by Jaqueline Sephora Andrews

What else do I have, if I don’t have my mind? Whoever controls your mind controls you. It has been a real struggle these past two days, which has confirmed my decision to focus my analyses on “Black Feminist Thought.” Some have claimed that the idea of black and white feminists came from men, whose goal was to divide women. However, it was black women who formed black feminist groups because of racism in the women’s liberation movement in the 1960’s (bell hooks, ‘Ain’t I a Woman’). It is this history that some “white feminists” continue to deny. If your movement is predominantly white, then it will in all likelihood be racist. I saw this racism yesterday, among a few radical feminists, who referred to me as a token and also talked down to me. They did not understand they were speaking from their white privilege. They also showed misogyny by assuming that a male should tell a woman what to do. I have noticed among the most extreme, they say they hate men until they want to tell other women what to do, then it is necessary to consult a man. I realized that I needed to step back and re-evaluate my analysis, which is what led me to “Black Feminist Thought.”

This is not about Black against White, as I have many friends who are “white feminists,” whom I love dearly. I also acknowledge that there are many wonderful radical feminists, but I am not going to pretend that there is not an extreme sect. I am not going to pretend that there are not women attempting to control other women, and blaming men for it. I will not take ownership of their bullying; the division among them did not come from me. The past two days has come down to one thing, people who claim to be “pro-women” being upset because I believe that women should be free to express themselves, as they choose. My advocacy is based in freedom; I believe that people should be free to be who they are, whether they are a radical feminist or a transwoman/transman. It is white privilege that leads some to believe they can control other people. There are no tokens in the movement that I am a part of. We are all valued, regardless of if you are female or male. Everyone’s thoughts are valued, whether we agree or not. Mind control is a product of this imperialistic and patriarchal society.

For true liberation, there needs to be liberation of the mind. How can you liberate your mind? First, you have to value your own thoughts and ideas. I love to read, and I am inspired by feminists, such as bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins and others, but my thoughts are still my thoughts. Don’t let anyone tell you how to think. This is why I love “Black Feminist Thought.” There is a necessity for us, black people, to be able to define who we are. This is what I want to share with others, regardless of race. I am critical of the transgender political movement because it also seeks to control people’s thoughts, but I still believe a transgender person can choose to identify how they like. It doesn’t change their biology, but their thoughts belong to them. I understand that community is important, but once they take away your ability to think, then what do you have left? I still love many radical feminists, but I won’t give them my mind.

I would also suggest you read, and read critically. No matter where or how you further your education, please, remember there is always a chance to fall into groupthink if you are not careful. Learning is your responsibility. You need to be able to understand that a book written in 1980 should be understood in the context of its time. The world is forever changing, so it is dangerous to read a book from 1980 like it was written for this time. My inspiration comes from feminists, but I still understand that 1980 is not 2015. It is still, however, important to read the writings of the past. There is a lot of wisdom in them that is necessary for today.

You can’t be free until your mind is free. Your mind will never be free, as long as you chase after purity sects. You will essentially become a slave.

How could we ever destroy the patriarchy? I refer to bell hooks, during her interview with Janet Mock, where she says that, “you are not going to destroy this imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy, by creating your own version of it.” How can you say that you’re for the liberation of women if you want to control women? How can you say that you want to destroy the patriarchy if you want men to control women’s speech? The patriarchy is about control; the patriarchy wants men to control women, and it also convinces women to control other women. The patriarchy will not be destroyed through patriarchal means. The patriarchy cannot be destroyed until people reject what the patriarchy is selling. The patriarchy will not be destroyed until people learn to think for themselves; it is your mind that needs to be liberated.

The patriarchy wants to control your mind. My ancestors suffered, while they dreamed about my freedom. I am not going to disrespect their memory by becoming a mental slave.

The post Liberate Your Mind appeared first on Gender Apostates.

A woman is an adult human female. Here is what we know about any given woman:

1. She has, at some point, experienced the physical reality of a female reproductive system.
2. She has, at some point, encountered sexism.
3. She has, at some point, been made to feel shame about #1 and #2.
4. She has claim to a cultural inheritance meant to counteract #2 and #3: feminism.

Over the past couple of years, I have been flabbergasted by the female-shaming of Leftists. Over and over I am told that defining a woman as an adult female human somehow reduces us to our female reproductive organs.

