gender roles are sticky, they get everywhere. It's foolish, in my opinion, to think that women's gender roles intersect with everything (true) but that men's gender is a non-entity that has no bearing on the other issues they experience. When Black men (as well as butches and studs) are viewed as hyper-aggressive, hyper-sexual, hyper-masculine, that's the intersection of patriarchal male gender roles (men are aggressive and sexually active) with anti-Black racism. The idea of "savage" men being cartoonishly violent and sexually aggressive (making them a threat to White women) is pretty common in various forms of racism, as gender roles are played up to demonize or mock another group. Disabled women are often painted as failures if they are unable to have children, or cook & clean, because of misogyny. Disabled men are often painted as failures if they cannot do manual labor, or impregnate someone, because of antimasculism. I don't think we can analyze other forms of oppression without looking at how gender plays into it, and we can't do that only focused on women & especially cis women. We need the trans perspective, and we need the male perspective. And "male perspective" does not mean "patriarchal perspective".
I hope this was a good explanation of why I feel men's liberation and studying of antimasculism is important.
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runthepockets · 6 months
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Tbh I'm really tired of battle of the sexes wars. Like, if it isn't cis men and women arguing over who has it harder, it's trans men and women doing the same shit. It's article after article of (rightfully) angry women talking about swearing off dating and sex forever due to dudes being so perverted and invasive, and the worst men you've ever met having their voices amplified in retaliation, both further alienating the women whose approval and affection we so desperately crave and making it harder for other men to talk about legitimate anxieties and struggles we have navigating the world. I hate that articles about high suicide rates and high rates of isolation and depression in men has brought out women who say things like "oh wah wah men's feewings I cannot BELIEVE I have to take RESPONSIBILITY for this CRAP again men are lonely cus they SUCK MEN'S FAILURES are the reason they're miserable", even when none of the studies are implicitly or explicitly blaming women for this problem (and even if they were, there's gotta be a way to deescelate / point out the entitlement of these accusations without victim blaming).
I hate that I end up dating and befriending a lot of feminist women who routinely encourage men to be vulnerable, and then my vulnerability immediately triggers an argument or a shitty dissmissive attitude or me being accused of manipulation, and I hate that those same women having (understandable) biases against men have gotten me up in arms reacting in pretty similar ways. I hate the way men talk about women's bodies when women aren't around. I hate the way women talk about male sexuality when there are no men around. It all feels awful. And I hate that voicing this to queer friends hasn't really gotten me anything but "lol thank god I'm not straight" or something of that nature. I hate how straight relationships have the potential to be just as beautiful and vindicating and empowering as any other human relationship but we're all barred by socioeconomic factors and poor / vastly differing communication skills.
This is why I got so into Men's Liberation two years ago. It gives me a space to vent my feelings and greivances as a straight guy without feeling like a total jerkoff while also being sympathetic to feminist ideals and views. It's very grounding. I can practice run and analyze my greivances after properly grieving in a safe and educated space, then I can approach the women in my life without the cotton between my ears and my defenses lowered instead of immediately shutting down at the first sign of discomfort. It's why I'm so loud about a lot of these issues; I believe everything is connected, and if men and women's lives and experiences and socioeconomic statuses are so deeply intertwined with each other under cishet capitalist white supremacist patriarchy, they need to be intertwined in the process of abolishing it, too. But I can't do that with my trauma and anger dictating my politics, nor can the women that find themselves in my sphere. It's also part of why I stopped hanging out in woman dominated spheres as often; while I'm not going to deny women their right to vent, the anti-male sentiment was debilitating, and I deserve a life free of any more neurosis around my manhood than I already may have (there was also nothing there for me anymore anyway, being a straight dude and all).
I think this is another thing I like about being straight; as nice as it I'm sure it is to never have to worry about these seemingly trivial aspects of "straight culture", and as much as I support gay people having spaces to feel at home in their own skin and to vent about their oppressors, it also seems like it sometimes blinds you to the fact that the "opposite gender" isn't really going anywhere (or that the opposite gender even exists, generally) and gay seperatism isn't a realistic or helpful solution, even for other gay and trans people.
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willtheartist · 9 days
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I finished Succession and Shiv's role was so interesting to me because of course, on one side it's so sad to see how she never stood a fucking chance because she's a woman and you have to change the system, not fight for a seat at the table (where, if you do get it, you'll go on to opress other women and minorities), so she just ends up staying with Tom, supporting him and having his kid because she'll have more power that way than if she lets Kendall be CEO.
(Maybe it's just extra sad to me because i'm sapphic and tho i do like men, id prefer marrying a woman exactly for the social aspect of it - i wont be expected to give birth, be a stay at home wife/mom, etc while Shiv's literally become like her mother and Marcia and all the other women her father's messed with).
BUT on the other hand...
it's such a nice fuck you to her because time and time again, she's chosen the opressor's side. She's a white "feminist" through and through. She only cared about important issues either on a surface level to appear morally good and superior to her family (Roman being the only honest one of the siblings, calling out how they're all terrible people but the others just try to hide it because they like being seen as a good person more than they like actually being a good person) or when they got so concerning that they could have even affected Her (abortion, Roman points out that she won't have a problem since she's rich and he's right to some extent but if abortion is criminalised, you're gonna have to be careful about getting it even if you have the money for an illegal one because rich people are always being paparazzied and "a source close to the family has shared this" and that and Shiv was most likely already pregnant when she was making the abortion argument when deciding who to back as President of the United States). She picked herself, her own interests and the opressive messed up system over and over again, thinking that with her power and privilege she'd be the exception if she fought hard enough, only to finally fucking realise that she was never going to win because the system that she constantly supported never cared about supporting her or people like her.
The only difference between her and Kendall (who also loved to play the feminist card when it was favourable but it was only for show, to get approval and treated his female workers like shit, mansplaining to his lawyer Lisa and to his assistant Jess, who are also both specifically black and would be even more affected by Mecken as President) is that Kendall's a guy so he can't play the woman card and instead has to go for the White Knight Saviour complex card. Shiv, being a woman, can act exactly like Kendall but then turn around and play the "oh but you're only angry with me because I'm a woman" card (btw, I DO think they were all sexist to her and that's not justifiable and she IS allowed to call out the sexism that she deals with personally, but she doesn't get to use the feminist/sexism card overall and then just ditch it when it's convenient).
Btw this same argument goes for their queerphobia, they were completely alright with it at moments and then at others, mainly when used against them, (like Kendall saying Lukas was being homophobic by calling Kendall's numbers gay) they would call it out "hey dad, that's homophobic/transphobic". So, which is it? Are the queer-trans jokes funny and alright or are they messed up?
These are ALL terrible characters and i love and hate them so much and the writers of this show are fucking amazing, holy shit, what a ride!
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caffeineandsociety · 2 years
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If there is such a thing as a universal AFAB experience, it is being told constantly - even in queer spaces - that it's not your turn to have your issues heard. It is being told constantly that your problems aren't serious, or aren't real, or aren't what you say they are. It's being told over and over and over again that you're overreacting, and that other people have bigger problems so you need to sit down and wait. It is having violence against you downplayed with "but did you die?" in some hat or another.
Scared at the loss of abortion rights? Well, just stop having so much sex then, slut! It's not a REAL problem! Frustrated that you're being obsessively micromanaged by dress codes while your male classmates or coworkers aren't? Ugh, first world problems, don't you know that there are countries where women are still treated like property? You ARE being treated like property? Well why don't you just leave him or call the cops, you hysterical clown? You clearly just want something to complain about! Assaulted because some guy wouldn't take "I'm a lesbian" for an answer? Well you must have been very rude!
No problem you ever face is REAL and SERIOUS to anyone but you. To the rest of the world you're just a child LARPing at having problems for attention, trying to take away from people with REAL struggles. Even if one of these problems is acknowledged as systemic, "well, did it happen to YOU personally? It did? Well you clearly didn't get the worst of it, you're alive, stop complaining!"
And if you transition? Suddenly it starts coming from "feminists" too. If you're a trans man? Well, if you go stealth you might get paid almost as much as a cis man, so corrective rape and medical gatekeeping are part of a privilege, they're not real violence. If you're nonbinary? Cool cool we'll play along with your little game acknowledge you but we need to know your REAL gender what you were assigned at birth so we can tell whether you're a scary predatory man or an annoying frivolous baby girl looking for attention by stealing a narrative from real oppressed people properly assess your privileges!
