Debs, you have it backwards.
I have actually had it now, and I’m tired. When women start attacking from within the ranks of ‘allies’, then that is when I lose patience, and I have had it.
I’m tired of women attacking from within the ranks of allies too, of seeing women of color attacked and belittled by white feminists*, of seeing trans women dehumanized and delegitimized by cis female feminists, of the most offensive, brutal, and misogynist characterizations of sex workers by anti-pornography feminists. I agree that this should stop.
So, is radical feminism ready to step up and stop attacking women for choices radical feminists don’t like? For being someone radical feminists don’t approve of?
We’ve had enough time on the margins. We’ve had enough time being the ‘extreme’ which everybody else’s pointless, futile version of feminism is compared to. We’ve had enough of being attacked for saying the stuff that’s important and meaning it.
Guess not.
Look, stopping rape is important. Reproductive freedom is important. Personal agency is important. Feminism’s basic premise - equality - is important. What I don’t get is why y’all are so bitter about women criticizing you when you spend so much time outright attacking other women for our choices, our lives. Not a week goes by without someone talking about how willing sex workers are practically rapists themselves, or how trans women enforce your oppression by being women, or the occasional “this black woman is morphing into the oppressor” rant, but when you get a response, it’s suddenly time to call a stop to it all?
Okay, so call a stop to it all. I’m sure we’ll all be right here when - if - it ever comes to pass. Until then, expect your privilege to go challenged.
* I messed this up originally, with just “feminists,” which implied a separation between women of color and feminists. Mea culpa. I do my best, I make mistakes.
March 17, 2008 at 6:51 pm
You know, what I don’t get is, why do you trans feminist women even bother with the feminists? They don’t like us. They hate our guts. They don’t like whores and most transwomen are in sex work. They don’t like lipstick and high heels and most transwomen wear those. They don’t like binary gender and most transwomen need it to surivive. They just don’t like and cannot accept transwomen, and even transmen at all because our lives go against their theory. So why the hell do you keep trying to cajole and coax them into seeing your point? They can’t and they won’t. And that’s not because they’re misguided or because they’re strong-headed or whatever. They’re just a bunch of fucking bigots and they just hate us. Hate, you know? Fuck them, you know? They are not our fucking allies.
(btw, nice to see you back Lisa :)
March 17, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I don’t know, why do people of color bother criticizing racism, why do women criticize sexism? Am I supposed to ignore some bigots because they hate me?
Do you think I’m cajoling and coaxing here? Because if that’s what you think this post is about, then either I failed in writing it. The purpose was to point out that Debs is being hypocritical, that radical feminists don’t receive this criticism out of the blue, that these so-called “attacks” are a response to what they say and write.
The last sentence in this post was almost “Until you do this, you’re not our allies,” but I left it out because I felt that was beating the drum a bit too hard. But seriously, I know they’re not our allies, and I think it was extremely disingenuous for Debs to refer to radical feminism’s declared enemies as “allies,” when asking us to stop criticizing their bigotry.
I would like nothing better than to see radical feminism drop these attitudes and stop trying to be such a divisive force within feminism, but I don’t expect it. I will, however, call them on it as much as I can.
March 17, 2008 at 7:11 pm
I think this is important what you do Lisa, even though it must be really hard work. I’ve spent a lot of time reading this site and I’ve learned alot. I used to have quite similar views as those of many radical feminists but that changed when the whole thing blew up over at twistys and i saw how savage and dismissve certain feminists were being about transgendered people and it really felt and sounded like alot of homophobia I’ve been on the recieving end of.
So I’m trying to be an ally even though I know I have a lot to learn.
March 17, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Sigh.
With that, I’m, y’know, SO DONE with this shit.
They want to be the cool little insular crowd, they can go on ahead.
Meanwhile, the world will go on turning without them, which will either raise their dander or wise them up.
March 17, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Re Stassa’s point: also useful to point out that just because someone does something in the name of feminism, doesn’t mean that it actually *is* feminism.
So-called Christians perform a lot of hateful acts in the name of Christianity yet we can hardly say that these acts are Christian. Same thing here.
March 17, 2008 at 7:30 pm
And I’m bloody tired of the radical feminism I fought for being turned into a fucking fundie cartoon by a bunch of ignorant neophytes and latecomers who don’t seem to understand what the movement’s vision originally was.
March 17, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Yeah, I personally don’t believe that hating on trans women, hating on sex workers, hating on people of color, is feminist at all, and spending so much energy defining that as feminist work is pretty noxious as far as I’m concerned.
I do consider myself a feminist, though.
Trin, yeah - I think you’re right, there. I don’t expect to keep posting on this blowup (although anything particularly self-indulgent or dumb, I probably will comment on).
Out Loud,
Yeah, I remember the fun threads at Twisty’s about trans women - that’s where Lucky said outright that trans women were just like serial killers. :( And it really is the same language that’s used to dismiss others because of race, orientation, etc.
Thank you for the comment.
March 17, 2008 at 7:33 pm
This, yeah.