Of course, men who claim the label “male” are not reduced to penises & testicles, because no one is reduced by the possession of organs that are deemed positive and powerful, not to mention the (supposedly) default human equipment.

But neither are black people reduced to their epidermises, immigrants reduced to their countries of birth, poor people reduced to their bank accounts, disabled people reduced to their disabilities, homosexual people reduced to their sexuality, Muslim people reduced to their religion, or elderly people reduced to their age, merely by having words to describe those facets of human experience, which are subject to irrational discrimination.

Perhaps it is that last point that is the hang up? Perhaps these “Leftists” don’t see sexism as irrational discrimination? Perhaps they really do see female people as less human than male people? Perhaps they really cannot grasp that being female in no way limits our full experience of humanity?

Many feminists fight back against this female-shaming with female pride. Female human beings are, after all, the only ones who can incubate new life. We can make movie after movie featuring male humans who save the human race from extinction, whether battling aliens or zombies or asteroids, but it doesn’t seem we can show any basic appreciation for the dangerous and draining labor of pregnancy and childbirth taken on by billions of real-life women throughout human history – labor to which every human being on Earth owes their very existence. I personally don’t feel any goddess type pride in simply possessing a female reproductive system, and often feel frustration about it (mostly due to the breathtakingly misogynist nature of modern medicine) but I refuse to feel shame about it. I refuse to feel it limits my humanity in any way.

Which brings us to the experience of sexism. Many feminists whom I love and respect reject any pride in or possessiveness about the category “woman” because it is a category that has historically been defined by men as not only Other but Less Than. From birth our female bodies mark us as the sex class that is expected and demanded to define ourselves by our use value to males. Feminine socialization is a lifelong exercise in breaking our will to self-define.

There is shame to be had there – but as with any perpretration of abuse, it is on those who benefit from the abuse, not on those who experience it.

I refuse to be defined by what has been done to me. I define myself by (among other things) my capacity to resist.

Human females are different from the females of other mammalian species – we have not only endured sexism, we have fought against it.

We are the daughters of resistance. Not just the Mary Wollstonecrafts and Sojourner Truths and Mother Joneses and Sylvia Pankhursts and Simone de Beauvoirs and Pauli Murrays and Adrienne Riches and Nawal El Saadawis and Andrea Dworkins and bell hookses and Gail Dineses and Soraya Chemalys and Sarah Slamens and Nimko Alis.

Not just the women who blazed (or are currently blazing) trails, but all those who have endured (and continue to endure) lives of quiet struggle, who did and do their best to love themselves and other women in a world that wants us to be nothing but vessels for the service of men.

My mother’s name will not be marked down in even the most specialized of history books, but she fought back against a lifetime of hardships and resentment to find her own place in the struggle for shared humanity, helping me out of a bad marriage before joining with other women in her rural Southern U.S. county to defend black voters from intimidation at the polls.

Neither will the name of my homestay mom in Nairobi be marked down in even the most specialized of history books – though she took in one cousin disowned for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, and another cousin disowned for being gay; though she worked two menial full-time jobs to put her daughters through school; though she joined with other women in her church to raise funds (seemingly out of thin air, through sheer force of will) to make possible the travel and entrepenurial outreach of other young women.

Women are all of us more than men would imagine. We fight back, against the shame laid on our femaleness and our feminine socialization. “Woman” is our word and I am proud of it. I am proud of us.

The post Woman Pride appeared first on Gender Apostates.

Writing this is an act of contradiction. Every act of writing creates an opportunity for betrayal. In letting loose my thoughts, I betray my sense of self and I betray others’ sense of me. I invite criticism, disappointment, scorn, and even anger. Every honest admission comes with a cost. It is a cost I willingly pay, and while never light, it is cheap to the price paid by women. Over time I’ve learned it is easier to watch the world pass and say little.  I’ve learned that in silence I am powerful.  Other transwomen would have you believe their power is in their anger, in victimization, in their non-stop flow of words. They argue everything, confront everything, if there is an argument concerning gender somewhere on the internet they will find it.  They scream at women, they scream at other transwoman, yet rarely scream at men. They recruit others to fight at their sides and bury opposition in an onslaught of verbiage.  I will not add to that raucous indignant fury. Instead, I offer another choice, one more men and transwomen need to embrace, I offer the power of silence.