There's a subset of "trans-inclusive" "feminists" absolutely frothing at the mouth for someone to treat the same way cis men treat them - but if you call them out on it, they turn on the fucking crocodile tears and start crying about how DARE you accuse them of being sexists they're FEMINISTS and you're not a WOMAN so YOU'RE just a misogynist and they will PROVE they're better and more progressive people than you by violently ripping away every piece of support you have.
They're so thorough, in fact, that simply by mentioning how they treat trans men, some of you are probably assuming I mean to imply that they treat trans women any better. I do not. I am well aware that these are the very same people who uplift trans women as flawless powerful queens and goddesses until they set one toe out of line and suddenly they're predators - no, no, it's not because they're trans women, it's because they openly indulge in a children's cartoon on the same blogs where they make sex jokes, so OBVIOUSLY they're PEDOPHILES.
But I'm tired of only being able to discuss my problems under that framework. I'm tired of not being allowed to discuss my problems in isolation. Other marginalized people are allowed to, but me? Hell, AFAB queer people in general? Lesbian issues, if not framed in terms of how the same issues affect gay men, get treated as divisive and seen as a likely sign of radfem nonsense - not because they inherently are, but because those vile communities are damned near the only ones that allow it. Discussing transmasc issues, and not framing them as lesser collateral damage to transmisogyny, is seen as denying that transmisogyny exists.
I'm tired of discussions of my own struggles having to come with disclaimers that I Know My Place, because you all still think of me as a caricature of a woman - a screeching harpy whining about non-issues, a permanent baby with a massive victim complex, too weak to protect myself from mild discomfort so I must spin it as the end of the world for attention - and blend that with the Born This Way narrative and blame it on me being an entitled man.
Unity should not mean "you must frame your issues in terms of how they affect us, while we barely pay you lip service in discussing ours."
So, when will it be our turn?
When will you admit that you're just as prone to bioessentialist misogyny as anyone else?
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antiterf · 2 years
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(Prefacing this to say that I'm not trying to convince you to move from neutral to pro transandrophobia- i think you being neutral is ur right and I can definitely understand why you are neutral. Just wanted to state my own perspective as a trans man, esp. As a trans man of color. Feel free to delete if necessary!)
I'm personally pro transandrophobia as a term because just as Trans Women have unique experiences due to their intersection of being Women and being Trans, and Black Trans Women experience a particularly unique blend of issues due to being Women who are Trans and black, Trans men also face a unique set of issues. Of course these issues can vary depending on where Trans men live, what their race is, how well they pass (as BS as passing is as a concept)and other factors, but so too might a Trans Woman's experience of transmisogyny/transmisogynoir vary based on similar criteria. Until recently, I've felt that there has been a major lack in information/discussion of transmasc specific issues, especially as a black Trans man. I've always felt like the specific intersection of transness and agab of transmasculinity causes unique issues combining misogyny and transphobia that isn't the same as transmisogyny. On top of that, Trans men of color like myself have the added issue of racism, adding to the bigotry stew we face. imho there just hasn't been adequate language to describe these issues until the introduction of transmisandry followed by the (more apt imo) term transandrophobia. I feel like this term adds to the toolkit we need to break down the systemic and societal issues we face. Ofc this is just my personal perspective, but I feel like the transphobia, misogyny, racism, and homophobia I face varies greatly from the same issues others face due to my identity, and I feel like discussing transandrophobia helps Bring light to how differently Trans men may be affected by these issues.
I'm not sure if I'm making sense, and apologies if my thoughts are all over the place, but hopefully this adds a perspective that others can see and take into account in the conversation surrounding transandrophobia...
I felt the same with lack of discussion around the issues trans men face. And I've thought about how I can make many shallow excuses, but overall I think I simply don't know enough about what's going on to speak on it.
I'm only 21, and what you get from everyday interaction with other trans people in activist spaces when learning about 20+ years ago in written history is limited if not non existent. Much of it focuses on a broad view that would be put through the individual lens of the historian or the person recording it, and there aren't many of those people. Basically, I can't relate to what I've learned of queer history back to this because the most queer history we have with trans men is "look, a trans man, or a possible one" and nothing about theories or activism from other trans people. This also applies heavily to trans women. So what we end up with is a cisnormative lens of what gender and how one gender is oppressive against the other, without much solidly believed theory from actual trans people.
This is part of what transandrophobia does. Its taking the issues of being men and having masculinity, but not as what we expect in a cisgender world, and the struggles that come with it. This can possibly applied to men in other minorities, like Black men or in my case disabled men, but much of that I've seen is surface level ("oh, look how masculinity hurts these groups in different ways" rather than "so how about we theorize how we see structural gendered oppression through this"), and that would be my responsibility to find out more for comparison about how this can work out.
I think transandrophobia has potential to finally take "but what about men?" And actually make it productive in the examination of gender rather than anti feminist nonsense. But what it seems to do as of currently is focus on the inner LGBTQ+ community more than anything, especially trans women for some fucking reason (transmisogyny, blaming them for hypervisibility), rather than the cisnormative societies that mainly hurt us.
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Like, the other day in the gay trans men being called fujoshis post, someone added these tags. I never mentioned trans women once. I've always focused more on the experiences of trans men because I am one, but the fact that I talk about it now and shade is thrown at trans women is incredibly worrying.
And what I said there is probably inaccurate because right now it's so new and there hasn't been a common ground established. Everyone that is loud about it, either for or against, are automatically biased and will show extreme negatives with each group. I don't know how the community is doing as a whole, what's going on as a whole, and do it reliably. That coupled with a lack of history doesn't sit well.
And I kind of wrote that rant because its really not because I don't see the use of transandrophobia, and I think it can be important especially with trans moc or honestly any of us who have intersecting minority statuses. I genuinely hope it can carry on to be critically looked at and discussed. But right now it's just chaos and please don't compare it to transmisogyny because thats on the basis of intersectionality, and transandrophobia would not fit under that same concept.
If something clicks from the research I do either in school or my free time I'll definitely talk about it.
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aholotte · 1 year
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I posted 821 times in 2022
That's 821 more posts than 2021!
69 posts created (8%)
752 posts reblogged (92%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@genderkoolaid
@queer-love-4-women
@genderpunks
@gay-otlc
@aholotte
I tagged 784 of my posts in 2022
Only 5% of my posts had no tags
#trans pos - 61 posts
#the owl house - 58 posts
#queer facts - 53 posts
#the posts ever - 52 posts
#witch hat atelier - 42 posts
#queer pos - 35 posts
#lesbian pos - 35 posts
#pokemon - 28 posts
#mspec lesbian pos - 28 posts
#lgbtq - 28 posts
Longest Tag: 137 characters
#garfield is irredeemable media because he’s mean to odie and this means that the author hates dogs and if you like garfield you hate dogs
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
being mspec doesn’t always mean you like all genders!!! all it means is that you like more than one gender. you could be mspec and like women and non-binary people. some of y’all treat non-binary people like women-lite or men-lite and it shows
74 notes - Posted October 5, 2022
#4
I love trans people
I love trans women, trans men, transfems, transmascs, non-binary people, agender people, genderfluid people, multigender people, transsexuals, trans intersex people, gnc trans people, trans people of color, religious trans people, disabled trans people, dysphoric trans people, nondysphoric trans people, everyone under the transgender umbrella
You have the right to express yourself the way you see fit.
You have the right to take up space wherever you feel like
You have the right to speak on issues that affect you
You have the right to tell people you’re trans, or to wait to tell people. No one should be outed against their will
You have the right to get any medical procedures you want/need
And transphobes, exorsexists, Exclusionists, infighters, and anyone who feels like they should decide your identity for you or exclude you from their space has the right to shut the fuck up :)
Even so, love trans people more than you hate transphobes
91 notes - Posted November 2, 2022
#3
STOP SAYING “NON-MEN” AND “NON-WOMEN”
Key words so this shows up on the Google algorithm: "non men loving non men" "non men attracted to non men"
This is the only time I’ll say this, but queer people online need to stop saying “non-men” and “non-women” these phrases create yet another binary and expects everyone to fit in a neat little box. Worse still, these phrases are inherently antiblack, homophobic, and dehumanizing. Not to mention that “nonmen” makes trans/nby people into “other” and ends up centering men anyway. SOURCES (alt text included)
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“The term nonmen has remained something of a battleground within feminist theory and practice for quite some time as a label built on a negation and hence as always reactive towards what is being negated—which, in turn, remains the norm as what is being resisted. The term also makes explicit the painful friction between woman-centered feminism and trans-inclusive feminism, in relation to which binary gender has never made sense. As a point of departure for a political movement or event, the category aims to include not only cis women but equally trans and nonbinary bodies positioned as other in relation to the white, straight male norm”
See the full post
101 notes - Posted August 3, 2022
#2
on this fine Sunday morning we are appreciating loveless aros. they deserve all the praise imaginable
185 notes - Posted September 11, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
anyways I love mspecs and lesboys and turigirls and multigender people and cusper people and people with complex or contradictory identities and people with “outdated” identities and people with good faith identities that are put into the dni list of some asshole and queer people who aren’t “queer enough” for some people and “too queer” for others and who Queered Wrong and who don’t fit society’s expectations and anyone who lives their best life without caring about what discourse-addicted tiktok users have to say about their authentic identity and
381 notes - Posted October 13, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
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jeannereames · 3 years
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Hi, Dr. Reames! I just read your take on Song of Achilles and it got me thinking. Do you think there might be a general issue with the way women are written in mlm stories in general? Because I don't think it's the first time I've seen something like this happen.
