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

The Category "Woman"

There's a lot of talk these days about the social category woman versus the biological category woman.

Historically, in feminist theory, this categorical separation is done in order to demonstrate that femininity (submissiveness to/dependency upon males) is not a natural outcome of femaleness, but is instead a stereotypical role forced upon female humans from conception, in order to facilitate male supremacy ("patriarchy.")

This stereotypical role is built upon a sexist interpretation of our physical reality - we are capable of gestating fetuses, giving birth and breastfeeding, and thus must fulfill this role and only this role of creating and nurturing others; furthermore, not only does the power to create human life supposedly mean we exist only to take care of others, but in the fundamental patriarchal reversal, this power is framed as weakness - to mean we cannot take care of ourselves. Therefore, we must attract and keep a man to protect and provide for us; therefore we must depend upon, and serve, men.

It is at the AND THUS in the above paragraph that feminists say NO. Because the female capability to bring new life into the world is both undeniable (every single human who ever lived came into existence via a woman's body) and un-shameful (creating new life is not all women can do, nor are all women bound to do it, nor does this capability to create others mean we cannot provide for ourselves.)

This separation between female reproductive capacity and feminine social role is done in order to show that how men wish to view women - as their mothers, wives, servants and whores - as human beings wholly defined by our usefulness to them - is not all that women are or can be. To put it more simply, the feminist separation between the biological category woman and the social category woman is done in order to show that the social category woman is bullshit.

~~~

Men on the right do not accept the separation of the social category woman and the biological category woman. To them, humans born to the potential baby-making class should become wives and mothers, and spend their lives serving their husbands and children. In return for this lifelong servitude, they will be provided (a kind of condescending, infantalizing) approbation and (supposedly) a modicum of safety. Women who do not find a man to take them in shall serve by default as servants and whores.

Men on the left have taken the separation of the social category woman and the biological category woman to mean they can simply ignore the biological reality of female impregnatability. Females are not born to the potential baby-making class but to the facilitation-of-recreational-male-orgasm class. Our uteruses are no longer fetal incubators belonging to men; but our entire bodies are cum receptacles to be used and discarded by them. We are no longer born to whisper "you're such a good provider" and push football sized infants into the world via our vaginas, but to scream "oh my god you're so big" and be buggered to the point of anal prolapse.

It should not be shocking that some men are willing to let go of the desire to use women to father children to whom they pass on their name and wealth when we are living in a hyper-individualistic a-historical time in which very few of us end up in old age with enough to live on, let alone to pass on to future generations.

It should not be shocking that in a culture determined to focus on the purchase of short-term pleasure that we would see men turn women into disposable sexual commodities rather than long-term domestic help.

It should not be shocking that many men would furthermore expect women to continue being their voluntary emotional caretakers as well as their voluntary sexual service providers and to feel short-changed in their manhood when this expectation is not met. (See: Men's Rights Activists.)

And it should not be shocking that feminists object to all of this, to any definition of women that is dependent upon our use-value to men.

And make no mistake, this is what the social category woman comes down to: use-value to men.

~~~

Various use-values women may serve for men:

• Heir-makers
• Caretakers
• Therapists
• Maids
• Cooks
• Secretaries
• Decorations
• Orgasm facilitators
• Objects of derision and violence (building dominant masculine identity in opposition to feminine "weakness")
• Proxies (enforcing feminine roles on other women)

These days, the separation of the biological category woman and the social category woman in mainstream leftist spaces is not done in order to show that the social category is bullshit. It is done to erase the inconvenient physical reality that recreational sex can have long-term consequences, and to enshrine the social category of women as decorative, sexually available foils and punching bags for men.

This is done ostensibly to protect a small group of males (trans women) from other males, as if pretending they are female will protect them, as if the position of decorative sex object is one of safety, as if dependence upon use-value to one's oppressor is not the very thing feminists fight.

Women are adult human females. We exist outside the male gaze. We are not defined by our usefulness to men. Biological reality exists outside the dictates of male desire, and our social reality should do the same.

10 Signs You Might Be a TERF

"TERF" ostensibly means "trans exclusionary radical feminist." However, this term is regularly applied to people who are not radical feminists, and is often applied to trans people who defend basic feminism. So what, really, does "TERF" mean? And how can you know if you are one? I've compiled this handy list for you.

1) Do you know how babies are made?

2) Do you know how dictionaries work?

3) Do you know the dictionary definitions of these words: female/woman & male/man?

4) Do you think that having words for reproductive classes of humans is important because human reproduction is important to humanity?