Male socialization has taught me, and all males, that my opinion is important.  Whether or not that opinion is informed, or welcome, it is perfectly reasonable for me to express it, in any context, at any time. I have been taught that arguments I disagree with are flawed, simply because I disagree with them. I have been taught all I need do is to scoff and dismiss them out of hand. It is my prerogative as a male to do so. My thoughts do not have to be logical or internally consistent. They are simply right. Should someone disagree with me, especially a woman, it is my right, nay my obligation, to talk down to them, to explain to them why they are wrong, even talk over them if necessary.  My sense of absolute right shall not be challenged.

Such bollocks.

A funny thing happened on the road to silence. I stopped to listen. As I progressed further in transition, and started interacting with the “trans community” I encountered questions to which I could not find answers.  I learned that even asking these questions was to risk excommunication.  I stopped talking, took on a cloak of silence and listened.  I listened to women. I read their words and their thoughts. I read conversations from those I followed on twitter. I witnessed the abuse they faced for simply speaking out, and more than anything I realized how women, and feminism, provided answers to the questions I asked. I realized I didn’t stumble upon gender like some lost continent.  There is a thriving community of women, women born into a caste from which they cannot escape.  Women rebelling against the system which trapped them and for whom gender is not a playground.  I realized that no matter what I write, what I think, that a woman somewhere has already thought and written about it with far more brilliance and eloquence than I could ever muster.

I should be content in this silence, to listen, and learn from some truly amazing women. Yet I cannot do so, not yet, probably not ever. I cannot stop because there are males who say they are like me, males who, unlike me, make claims they women, who browbeat, stalk, abuse, and harass women for the crime of speaking their mind. I cannot turn a blind eye to this behavior and it is to these “women” I wish to now speak.

Stop. Just Stop.

Stop believing your words and opinions are wanted, especially about feminism. Do not think you have a better understanding of feminism then women who have lived and understood what it is to be female from birth? Do not think your thoughts matter.  This is not to say that you are not intelligent nor have worthwhile ideas to express. It is simply to say you do not need to express them about everything, at all times.  Just because a thought enters into your mind, does not mean it needs expression. One of the most important things we can do as transwomen is to protect the boundaries women establish from intrusion by other men, and by men I include transwomen.  Men will take over any space open to them. We will seize control of the conversation in mixed environments. We will, by virtue of our presence, silence women.  This is what we are taught to do and what we must guard against.

This isn’t easy, I know. It is in direct contradiction to our socialization, but we can overcome our male socialization. With work, and self-awareness, we can succeed. It is not without difficulty or without cost.  Having broken my silence to write, I have been subject to criticism, both good and bad.  While the good is uplifting, the bad can be really, really bad.  I’ve seen intensely personal things written about me, entire psychological profiles imagined from my words.  I’ve read the rants of those I once called friend.  I witnessed them all, but have said nothing.  One of the most difficult things I’ve ever read about me was an intense discussion, by a group of women, on the first piece I published on this site.  I’ve not said a word about that discussion until now, and this is all I will say: I am glad that my words sparked conversation and I believe it is important for women to discuss it and me in the same manner as any group of men would. They should not have to fear reprisal, or my intrusion into their space, a vigorous defense, or me mansplaining “what they don’t understand.” While I may not agree with all they say, it is important they say it. My words are written. It is out of my hands.

If I can endure this criticism, if I can read words which challenge my thoughts and beliefs and not collapse into a gibbering puddle of tears, then so can all transwomen.  Listening is hard. As we listen, we open ourselves to words we may not want to hear. By listening, and understanding, we can move toward cooperation.  We can listen to and accommodate the concerns of women and work together to find solutions which don’t ignore them entirely. In short we can stop acting like the men we were raised to be.  If for some reason you believe yourself immune to male socialization, think about this. The way you attack women online, the way you argue with them, dismiss them, tell them they’re wrong, is no different than any other man.  Those who claim to be our allies do it.  Those whose misogynistic righteousness leads them to be MRAs do it.  You call yourself a women, yet claim to be different? Think how your behavior matches those you claim most to despise, and consider what that says about you.