And my next question is, could you delve further into this thing you mention about modern female authors writing women? How could we, beginner female writers, avoid falling into this awful representations of women in our writing?
Thank you for your time!
[It took a while to finish this because I wrote, re-wrote, and re-wrote it. Still not sure I like it, but I need to let it go. It could be 3xs as long.]
I’ll begin with the second half of the question, because it’s simpler. How do we, as women authors, avoid writing women in misogynistic ways?
Let me reframe that as how can we, as female authors, write negative (even quite nasty) female characters without falling into misogynistic tropes? Also, how can we write unsympathetic, but not necessarily “bad” female characters, without it turning misogynistic?
Because people are people, not genders, not all women are good, nor all men bad. Most of us are a mix. If we should avoid assuming powerful women are all bitches, by the same token, some women are bitches (powerful or not).
ALL good characterization comes down to MOTIVE. And careful characterization of minority characters involves fair REPRESENTATION. (Yes, women are a minority even if we’re 51% of the population.)
The question ANY author must ask: why am I making this female character a bitch? How does this characterization serve the larger plot and/or characterization? WHY is she acting this way?
Keep characters complex, even the “bad guys.” Should we choose to make a minority character a “bad guy,” we need to have a counter example—a real counter, not just a token who pops in briefly, then disappears. Yeah, maybe in an ideal world we could just let our characters “be,” but this isn’t an ideal world. Authors do have an audience. I’m a lot less inclined to assume stereotyping when we have various minority characters with different characterizations.
By the same token, however, don’t throw a novel against the wall if the first minority character is negative. Read further to decide if it’s a pattern. I’ve encountered reviews that slammed an author for stereotyping without the reader having finished the book. I’m thinking, “Uh…if you’d read fifty more pages….” Novels have a developmental arc. And if you’ve got a series, that, too, has a developmental arc. One can’t reach a conclusion about an author’s ultimate presentation/themes until having finished the book, or series.*
Returning to the first question, the appearance of misogyny depends not only on the author, but also on when she wrote, even why she’s writing. Authors who are concerned with matters such as theme and message are far more likely to think about such things than those who write for their own entertainment and that of others, which is more typical of Romance.
On average, Romance writers are a professionalized bunch. They have national and regional chapters of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), newsletters and workshops that discuss such matters as building plot tension, character dilemmas, show don’t tell, research tactics, etc. Yet until somewhat recently (early/mid 2010s), and a series of crises across several genres (not just Romance), treatment of minority groups hadn’t been in their cross-hairs. Now it is, with Romance publishers (and publishing houses more generally) picking up “sensitivity readers” in addition to the other editors who look at a book before its publication.
Yet sensitivity readers are hired to be sure lines like “chocolate love monkey” do not show up in a published novel. Yes, that really was used as an endearment for a black man in an M/M Romance, which (deservedly) got not just the author but the publishing house in all sorts of hot water. Yet misogyny, especially more subtle misogyny in the way of tropes, is rarely on the radar.
I should add that I wouldn’t categorize The Song of Achilles as an M/M historical Romance. In fact, I’m not sure what to call novels about myths, as myths don’t exist in actual historical periods. When should we set a novel about the Iliad? The Bronze Age, when Homer said it happened, or the Greek Dark Age, which is the culture Homer actually described? They’re pretty damn different. I’d probably call The Song of Achilles an historical fantasy, especially as mythical creatures are presented as real, like centaurs and god/desses.
Back to M/M Romance: I don’t have specific publishing stats, but it should surprise no one that (like most of the Romance genre), the vast bulk of authors of M/M Romance are women, often straight and/or bi- women. The running joke seems to be, If one hot man is good, two hot men together are better. 😉 Yes, there are also trans, non-binary and lesbian authors of M/M Romance, and of course, bi- and gay men who may write under their own name or a female pseudonym, but my understanding is that straight and bi- cis-women authors outnumber all of them.
Just being a woman, or even a person in a female body, does not protect that author from misogyny. And if she’s writing for fun, she may not be thinking a lot about what her story has to “say” in its subtext and motifs, even if she may be thinking quite hard about other aspects of story construction. This can be true of other genres as well (like historical fantasy).
What I have observed for at least some women authors is the unconscious adoption of popular tropes about women. Just as racism is systemic, so is sexism. We swim in it daily, and if one isn’t consciously considering how it affects us, we can buy into it by repeating negative ideas and acting in prescribed ways because that’s what we learned growing up. If writing in a symbol-heavy genre such as mythic-driven fantasy, it can be easy to let things slip by—even if they didn’t appear in the original myth, such as making Thetis hostile to Patroklos, the classic Bitchy Mother-in-Law archetype.
I see this sort of thing as “accidental” misogyny. Women authors repeat unkind tropes without really thinking them through because it fits their romantic vision. They may resent it and get defensive if the trope is pointed out. “Don’t harsh my squee!” We can dissect why these tropes persist, and to what degree they change across generations—but that would end up as a (probably controversial) book, not a blog entry. 😊
Yet there’s also subconscious defensive misogyny, and even conscious/semi-conscious misogyny.
Much debate/discussion has ensued regarding “Queen Bee Syndrome” in the workplace and whether it’s even a thing. I think it is, but not just for bosses. I also would argue that it’s more prevalent among certain age-groups, social demographics, and professions, which complicates recognizing it.
What is Queen Bee Syndrome? Broadly, when women get ahead at the expense of their female colleagues who they perceive as rivals, particularly in male-dominated fields, hinging on the notion that There Can Be Only One (woman). It arises from systemic sexism.
Yes, someone can be a Queen Bee even with one (or two) women buddies, or while claiming to be a feminist, supporting feminist causes, or writing feminist literature. I’ve met a few. What comes out of our mouths doesn’t necessarily jive with how we behave. And ticking all the boxes isn’t necessary if you’re ticking most of them. That said, being ambitious, or just an unpleasant boss/colleague—if its equal opportunity—does not a Queen Bee make. There must be gender unequal behavior involved.
What does any of that have to do with M/M fiction?
The author sees the women characters in her novel as rivals for the male protagonists. It gets worse if the women characters have some “ownership” of the men: mothers, sisters, former girlfriends/wives/lovers. I know that may sound a bit batty. You’re thinking, Um, aren’t these characters gay or at least bi- and involved with another man, plus—they’re fictional? Doesn’t matter. Call it fantasizing, authorial displacement, or gender-flipped authorial insert. We authors (and I include myself in this) can get rather territorial about our characters. We live in their heads and they live in ours for months on end, or in many cases, years. They’re real to us. Those who aren't authors often don’t quite get that aspect of being an author. So yes, sometimes a woman author acts like a Queen Bee to her women characters. This is hardly all, or even most, but it is one cause of creeping misogyny in M/M Romance.
Let’s turn to a related problem: women who want to be honorary men. While I view this as much more pronounced in prior generations, it’s by no means disappeared. Again, it’s a function of systemic sexism, but further along the misogyny line than Queen Bees. Most Queen Bees I’ve known act/react defensively, and many are (imo) emotionally insecure. It’s largely subconscious. More, they want to be THE woman, not an honorary man.
By contrast, women who want to be honorary men seem to be at least semi-conscious of their misogyny, even if they resist calling it that. These are women who, for the most part, dislike other women, regard most of “womankind” as either a problem or worthless, and think of themselves as having risen above their gender.
And NO, this is not necessarily religious—sometimes its specifically a-religious.
“I want to be an honorary man” women absolutely should NOT be conflated with butch lesbians, gender non-conformists, or frustrated FTMs. That plays right into myths the queer community has combated for decades. There’s a big difference between expressing one’s yang or being a trans man, and a desire to escape one’s womanhood or the company of other women. “Honorary men” women aren’t necessarily queer. I want to underscore that because the concrete example I’m about to give does happen to be queer.