March 17, 2008 at 9:04 pm
You gotta love the revivalist tone she takes there, though.
but now it is Out There, and it is going to happen, and, if we have our way, it will happen every year, and we will grow in numbers and get louder and louder, and stronger and more demanding until we drown out any ‘what about the men’ or ‘but I like my porn’ bullshit people throw at us. These things will happen regardless of what anybody outside of radical feminism thinks about it, these things will happen even if the patriarchy and the ridiculous patriarchy-pleasing “feminists” ignore us and belittle us, and speak about us as though we should be extinct…
If you are a radical feminist. If you are a woman-born-woman. If you like the idea of getting together and talking to other radical feminists, and discussing actions to take, and strategies and tactics for winning this WAR we are in (yes, it’s a war. I wish it wasn’t, but unfortunately I’m not in charge, you’ll have to see someone with a penis about that).
classic rhetoric there, I may blog about it. awesome stuff. she just forgot to mention whether it was Eastasia or Eurasia we were at war with, but then, if you have to ask.
But yes; apparently tactics and strategies don’t include ever, like, you know, talking to other people who don’t already agree with you about absolutely everything, with the possibility that one might change one’s mind; that’s not -work-, natch. There are signs to paint and slogans to chant, after all…
March 17, 2008 at 10:50 pm
as per the “allies” thing: see, she actually wasn’t addressing usn’s or y’all, she was talking to/about people like Maia, the wavering faithful.
March 17, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Well, that doesn’t even make sense, because if she’s addressing radical feminists, they’re not allies, they’re part of the crowd.
But then, she’s railing against being called to account for things she’s actually done, so we’re beyond the point of reasonable.
March 18, 2008 at 1:24 am
Well, one of the reasons I participate and read the IBTP forums is to help folks see that we aren’t the enemy, we don’t always fit stereotypes, even when we do fit stereotypes it isn’t necessarily wrong or bad, etc. (as well as I like most of the folks there and generally it is even the things I don’t agree on/believe interesting to read)
And I have changed minds about trans*folk; and shown that we are oppressed, we are not deluded or malicious in our transitions and identities, and –most importantly–we are real people–not cardboard cutouts for some theorist in an Ivory tower (of feminism or religion or science or whatever) to take potshots at.
March 18, 2008 at 6:49 am
“You gotta love the revivalist tone she takes there, though.”
Yeah. I still think it sounds as much like Scientology, and their use of terms like “wog” and “wog world” (how they refer to outsiders), but yeah. all the same shit, stinks the same way.
March 18, 2008 at 9:57 am
Lisa, I’m being over the top again, I guess. I recognise the work you are doing, speaking out against those radfems that hate us that much and I know I shouldn’t lump everyone together, the transmisogynistic radfems with the non- ones. But I find myself at odds with them for their opinions on heterosexuality, pornography and prostitution too, very often and I’m not sure it’s always the same people who hate all four, straight, trans, pron and whores. I mean, even among radfems who are friendly to transsexuals in the matter of gender, aren’t there many who dismiss transwomen as whores, for making porn and taking it up the arse etc?
The truth is, I don’t know much about feminism. I haven’t bothered. I read some of the stuff that goes around on the net, realised that there is a very vocal chunk of the feminist spectrum that hates my guts and that if I ever approached their camps they’d tar me, feather me and chase me out and so I stay out. I also recognise that some of my Views would be terminally insulting to them, especially how I don’t think I should let go of any male privilege I may have just because I’m a woman now, or how I don’t accept that womanhood was not a choice for me…
My comment about coaxing and cajoling them, that was referring to michfest I guess, which is the symbol of the segregationist radfem’s practices. But I’d better take that back. I can only imagine what that means to transfems like you. It can’t mean the same to me. Especially since, once again, I come from across the seas…
March 18, 2008 at 10:05 am
I’m not saying it clearly. The thing is, you see, I am getting the impression I don’t belong in the feminist dialogue, because I am not welcome there. Is that the radfems that give me that impression? Is it myself and my internalised transphobia? One of the two keeps me thinking “I’m not really a woman, because I was born with a penis.” In either case, sometimes I see how you girls are pushing for acceptance in mitchfest and beyond and I get a knee-jerk reaction that, you shouldn’t, ’cause they don’t want you, so screw them.
But I’m sure you’ve heard that one before… :/
March 18, 2008 at 10:25 am
Depends on the feminist dialogue. Radical feminism is not all of feminism, for example, and a lot of feminism does accept trans women as women.
As for seeing yourself as a woman. Lots of trans women don’t really feel like women early on, or even for years, because of trans history. I felt that way for awhile, but I realized that it didn’t really matter if I thought of myself as one because everyone treated me as one, and to stop getting hung up on history that’s just not visible to most people, nor any of their business.
As for discrimination as practiced by MichFest and as those who love that policy would love to see propagated across many or even all women’s spaces, it’s discrimination. I’m sure white people didn’t want black people eating in their restaurants and using their restrooms, either, but that stuff stopped because people protested it, because separate but equal is not equality.