If you’ve made it this far, and are willing to challenge yourself, I have a homework assignment.  There is a book I would like you to read: Pornography by Andrea Dworkin. It is available for free, here. Pornography is probably the most difficult book I’ve ever read. It is not the prose or the syntax which makes it difficult, but the ideas which cleave to the very heart of your being.  It is a difficult read for men and women alike, but I believe it is important.  Dworkin pummeled me into silence.  Every critical argument I wanted to raise, every time my mind cried out “Yeah, but…” I was defeated by her brilliance.  It is a transformative book. It will change the way you look at sex, porn, and gender forever.  It will change the way you view women and the world. It will teach you silence, if you’re willing to submit. Open your mind to Dworkin’s ideas, and you will understand.

Silence is difficult, but I want to believe in a world without gender.  A world in which people can be who they want and say what they want without fear of repercussion. I want to live in a world where the thoughts and ideas of women are recognized and disseminated as widely as those of men. Yet I understand we still live in a patriarchal world, and I’m aware of my place in it. My socialization says my opinions matter.  I say they do not.  My socialization says I should speak up.  I say I should not.  I rebel in silence. It is a simple, yet powerful act.  I do not have the answers, but someone else may, and when she speaks, I want to be certain she is heard.

The post The Power of Silence appeared first on Gender Apostates.

The devastating breadth of male violence against women and transwomen alike is under-reported and under-acknowledged, and the violence perpetrated by transwomen against women is flat out denied. Much of the venom some transwomen feel towards the lives and beliefs of women is visible within the war that rages on the internet, and increasingly in the real world, between feminists and transgender activists, a war over what it means to be a woman, a transwoman and a member of a sexually dimorphic species. As a transsexual male who wishes to analyse the system of gender within which I live, and who wants to challenge the culture of transwomen mirroring the behaviours and attitudes of non-transsexual males, I hope to use this piece to analyse this disagreement, and the attitudes and behaviours that come to the surface within the confines of this discussion.

Male violence is real, perverse, disgusting, abysmal, and a global epidemic. Women and girls are on the receiving end of levels of violence at the hands of males across the globe at a level that is truly horrific: 35% of women have experienced either “physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence”. 35% of OVER HALF OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION experiences sexual violence. This is violence that is committed against women by men for the sole crime of being female. This culture of male violence is also prevalent with regards to violence against transsexual people. A survey of violence against transsexual people within the European Union found that 79% of the 2669 respondents to the survey experienced some form of harassment that ranged from transphobic comments to physical and sexual abuse. Another report found that 50% of trans people have experienced sexual violence. All of these studies, regardless of how honestly they represent reality, can be used to come to the same conclusion: all over the world, there is a culture of Men committing violence, including sexual violence, at a truly under-acknowledged level, against people these men view to be not-men and therefore deserving of violence (for being female, or for not being masculine enough).

Male violence is a problem that does and will mar many people’s lives, and this is true for myself. I was bullied relentlessly during my schooling for not fulfilling the role of “male” well enough, for being visibly homosexual and for being gender non-conforming. This has damaged me irreparably, inhibited my ability to form friendships and healthy relationships with Men, and will forever force me to live under the shadow of a serious suicide attempt. So forgive me for having a shaky relationship with men and those who act in ways that mirror the way I was treated by other males, and this includes other transwomen. My experience is not unique; during conversations with many of the transwomen I know this history of not fitting into the male gender-role, and experiencing the violence directed at us as a direct consequence for our gender-non-conformity, is common.

Before I continue, let me make clear my definition of “transwoman”, just so there are no misunderstandings. My understanding is transwomen are males who alter their bodies to enable themselves to live, to the best of their ability, within the social role of “woman”. The desire for this behaviour / treatment can be for a number of reasons including: intense sex dysphoria, a disgust for masculinity, or more commonly and as is the case for myself, a mixture of the two. This is my understanding of transsexuality and transwoman-hood and if you wish to know more you’re welcome to read my piece titled Transwomen Are Women Period… Or Not (And That’s Okay).