I’ve talked before about Mary Renault’s problematic portrayal of women in her Greek novels (albeit her earlier hospital romances don’t show it as much). Her own recorded comments make it clear that she and her partner Julie Mullard didn’t want to be associated with other lesbians, or with women much at all. She was also born in 1905, living at a time when non-conforming women struggled. If extremely active in anti-apartheid movements in South Africa, Renault and Mullard were far less enthused by the Gay Rights Movement. Renault even criticized it, although she wrote back kindly to her gay fans.
The women in Renault’s Greek novels tend to be either bitches or helpless, reflecting popular male perceptions of women: both in ancient Greece and Renault’s own day. If we might argue she’s just being realistic, that ignores the fact one can write powerful women in historical novels and still keep it attitudinally accurate. June Rachuy Brindel, born in 1919, author of Ariadne and Phaedra, didn’t have the same problem, nor did Martha Rofheart, born in 1917, with My Name is Sappho. Brindel’s Ariadne is much more sympathetic than Renault’s (in The King Must Die).
Renault typically elevates (and identifies with) the “rational” male versus the “irrational” female. This isn’t just presenting how the Greeks viewed women; it reflects who she makes the heroes and villains in her books. Overall, “good” women are the compliant ones, and the compliant women are tertiary characters.
Women in earlier eras who were exceptional had to fight multiple layers of systemic misogyny. Some did feel they had to become honorary men in order to be taken seriously. I’d submit Renault bought into that, and it (unfortunately) shows in her fiction, as much as I admire other aspects of her novels.
So I think those are the three chief reasons we see women negatively portrayed in M/M Romance (or fiction more generally), despite being written by women authors.
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*Yeah, yeah, sometimes it’s such 2D, shallow, stereotypical presentation that I, as a reader, can conclude this author isn’t going to get any better. Also, the publication date might give me a clue. If I’m reading something published 50 years ago, casual misogyny or racism is probably not a surprise. If I don’t feel like dealing with that, I close the book and put it away.
But I do try to give the author a chance. I may skim ahead to see if things change, or at least suggest some sort of character development. This is even more the case with a series. Some series take a loooong view, and characters alter across several novels. Our instant-gratification world has made us impatient. Although by the same token, if one has to deal with racism or sexism constantly in the real world, one may not want to have to watch it unfold in a novel—even if it’s “fixed” later. If that’s you, put the book down and walk away. But I’d just suggest not writing a scathing review of a novel (or series) you haven’t finished. 😉
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bitchesgetriches · 2 years
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MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Repairing Our Busted-Ass World
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goingrampant · 3 years
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Freaky (2020)
So. Um. This is my new favorite film, pushing past Let the Right One In. It’s a transgender body-swap horror-comedy with zero transphobic content. I am like the most sensitive person ever when it comes to transphobia, but this is probably the most trans-friendly film ever. They even reference the trans pride flag in the credits with a pink and white striped makeup pad set against a blue tablecloth. So, like, I’m pretty sure the (gay) director made it with a nod to the trans community. Also, the gay sidekick (Josh) is played by a non-binary actor, and he has great prominence in the plot, giving it an authentic queer aesthetic.
It is bizarrely feminist, with great respect offered to both the Butcher and Millie characters in both of their bodies. The Nyla sidekick character is amusing as an annoying feminist without crossing the line into actually making the plot condemn her for it, a very tricky balance they somehow manage. Nyla and Josh bounce off of each other as straight feminist and outrageous twink in a greatly entertaining way.
Similar to Lisa Simpson, by starting off with Nyla as annoying, she is allowed to influence how the plot is interpreted without it coming across as didactic. She points out that gender labels don’t apply, and this makes sense, so we just go with it unquestioningly. She bugs love interest Booker to use the right pronouns; he expresses annoyance, but, hey, the scene’s gotta keep moving, so he accepts the pronoun schema she puts forward, and the plot just accepts the Butcher in Millie’s body is a man (he/him) and Millie in the Butcher’s body is a girl (she/her). And then it’s very trans-friendly.
The plot explores gender, sexism, and the forms of power attainable by men and women in a way both intriguing from a feminist perspective and accessible to a mainstream audience. Millie is a pushover in a stereotypically feminine way; the Butcher is a bully in a stereotypically masculine way; they switch bodies, hilarity ensues. Millie learns to use the strength available to her in the Butcher’s body, the physical power of a macho man, and he fumbles his way into figuring out how to be powerful in a girl’s body, a mix of emotional manipulation and unyielding ferocity. Booker tells Millie that true strength is in the heart and mind, and the film makes a solid case for this being true, with the Butcher succeeding to be absolutely terrifying even in a girl’s body, and Millie figuring out how to overpower him once they switch back.
One of the best scenes is when the good guys tie up and gag the Butcher while he’s in a girl’s body. You would think that this character would be completely disempowered with no ability to affect the scene until he gets free, but... no. He has such a strong presence in the scene, being able to effectively communicate with intense glares, grunts, emotionally manipulative whimpers, and evil laughter. He’s almost more powerful than the characters who can speak and move around. It challenges gendered assumptions about power, is in theme, and is also incredibly funny.
On a deeper level, I feel like they might have played the Butcher as genderfluid and bisexual. He adapts really well to a girl’s body. What most concerns him is the lack of physical strength, and he finds ways around that. When he gets ready to hunt students, he dismisses Millie’s usual nerdy wardrobe and, having a chance to dress himself, avoids any kind of butch aesthetic and goes for the badass femme Baby Terminatrix look instead. He specifically strives for a hot dominant woman look, seemingly trying to make everyone attracted to him, and appears sexually sadistic as he stalks different genders. Also, for all he complains about Millie’s body being weak, he resists switching back because being mean to Millie is more important to him than having his own body, even laughing hysterically when he thinks he stopped her for good. It’s both scary and really queer-friendly.
The one issue I have with it is that it’s not great on race. Josh is introduced as outrageously gay by embarrassing a black guy with a black dachshund by calling out, “I love your black wiener!” Now, it was not necessary to bring race into that. They could have just as easily went with “I love your long, skinny wiener!” or similar. The plot device is also a cringy evil Aztec weapon with Spanish writing for some reason. That wasn’t necessary. 
So, not perfect, but generally this is a top-notch feminist slasher film with strong queer elements and very entertaining.
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JK Rowling, transphobia and a hopefully helpful post.
A few days ago I posted on my Facebook (yes I have one sue me) debunking some of the things Rowling has been saying on twitter. Since she made a statement I felt the need to make another one... but this time Im sharing it here. Please note this is long, it is fairly opinionated in places but her statements have felt so insidious I want to share something in depth. If you are cis I implore you to read, but I understand this is long and a lot of people wont want to. No judgement. 
