Some people find the birds and the bees very confusing

Here's an imaginary group of 1000 people, all aged between 20 and 40:

30 have an intersex condition (let's assume none are fertile)
485 are male: 460 fertile, 20 infertile, 5 transsexual (let's assume post-op)
485 are female: 454 fertile, 30 infertile, 1 transsexual (let's assume post-op)

Apparently, all this variety - the fact that only 91% of the above people are capable of procreation - is very confusing to academic Sara Ahmed. We could go into the effects of perceived reproductive capacity on socialization, and the effects of socialization on both personality and opportunity, but guess what?

There's an easy way to simplify this for confused folk like Sara.

Every single one of those 1000 people above came into existence through heterosexual reproduction. The sperm from a male person successfully fertilized the ovum of a female person. A female person then grew a fetus inside her female body, and eventually birthed a baby, from her female body. THIS IS THE CASE FOR EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE 1000 PEOPLE.

Let's say for this particular group of human offspring, all were single births not involving surrogacy, with no sibling overlap. Then let's talk about those moms and dads: 1000 (fertile) human females, and 1000 (fertile) human males.

Those human females were correctly identified as ova-producers at birth. Was it right for them to be socialized to view themselves as weak, irrational, submissive? Those human males were correctly identified as sperm-producers at birth. Was it right for them to be socialized to view themselves as entitled to dominate and exploit?

BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT WE CALL GENDER.

AND THAT IS WHAT FEMINISTS FIGHT AGAINST.

Not the simple, obvious, fucking *elementary* observation that human beings are male or female. We fight against the idea that our reproductive capacity somehow determines our personality and thus should determine our social role and status. Being female is not shameful. Being female simply means we have the ability, should we so choose and should our health allow, to create human life. It is only through gendered socialization that women come to be viewed/view ourselves as dirty, dependent sub-humans. Being male is likewise not determinative: it is only through gendered socialization that men are excused for the violent, exploitative behavior that props up male supremacy.

Pointing out that socialization based on perceived reproductive capacity (for that is what gender is) should not apply to a certain percentage of people (let's say 10%) for whom perceived reproductive capacity does not match actual reproductive capacity - DOES NOTHING FOR THE 90% LEFTOVER.

One might hope someone with a PhD could grasp this. One might despair for higher education.

The Cotton Ceiling - links and screencaps

Cutting and pasting from TheNewBacklash  

The "Cotton Ceiling" = Trans activists and their allies calling lesbians transphobic for not having sex with male people. Trans activists are never so clear about their central tenet of "women are not allowed to be bigoted TOWARD PENIS" than they are here.

-Transwoman leads a Planned Parenthood workshop entitled "Overcoming the Cotton Ceiling: Breaking Down Sexual Barriers for Queer Trans Women." The cotton in question? Lesbian's underwear.

-In this email exchange, a transwoman explains to a lesbian that penis can be female and to refuse sex with be-penised people is transphobic.
-Often, AFTAs will say the "cotton ceiling" isn't really a thing, and was made up by paranoid feminists. Yet a transwoman posts this: The Cotton Ceiling Is Real and It’s Time for All Queer and Trans People to Fight Back

-Here, a transwoman uses a LOT of words to try to convince the trans community to ditch the phrase "cotton ceiling" while doubling down on the male sexual entitlement.

-Enough With "I Date Women and Trans Men" A masterpiece of jargony doublespeak in which the biological reality of sex is completely erased.

-The Best of Both Worlds ("But being shut off from the very idea of it, not even considering that having my penis inside you is different from having a man’s penis inside you? That hurts.")

-The Struggle to find Trans Love ("And when the overwhelming majority of cis dykes date and fuck cis women, but are not open to, or are even turned off by, the idea of dating or fucking trans women, how is that not transphobic?")

-Shit I cannot believe needs to be said: I don’t dwell on your genitals Shit I cannot believe needs to be said: this shit is bananas.

-More on how lesbianism is transphobic

-Can Cis Lesbians and Trans Women Learn to Get Along? Answer: yes, as long as "cis" lesbians will have sex with transwomen.

-Lesbian porn stars are not allowed to refuse sex with be-penised people
-Some thoughts on the cotton ceiling As per usual - lesbians must prove their "acceptance" of transwomen by having sex with them. To refuse sex with be-penised people is backwards and hurtful.
-Cambridge University student union gets in on the Cotton Ceiling

Er. No.

Hmm. Where have I heard of this "friendzone" before?

Men's Rights Activist or "Trans" Rights Activist?

