Transphobia In Action!
Actually, I think it was more of a drive-by. Belledame of Fetch Me My Axe linked to a trans-friendly feminism proposal on another blog last week, and just in the past couple days, a transphobic feminist dropped in to put trannies back in our place.
Responding to Kim’s proposal:
For 30+ years, I’ve heard men saying that women refusing to take care of them, accept their excuses, let them in wherever they want to go HURTS the men. So, when you use the word “hurt”, I want a definition.
Hurt like sexist laws shorten the lifespans of women? Or hurt like my feelings of abandonment come up?
It is possible to COMPLETELY support the human rights of transfolk and choose to not include them in your own particular self-definition. And if your organization/gathering is based on your own particular self-definition, one you’ve arrived at despite being the member of a group targeted for serious oppression for millenia, then your decision has a right to stand on its own. It’s about self-definition and empowerment for groups who are not running the show.
So, when I say my self-definition as a Jew for a gathering on the meaning and culture of what it means to be a Jew in an oppressively Christian culture does not include someone raised fundamentalist Baptist but now converted to Judaism, is that hurtful? Forcing my labels onto you, or resisting your labels being forced onto me?
Some of us NEED space where our own self-definition (as members of a group targeted for hostility and projection of others definition of us) is dominant. The fact that this is perceived as a threat, as “painful”, as not “nurturing” enough simply REEKS of how women are supposed to sacrifice self for the needs of others.
We’re not in the way of your liberation or self-definition. We just want some room to create our own spaces sometimes. We really don’t believe you’re exactly the same as us, and honestly, neither do you — you make a giant production of how special you are. You play the victim card every chance you get. Some of you claim you are MORE oppressed than other women.
But we DO get to make up our own minds, and our own definitions of who we are. I categorically reject the accusation that this action by a target group is “hurtful”.
Belledame answered this person with another post.
I like her invocation of the victim card (see my comments about Race Cards here) as well as the Oppression Olympics.
I also like her assumption that only trans feelings are hurt when we’re not accepted. I mean, I only like it as far as I like any easily refuted argument. Less work for me. Mainly, though, I just marvel at the sheer gall of trying to put trans people in our place. It’s almost like trans hatred is socially acceptable, or something.
November 5, 2007 at 4:17 am
It is possible to COMPLETELY support the human rights of transfolk and choose to not include them in your own particular self-definition.
ARGH!
Right. It’s true because SHE SAYS SO.
Who cares what actual trans women think about that. I mean, in her formulation, it appears to me that trans women don’t actually exist.
So that claim — well, apparently it’s true because the cisgendered woman says so. And what she says goes. After all, who else has the right to define who is “really” a woman?
But she’s not privileged. Noooo. That is not the act and mentality of unquestioned entitlement. Nah.
She’s just oppressed. Couldn’t hurt a fly.
November 5, 2007 at 4:30 am
Nope. I’m sure it causes her actual pain to have to deal with trans women at all. When we assert our womanhood, it actually steals magic from her womb.
And then she has the gall to talk about harm when the MWMF trans-exclusion policy sets an example for women’s services, for social spaces to exclude trans women. It sucks to not be allowed into a queer or dyke gathering as a lesbian trans woman, but it’s much worse when a trans woman is denied access to needed services like a DV shelter or rape counseling.
Trans women feelings are completely irrelevant to radical feminist’s construction of oppression. After all, gender is the oldest, overriding oppression there is. Nothing else can make it worse - not race, not orientation, not disability, not trans status.
Hell, to hear some of them talk, all trans women are treated as men after transition and partake of the same privilege, and this somehow happens without anyone beating us to death, because we sure as heck aren’t getting murdered two or three times each month.
Whenever I read stuff like that, I just want to scream “That’s not even wrong!” So much ignorant stuff that’s asserted and accepted without question, just to make trans women look like horrible monsters.