Jk Rowling’s latest statement is a mess of valid concerns and fear mongering. At this point there can be no claim she doesn’t know what shes talking about - she herself has said shes been researching this for years. She throws in token acknowledgements to “real” trans people while framing the rest of her statements as concern for confused teens.So first things first - and something that might not be popular with some of my trans friends. I agree that teenagers should not be able to medically transition. It is a choice that should be made when the brain is fully mature. Hormone blockers are something I trust - and that are reversible. I have seen enough detransitioned people hurting to feel like we do need to be careful - especially with children who are trying to find themselves. I dont know about other people but during my teens I was coming to the crushing realisation that I wasn’t special. I was learning that no matter how well I painted someone else did it better, no matter how badly I hurt someone had it worse - I was learning about the wonderful mediocrity of life, and having anything that made me stand out gave a brief reprieve from learning to be okay with all these things. For me to be fair it was dying my hair outrageous colours and dressing in black leather during 30 degree summer heat - but its still something we cant forget. I KNOW a lot of kids claiming to be trans are - and I dont want to keep that from them, however I dont want to cause harm to the kids that are wrong. Continuing on, I’d like to address her comments about TERFS. Terfs are Self Described Trans-exclusionary-radical-feminists and the term does get thrown around a little too liberally at times. Terf is not and never will be a slur. No more than “White” is. It is about a group of people who have taken it open themselves to segregate another group - and calling that what it is, is not a crime. The reason Terf and transphobe have become synonomic is because the ‘radical feminists’ that subscribe to this have lost focus on nearly all other issues of feminism and sit squarely on “dropping the T” from the lgbt community and “keeping men out of womens bathrooms.” Terfs are overwhelmingly women - this is sadly simply a fact. Terfs are reviled because of how much it feels like a betrayal to the community. A group that fights for rights - except ours. A group that wants equality - except for us. Its different to the conservatives who hate us all equally - with Terfs we are singled out. Terfs are not, as Rowling claims, inclusionary to Trans-men. I’ve been met with a combination of pity, loathing, mockery and revulsion by people within this group. I’ve been told that I shouldn’t let homophobia push me into transitioning - only for all correspondence to abruptly drop when I mention Im marrying another man. I’ve been told my old body was beautiful - only for stunned silence when I agree. I was beautiful - I was curvy, I was a dancer and had a body to match - but I wasn’t Me. When their usual arguments against me fail - I’m met with hate. Im called anti-woman, traitor, homophobic. I even have some such comments saved on my blog. I have yet to meet a Terf who was pro-trans-man. Rowling claims that had she had the ability, as a confused teen, she may have sought to transition. I hate to tell her but she did have the ability and trans people didn’t pop into existence in the twenty-first century. I’m actually looking to do my dissertation topic in my final year on lgbt presentation throughout history - and in my overeager way I’ve already started researching. James Barry has been becoming a common name for years - a transgender surgeon who died in 1865. If Barry was able to at least socially transition from 1790 to 1860, I am fairly sure Rowling could have in 1980 - over a century later. Rowling also claims that groups of friends in schools all suddenly identify as trans at the same time. Speaking from my school experience - the queer kids group together. We seek out others like us, and we take strength from each others bravery to come out - often around the same time. We almost get a rush of resolve when one of our group musters the courage and strength, and some of us use that rush to bite the bullet ourselves. Its one of the beautiful ways the lgbt community is here for one another - and the influx of people identifying as trans is partially a factor of more people knowing the name of their feelings. Survivor bias will ignore the trans people through history without the knowledge or means to transition - and will claim they were never trans at all. Her initial statements about charities worry me in particular. As I said last time - we know sex is real, we just dont really like to be defined by it. She is worried that we’re going to “rebrand medicine” and ignores that medications for years have had warnings in their leaflets about “If you are or become pregnant” regardless of if the person receiving it has a dick or a vagina. We dont advocate for ignoring the differences in how people respond to heart attacks - and I for one would like research to be done on how hormones effect that. I dont actually know if I would respond more like a cis gender woman or a cis gender man if I were to have a heart attack or a stroke. But where possible we do want to change the language around some of these things. I have had a double mastectomy, but some Cis-men have these as well. This is not a gendered term. Why should a period be called anything else? Why call it a “womens problem.” I and Im sure many other trans people, support the research into how different medical and mental issues affect different sexes. I just think that should be extended further - and we know it should, as some medical issues affect people of different ethnicities in different ways and we don’t know how. I am truly sorry that Rowling has experienced abuse and assault of any nature. I am truly sorry that she has felt unsafe. But her feelings do not invalidate others experiences. Of the trans people I know, a saddening number have been assaulted, have been abused and in particular have experienced these things domestically. There is much work to be done on this in the UK. There are nearly no mens shelters for sufferers of violence to my knowledge. I, a trans man who have experienced some of these things in my teen years, would Not want to be around cisgender women even if I could be. A cis woman was responsible for much of the pain I personally suffered - and in fact one of the acts of violence she carried out against me was directly after I came out as trans to her. Trans women, even if they could go to male shelters, should not have to be surrounded by a group that put them in danger - in a place that is detrimental to them physically and mentally and is frankly degrading. The belief that allowing trans women into shelters for those escaping abuse is dangerous is sad. To be so afraid is deserving of pity. To let fear blind you to the suffering of others - to think its better that a trans woman face homelessness or a return to an abusive household because you personally would sleep better at night is the kind of passive evil we should be aware of in this day and age. It comes from choosing to see the word “trans” before “person.” Its from choosing to see a persons genitals before their humanity. Trans people are not dangerous - and cause no greater risk than any other demographic.  Her claims that she can empathise with this fear are empty. A gender recognition certificate is not a ticket into womens bathrooms. Funnily enough you dont actually require a piece of paper to go almost anywhere. I do not have a gender recognition certificate and use male bathrooms, can enter male spaces as I please. All a gender recognition certificate does is change the letter on your birth certificate. It doesn’t even affect other forms of identification - my passport, my student id, my drivers license all already say male. I am not sure why so many people have chosen this as their hill to die on because its the least relevant thing to them on the planet. How often have any of you seen another persons birth certificate? Rowling says she and other ‘gender critical’ (a terf dogwhistle) people are concerned for trans youth. Well… she can take her condescending concern and direct it to matters that are relevant to her. Trans people want to be left alone. Its a simple request, and yet people endlessly seem to trip over the dirt level bar.
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magdolenelives · 4 years
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Tweet here, article here. Highly recommend reading the whole article, but just a few choice quotes: I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream. I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen. -- AF: One example of mainstream public discourse on this issue in the UK is the argument about allowing people to self-identify in terms of their gender. In an open letter she published in June, JK Rowling articulated the concern that this would "throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman", potentially putting women at risk of violence. JB: If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry. -- AF: The consensus among progressives seems to be that feminists who are on JK Rowling’s side of the argument are on the wrong side of history. Is this fair, or is there any merit in their arguments? JB: Let us be clear that the debate here is not between feminists and trans activists. There are trans-affirmative feminists, and many trans people are also committed feminists. So one clear problem is the framing that acts as if the debate is between feminists and trans people. It is not. One reason to militate against this framing is because trans activism is linked to queer activism and to feminist legacies that remain very alive today. Feminism has always been committed to the proposition that the social meanings of what it is to be a man or a woman are not yet settled. We tell histories about what it meant to be a woman at a certain time and place, and we track the transformation of those categories over time. We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women... Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. The trans-exclusionary radical feminist position attacks the dignity of trans people.  -- First, one does not have to be a woman to be a feminist, and we should not confuse the categories. Men who are feminists, non-binary and trans people who are feminists, are part of the movement if they hold to the basic propositions of freedom and equality that are part of any feminist political struggle. When laws and social policies represent women, they make tacit decisions about who counts as a woman, and very often make presuppositions about what a woman is. We have seen this in the domain of reproductive rights. So the question I was asking then is: do we need to have a settled idea of women, or of any gender, in order to advance feminist goals?   I put the question that way… to remind us that feminists are committed to thinking about the diverse and historically shifting meanings of gender, and to the ideals of gender freedom. By gender freedom, I do not mean we all get to choose our gender. Rather, we get to make a political claim to live freely and without fear of discrimination and violence against the genders that we are. Many people who were assigned “female” at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms.   Feminists know that women with ambition are called “monstrous” or that women who are not heterosexual are pathologised. We fight those misrepresentations because they are false and because they reflect more about the misogyny of those who make demeaning caricatures than they do about the complex social diversity of women. Women should not engage in the forms of phobic caricature by which they have been traditionally demeaned. And by “women” I mean all those who identify in that way. -- AF: Threats of violence and abuse would seem to take these “anti-intellectual times” to an extreme. What do you have to say about violent or abusive language used online against people like JK Rowling? JB: I am against online abuse of all kinds. I confess to being perplexed by the fact that you point out the abuse levelled against JK Rowling, but you do not cite the abuse against trans people and their allies that happens online and in person. I disagree with JK Rowling's view on trans people, but I do not think she should suffer harassment and threats. Let us also remember, though, the threats against trans people in places like Brazil, the harassment of trans people in the streets and on the job in places like Poland and Romania – or indeed right here in the US. So if we are going to object to harassment and threats, as we surely should, we should also make sure we have a large picture of where that is happening, who is most profoundly affected, and whether it is tolerated by those who should be opposing it. It won’t do to say that threats against some people are tolerable but against others are intolerable. -- It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists' return to biological essentialism. It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society. -- My point in the recent book is to suggest that we rethink equality in terms of interdependency. We tend to say that one person should be treated the same as another, and we measure whether or not equality has been achieved by comparing individual cases. But what if the individual – and individualism – is part of the problem? It makes a difference to understand ourselves as living in a world in which we are fundamentally dependent on others, on institutions, on the Earth, and to see that this life depends on a sustaining organisation for various forms of life. If no one escapes that interdependency, then we are equal in a different sense. We are equally dependent, that is, equally social and ecological, and that means we cease to understand ourselves only as demarcated individuals. If trans-exclusionary radical feminists understood themselves as sharing a world with trans people, in a common struggle for equality, freedom from violence, and for social recognition, there would be no more trans-exclusionary radical feminists. But feminism would surely survive as a coalitional practice and vision of solidarity.