EITHER WAY, WOMEN DON'T OWE YOU SHIT.

---

Natacha/Mark provides a rich AFTA text for feminist analysis

This post is about, though not in response to, this drivel:

http://uncommon-scents.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/another-green-comes-out-full-terf.html

Natacha, true to form, begins with a lie. Natacha was not forwarded this letter from an anonymous source. Natacha is on the mailing list for Goldsmiths at the University of London, a group to whom the letter was sent for possible signatures. Except of course, "Natascha" is listed there as Mark Hellen. Mark Hellen is "Natacha's" male name.

That's right, Natacha only "lives as a woman" part-time. Apparently, Natacha might also experience a kind of multiple personality disorder that allows a person to publish a paper as two people:

I'm not going to waste my time with a point-by-point rebuttal of Natacha/Mark's post, as anyone who actually cares about the Nordic model can do their own research. Also, I've already written about the absurd idea that college students shouldn't have to confront "offensive" views. I'm only interested in how this post so helpfully illustrates several key AFTA (anti-feminist trans activist) themes:

1) The rhetorical marriage of the anti-feminist propaganda terms SWERF and TERF. SWERF supposedly stands for Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist and TERF supposedly stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Except SWERF is routinely applied to abolitionist women who have survived prostitution, and TERF is routinely applied to any transsexual person who questions modern transgender identity politics (aka brain sex.) In reality, SWERF means anyone who thinks men do not have the right to stick their dicks in women for money, and TERF means anyone who thinks men do not have the right to empty the word "woman" of both its biological and political meanings (female bodies and lifelong feminine socialization). More on SWERF & TERF in a bit.

2) The concurrent a) representation of any [failure to capitulate totally to any self-identified "trans" person] as abuse and b) dismissal of actual intimidation tactics by "trans" activists. "Germaine Greer did not want to work with Roz Kaveney" becomes "Germaine Greer censored Roz Kaveney," while "trans activists sought to end Rupert Green's political career" becomes "well, he deserved it."

3) At the core of this and most AFTA blog posts is the idea that "TERFs" deny them their "right to exist." Of course, pointing out that someone is male does not mean you don't think they exist. Neither does pointing out that someone is male mean you want them dead.

In order to distract from the absurdity of this claim, (white, middle class) AFTAs must routinely co-opt the real male violence faced by poor transwomen of color who are *dun dun dun* engaged in prostitution, and blame that male violence on the evil TERFs. The male violence endemic to an industry that presumes males are entitled to use other humans' bodies as masturbatory aids is co-opted by privileged assholes in order to monster feminists.

To be clear, women don't place transwomen in danger by knowing they are male. Men don't attack transwomen for being male, they attack transwomen for threatening their masculinity. Masculinity, which is to say "gender" in the feminist sense of the term, is the problem. You don't stop men from attacking transwomen by pretending male is female any more than you stop white men from shooting black people by pretending black is white. Play-pretend is not how grown-ups solve problems.

But AFTAs don't care about solving the problem of violence against poor transwomen of color, only weaponizing it on their own behalf.

4) Furthermore, AFTA claims of erasure are pure patriarchal reversal.

Whose existence is being erased? Do we have any words left to describe ova-producing people without reference to sperm-producing people? What spaces are left for us? What analyses? None.

Universities are both important and dangerous for trans people? What about female students who might like some tools to describe and fight their oppression? You know, the same female people who face something like a 1 in 4.5 chance of sexual assault on college campuses? Nothing for them? Great.

And of course, feminists who think "woman" is a material reality - that we are born into female bodies and face lifetimes of socialization as second class citizens - are categorized as a fringe minority who offer "no critique of gender." Our lived reality, erased. Decades of feminist analyses, erased.

WE SEE THIS.

5) I discussed above the rhetorical marriage of the anti-feminist propaganda terms TERF and SWERF. You can read TERF as "person who does not prioritize male feelings" and SWERF as "person who does not prioritize male orgasms." However, after spending more than a year on Twitter observing the behavior of AFTAs, I'm gonna go ahead and say both terms are about putting male orgasms at the center of feminism.

In re. prostitution: Men view assisted orgasms as their human right. (Amnesty fucking International backs them up on this.) Men supposedly need to use other humans' bodies (usually women, sometimes men, more often than you might like to think, children) as masturbatory aids, so we must designate an underclass to serve those men who cannot find another person to serve as said masturbatory aid in the spirit of mutual desire. Otherwise, men might take their "needs" out on the "good" women. This assumption lies at the heart of all arguments for legalizing the purchase of sexual access to another person's body. No one is concerned about women having a designated underclass to serve our sexual needs. No one is concerned about men learning an adult level of self-control. Easy access to assisted penile orgasm is all that matters. Except, of course, to those evil evil SWERFs.