5) Do you think that having words for reproductive classes of humans does NOT mean that A) humans in either class MUST fulfill their potential reproductive role and B) ALL they can do is fulfill their potential reproductive role?

6) Do you think that potential reproductive role, while an important part of our lived reality as embodied mammals, does NOT determine human personality, and thus should NOT determine social role or status?

7) Do you think that human females - girls & women - should be able to look how they want, love who they love, and pursue whatever talents they have that do not harm others?

8) Do you think that human males - boys & men - should be able to look how they want, love who they love, and pursue whatever talents they have that do not harm others?

9) Do you think that male violence against other, gender non-conforming males is A) unacceptable and B) the responsiblity of those violent men and C) not the responsibility of women?

10) Do you think it's OK for women to put women first?

CONGRATULATIONS, YOU'RE A TERF.

Feminism and Trans Women: A Bullet Point Overview

*An updated version of this post is available at Gender Apostates.

*Further explication, screen shots, and links at The New Backlash.

---

Preface: a note on the word "gender"

People outside of academia commonly use the word "gender" to mean "sex class of male or female" (in contrast with the act of sexual intercourse.) Feminist theorists, however, use the word "gender" to refer to the social expectations thrust upon men and women, otherwise referred to as sex stereotypes or sex roles. Transgender identity politickers, further clouding the language, use "gender identity" to mean an innate inner feeling that overrides and in fact determines biological sex.

Always stay alert to the context in which you see the word “gender,” and ask for clarification when needed.

---

Reproductive Difference

1.       As the continuance of any species is important to that species, sexual reproduction is important to humanity.

2.       Human beings reproduce via the fertilization of females' eggs by males' sperm, and the work done by females to gestate fetuses and birth infants. (That work is arduous and dangerous and should always be freely chosen.) Every single human being on Earth was created in this way, as were their parents, and their parents’ parents, et cetera.

3.       Human communication via language depends upon words having shared meanings. Humans codify our shared meanings via dictionaries. Dictionaries are your friend.

4.       Dictionary definitions:

Woman: An adult human female.

Female: Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.

Man: An adult human male.

Male: Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.

5.       The existence of infertile people does not render these definitions unusable any more than the existence of bilateral amputees means we can no longer refer to humans as bipeds. If you actually care about infertile people, good - support them rather than using them as a weapon against women's language.

6.       The existence of intersex people does not mean men can “identify as” women any more than the existence of mixed race people means white people can “identify as” black. If you actually care about intersex people, good – support them rather than using them as a weapon against women's language.

7.       The simple act of classifying human beings by sex does not assign to either sex any innate dispositions nor pre-determined behaviors and is therefore not essentialist nor determinist. (Again, dictionaries are your friend.) Knowing that women are female does not mean all we can do is have babies any more than knowing men are male means all they can do is produce sperm.

8.       Merely having words for classes of people is not only not-essentialist and not-determinist, but very obviously necessary for describing the material conditions, lived reality, oppression, and possible liberation of those people.

9.       Rendering female biology unspeakable for any reason is an act of misogyny.

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Feminist Gender Analysis

1.       Female humans are expected and raised from birth to be submissive (“feminine”). Male humans are expected and raised from birth to be dominant (“masculine”). Feminists call this gender, and feminist gender analysis deconstructs the notion that there is anything “natural” about it. Gender in this context is seen instead as a social tool to naturalize women's dependence on men, and thereby ensure male access to female bodies.

2.       We are expected to signal our maleness or femaleness in various visual ways specific to our time and place, but gender is not about fabric color or hair length. Those are merely signals for others to know where we fall in the social hierarchy of male over female.

3.       Femaleness does not naturally equate to the human personality traits labeled feminine, nor does maleness naturally equate to the human personality traits labeled masculine. Human personality development should not be limited based on sex, nor, as in the case of male violence, excused because of it.

4.       In a post-gender world, all the stuff of human life would still be there, but access to it would no longer be limited by perceived reproductive potential. Boys and girls could all play with and wear whatever they like. Men and women could all explore their human personalities to the fullest. Men would not be pressured into violence nor excused for it. Men and women could share responsibility for the care of children. Feminism is by, for and about women, but would benefit anyone who longs for a more just world.

5.       Intersectionality does not threaten feminist gender analysis but expands upon it. Sex is one axis of oppression/privilege. Women are always oppressed based on sex but may have privilege based on race, class, or any other axis. Men are always privileged based on sex but may be oppressed based on race, class or any other axis.