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lowkeyorloki · 3 years
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I really love how you weren't afraid to call out the mcu actors and their bs. I was hoping for some advice if that'd be okay? Who else besides Loki would in your opinion be safe to stan from the mcu that doesn't have someone with a lot of bs playing them? I understand if this question isn't your cup of tea, thank you anyways
Well anon, first let me thank you for your praise, though I don’t entirely deserve it: I took the post telling rdj/mark ruffalo/zoe saldana to develop critical thinking skills about fifteen minutes after I posted it. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but the main one is (despite all my angsty content) I want this blog to be a source of escapism for myself and my readers.
However, I’m willing to answer your question because I always encourage conversation and I am more than willing to give my opinion on anything, I just prefer to be asked it first. If you came to me, I want to honor that. I also want my blog to be open for my readers to discuss any and everything. 
This is a really hard question to answer. I’m going to preface by saying that I am minoring in ethics (which is directly what this question is about) and I have read a good handful of philosophy books. That being said, I am still just a 19 year old girl on the internet and while my perspective can influence your opinion, it should not form it. I hope you take what I say seriously, but do not take it at face value. Doing your own research is still necessary. I’m okay with contributing to your views, but I do not want be directly responsible for them. I don’t want to take that power from you. 
A lot of behavior from the MCU cast and your thoughts on that is going to be dependent on your experiences your personal morals. For example, because I was raised Jewish, Robert Downey Jr publicly defending two men (Mel Gibson and Chris Pratt) who have said or belong to groups with anti semitic rhetoric, I’m going to be more critical of RDJ than someone who was raised or still practices more mainstream religions. These are the types of questions to ask yourself when you’re deciding how you feel about certain people: What behavior is okay to me personally? Should I change that? How is my bias/privilege affecting my view?
It’s also important to note that no one in unproblematic. No one. Even Tom Hiddleston worked with one of the scummiest men alive. Your own core values will dictate what is and isn’t okay from people. I can excuse Tom for working with Woody Allen because he worked with him in 2011- a pre #metoo world. Tom is also English and Woody Allen is American, meaning that there’s a fairly big chance he never heard about Allen’s issues and demeaning behavior towards women at that time. Furthermore, Tom has never (to my knowledge) publicly supported Allen since around 2015. Would it be nice for him to address that he worked with one of the world’s most hated men? Sure, but until Tom expresses he still respects Allen, I’m not going to have an issue with him. However, not everyone will agree with me on that. It’s subjective. 
No one, especially people who grew up before the 2010s, is going to be without fault. What’s more, we shouldn’t expect them to be. We have to make mistakes to grow- first mistakes aren’t an issue. Repeated behavior is. Tom Hiddleston is one of the only MCU cast members who hasn’t repeated his shitty choice. That’s why I’m still comfortable being his fan.
I also want to express: You can like the characters even without liking the actors! That’s totally okay. Actors do not have to dictate if you like their characters! I promise.
All that being said, I don’t think the majority of the cast should be “cancelled”. If you’re looking for my opinion, I only really have a problem with three other cast members. 
I do not support Scarlett Johansson. Almost all of her behavior falls under that of a white feminist. She also has immense problems with transphobia. For that same reason, I don’t like Benedict Cumberbatch. He also had a horrible incident when he got defensive over being asked if his character on BBC’s Sherlock was autistic, and acted as though being autistic was bad and that people shouldn’t think Sherlock was that way (not cool! very mean). That was also a show with crazy problems over queer baiting (which was literally confirmed by Mark Gaitiss).
The reason I can’t look past these things is because Johansson and Cumberbatch in particular have a complete inability to take accountability. They consistently defended their behavior, with Scarlett Johansson claiming it was okay for her to take POC and trans roles, and Benedict Cumberbatch not thinking his performance in Zoolander 2 could be harmful. They can’t take criticism, even when marginalized groups are begging them to. 
Jeremy Renner... just do a google search. I can’t unpack all his shit. Actually, just search up the movie “Neo Ned.” That should give you enough perspective. 
Again: I am just a teen girl on the internet. I don’t know every single bad thing every single cast member has ever done, and I don’t want to. I’m not interested in holding people to impossible standards. That isn’t fair, and it’s a really self-indulgent stance to take. Who am I to decide if someone’s a bad person? I can only make that decision in regards to myself. I’m not going to tell you to unstan any of those people because it’s not my job or right. I can only give you my views and my justification. 
My personal method of when to stop supporting someone is when I see repeated bad behaviors. Everyone makes mistakes, but when we see the same ones happening over and over despite the ignorance being addressed, that’s when I begin to struggle with justifying it. That’s what works for me, that’s how I choose to live my life. You can do what you will with this information. I hope I answered your question or gave you some clarity. 
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citrineghost · 3 years
Text
100 Humans on Netflix
So there’s this neat Netflix Original show called 100 Humans. I immediately got interested in it because they take this group of various humans from different backgrounds, age groups, and so on, and they use them to conduct experiments to get answers to interesting questions.
So, right away I had concerns about this show because
If you know anything about data and statistical research, you know 100 people is a very small sample size and does not breed accurate results
However, I’m very curious and wanted to see what they came up with anyway. I watched all 8 episodes and, honestly, I enjoyed watching it for the most part. However, I have a LOT of issues with the show and how it was conducted and I want to list them out here.
If you’re interested in watching 100 Humans or have already watched it, please consider the following before taking any of the show’s data as fact.
100 people is a very small sample size. This is because, the more people you have, the more weight each increment in your percentages has. With 100 people, each person represents 1 entire percent. That’s a lot. That means even a few people giving incorrect answers, having off-days, or giving ridiculous results (such as you can see in the spiders georg meme), can sway the entire result of an experiment into unreasonable territory. This is why most scientific studies attempt to get data from many hundreds or even thousands of people. The bigger the sample size, the more accurate it is to the entirety of the world.
I’ll put the rest under the cut because it gets long
The 3 hosts, who I’ll refer to as the scientists (regardless of if they actually are, because I’m not sure and don’t feel like googling it) repeatedly make false statements. For example, in one episode, they told their humans to “raise your hand if you believe you’re less bigoted than the average person here,” to which 94 people raised their hands. One of the scientists then made the statement, “If that were true, it would mean only 6% of Americans are bigoted.” This statement is entirely false. The only way to actually determine a true meaning to that would be to determine at what percentage of bigotry you are considered a real bigot. You also must consider that believing you’re more bigoted than other people in a small group, who you already have an impression of, is not necessarily indicative of how you feel you measure up to America as a whole. Anyway, I could go on and on. The only way to accurately summarize the results of that question would be to say that 44% of the humans had an inflated sense of righteousness or something of the sort.
The 3 scientists, both in person and in narration, for the sake of entertainment (if that’s what you call it) continually made “jokes” that poked fun at different groups, implied men are shit, etc. Maybe that’s fun for some people, but the kind of jokes they were making to amp up the hilarity of their host personas was genuinely just uncomfortable and made me feel even more like they couldn’t be trusted to go about unbiased research.
The scientists continually drew conclusions where the results should have been labeled inconclusive
The scientists made blanket statements about certain groups based on 1 element of research that would not stand up to further evaluation. For example, when explaining that ~93% (i think it was about that number) of Americans have access to clean, drinkable, tap water and yet some large number of single use bottled waters are sold every year, one scientist said it was because people believe bottled water is safer and cleaner than tap water. I am going to do my next survey on this to see if my own perception is flawed, but I simply don’t believe that all of the people who buy bottled water do so because they think its cleaner than “tap” (as if all tap is the same.) I know there have been studies about people drinking unlabeled bottled water and tap water and not being able to tell the difference, but this neglects to account for the fact that different houses pipes can affect the taste of the tap water running through them, people can use disposable bottles of water for certain activities or events too far away from tap for people to refill their reusable bottles easily, and so so so much more. Anyway, it just really bothers me to see “scientists” making these kinds of generalizations when they’re the ones whose results we’re supposed to trust.