AFTAs, meanwhile, get their kicks a different way. This article illuminates some of the psychological facets of autogynephilia, including its high correlation with masochism:

AFTAs find sexual pleasure in both viewing themselves and having others view them as women - but not just any old women. The most oppressed women ever. The most distressed of damsels. And social media enables them to act out masochistic fantasies in front of an adoring audience from the comfort of home.

How does a white male with an academic post under a male name at the University of London play at Most Oppressed? The same way this white male with a yacht or this white male college student does:

Log on to the internet: Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, pick your favorite. Claim to "feel like a woman." Wait for some uppity female person to ask what that could possibly mean. If you don't get a bite right away, try something a bit more provocative:

As soon as you are questioned in any way, cry TERF, and portray any questioning of your feelings and demands as equivalent to murder:

DON'T WORRY, nobody will question the assertion that a woman calling a white middle or upper class, usually heterosexual male with a fully intact penis "he" on the internet will cause other males to murder poor transwomen of color who are engaged in prostitution. Nobody will do the Google search necessary to find out that 1 in 12 estimate was back-of-the-envelope and only ever meant to apply to people who were profoundly transsexual from an early age. Nor will anyone question the assertion that a male person privileged along several axes of power has the right to demand all strangers recognize and pander to his self-professed special gender feelz on pain of suicide threat, while women are told we must call ourselves "cis" because unless we claim to "feel male" we must have ladybrains and innately deserve our oppression. 

After all, people HATE to question male entitlement and LOVE to blame women for male suffering. So you're all set. Assert that female biology is a social construct and feminine socialization is a privilege, then flail about crying hate, murder, "you don't want me to exist," abuse abuse suicide when any feminist dares question your anti-feminist presuppositions. Legions of loyal fans will line up to wipe your tears and smear your enemies, because most mainstream liberals would rather spew piousness than engage in one second of critical thought. They'll eat it up when you opine on the necessity of sterilizing gender non-conforming children even as young transwomen stop attending support groups because they've been taken over by pervy late transitioners.

Now, don't concern yourself with the plight of those kids, nor the plight of poor transwomen of color - don't feel you must do anything that might address the intersecting structural inequalities of sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia, and don't feel guilty that you're trampling those realities into dust with your histrionic hear-tearing about pronouns and temper tantrums about mean lesbians who won't suck dick. You don't need to worry about GNC kids or poor transwomen of color any more than the pimps trotting out highly-paid escorts as poster girls for "sex work" need to worry about the millions of victims of sex trafficking. Actual victims of actual violence don't matter here. The only thing that matters is that you can leverage the suffering of those victims for penile orgasms. In this case, autogynephilic, masochistic penile orgasms.

AFTAs claim to hate TERFs, but I posit that when they type "TERFs want to debate my existence" they're typing one-handed, trolling for unpaid dominatrix services. Let's not play along.

Why would privileged college students want to avoid debate?

There's a lot with which to take issue in this article: Safe space or free speech? The crisis around debate at UK universities, not least of which is the framing: if students don't have free speech, students are not safe. But I'd like to take a look at one passage in particular, which presents the view of Tim Squirrel, former president of the Cambridge Union:

“Safe space gets a bit of a bad rap,” he says. “Most of the people involved in advocating these types of policies don’t mind debate; they just they don’t want to do so in their homes with strangers.

“Every time you invite someone like Germaine Greer on to campus, or someone who disagrees with the rights of sex workers to do their work, or a racist or a homophobe, you’re not endorsing their views, but you’re legitimating their views as something that’s up for discussion. There’s a place for that discussion, but the question of whether it should happen in people’s homes is a difficult one. Greer doesn’t think trans women are real women. These are not abstract issues. They affect real people.

“I know someone in the debating circuit who used to say to teams: ‘If you think your case is offensive, you haven’t found the right case to make. You should go back and find another one which doesn’t appear prima facie to be offensive. There are ways of debating these things which aren’t hurtful.”

This statement represents everything that goes wrong when we treat higher education as a vacation for entitled rich kids, rather than a privilege for young people who want to commit to several years of intellectual exploration, with all the assorted responsibilities that should accompany such an opportunity.