You are correct that it’s not all the same radfems who hate sex workers and trans women and so on. There’s not a huge monolithic bloc of radfems who all have a checklist of things to hate (although there are individual radfems who want to have a checklist of required hatred), but there’s a lot of overlap, and a lot of ideology that gets passed around and if not actively promoted, is sometimes accepted.
What I’d like to see happen with MichFest is for everyone who does not support the trans exclusion to stop attending, stop giving their money to the festival. I would also like to see them boycott the musicians who perform, and would like to see those musicians not be invited to perform for pride or other events.
That’s not exactly coaxing and cajoling, but it seems unlikely to happen, either. There was a boycott a couple years ago, but I don’t know how successful it was.
But as a feminist - not really a “trans feminist,” just a feminist - as someone who experiences sexism and life as a woman, I don’t think there’s any particular reason that women like me don’t belong in feminism. Those who believe we don’t aren’t interested in our life history and experiences, and are already prejudiced.
As for the male privilege thing, I’m not sure what you mean. Much of it is extended to you, and if people see you as a woman, they won’t extend it to you. Or do you mean what you benefited from prior to transition?
March 18, 2008 at 11:22 am
Stassa, there are a number of us who are feminists who have been saying all the things you’re saying, wrt those other subjects as well, for quite a while now.
March 18, 2008 at 11:25 am
As per Michfest, personally I’ve said my piece about camping in the woods and shit; but the thing is, it’s not just Michfest, it’s stuff like the Vancouver Rape Relief Shelter; this shit matters to a lot of us, not just the ones who’re directly first affected by such matters.
March 18, 2008 at 11:28 am
“But then, she’s railing against being called to account for things she’s actually done, so we’re beyond the point of reasonable.”
Well, yeah. I mean, this is a person who 1) says that people of group x, y, and z must not comment on her blog 2) people (who belong to groups x, y, and z) linking to her blog and talking about her posts on -their- blogs are horribly rude and unfair 3) she’s mad as hell, and she’s not gonna take it anymore! 4) she’s gonna DROWN THOSE PEOPLE OUT! 5) “silenced,” she’s taking her toys and going home again (checks watch: 5…4…3…2..1)
March 18, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Stassa, I understand your point, however (and I learned about it just relatively recently…) - is it feminism if it’s not about all women?
I mean, the pro-censorship feminists have kind of a bad history of backstabbing the queer community (of all genders) to get their moralist streaks stroked in Canada, even if just on paper and the double standard which happened was to be expected from miles away…
Let’s just sum up that MacKinnon acted like a bottom feeder around the case that led to our antipornography laws which only helped the conservative government attack queers, radicals and students (well, their production of porn, at least, and criticism of it, and at the time plenty of safe-sex material they could happily censor since it pretty much entrenched a huge government index)…
Oy, I’ve been ranting too much about it this month :p
March 18, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Yugh - sorry in advance for the dreadful syntax.
March 18, 2008 at 3:30 pm
belle, I know, i read your blog. I read Ren’s blog and she’s in sex work/ porn, I read Trinity’s blog and she’s into BDSM. I know not everyone is like Heart. I don’t even bother reading Heart’s blog. I overreacted. Uh, I do that…
Lisa, remember that first post of mine on my blog you linked to a while ago? It’s been like, what, six months since I realised I could pass ::cringe::? I go around town and people hold open doors and wait for me to get in the bus and I still startle. I’m still not used to it. So, yeah, I am a woman now, because I’m present in the world as one, but I used to be a man and I got the baggage to carry. So what do I say to a feminist, about how I grew up and all? What do I say when they start sharing stories about how their folks wanted to indoctrinate them in the “girls serve men” stuff? How do I fit in? Among the natals?
Um. Yeah. That’s me being insecure. Surprise, huh?
As about the male privilege. Well. I’m strong like a guy (though not half as I used to be!) I’ve been assaulted, after transition, and I really messed the guy up. He knew I was trans, he tried to bully me into, uh, something, so I went ballistic and, uh, really messed him up. I don’t “hit like a girl” ::double triple cringe:: So I can’t be attacked like a girl. And isn’t that supposed to be the original privilege, like, that established males’ supremacy over females? And also, as I said, it’s my choice to be a woman so I could, theoretically, always go back and claim back the rest of my male privilege- being read as a man in the world. And I don’t even rule that out entirely. I am a woman now. I was a man before. I could be a man again. So… ?
So, as far as I’m concerned, I’m a woman who has the male privilege. If that makes any sense. And I don’t see why a woman who has it, shouldn’t exercise it (though, obviously, not to do the dominance thing; to protect herself from it.) But I can see why women who never had that opportunity would hate my guts for it. And even feel insecure and unsure around me.
Also, somehow, I think it’s best for the acceptance of transwomen in general by radfems and so on, if I keep my big mouth shut about all of the above around a certain type of radfem. If you see what I mean…
March 18, 2008 at 3:32 pm
OK, in retrospect, the guy could still walk afterwards, so it wasn’t that but a messin’ up.