The show was incredibly cisnormative. There was an entire episode based on comparing men and women that made me extremely uncomfortable with its division of people by men and women. There was the implication that all men have penises and all women have vaginas. There were implications that reproduction is a necessity in picking a partner. It was just a shitshow. There was one comment by one subject who asked, when being told to separate by men and women, “What if I’m transgender?” Obviously I can’t say for sure, but this person didn’t appear to be transgender and the sort of tone it was asked in makes me think it was literally something they asked him to say in order to get inclusivity points with the viewers and to “prove” that they’re not transphobic by having them divide up, because they said to go to the side you identify with. This whole thing is a) harmful to nb folks who would not have had a side to go to and b) completely negating the fact that the way we were socialized can have an effect on our social responses. That means that for a social experiment, a trans person could sway the results of one side due to their upbringing and the pressures society put on them before/if they don’t pass. This is all assuming they had any trans people there, which is potentially debatable.  I also take issue with this entire fucking episode because just, the amount of toxicity in proving one sex is better than the others is really gross and actually counterproductive to everything feminist and progressive. Not to mention, them implying that they’re trying to support trans people only to reinforce the notion that a trans man is inherently lesser for being a man when even prior to hatching, he would have also been force fed propaganda and societal pressure implying he’s less than for supposedly being a woman is really gross and makes me angry. The point of what I’m saying is that it’s actually not woke to hate men as a way of bringing women up because there are men who are minorities who are being hurt by the rise of aggression being directed at them for their gender. Anyway enough about that.
The tests drew false conclusions because they did not account for how minorities adapt to a world that’s not made for them. This is specifically directed at the episode where subjects were asked to match up 6 people into couples. There were 3 women and 3 men and the humans were asked to put them together into pairs. they could ask the people 1 question each but then had to match them up with only that information. The truth is, the people brought in were 3 real life couples already, which the humans didn’t know until after they matched them. The couples were m/f, m/m, and f/f. I think that’s great, but the problem is, literally none of the humans asked any of them their sexuality as their question and most people didn’t even consider they could match up same-sex people. One girl even thought that they had told her to make m/f pairings, even though they didn’t.  The scientists concluded from the experiment that the humans have a societal bias toward people, and assume they’re all straight, even if they, themselves, are not straight. I personally believe that was the wrong conclusion to draw. You could see some of the queer humans were shocked that they hadn’t considered some of the pairings might be gay. But, I don’t think it’s because they believe everyone they meet is straight, I believe this says more about what they expected from the scientists themselves. If someone is in a minority and they go to do something organized, like a set of experiments, they are going to be judging the quality and setup of the experiments by those designing them. I feel that the lack of consideration that the couples might be gay has a lot more to do with queer people having adapted to a world where queers are rarely involved or included in equal volume to the cishets. The queer humans taking part in the experiment and failing to guess gay couples shows that they have adapted to a world where they are excluded rather than a belief that every random person that they meet is straight. My point is further supported by an expert they had on the show who explained that, statistically, it was entirely likely that they were all straight and that even queers will account for being minorities by going with what’s most likely. The truth is, we are surrounded by a whole lot of straight people. It makes sense to assume only 6 people are all straight and that, if any aren’t, they may be bi.
The scientists frequently broke an already small sample size into even smaller groups. The group was very frequently broken in half, in thirds, or into sets of 10 people. These sample sizes tell us almost nothing actually conclusive. 
The experiments/tests frequently were affected by peoples abilities, unrelated to what was being tested. For example, one test that was broken down into 6 people and 6 control people competing at jenga was meant to show whether needing to pee helps or hurts your focus. first of all, sample sizes of 6 are a fucking joke. Second, this completely ignores these 6 people’s actual ability to play Jenga. If someone sucks at jenga with or without needing to pee, them losing Jenga when they need to pee says exactly fuck all about whether needing to pee affected their focus. They should have tested people’s Jenga skills beforehand, counted the amount of moves they made before the tower fell, and then did it again after hours of not peeing to compare their results. This test made no logical sense at all.
The scientists ignored the social effect of subjects knowing each other as well as duration of events during their last experiment. They were testing to see if people with last names near the end of the alphabet get a shittier deal because they go last in everything where things are done by name order. They tested this by doing a fake awards ceremony where they gave out some 30 awards to people, gauging the applause to see whether the people at the end got less hype and therefore felt worse about themselves than those in the beginning who got the fresh enthusiasm of the audience. the results showed that the applause remained fairly consistent throughout the awards. The issues with this test are numerous, but here are the three I take most issue with. 1) the people here all got to know each other very well over the week it took to make the show. People who know each other and have become friends are much more likely to cheer for each other with enthusiasm, regardless of how long it’s been. On the other hand, polite applause from a crowd at, say, a graduation, where you are applauding people you don’t know, WILL start off more raucous and grow very quiet except for individual families near the end. 2) the duration of the test was a half hour, which is not very long at all and doesn’t say much to test the limits of enthusiasm. Try testing the audience at a graduation with a couple hundred graduates that also involves the time it takes to walk all the way up to a stage a hundred feet away, accept a diploma, and then wait for the next person. These kinds of events take hours and nobody keeps up their enthusiasm that long unless they’re rooting for someone in particular. 3) this study tested only one of many many ways name order affects a person. Cheering and applause is only one factor. It does not take into account people having their resumes looked at in alphabetical order and therefore people at the beginning of the alphabet being picked before anyone ever looks at a W name’s resume. It doesn’t take into account a small child’s show and tell day being at the very end of the school year, after 6 other people have brought in the same thing they planned to. No one cares about their really cool trinket because they’ve seen a bunch like it already. This test doesn’t take into account how many end-of-the-alphabet people just get straight up told, “we ran out of time. maybe next time,” when next time doesn’t really exist. I feel genuinely bad for the girl who suggested this experiment because the scientists straight up said something akin to, “lmao her theory was bs ig /shrug” even though it was their own shitty research abilities that led to their results.
They did one experiment intending to see how many people have what it takes to be a “hero.” The request for this test was made by someone curious about the effect of adrenaline and if it really works how some people say. The scientists thought it an adequate method to determine an answer by testing their reflexes with a weird crying baby sound and then dropping a doll from above while they were distracted with answering questions. The scientists looked up before the doll dropped to indicate a direction of attention. While this does give some answers about peoples intuition, reflexes, and ability to use context clues, its entirely an unusual situation, makes no sense in reality, fails to take adrenaline into consideration literally at all, and has a lot more to do with chance. The person dropping the doll literally couldn’t even drop it in the same place from person to person. Some got it dropped into their lap and others almost out of arm’s reach. This, like a few of the other mentioned experiments, was during the last episode, which felt lazy and thrown together last minute, with very little scientific basis to any of the results. The last episode was weak and disappointing overall. 
One of the big issues I have with this show is actually their repeated use of the same group. They said at the end that they had done over 40 tests. Part of doing studies is getting varied samples of people in order to get more widespread results. Using the same 100 or less people (already a tiny sample) repeatedly is a terrible research method. You’re no longer studying humans at large. You’re studying these specific humans. You can’t take the same group with the same set of inadequacies, the same set of skills, and the same set of biases and then study them extensively and in many different ways like this. Your results are inherently skewed toward these specific people and their abilities. I expected them to at least get a new group each episode - every 5 or so studies - but no. They keep the same group all week, which makes the entire season. This is inexcusable in research imo.
The next issue is contestant familiarity. The humans all getting to know each other is great, socially, but it also destroys the legitimacy of many of the studies that involve working together or comparing yourselves and your beliefs
Many tests had issues with subject dependency. One study, meant to compare age groups and their ability to work together to complete the task of putting together a piece of ready to assemble furniture had each group with members they relied on entirely. A few people built the furniture while one person sat across the room, looking at instructions with their back to the others. They had to relay the instructions through a walkie talkie to another contestant and that other contestant had to relay it to the people they’re watching build the chair. You cannot study a group’s ability to build something with instructions by the ability of one single person to communicate. You’re testing that individual and the rest of them on two completely different capabilities. One person fails at being able to communicate and everyone else becomes unable to build the furniture. Even if everyone else in the group is more effective than all the other groups at building ready to assemble furniture, they might end up falling in last because of their shitty communicator who is literally not able to convey simple instructions. (yes, this actually happened in the test)
One test judged the subjects at their speed of getting ready, to see if men or women are faster at getting ready. While most elements of this test were just fine, the part I took issue with was that they did this test without regard to social convention. They told the subjects they were going on a field trip and to get ready by a certain time. Then, they gave them many things to get distracted by, like refreshments to pack with them, a menu to preorder lunch from, and so on.  The part that upsets me about this test is that they ignored social convention entirely, to the point that subjects were judged based on their conventional actions and expectations more than their actual speed at getting ready. The buses promptly shut their doors and left at the time they were supposed to but there was no final call to get on the buses. In general, when a group is to be taken somewhere by bus, there will be an announcement to load up and leave. You could clearly see many of the subjects were ready to go and were just standing around talking while they waited for fellow subjects to finish getting ready. I have no doubt that, if given a final call, most of them would have loaded up within a couple minutes. However, they were relying on the social convention of announcing departure and were therefore, left behind entirely (for a nonexistent field trip). These people who were left behind were counted as being late and not making the time cutoff. If one were to look at the social element of this situation, if everyone there believed there would be a warning before departure, the fact that 24 to 14 women to men were loaded onto the buses at departure doesn’t necessarily indicate the women were faster to get ready. It seems to me that it’s more likely to indicate anxiety at being late and a belief that they need not impede on anything lest they be reprimanded or have social consequences for taking too long - something women are frequently bullied for. There’s also the chance that many who boarded without final call are more introverted or antisocial. Plus, we can’t forget to include the people who have anxiety about seating. If someone is overweight, has joint pain, or has social anxiety, they will be more likely to board early to get a seat they feel comfortable in. If they had counted up all of the people socializing and waiting on the sidewalks nearby, they may have found that there were more men who were ready to board up at a moment’s notice. I’m not saying I think men are faster to get ready, I’m just saying that we can’t know based on who boarded without a final call. If people believe they will have a last minute chance to board, a large number of them will take the last few minutes to socialize with their new friends until they’re told they have to board. Therefore, this test cannot be considered conclusive without counting and including the people who were ready and not boarded as a third subset.