1) No one is asking students to invite strangers into their dorm rooms for contentious debate, although damned if daily, spirited debates in every setting imaginable weren't part and parcel of my college experience - as I was there to think and grow. However, the entire campus is not a student's "home," nor is everyone there meant to coddle them. Going to classes and extracurricular events are part of a student's work, their intellectual work, which they are privileged to spend several years exploring, rather than heading off to the military, or minimum wage drudgery, or whatever else their less privileged contemporaries must get on with.

2) Of course offensive views are up for discussion. OF COURSE THEY ARE. Offensive views are being written into laws and policies the world over. If you do not learn to engage those views honestly and constructively, like thinking adults, how in the world do you think you will deconstruct them - and provide viable alternatives - in the real world?

During my final days at university, Charles Murray came to our campus, and I attended his presentation. Afterwards, I watched as -one by one and with calm composure- students rose to ask him detailed, pointed questions about his historical and statistical methods. These questions wrecked his racist suppositions. I thought to myself, with relief and pride, "My classmates are prepared to go out and do real good in the world."

If you actually care about social justice issues, spending four years in university plugging your ears and shouting buzz phrases will render you about as prepared for real social justice work as a soldier whose only skill on the battlefield is to yell "don't shoot!"

3) Then there is the real question: For whom are campus spaces supposedly safe? To whom are these debates hurtful?

Generally speaking, any debate on social issues threatens to highlight the rampant insincerity of campus social justice warriors.

If a student is unwilling to entertain debate on sensitive matters of race, religion, sexuality, you name it, my first thought is that they are unable to defend their stated positions. Hell, most of the students advocating for no-platform policies aren't even able to define their positions without the use of deliberately obtuse and polarizing language, language which they have parroted with no independent analysis of their own.

But the problem goes beyond intellectual superficiality. Unlike my undergraduate cohort, I doubt these students would welcome the opportunity to calmly and systematically refute racist theories, and I suspect this is because they actually believe those racist theories to be true, and they consider their willingness to lie about that, and to spew sanctimony at those who state out loud their own secretly held views, to be a form of moral righteousness. (And of course it is their own white righteousness that is most important, not any concrete action that could address the systematic exploitation, imprisonment and murder of people of color, from which all white people benefit.)

But more specifically, the recent no-platforming of (supposedly) controversial feminists is very obviously meant to protect male privilege.

There's a reason you see the no-platforming of feminists lumped in with the no-platforming of racists and homophobes - male privilege/female oppression is the only axis of power relations that is deemed unacceptable for investigation by the modern Left.

Just look at the language of the privileged white dude above: he describes a woman who supports the Nordic model as "someone who disagrees with the rights of sex workers to do their work." The Nordic model explicitly supports the decriminalization of women who sell sexual access to their bodies. At issue is the criminalization of men who feel entitled to buy sexual access to women's bodies - but apparently male entitlement to female bodies is not up for debate on the Left.

Also not up for debate on the Left: the thought-terminating cliche that "trans women are real women." Do women have the right to a word for adult female humans? Do we get a word for those humans who were recognized as female at or before birth, who grew up under a regime of oppressive feminine socialization? Do we get a word for those humans who went through the specific hell of female puberty in a rape culture? Do we get a word for that class of humans that menstruates, that is vulnerable to pregnancy, that does 99% of the work of reproducing the species? What does it mean for our protections under the law if we cannot even name ourselves? How can feminism, the movement for the liberation of women, continue to exist if men are allowed to re-define "woman" however and whenever they like?

Furthermore, who does it really protect to shunt "not-masculine-enough" males into the woman box? Could it be that as women have expanded our acceptable sex roles, men have lost access to their traditional supply of emotional, sexual, reproductive and domestic labor? Could it be that as women have become more independent of them, men have had to question their core masculine identities? Could it be that this idea of "real men" vs. women-in-men's-bodies is actually all about protecting male privilege? Again, none of these questions are up for debate on the Left.

Privileged, mainstream, anti-intellectual students regularly conflate homosexuality with transsexuality. Is this because they truly believe that gay men are actually women in men's bodies and lesbians are actually men in women's bodies? Does transgenderist brain sex theory exist to diffuse the threat gay rights pose to compulsory heterosexuality, which is central to male privilege? Shouldn't we consider how brain sex theory is putting gender non-conforming children of both sexes - our best hope for a more feminist generation - on the route to medical sterilization? Again, these questions are not up for debate on the Left.

These students don't want debate because they don't want to do the work of real change. Instead, they want a shortcut to claiming their place on "the right side of history." They do not care for the difficult, messy, fraught work that must be done to get to the root of any given social problem. They certainly don't want to question the extent to which their own privileges would be threatened by a more justly structured world. They just want to yell the most superficially right-on slogans and have that performance recorded for posterity on their social media platform of choice.