Returning to the original point, and in light of this definition, if it is the wish of transwomen to live within the social role of “woman”; transwomen should, insert a massive “in theory”, be tolerant individuals who act and behave in a way that shows empathy for women. As human beings we should respect each other, but we also have some shared experiences and both understand (to different and varying degrees) the struggle of living under patriarchy whilst being viewed as inferior (women for being female, transwomen for being unable to perform violent masculinity and therefore being “useless males”). Sadly, however, this is not the case- instead we live in a world where women are attacked by transwomen for understanding that biology exists, and women and transwomen are biologically different and lesbians are told they must view males as sexual partners if an exclamation of “female identity” is given. This is increasingly common with “transwomen” who transition after a lifetime of benefiting from male privilege and patriarchy through being gender conforming males. The very men who enacted and enact misogynist and homophobic violence, against women and gender non-conforming males respectively, as a display of their masculine dominance, and who did not struggle within the confines of the male gender role, but who thrived.

The behaviours exhibited by these “transwomen” (I use quotation marks because who are we kidding? but also to acknowledge these people are “the same as me” despite my continued dismay) are inexcusable, and explicitly mirror those of the violent males who attack women and transwomen alike. There is a growing culture of this behaviour being committed and not just being excused, but being encouraged -those who engage in spouting violent vitriol at women are being rewarded with praise. I, for one, find that the fact this behaviour is committed in the name of a movement that supposedly exists for me, trans activism, incredibly upsetting. Equally, the growing use of the term “transphobe” as a label to enable the socially acceptable silencing of women is very troubling. These “transgender rights activists” are advocating not for a world where we can live free from male violence, but for a world where we can live a life free from criticism by those we aim to “identify” with (or “as,” as is more commonly stated) – much to my continued disgust.

If you are still under any illusion that this behaviour is not a mirror of the behaviours males use against women and transwomen, then look no further than non-transsexual “male allies” of the transgender movement who pick up, with joy, the terms used by transgender activists to silence women. As luck would have it for these men, in doing so they get to gain *liberal-super-justice points* whilst simultaneously enacting male oppression of women. These “male allies” show that transgender activism truly is a movement that exists to silence females into submission and obedience, and enable males to live free from the constraint of thinking of females as humans and equals, humans with their own experiences, lives, rights and opinions.

Increasingly those who claim to be like me and to share my experiences are people who mirror the words, behaviours and actions of those people who have harassed, name-called, bullied and enacted violence against me. The people who are “championing my rights” in this war against women are using the same techniques and actions that were used to push me into attempting to take my own life, and this causes me anguish. We have these “transwomen” who demand I view them as my equal, or else I’m a “Truscum”, who demand to speak for me and who demand I do as they tell me “or else”. We have these “transwomen” who are predatory in their behaviours and who refuse to acknowledge that my experiences exist and are valid and then tell me they are “just like me” and that we have this unbreakable “sisterhood”. Every action, every movement is a step further away from actually helping me and people like me (transsexuals) and a step closer to erasing my lived experiences as a transsexual who was a gender non-conforming boy prior to transition. It’s becoming impossible for me to talk about my past or to analyse my life, because as soon as I suggest I’m not and have not ever been female I get shouted down, called out and told I must denounce “The TERFS” and resign my opinions.

I wish to suggest that the “gender wars” are less a war than a one way attack. An attack that mirrors the power dynamics already in place within society of males on the top calling the shots, and females on the bottom being forced to make amendments to how they live their lives (referring to themselves as “cis-women” and giving up the term “female”, for example) so that they can navigate delicate male egos and the threat of and use of violence. The attacks that are made against women in the name of “trans activism” are uncalled for, disgusting and do nothing but throw smoke over the fact that the real problem and the real threat comes from Males, gender and patriarchy.

The ultimate truth is I try my best to rid from myself my male socialisation, but I can only do so much. I am and always will be a transwoman, so by definition a male, and the 18 years I spent socialising as a man will always pervade my experiences  and existence. I have, despite my attempts to fight against and reject it, been socialised into the class of the oppressor, the one who commits violence and the one who commits the subjugation of women. This is not something I can help and this is not something I can change.

The post Male Violence Is The Problem And Transwomen Commit It Too appeared first on Gender Apostates.

This piece presents thoughts on “Jazz Jennings: The Transgender Teen and Wannabe Mermaid the Internet Needs”

Jazz; an art form which appears to transcend usual musical convention. Affected and nonsensical, it is studiously performed in order to appear natural, free form and released from the mundane. Its fans are almost fanatical in their devotion to it as musical ‘truth’.

Listen carefully, dear ones, for I have a cautionary tale to tell. It is the story of two daughters, one born, one made.