6.   Gender non-conformity may be an axis of oppression which men wish to analyze. Women, on the other hand, are punished whether we do conform to gender expectations (as the feminine gender is about subjugation) or whether we don't. Thus men need to do their own work on this subject, although they are welcome to use feminist work as a guide!

7.      Women’s sex-based oppression matters, independent of any other oppression that can be shared by men.

8.       Feminist gender analysis is central to women's liberation and the act of deliberately suppressing, mischaracterizing or erasing it is a misogynist act.

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Transsexual People

1.       Transsexual people experience a psychiatric condition, referred to as gender dysphoria, perhaps better labeled sex dysmorphia, which makes it very difficult to live in their sexed bodies. This is a painful and poorly understood condition occurring in less than one percent of the population.

2.       Sex is chromosome-deep and expressed in physical morphology beyond that of the genitals and breasts. It is not possible to change one's sex, any more than it is possible to change one's genetic ancestry. However, one can undergo hormone treatments and surgery in order to more closely resemble a member of the opposite sex, and this can help relieve sex dysmorphia.

3.      Social transition is just as important as physical transition, particularly for males who must work through their male privilege and learn what it is like to live in a sexist world while being perceived by others as women.

4.       The term “trans women” is a concession, made out of sympathy and respect, for males with sex dysmorphia who undergo physical and social transition.

5.       Transsexual people are capable of building healthy, happy lives for themselves, and do not need to be treated like they are made of glass or like their physical reality must be papered over with magical thinking.

6.       Women and trans women will have some important things in common (e.g. fear of male violence) and some important things not in common (e.g. socialization as a girl from birth, female reproductive biology). Accordingly, we will share some goals and spaces and not share others.

7.       Transsexual people deserve legal protection of their human rights to safety, education, employment, and housing.

8.       Gender non-conforming males experience violence at the hands of other males. That violence should be addressed at the source. Women are not responsible for putting male victims of male violence ahead of female victims of male violence. That expectation is grounded in the gender hierarchy. Many of us will, however, partner with anyone who wishes to help name and confront the social pandemic of male violence.

9.       As for women’s spaces, feminists have proposed compromises such as simple documentation of medical treatment for sex dysmorphia before accessing opposite-sex nude and semi-nude spaces. I refer you to Elizabeth Hungerford’s work at sexnotgender.com.

10.   Transsexual people furthermore deserve caring and effective medical treatment.

11.   It is, however, absurd to expect any woman who wants to talk about feminism to have an opinion on the proper treatment for a rare, complex and poorly understood medical condition.

12.   It is furthermore absurd to expect feminists to center males who experience a rare, complex and poorly understood medical condition; pretend reproductive difference does not exist or matter; or call themselves "cis women" in order to differentiate the 52% of the human population that is female from the less than 1% of males who experience sex dysmorphia.

13.   Most trans women are just trying to live their lives without receiving nor giving harm, and are not demanding that women jump through these absurd hoops for them.

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Transgender Identity Politics

1.       It is an act of aggression to take away oppressed people's language.

2.       This applies to women, and also to transsexual people.

3.       Transsexual people experience sex dysmorphia and therefore undergo physical and social transition. Transgender identity politickers, however, dismiss the necessity of any experience of sex dysmorphia OR transition to claim the label "transgender" or "trans."

4.       According to transgender identity politickers, any male who simply states he “feels like a woman” is 1) “trans” and 2) a woman and also 3) female and also 4) has always been female, 5) because he says so. Such is the power of their special snowflake feelings, or "gender identity."

5.       To be clear, someone claiming the label “transgender” or “trans” could be transsexual, or they could be a part-time cross-dresser. You can’t know and you are not allowed to ask.

6.       According to transgender identity politickers, if a male person says he “feels like a woman” then his penis is female. If a male person says he “feels like a woman” than all blatant displays of male privilege and aggression no longer count as such.

7.       Transsexual people who object to this colonization of their language and experience are labeled "truscum" and dismissed. Women who object to this colonization of their language and experience are labeled “TERFs” and dismissed. Both "truscum" and "TERFs" are deemed fair game for violent threats and organized silencing campaigns.

8.       Transgender identity politics are thus not about protecting transsexual people, but about pushing the idea of brain sex (there is a way women innately "feel," and feeling that way makes you a woman) - dressed up in social justice language.

9.       A group cannot have boundaries against their oppressors if they are not allowed to define the basis of their oppression. By erasing the material reality of female bodies, transgender identity politics enable men to destroy women's boundaries, under cover of political correctness. 