Engaging difference - rather than screaming buzzphrases - means acknowledging that difference might have an actual effect on your own life. It means putting your own understanding of the world - which almost always involves rationalizing your own privilege - at risk.

Fortunately for those on the wrong side of history, Leftist students now enthusiastically offer themselves up as enemies of the critical thought that is necessary to achieve the liberatory goals they claim to hold. Female students on college campuses face an epidemic of sexual violence at the hands of entitled males, even as they are banned from merely naming maleness and femaleness for the sake of "safe spaces." It is as it always has been: the only people entitled to either free speech or safe spaces are those people who were born and raised white and male.

Try This One Easy Trick To Instantly Figure Out What That Article Is Really About

Ask yourself: Is this really feminism?

Everyone and their pornsick uncle claims to be a feminist these days. However, many people claiming to be feminists are merely woman-haters in disguise, who spend a good deal of their time engaging in brazen reversals (an old trick of patriarchy) - such as denouncing actual feminists as fake or bad or evil (see: TERF and/or SWERF.)

So whenever you are reading an article by someone who claims to be a feminist, I suggest asking yourself if it rests on any of these 10 anti-feminist premises:

1. Ova-producing people are not entitled to a name for ourselves.

Feminism is the fight for women's liberation. Women are female humans, and we are oppressed because men wish to control our female bodies. How do you liberate a group if you cannot name that group nor describe the root of their oppression? More discussion here - I'm not retreading this absurd, infuriating ground.

2. If we dare name the biological processes specific to ova-producing people, ova-producing people are somehow necessarily reduced to and enslaved by those processes.

Also known as the "acknowledging the biological category of women is determinist/essentialist" fallacy. Whether you let us name our physical reality or not, it still exists. And guess what, there's nothing shameful about it. Women as a biological class have the ability to make other humans. Men don't. Get over it.

3. There is any such thing as ladybrain.

This is TRANSPARENTLY sexist pseudoscience meant to reinforce the naturalization of male dominance. Fuck off with it.

4. Ova-producing people must never exclude sperm-producing people.

I mean, seriously? I know it's scary - allowing women to talk to each other with no male overseer is the first step towards women figuring out how to live without constantly seeking male approval - but once again, you're gonna have to get over it. Because: Numbers 5 and 6.

5. Sperm-producing people are entitled to emotional caretaking by ova-producing people.

Nope. We are not the mommies of the entire world. Grow up.

6. Sperm-producing people need and are entitled to orgasms facilitated by ova-producing people. Corollary: "real/good" feminists not only refuse to name the penis as the locus of male privilege, they are absolutely *gagging* to facilitate penile orgasm.

Nope. Men will not die if left on their own to masturbate. And feminism is not #fuckabilitypolitics. Once again, grow up.

7. If ova-producing people do not comply with the desires of sperm-producing people, sperm-producing people are bound to respond with violence, for which the non-compliant ova-producing people are responsible.

Also known as the "porn/prostitution save lives" crowd. Also known as the "men only attack transwomen because women say penis is male" crowd. Also known as Elliot Rodger.

Men are capable of growing up and acting like decent human beings. And men are responsible for their own actions. Stop blaming us uppity women for shit men do.

8. The choices of ova-producing people are free and unconstrained by intimate lifelong oppressive socialization and the ever-present threat of (physical, economic & psychic) violence.

After a lifetime of being groomed to worship and fear cock, women then have the "agency" to objectify themselves for money? Fuck all the way off.

9. Ova-producing people who conform to the feminine gender role -A ROLE OF SUBSERVIENCE- must be doing so out of an innate identification with subservience. And to do so is a privilege.
 
As above: sexist socialization - it's a thing. You might perceive that if you pulled your head out of your ass.

And fuck your "cis privilege" nonsense wankery. Womanhood is not the retreat to blissful childlike dependence males imagine it to be. (Did I mention: GROW UP.)

10. Oppression of ova-producing humans doesn't really count, unless that oppression can be shared by sperm-producing humans.

AKA the common perversion of the solid and necessary theory of intersectionality to mean all oppressions must intersect with penis. Leads to the "white women (meaning-though-hardly-ever-bothering-to-state: straight, financially stable, healthy white women) are the real enemies" gambit.

Sexism - WHICH IS BASED ON SEX, THE CLUE IS IN THE NAME - is an axis of oppression. Either wrap your mind around that, or stop calling yourself a feminist.