:)
March 18, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Oh, er and, sorry about the “transfeminist” bit. Bad qualifier there. Huh?
March 18, 2008 at 5:26 pm
No, there are people who identify as transfeminist. It’s fine, I just wanted to clarify that my feminism isn’t strictly centered around trans issues.
I have a lot of respect for Emi Koyama, also. Check her out if you have the time, although she’s come up before here.
March 18, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Well said!
March 19, 2008 at 8:18 am
Stassa, interesting! Glad you messed him up–haha, he wasn’t expecting that!
Male privilege regarding trans has historically been about how one was raised. Example: In many families, the boys’ education has been paramount, since it was understood that boys needed to “support families”–so in these families, if there are limited resources, they all go to the boys by default. I think this may be true the world over (particularly in what they like to call “developing countries”–a really noxious phrase and sorry about that).
I realize the boys in question may not have chosen this path at all… I grew up in the 70s when boys were rejecting the 50s Man in the Grey Flannel Suit model, and refused to play the game. This is why feminists say it is a whole system of patriarchy, not just repeating “girls need education too!”–but the heterosexual and sexist assumptions that allowed this whole state-of-being to evolve.
So, when many second-wave or older feminists (including me) first noticed transwomen with several degrees, lots of occupational experience….well, it can rankle. ESPECIALLY if they try to deny the privilege, “oh, I would have had all that anyway.” No, you got hired and promoted AS A MAN, and it is important for you to recognize that. (Yes, yes, I fully realize many/most transwomen have not had these experiences, I refer to the ones who have, like Julia Serrano.) This is what sets feminists off, and kept me on the “transwomen have male privilege!” bandwagon longer than I ordinarily woulda been, if I had been thinking clearly. This is emotional for many of us, as we saw brothers and other men get stuff that was rightly ours. So, the anti-trans feminists exploit this emotion, the way the right wing exploits affirmative action as an issue to stir up disenfranchised or poor whites.
Hope that made sense, trying to make pot pies.
The worst possible thing to do (hint) in these circumstances, as a certain person on the Ms board used to do, is say “I am a Ph.D in blabbity blabbity, and I know better than you do—” and wave those degrees around in arguments about these issues. Expect the radfem nukes, at that point, blammo!
Seriously, though, IMHO, I think most transfeminists have interrogated the male privilege in their own lives, but then, I travel in some high-minded political circles! ;)
And most radfems don’t even take the concept of cissexual privilege seriously, much less do any self-examination.
March 19, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Of course, you also realize that a number of prominent radical feminist figureheads come from similar privilege, being Athena-like daughters of prominent patriarchal men (Catherine MacKinnon leaps to mind)
March 19, 2008 at 12:20 pm
…and that even if you have a degree from a prestigious university, if your current status means that you can’t even use the bathroom in it, much less use it to get the jobs you would have done if you didn’t have to clear the transphobia hurdle at every turn (with plain old sexism now added as well), well, what’s become of the privilege then?
I guess I see it as sort of equivalent to, I don’t know: say you become disabled late in life and it profoundly changes the way you live your life and are treated; are you currently more privileged than the people who’ve had milder, less obvious disabilities but had them since birth? Or is it just, you know, a -different- experience?
March 19, 2008 at 12:22 pm
“The worst possible thing to do (hint) in these circumstances, as a certain person on the Ms board used to do, is say “I am a Ph.D in blabbity blabbity, and I know better than you do”
and I mean: can’t some things just be plain old obnoxious no matter who they’re coming from? I’ve seen non-trans women pull similar shit.
March 19, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I don’t like Catherine MacKinnon.
Don’t tell anyone I said that! :P
and I mean: can’t some things just be plain old obnoxious no matter who they’re coming from?
I was being descriptive, not necessarily endorsing the perspective described.
March 19, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Well, it would be fair for trans women to say “Yes, I was able to go this route more easily because I was seen as a man,” and not deny it. But there’s more stuff bound up in it from early childhood that just isn’t simple. :(
Also, since I transitioned at 18, I never really got a taste of the real heady power. Maybe in high school, if everyone hadn’t thought I was gay and even some of my teachers treated me like garbage.
Some benefits, sure: I got to stay out later more often than my sister - something I did argue with my parents about, as well as other occasions when they gave her the short end of the stick for being a girl.
March 20, 2008 at 3:58 am
But there’s more stuff bound up in it from early childhood that just isn’t simple. :(
I have learned this only by listening to transfolks and reading their blogs, books, etc. Like there is a passage in Jennifer Finney Boylan’s book (someone I only heard about by reading trans blogs) about going to live on “girl planet” as a child.
The more radical (and other) feminists hear these personal stories, the more we will understand. :) I certainly hope so, anyway.
I believe in witness!
March 20, 2008 at 9:09 am
“…there is a very vocal chunk of the feminist spectrum that hates my guts and that if I ever approached their camps they’d tar me, feather me and chase me out and so I stay out.”
been there, done that. got tarred and feathered, and now i stay out. when my lack of capital letters in my comments was used as evidence that i’m not worthy of a legitimate response, i realized i was talking to a brick wall.