Honestly, I could go on and on about how sensationalist and unscientific this show is, but I just don’t have 6 more hours to contribute to digging up every single flaw with it. There’s A Lot.
My point is, if you feel like watching this show, which I don’t necessarily discourage inherently, I just beg you to go into it with a critical eye. Enjoy the fun of it and the social aspects, but please don’t rely on the information provided and please don’t spread it as fact, because it’s not.
It’s entertainment, not science.
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bluewatsons · 4 years
Conversation
Alone Ferber, Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”, New Statesman (September 22, 2020)
Alona Ferber: In Gender Trouble, you wrote that "contemporary feminist debates over the meanings of gender lead time and again to a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism”. How far do ideas you explored in that book 30 years ago help explain how the trans rights debate has moved into mainstream culture and politics?
Judith Butler: I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream. I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen.
Alona Ferber: One example of mainstream public discourse on this issue in the UK is the argument about allowing people to self-identify in terms of their gender. In an open letter she published in June, JK Rowling articulated the concern that this would "throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman", potentially putting women at risk of violence.
Judith Butler: If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry.
Alona Ferber: I want to challenge you on the term “terf”, or trans-exclusionary radical feminist, which some people see as a slur.
Judith Butler: I am not aware that terf is used as a slur. I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women's spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.
Alona Ferber: The consensus among progressives seems to be that feminists who are on JK Rowling’s side of the argument are on the wrong side of history. Is this fair, or is there any merit in their arguments?
Judith Butler: Let us be clear that the debate here is not between feminists and trans activists. There are trans-affirmative feminists, and many trans people are also committed feminists. So one clear problem is the framing that acts as if the debate is between feminists and trans people. It is not. One reason to militate against this framing is because trans activism is linked to queer activism and to feminist legacies that remain very alive today. Feminism has always been committed to the proposition that the social meanings of what it is to be a man or a woman are not yet settled. We tell histories about what it meant to be a woman at a certain time and place, and we track the transformation of those categories over time. We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women... Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. The trans-exclusionary radical feminist position attacks the dignity of trans people.
Alona Ferber: In Gender Trouble you asked whether, by seeking to represent a particular idea of women, feminists participate in the same dynamics of oppression and heteronormativity that they are trying to shift. In the light of the bitter arguments playing out within feminism now, does the same still apply?
Judith Butler: As I remember the argument in Gender Trouble (written more than 30 years ago), the point was rather different. First, one does not have to be a woman to be a feminist, and we should not confuse the categories. Men who are feminists, non-binary and trans people who are feminists, are part of the movement if they hold to the basic propositions of freedom and equality that are part of any feminist political struggle. When laws and social policies represent women, they make tacit decisions about who counts as a woman, and very often make presuppositions about what a woman is. We have seen this in the domain of reproductive rights. So the question I was asking then is: do we need to have a settled idea of women, or of any gender, in order to advance feminist goals? . . . I put the question that way… to remind us that feminists are committed to thinking about the diverse and historically shifting meanings of gender, and to the ideals of gender freedom. By gender freedom, I do not mean we all get to choose our gender. Rather, we get to make a political claim to live freely and without fear of discrimination and violence against the genders that we are. Many people who were assigned “female” at birth never felt at home with that assignment, and those people (including me) tell all of us something important about the constraints of traditional gender norms for many who fall outside its terms. . . . Feminists know that women with ambition are called “monstrous” or that women who are not heterosexual are pathologised. We fight those misrepresentations because they are false and because they reflect more about the misogyny of those who make demeaning caricatures than they do about the complex social diversity of women. Women should not engage in the forms of phobic caricature by which they have been traditionally demeaned. And by “women” I mean all those who identify in that way.
Alona Ferber: How much is toxicity on this issue a function of culture wars playing out online?
Judith Butler: I think we are living in anti-intellectual times, and that this is evident across the political spectrum. The quickness of social media allows for forms of vitriol that do not exactly support thoughtful debate. We need to cherish the longer forms.
Alona Ferber: Threats of violence and abuse would seem to take these “anti-intellectual times” to an extreme. What do you have to say about violent or abusive language used online against people like JK Rowling?
Judith Butler: I am against online abuse of all kinds. I confess to being perplexed by the fact that you point out the abuse levelled against JK Rowling, but you do not cite the abuse against trans people and their allies that happens online and in person. I disagree with JK Rowling's view on trans people, but I do not think she should suffer harassment and threats. Let us also remember, though, the threats against trans people in places like Brazil, the harassment of trans people in the streets and on the job in places like Poland and Romania – or indeed right here in the US. So if we are going to object to harassment and threats, as we surely should, we should also make sure we have a large picture of where that is happening, who is most profoundly affected, and whether it is tolerated by those who should be opposing it. It won’t do to say that threats against some people are tolerable but against others are intolerable.
Alona Ferber: You weren't a signatory to the open letter on “cancel culture” in Harper's this summer, but did its arguments resonate with you?
Judith Butler: I have mixed feelings about that letter. On the one hand, I am an educator and writer and believe in slow and thoughtful debate. I learn from being confronted and challenged, and I accept that I have made some significant errors in my public life. If someone then said I should not be read or listened to as a result of those errors, well, I would object internally, since I don't think any mistake a person made can, or should, summarise that person. We live in time; we err, sometimes seriously; and if we are lucky, we change precisely because of interactions that let us see things differently . . . On the other hand, some of those signatories were taking aim at Black Lives Matter as if the loud and public opposition to racism were itself uncivilised behaviour. Some of them have opposed legal rights for Palestine. Others have [allegedly] committed sexual harassment. And yet others do not wish to be challenged on their racism. Democracy requires a good challenge, and it does not always arrive in soft tones. So I am not in favour of neutralising the strong political demands for justice on the part of subjugated people. When one has not been heard for decades, the cry for justice is bound to be loud.
Alona Ferber: This year, you published, The Force of Nonviolence. Does the idea of “radical equality”, which you discuss in the book, have any relevance for the feminist movement?
Judith Butler: My point in the recent book is to suggest that we rethink equality in terms of interdependency. We tend to say that one person should be treated the same as another, and we measure whether or not equality has been achieved by comparing individual cases. But what if the individual – and individualism – is part of the problem? It makes a difference to understand ourselves as living in a world in which we are fundamentally dependent on others, on institutions, on the Earth, and to see that this life depends on a sustaining organisation for various forms of life. If no one escapes that interdependency, then we are equal in a different sense. We are equally dependent, that is, equally social and ecological, and that means we cease to understand ourselves only as demarcated individuals. If trans-exclusionary radical feminists understood themselves as sharing a world with trans people, in a common struggle for equality, freedom from violence, and for social recognition, there would be no more trans-exclusionary radical feminists. But feminism would surely survive as a coalitional practice and vision of solidarity.
Alona Ferber: You have spoken about the backlash against “gender ideology”, and wrote an essay for the New Statesman about it in 2019. Do you see any connection between this and contemporary debates about trans rights?
Judith Butler: It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists' return to biological essentialism. It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.
Alona Ferber: What do you think would break this impasse in feminism over trans rights? What would lead to a more constructive debate?
Judith Butler: I suppose a debate, were it possible, would have to reconsider the ways in which the medical determination of sex functions in relation to the lived and historical reality of gender.
12 notes · View notes