Sexist oppression is not erased by any other axis of privilege, anymore than racism, classism, homophobia, ageism or ableism are. (Is the racist vitriol daily hurled at President Obama excusable because he commands the world's largest army and has a private jet at his disposal?)

As Catherine MacKinnon explains, the woman who does not share any axis of oppression with a man is no more definitive of the class "woman" than any other woman - but the way said women are imagined is "a particularly sensitive indicator of the degree to which women, as such, are despised."

Check your "feminist" articles accordingly.

Is Radical Feminism Totalist?

(Totalist in the sense of ideological totalism.)

No, of course it isn't. Radical feminism is a framework of ideas, and an amazingly incisive and liberatory one at that.

Some radical feminists certainly do practice ideological totalism, however.

When I can spend half my waking hours writing and posting about the harms of gender, defending women's language and spaces - imperiling my own employment in the process - and still be attacked as a lesbophobic dick-licking enemy of women because I grant a handful of pro-feminist transwomen (all of whom actively fight the dominant narrative of transgender identity politics at personal cost to themselves) the pronoun "she" - that's ideological totalism.

I'm not saying this because oh-my-poor-feelings - although I am a human being and I don't deserve to be constantly trashed by my so-called "sisters" - but because women desperately need radical feminism and totalist behavior alienates them from it.

• When you shame strangers on the internet for not knowing the feminist academic use of the term "gender," it might make you feel superior, but you're not actually educating anyone.
• When you shame strangers on the internet for having empathy for transwomen, they aren't going to stick around to hear your analysis of the gendered expectations of empathy. 
• When you repeatedly attack women who dare to only agree with 95% of your opinions, you can bet women who are curious about those opinions but already nervous about the current political climate are going to head for the hills.
• When you repeatedly state that gender is a social construct but go on to behave as if you believe all individual males are innately evil, you both undermine your own argument and alienate the great majority of women who have no choice but to live in a world of men - many of whom they love in one way or another.
• Furthermore, when you behave as if being born into a dominant class erases one's possibility for personal moral development - and you are white - you really do appear to be ignoring white supremacy in a manner usually reserved for ignorant racists.

Radical feminism is not an i-dentity through which one can establish one's superiority to other women. Radical feminism is an invaluable framework of ideas that is vital for women to access, but which is misrepresented and monstered to such a degree that it takes a lot of patient, honest, painful work to connect women with those ideas. Please consider the effect of your behavior on the women who need the analyses you claim to hold.

Empathy: Addendum

I'm in the tiny, grimy bathroom of a tiny, grimy rental apartment in a tiny, frat-infested college town in the middle of nowhere. I'm in my third job post graduate degree, working 80 hours a week for an obtusely sexist, abusive boss, and I still don't make enough to get ahead of the massive debt. Every bill is a panic attack in an envelope sitting like a bomb in my mailbox.

I'm in a "relationship," of sorts, with a(nother) tortured writer. He considers himself a "dominant" in bed, which it seems the majority of men do these days, bless their shitty little boyhearts. I let him abuse me. In those moments, I feel erased, and that erasure is the only relief I feel all week. He is my temporary suicide. I won't do the real thing, not as long as I have a dog who looks at me with all the love I never got as a child bubbling out of his eyes.

I can't afford the dog, who came into my life when I was married, before divorce bankrupted me. But I cannot give him up. I cry into his fur. I cry all the time. I have no idea how to get out of the hole I'm in. Hard work doesn't do it. Nothing helps. I have no hope.

I'm in the tiny, grimy bathroom of a tiny, grimy rental apartment in an empty landscape and a life of brick walls. I'm tired. My head hurts.

The stick I peed on two minutes ago reads positive.

I shut down half my brain. I shut down the panic. I go to a movie with a friend. I don't tell her I'm pregnant. Later, I text the writer. He wants to talk. I say, not now. I'm not going to cry. I can control that much.

I might love to have a baby, but like I said, I can't even afford my dog. Best not to think of what might be. Best not to think what is happening INSIDE ME.

I log on. I spend hours searching, but there is no abortion clinic anywhere near me. (The clinic up the street, the one I walk by every day on my way to work, is run by pro-lifers). I call the Planned Parenthood abortion line. The voice on the other end is calm and kind. This makes it harder to not-cry.

We figure out what I have to do in order to comply with all the new Republican laws: take a half day off work to drive four hours (round trip) to the nearest clinic that can show the required video and provide the required form to begin my waiting period. Take another full day off to drive three hours (one way) to the nearest clinic to perform the actual procedure.