10.    Furthermore, "gender identity” cannot be defined without reliance on sex stereotypes. This is because, once de-coupled from sexual reproductive capacity, human personality is just human personality.

11.    Transgender identity politickers cling to sexed labels for their personality because they fetishize women’s oppression. Autogynephilia is a whole big thing that will not fit into this overview, but:

12.   When you look at behavior rather than doublespeak, it becomes clear that transgender identity politickers equate “feeling like a woman” with the MRA myth of the sexually powerful woman.

13.   Feminists know that relying on one’s attractiveness to the objectifying male gaze in order to access power - in a misogynistic rape culture, rather than a fairy tale - is not a means of attaining safety or happiness, but a dangerous, no-win game. Therefore we have every right to object when that game is enshrined, by transgender identity politickers, as the essence of womanhood.

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How did we get here?

1.       The use of transsexual people as cat's paws by misogynists on the Left, in order to push the regressive idea of ladybrain, is both cruel and ingenious.

2.       Leftists will naturally feel empathy for anyone with a painful psychiatric condition, yet conversely feel an equally natural aversion to major surgery on healthy genitals, leading to an aversion to considering this condition too closely. Combined with their pride in a high "disgust tolerance" (central to Leftist identity) this will lead them to the knee-jerk projection that anyone questioning trans politics is operating out of a low disgust tolerance (labeled "transphobia"), and prompt the Leftist to publicly scold that questioner as a means to prove their (imperfect) righteousness.

3.       If you can push a Leftist past this point, they will still have to confront the idea of larger systems of power outside of individual "identity," especially systems of power based on sex (what feminist theorists call "gender.")

4.       This point of existential crisis -between individualistic identity politics and radical class analysis- renders the Leftist vulnerable to ideological totalism, at which transgender identity politickers excel: Nevermind that difficult thinking stuff, our magical "truth" is all there is. Brain sex transcends mere science, all questioners can be renounced and declared sub-human, thought-terminating cliches ("trans women are women") are all the effort required. Just relax and submit.

5.       Another benefit reaped by proponents of brain sex who use transsexual people as their human shields: when people *do* get enough of the absurdity of transgender identity politics, the backlash is pointed towards transsexual people. And while some transsexual people have gone along with the ladybrain narrative, others have not; some have even bravely fought against it. Regardless, the enemy is not transsexual people, it is male supremacists of any stripe (including but not limited to men who think they get to re-define what "woman" and "female" mean.)

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Why does it matter?

1.       Transgender identity politics (“anyone who feels like a woman is a woman”) are finding unprecedentedly rapid acceptance in the form of gender identity laws, which override sex-based protections for women.

2.       The language women need to describe their biological and social reality is under attack.

3.       Female-only spaces are under attack.

4.       Lesbians are labeled bigots for not accepting penis as female.

5.       Gender non-conforming children are being referred for life-altering medical treatment, when most of them will simply grow up to be homosexual.

6.       The valid concerns transsexual people have about medical treatment, safety, and institutional discrimination are drowned out by fetishistic transvestites performing histrionic hair-tearing about pronouns.

7.       And anyone who objects to any of this is labeled a hateful bigot.

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In Conclusion

1.       Do not submit to the ideological totalism of transgender identity politics. I plead with you to use your brain, which is an organ of cognition, not sexual reproduction.

2.       Progressive causes should not require the abandonment of critical thought, the emptying of language, or the knee-jerk monstering of dissenters.

3.       Misogynists on the left should stop using transsexual people as a weapon against women and feminism.

4.       Feminists who see this happening should remember that transgender identity politics are about male supremacy, not transsexual people. Male supremacy is the problem, not transsexual people.

5.       Personality is not innately tied to sex, no matter which way the arrow goes. The notion that reproductive potential determines personality is sexist. The notion that personality determines sex is simply ludicrous.

6.       Women are female people, and both words matter there. Female, and people. We are not combination mommy-maid-whores created at the plastic doll factory, neither objects for sale nor costumes to wear. We are not the mere absence or malfunction of maleness, as we have all our own parts and all our own experiences. We are human beings born with female reproductive systems, in a world that assigns lifelong subjugation to that fact. We do not have to choose for our sex to mean everything or nothing, any more than men do. Our bodies are our own; not alienable property nor marks of shame, but integral parts of our human experience.

7.       We'd all be much better served if, instead of this constant, absurd, power-blind deconstruction of "What is a woman?" we asked "What are we willing to tolerate from men?"

8.       It is vital that "man" comes to mean *only* adult human male, with thousands of ways to inhabit a healthy, happy male body, none dependent on the exploitation or bullying of others.