March 20, 2008 at 9:23 am
thebewilderness said that because I used the phrase “to be honest” in the discussion on Deb’’s post linked in this post that I’m a liar.
Someone else accused little light of trying to appear vulnerable by spelling her name with lower case ls. It’s pretty easy to throw irrelevancies at us rather than engage our points.
March 20, 2008 at 10:40 am
Daisy: as with all other bigotries, I think that that’s true for a good 80, 90% of the population.
what we have here, for the most part, is the remaining segment: the intransigent assholes.
if they weren’t being assholes about this, it’d be about something else.
it’s not -quite- that clearcut, of course. but by and large.
for me, besides the “get the word out,” the other question is: what does one do, when confronted with intransigent jerkitude, because clearly–well, take Lisa’s last comment here viz the interchange with the bewilderness. some people just don’t want to hear it. you can’t keep talking to them as though they were the same as the people who -do- give signs of being able/willing to hear it, however glimmering. it’s a waste of energy. you also however can’t let those people dominate the discourse, and that’s exactly what they tend to do. Look at Debs’ original gauntlet-chuck: she proposes to SHOUT DOWN the opposition. You have to take it at face value when people say shit like this. You can’t reason with -this person.- You can however probably reason with a lot of -other- people.
meanwhile, though, there’s this really annoying person alternately shouting and whining about HALP HALP SHE’S BEING OPPRESSED.
what to do?
try to outshout? you get a sore throat.
ignore? but sometimes they really do drown you out.
tell them to shut the fuck up, adults are trying to have a conversation? then they have an added whine about how they’re being SILENCED O NOEZ.
I honestly don’t have an answer. I guess Olbermann is my template (these people are really the Bill O’Rlys of the feminist sphere): alternately call them on their shit or mock them till they pop. It’s still really tiring, though.
March 20, 2008 at 10:41 am
a grudging nuance: some people can be total assholes in one context and actually sort of open to dialogue in another. How often you want to try with any given individual is a judgment call.
March 20, 2008 at 10:49 am
on the “self examination” tip: there is also the added wrinkle that many of us have let’s say “stuff,” unrelated to the current whatever it is, which is (not consciously) driving us to try extra extra hard with the brick walls while taking the non-brick walls for granted or simply not seeing them, because there’s this let’s say tape playing that says if you can only get this brick wall to become a door, everything will be better.
but, you can’t. and that’s not actually the way to go anyway.
so, you go around, or you jump it, or you spray paint it, sit at the foot and have a picnic, or go somewhere else entirely, or even knock it down if you have to.
just know what’s in front of you: it’s a brick wall.
this is not the rest of the world. the rest of the world is much much bigger and more open and full of doors and windows and intriguing passages.
it’s easy to forget that, when you’ve been–understandably–so preoccupied with the brick wall. It IS an obstacle, a real one.
But it’s not the only thing in existence, much as it would like to persuade you that it is.
March 20, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Daisy, privilege is a tangled mass of weird stuffed in a box of huh? I don’t get it. I’m supposed to be privileged, ’cause I’m middle-class, my folks are well off etc etc and I’m Greek (we’re privileged by default) but I’m 34 and still trying to get a degree. And a proper job. I’ve done shit fuck all in my life that I could put on a CV and I don’t earn any money of my own. If there was any privilege in my past, I either missed it completely, or fucked it so hard it died with a sigh of gratitude.
Small aside. When I was 16, I left home and went to live on my own, working (not on the streets) to sustain myself something much more unusual in Greece than it may be elsewhere. One reason was my family being well-off middle-class bourgeois and that I didn’t want to turn into them.
I’m so not Julia Serano, or Deirdre Mc Closky, or whoever. I’m an ex-whore. I ‘m the shit of the Earth. And, you know, from down here I can see up the skirts of all the women screaming bloody privilege at the faces of the Ph.D. TGs and I’m not sure it’s not a pair of hairy balls I see hanging up there. If you catch my drift.
March 20, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Oh and on the subject of being Greek. I recently found out that Greek immigrants in the US, in the 1920s, were routinely treated as troublemakers, criminals and underworld types, and were frequently getting into fights with the Klan. Though I’m fair-skinned, green-eyed and fair-haired and I think of myself as white, in the USA I’m brown. And seeing the nasty dickheads reigning supreme in the political tapestry of the States, I can say, Gods of my Ancestors, thank you for that. I have nothing in common with them.
Here’s a short video if you’re interested. It’s mostly in Greek, but there’s parts in English that explain what I mean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVF6_tYdEiw
March 20, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Urk. You were talking to an ass, I think’s more like it.
And we all know what comes out of an ass…
March 20, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Daisy, referring to your comment #27, I don’t know whether you believe this yourself or you’re just relaying what a lot of radfems say, but, yeah, there’s this trope about how trans women supposedly have all of this male privilege.