I can't afford both the gas to make those trips and groceries, but that's alright, as I don't have much of an appetite anyway.

My boss wants to know why I'm taking the time off. I tell him "doctor's appointments." He pushes, I snap. He assigns me even more work in retribution.

All day alone in waiting rooms. Interviews, forms. Perfunctory ultrasound performed by uninterested clinician. "Yep, there it is," she says, with an instrument not much smaller than my arm crammed up my vagina. The abortion itself is breathtakingly painful but blessedly brief. A nurse lets me squeeze her hand while it feels like my innards are being sucked out through my cervix. I walk on shaky legs to the recovery room. I joke with the other women. Most of them already have kids. We all wear unclenched faces of relief. We call out our thanks to the grim-faced doctor as he leaves. He spends all day every Friday doing this. He is the only doctor performing abortions in this third of the state.

I've rented a hotel room nearby, as a friend cautioned me against driving home directly after. The writer is paying for it. He's waiting for me. He brought me a heating pad. He wants a blow job. I give him one. I am a good girlfriend. (Except I'm not his girlfriend.)

On the drive home alone I cry. I cry a lot. At home, I continue to cry. Great heaving helpless sobs that morph into dry heaves. I'm not sorry I had an abortion. I'm immensely relieved it's done. I'm crying because my life is a closed box.

A month later, I email the writer to announce my period has arrived. I am overjoyed. The relief comes in huge waves. His response: "I don't really need to hear about that."

"I don't really need to hear about that."

I begin to comprehend how he sees me. Or how he doesn't see me. I'm not a person. I don't continue to exist when I'm not in the same room as his dick. I'm a doll, I'm a cheerleader, I'm an editorial assistant. The parts of me that are useful to him are, while useful, real, but the rest of me is but the echo of a rhetorical tree fallen in a lonely forest.

I think back to my marriage. I was a nanny, a secretary, a maid. A useful accessory with no claim to an inner life.

I begin to love myself out of pure contrariness. I begin to inhabit my body again. I begin to stop loving men.

My reality is a female reality. I will not have it erased.

On empathy

Because I'm a gender critical feminist on the internet, I'm often told I need to "just have some damn empathy" for trans people. As is my wont, I go to the dictionary:

Of course, this would seem like an impossible demand if I listened to the countless trans activists announcing that non-trans people can never know what it is like to be trans, that we shouldn't even ask for a definition of it (even as we are simultaneously expected to voluntarily define ourselves as not-it), that we should simply listen and accept.

Maybe instead of empathy, they really mean sympathy?

I do feel sincere sorrow for anyone who experiences sex dysmorphia, as I would for anyone with a painful medical condition. However, I don't feel pity toward transsexual people. I don't think pity is a very useful emotion. I think many of the people scolding me to be more "empathetic" *do* feel a kind of horrified, disgusted, abject pity about the transsexual experience, which stops them from thinking very much about it at all. And I think this refusal to *look at what's really happening* is what allows people who experience no sex dysmorphia at all to co-opt the transsexual experience for political cover, while spouting obviously anti-woman rhetoric.

But what about this pity? What is so special about the pity some people feel for male transsexuals that they have no problem telling women to give up our language, our spaces, our analysis, just give transwomen anything they want, no questions asked?

(Why do I concentrate on transwomen rather than transmen? Simple: because transmen, who are female, do not have the institutional power to wreck men's boundaries or take away their language.)

...

An old college friend recently became very ill and nearly died; circulation to her limbs was compromised to such an extent she lost both hands, one foot, and part of another foot. She has five children. Her friends and family were very lucky in fundraising for advanced prosthetics; still, she will never feel any of her kids' hands in her own again. She must struggle through every mundane task, must endure the stares and pity when she goes out in public. The prosthetics chafe all day and come off every night. When I think of her lying in bed, with so many body parts gone, unable to even fluff her own pillow, adjust the blanket or get up to use the bathroom on her own, I am stricken with sorrow.

Some statistics from the Amputee Coalition: 

Two million amputees in the United States alone. Yet I am not told I must voluntarily identify as a "non-amputee," stop defining humans as bipeds, object to any language implying the use of healthy hands or feet, or in any other way center amputees in my day to day life, much less my politics. I am not told I must play-pretend that prosthetic limbs are just like natural limbs or else my friend might kill herself. Why is the suffering of amputees so qualitatively different from the suffering of transsexuals? Why can we expect amputees to adjust to their new realities and deal with the hardships they face, but human language, feminism and sex-based boundaries must all bend around the feelings of transsexual people?

...

The pity some people feel for transsexuals renders them reactionary and thoughtless because it is bound up in their own gender expectations. A man "identifying as" a woman is a member of the dominant (superior, default human) class who identifies with the subjugated (inferior, subhuman other) class - someone to be pitied for sure, if you buy into the gender hierarchy. But - no matter their exhaustive denials - these people still know that male people are male, and female people are female. And they do not merely expect female people to empathize and/or sympathize with male people. They expect us to anticipate, prioritize, and indulge the feelings of male people. To empty our female Selves and fill our hearts and minds and bodies back up with the needs and desires of a male Other. 

This is, of course, merely more of the same vis-à-vis the oppression of women. 

...

I was raised in a sexist family. This means I was told from Day 1, by the people who were supposed to love me the most, that who I was inside was unacceptable for anyone inhabiting a female body. My accomplishments were derided; my failures were exaggerated, punished, often fabricated out of thin air. I lived in fear of violence in my own home, and when I fought back I was punished. I was a math prodigy, but was held back/obstructed not only by my family, but by teachers and school administrators who felt such talents unsuitable for a girl. I've thrown myself on the sword of marriage and step-motherhood only to be told that none of that sacrifice or work matters because I was born to serve. I'm constantly told my body is wrong, misshapen, unlovable by every corner of the media. I've been sexually harassed at work, severely underpaid, ignored, exploited. I've been treated as sub-human by multiple doctors in multiple specialties.

And I'm one of the lucky ones - I'm white, I was born in a rich country, I've worked my way into the middle class. My suffering as a female person still matters. I feel tore up inside. All the time. Tore up, sore, weary. I suffer from agoraphobia and clinical depression, including suicidal ideation. I am only still alive because I found feminist analysis. I was then able to make sense of the world, to understand why people treated me like shit, to understand that I did not deserve that treatment, that I could therefore fight for a better life.

I'm also lucky because in my 30s my parents came to accept me for who I am. I helped my mom come to feminism. Now my mom is gone, passed away from ovarian cancer. I think of her and I'm immediately transported back to a childhood in which I felt trapped, imperiled, hated, fragile, exhausted. Then I think of her own youth, incredibly intelligent but impregnated at age 15 and all life goals out the window. I think of our shared experiences of chronic diseases dismissed by doctors, and I wonder if the cancer would have been caught earlier if we hadn't all assumed the pain was from Crohn's Disease, itself undiagnosed and untreated until her mid-50s because the excruciating abdominal pain was said to be "all in her head." I wonder if I too will develop ovarian cancer, and if I should have the hysterectomy I fought against for over ten years while seeking treatment for uterine fibroids.

But I'm told female biology is a social construct, unimportant, in no need of naming because transwomen don't experience it. And I'm told this dismissive bullshit is feminism.

This triggers me. This makes me feel physically ill and emotionally embattled. Being told I must erase my own experiences and deny my own needs is just more of the same bullying I've experienced all my life. It's just more male supremacy being forced down my throat, trying to choke off my words, my air.

But of course actual women - adult human females - are not allowed to be triggered by sex-based oppression. We're just supposed to shut up, lie back and take it. Any resistance will be framed as either (innate) weakness or (unnatural) selfishness.

But I know the truth, I see it and speak it, no matter if my voice shakes. If transwomen were female, they would be expected to *give* empathy, rather than demand it all for themselves. And if transwomen weren't male, they wouldn't confuse empathy with capitulation.

See also: Empathy, Addendum

#TERFweek

This is a post for anyone wondering what the heck is going on with the #TERFweek thing on Twitter.

First of all, what is a TERF?

Ostensibly, this acronym stands for "trans exclusionary radical feminist."

In reality, it is applied to anyone who:

1) Recognizes the difference in potential reproductive role between women and men;
2) Recognizes that men weaponize this difference to oppress women (we call this "sexism"); and
3) Thinks women should be allowed to discuss #1 & #2.

If you don't believe me, simply try tweeting "penis is male" or "women are oppressed based on their female reproductive systems," tag it #TERFweek, and see what happens.

Second, what is the label TERF used to *accomplish*?

Sarah Ditum already wrote an excellent piece about how TERF works to silence and separate women.

"TERF" also works to support the ideological totalism of transgender identity politics by enabling believers in "gender identity" to dismiss non-believers as subhuman, and thus excuse violent rhetoric - again, meant to silence - against anyone who meets the above definition:

Do not use the term TERF. Be wary of anyone who does.

*Analysis here: The New Backlash