I’ve said the following in many a comment throughout the blogosphere, so forgive me if I’m getting repetitive, but I think it bears saying:
Yes, I’m a late transitioner (at age 45). However, I was highly gender variant as a child, and suffered for it - for seven years, I was harrassed daily, spit upon, and beaten in school, all with the encouragement of the school administration, because I looked like a boy and acted like a girl. So exactly how does this equate privilege?
And, yes, as a pre-transition adult, I did my best to act “male” and to fool myself into believing that I was male, and was mostly seen that way, so perhaps I was granted privilege as an adult. But even there, I was not macho enough, cried too easily, expressed my emotions too much — and I understand that attaching those qualities to supposed “womanhood” is culturally determined, but still — that all cost me, in lost jobs, in constantly being examined and held in suspicion by the “real men”, in being subject to homophobia (Oh, boy, do I love being called a “faggot bitch” while being “graced” with a saliva shower), in fearing walking down the street alone, in feeling like I needed to cross the street for my own safety when men approached — and this was *before* transition. And again, how exactly is this privilege?
On the other hand, I will admit to doing some pretty shitty things: Joining the Libertarian party (which I left three years later), and pulling some disgusting whiny MRA shit at a company sexual-harassment awareness workshop some years ago. All in an attempt to “prove” my “male”-ness to myself, but that doesn’t excuse it.
So, really, it is much more complicated than this all-or-nothing view of privilege.
March 20, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Yeah but, no but, yeah but, no but, you see, privilege un-womans you. ‘Cause, women, they can’t hold privilege. Their brains start overheating.
Also, you were supporting the Mutant Registration Act? For shame. I hope Magneto personally hangs you by your guts. XD
March 22, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Hi Lisa
This is my first time on your blog. As a radical feminist of color I find it really offensive that in the wording of your post you say “feminists belittle women of color.” Why can’t one be both a feminist and a woman of color? Why the sexist and old-fashioned assumption that all feminists are white? And what’s with lumping all radical feminists together as if they are all the same? You obviously don’t like it (and rightfully so) when a few radical feminists have made all trans people to look the same, so don’t do the same thing to rad fems.
Since when did all or most radical feminists try to say that “black women morph into the oppressor”? Jesus Mary and Joseph don’t use one or two blogs in the whole radical feminist blogosphere to represent all radical feminists and all of their views.
And how does attacking prostitution for the modern-day slavery it is constitute “judging women for their beliefs”? That’s like saying that opposing race-based slavery or discrimination is limiting the options of minorities in the workplace and is tantamount to “judging their career decisions.” We have never attacked individual women or their “choices”, we are attacking a whole institution, the intersection of capitalism, sexism, and racism.
Is this what you think all radical feminists are? Just a bunch of conniving evil women who don’t actually give a crap about women’s rights? Why even care about feminism in the first place?
What are you really proving with this post? And from reading your post it looks to me like you didn’t even read all of Debs’s post on her blog. I read the whole thing carefully and the way you twist her words around and turn them into something else is just unreal.
A lot of radical feminists (whose blogs I read) are NOT arguing that MTF transpeople don’t suffer. They certainly recognize that they suffer (after all, patriarchy is essentially what causes transpeople’s suffering and oppression in the first place). What they are trying to point out is that even if as a young boy you didn’t feel right inside about being male, the fact of the matter is that society, everyone on the outside, is treating you as a male. Yes, you were certainly (and still are) discriminated against, made to feel alienated from yourself, but you have to understand that it is not the same TYPE of systematic alienation, violence, and socialization that women-born-women face.
Listen, we are all hurt very very deeply by patriarchy and sexism, almost equally so. But we are oppressed in DIFFERENT ways, and that is really essential to understanding why it is wrong to attack radical feminists for trying to deconstruct the systematic oppression inherent in gender binaries, pornstitution, etc.
If a white person grows up feeling deep inside an alienation from their race, their skin, their racial identity even, and is convinced deep down that they are “black” or “latina”, does that mean that they grow up with barely any or no white privilege? Of course not. And that white person who feels “black” or “latina” has absolutely no right claiming that African Americans or Hispanics are oppressing her just because her racial privilege is still there. Race is just as fluid of a concept as sex roles, and just like sex roles, the effects of it on people’s lives are very tangible and real. That is the reality of racial and sex privilege. Okay now this may be rambling so I’ll stop here.
March 22, 2008 at 9:18 pm
I’m sorry I wrote it that way. I did mean “white feminists,” and not to imply that women of color are not feminists, and I obviously screwed up. I’ll edit it with an apology as soon as I submit this. My basic point - that there’s plenty of racism in the white feminist blogosphere - is one I will continue to stand by. I suggest Having Read the Fine Print, A Womyn’s Ecdysis (and her video blog I link a few posts up), La Chola, Problem Chylde, and The Silence of Our Friends for good blogs to find examples that women of color have pointed out. Also, the comments at Miss Andrea’s White Privilege post.
“Morphing into the Oppressor” is my favorite example, because of the sheer absurdity of the scenario, but I did not mean to imply it’s the most prominent or only example.
I was never a young boy. I had a male body, and I was treated as one, but it wasn’t a straightforward life as a young boy. People treated me as male, but they treated me as a sissy, queer. I got to deal with bullies throughout school who saw me as an easy target, unsympathetic school staff who were strangely unable to take action because “it’s just my word against theirs” when I was attacked, but ready to punish me when I did fight back. Yes, that is an experience that a lot of young males - especially actually gay males - have, except for the part where I know that my body is wrong, I’m trying to make sense of the social cues and pick the ones I’m supposed to pick and hide the ones I pick up anyway because their aimed at girls - and I identified as one.
And, ever since my transition, I have experienced much of the same oppression that women experience. I have been fortunate enough to not be raped, although I have had men follow me for miles on the bus at night, and as far as the first restaurant I could walk into and call for a ride home. I have been the victim of domestic violence. I have had many of these experiences that continue throughout life. And I have people telling me what my life is like without actually living that life.
Obviously, my early life was not like other girl’s lives, but girls also have pretty varied lives lacking or having various privileges (race, economic, and so on). However, I find it pretty damned offensive that the privilege I no longer benefit from is used as weapon to attack me. To tell me that I don’t belong with other women, that I am in fact, not a woman. I begin transition almost immediately after high school, and I’ve worked three jobs in my life prior to transition (all of them in fast food). I never attended college prior to beginning transition and certainly not before I started living full time as a woman (and I will delete any comment that tries to pick that apart as proof that I’m not a woman. I don’t care about semantic games).
A lot of radical feminists do acknowledge that trans people experience discrimination and violence, but they often also try to position themselves as lacking privilege in relation to trans people, redefining the discrimination and violence trans people experience as something other than discrimination and violence directly aimed at trans people.
I do not attack radical feminists for trying to deconstruct the systematic oppression inherent in gender binaries. I criticize radical feminists for trying to make my life, and the lives of other trans people into political tokens that they can write their own meaning onto as part of that deconstruction.
I did read all of Deb’s post. I did not twist her words. I answered her question. I do think she has it backwards. I see radical feminists spend much effort identifying and declaring enemies. I was not saying, “Deb, you’re a racist and transphobe who spends all your effort identifying and declaring enemies,” I was answering her question as to why so many women criticize radical feminism.
I don’t think it’s really valid to compare a trans person to a white person who wants to be black and complains that African Americans or hispanic people are oppressing her. You see, generally speaking, people who are white, raised white, live as white people tend to live as white people their entire lives. Birth to death, and they typically don’t assimilate into other communities. If they do, they continue to look white.
I haven’t looked male since I was 18 years old. I look like a woman, I am treated as a woman, I am largely seen as a woman, and if someone reads me as trans, they don’t see me as a male, they see me as a potential victim, a novelty, or a token. They might try to put me in my place as really male, as it seems like you’re doing here. I haven’t been a male legally or socially in nearly two decades. In fact, I’m only months away from the 20th anniversary of my first day living as a woman.
These aren’t the same situations. Transitioning puts me in a very lack-of-privileged space. It doesn’t cancel out anything I experienced prior to transition, but I haven’t received any new male privilege since then. Even someone who transitions late in life, a 30-40 year old - will often lose her family, her job, and have to build her life all over again. She’s lucky in that she probably has degrees, or at least job experience that she can use to stay on her feet, but the fact remains that she’s gone from being a privileged middle-aged male to being someone that society largely considers expendable. In most parts of the country, she can be legally turned down for work because she’s trans, despite any qualifications.
Not to say that she isn’t better off than I was at 18, but she’s still not nearly as well off as she was before transition.
Transitioning is a real eye-opener, not just for sexism (because you get to experience full-blown sexism once most people who see you accept you as a woman), but also because those who know you’re trans treat you even worse. Monica Roberts has pointed out that a lot of white trans women have no idea of what we’re getting into when we transition, by going from a privileged minority to an oppressed minority, and I completely agree with her.
I have experienced sexism. I know what it’s like. Please don’t tell me I don’t. Please don’t compare my transition - my physical transition - to a white person who might like to be black but will always look white. Black Like Me is probably a better comparison - the author didn’t know what it was like to grow up black, but he almost certainly experienced, for a brief time, what it was like to be black and be treated like a black man. He couldn’t opt out of being black until the color faded, and I can’t opt out of being a woman because I have this female body now, and my breasts aren’t fading away. And no, I did not just equate womanhood entirely with breasts.
I do realize that some people look ambiguous enough to be taken as white or as a person of color, and that many people of color themselves can pass for white with relative ease. I also realize they do not come from the same place as white people raised in a white society by white people. I’m not talking about them or trying to speak for them.
Women who were born female and raised girls have privilege over me, in that they didn’t have to go through hormones, electrolysis, surgery, making themselves into a third-class citizen, completely reinventing their external identity, they don’t have to deal with people who discount their gender’s validity, or form assumptions about their lives and history based on their medical history. And many radical feminists refuse to ever let me forget it, because they’ll repeat the same litany: “You weren’t born female, you weren’t raised a girl. You benefited from male privilege.” That’s another way to put me in my place, remind me that my womanhood is different from yours in a way that’s seen as inferior or perhaps even counterfeit. And please do not tell me that radical feminists aren’t saying these things, because I’ve seen those statements made for years over and over again. I remember Janice Raymond writing “Transsexuality ought to be morally mandated out of existence” and radical feminists within the past few years agreeing with that assessment. Characterizing trans women as men, as colonizers, as invaders, as agents of the patriarchy, as reinforcing and reifying gender roles, as the enemy. And yes, women who are trans can and do contribute to my oppression.
It is good that many radical feminists are not transphobic, do not constantly repeat the litanies about how disagreeable women like myself are not real women, and do acknowledge that trans people deal with violence and hatred and prejudice. But, many others run us down, tell us that we’re insulting them by using words to distinguish women who are not trans from women who are, telling trans women we have no right to call ourselves women, calling us “men” as a way to put us in our place and not engage with us, imply that because of our male histories we’re potential rapists. Attack our bodies by calling us “men in dresses” if we don’t look feminine enough, and calling us all kinds of misogynist things if we do.
And, I’ll just repeat it again: Since I’m often seen as a cis female, I receive everyday sexism. People who see me do not automatically know of my history and thus trans does not override sex, but it does intersect occasionally. I receive sexism, transphobia, transmisogyny, and any combination thereof.
Also, homophobia because I’m a lesbian, although most people don’t automatically assume I’m one because I don’t look the stereotype. And of course many radical feminists tell me I’m not allowed to call myself a lesbian despite being a woman, despite being attracted to women, despite wanting a long-term relationship with women, and despite a total lack of sexual, romantic, or relationship interest in men.
March 22, 2008 at 9:25 pm
You’re right about Lisa’s unwitting, unspoken assumption about feminism as inherently white. But a lot of your other comments are quite off-base.
>>>A lot of radical feminists (whose blogs I read) are NOT arguing that MTF transpeople don’t suffer
And a lot are. And spending their time denying the realities of trans people’s identities, and the risk we take in those, and engaging in reductive and pointless theorisations of the ethical and philosophical implications of trans people transitioning.
>>>Yes, you were certainly (and still are) discriminated against, made to feel alienated from yourself, but you have to understand that it is not the same TYPE of systematic alienation, violence, and socialization that women-born-women face.
No, it’s not always exactly the same. But it is systemic, and I think you’re implicitly implying its not. We’re talking doctors, psychiatrists, birth-certificates, passports, institutions that only have male/female spaces, employers doing background checks, and legally acceptable discrimination in the vast majority of areas. Not to mention a crapload of violence too, most of which is borne by trans women of colour. Tell me *that’s* not systemic..
And, let us not forget that trans women when they are seen and treated *as* women are subject to the same abuse as every other woman. Radical feminists might not always treat us as women, but random groping dude on the bus is.
>>>Since when did all or most radical feminists try to say that “black women morph into the oppressor”?
Lisa didn’t say that. She said the *occasional* morphing, and it’s certainly true that some white radical feminists have engaged in that. I believe the phrase is Heart’s, but I mean, it’s a common enough dynamic by white feminists to short-circuit critique by WoC.
>>>If a white person grows up feeling deep inside an alienation from their race, their skin, their racial identity even, and is convinced deep down that they are “black” or “latina”, does that mean that they grow up with barely any or no white privilege? Of course not. And that white person who feels “black” or “latina” has absolutely no right claiming that African Americans or Hispanics are oppressing her just because her racial privilege is still there.
Look, this is a flawed analogy. You position trans people - trans women presumably, it’s always trans women - as privileged against non trans people, and this is just not true. We don’t hold our privileges after transitioning, or even during most of the time. As soon as you start presenting in your real gender, you’re in the double bind of being seen as trans (and subjected to a bunch of horrible shit), or seen as a woman (and subjected to other shit). So it just doesn’t work as an analogy, sorry.
March 22, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Also, regarding racism from white feminists - a lot of the writing about Hillary vs. Obama really makes this as plain as day.
March 25, 2008 at 12:27 pm
I wonder how many people here have ever really sat down and actually read and understand radical feminism or who have actually read MacKinnon? MacKinnon has never said anything actually negative about people going through reassignment and she had done much to challenge the essentialism that is used against them. The trouble is, she’s “too radical” and she challenges the essentalists who have annexed the term radical feminists.
But I have absolutely no sympathy for someone who diss’s MacKinnon because they can’t feed their porn addiction. Pornography HURTS women something that has never slowed down the trans movement before. Everything counts but women……
March 25, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Ah, yeah, the ever misogynist trans movement. I guess it’s hard to justify excluding us, judging us because of how we look, judging us because of how we live, without proposing that we don’t care enough to not hurt women.
Danae’s talking about how MacKinnon supported anti-pornography laws that were also used to harm queers, radicals, and students. While MacKinnon might not have personally set out to do that, that’s what the stuff she worked for was used to do.
Is it only bad when some women are harmed, but queer women are fair game?
I would also like to know who in this thread dissed MacKinnon because they can’t feed their porn addiction?