Born, one daughter to be the dutiful, dowdy, dull-feathered common bird, full of the usual eggs, who, with her flawed, ordinary female body, will suffer the familiar dangers, disappointments and hatred, and be expected to serve her family, not just in the everyday ways of always being the one to contact, to come over, to care, and to clean, not just in the usual expectations of continuing the family with her own offspring, but to also be the mere vessel, the incubator, for however many children her more-important sibling may desire for their perfect, pink, dazzling Disney fantasy. 101 Dalmations for Cruella, coming right up.

Made, one daughter-once- son forced Phoenix-like to transcend the limits of his parents’ misguided care to mimic  a bird of paradise, all dazzling plumage, encouraged squawks, and apparent glee at the gilded cage they have been told is freedom. All cuckoo and magpie, this glittering creature has its lesser sister to tend to its young, whilst it gets on with the more important job of delighting us with its beauty and sweet gibberish.

Two daughters, to be both aspects of Cinderella at once; the rags and scraps slave of the hearth, and the enchanting, magical, captivating party princess. This Cinders will serve herself. It won’t just be the Ugly Sisters getting bits cut off themselves to win the heart of Prince Patriarchy.

Whilst the first sister stays forever landlocked, the second can swim. This Ariel, this sparkly fun mermaid, can live in water and on land. All the entitlement of breathing rarefied air, all the glamour of appearing to live in unexplored depths. Remove her tail and she only gets more perfect: what men truly want. Her breasts will never sag, stretch, pucker or leak, or be wasted on keeping a baby alive, or be lopsided or deemed the sum of her worth (the bright new jewel of privilege). Her factory-fresh vulva will be crafted to be porn perfect; trim, pink, childlike and hair free. No natural asymmetry, wild bush, secreting or bleeding for her. No birth to wreck it. She will be taller and leaner than mere mortal females, her belly untouched by growing life, never contorted with cramps, never anything but a smooth doll blank, inside and out. Her wardrobe will be sublime; as practical and mundane as the shell bras all true mermaids wear, all the time. Under the sea, you and me, where the waves distort the sound of truth being told…

… I need to wake up. To stop writing like this. This is a nightmare, but it is no fantasy land, it is all too true. We will have to save ourselves, and the children, because the prince has chopped off Rapunzel’s hair for himself.

I will put this bluntly: I believe that transing children is a form of child abuse. Furthermore, I feel that there is a sexual element to that in this case. What the hell are adults doing making such a big deal of sexual issues with a child?! Hypersexualisation is one of the most clear-cut signs of abuse in a child, yet here we have a child talking about being pansexual, about his sister’s vagina, like he’s reciting his times table, and everyone seems to be applauding instead of being alarmed.

I see the hidden message: here is a child we can sexualise and legitimise feeling sexual about, because they are apparently opting into adult notions of female sexuality. You can’t be a creep who fancies teenage girls when that girl is really a boy, oh no. Your arousal is just approval of *her* empowerment and choice. Right. Right. The fact that it will also encourages real girls to think of themselves as objects for sexual consumption doesn’t interest you, oh, of course not.

These cases, of transed children fool the public, like an evil stepmother’s (played by ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner)  mirror telling us all that this way is the fairest of them all. But the truth is ugly, and downright wicked. Now, I do believe that virtually all of these cases are driven by either a well-meaning ignorance or unexplained psychological need of one or both parents, and that they genuinely believe they are going what’s best for their child. It’s pretty clear to me that having a child who’s a transgirl psychologically relieves the parents because they can indulge in a fantasy of believing that one ‘daughter’ is living a life free of the usual oppressions, dangers, etc., that actual females face. Instead of the hard work of supporting their real daughter, she must be sacrificed for her parents enjoyment and self-indulgent delusion of relief, of freeing at least one girl. What’s more, a mother can live out her fantasies of what being a girl is without the intrusions of the reality of her own limited body and its very real material oppression. They get to deny not only the pain of a daughter battling a lifetime of misogyny, but the mother’s own oppression as a woman, AND their own very real homophobia and gender brain-washing that led them to unconsciously psychologically abuse their toddler by telling him that he must be a girl because he loved pink.

Of course, this is no excuse. If your child is suffering mentally because they cannot physically bear a child or be a mermaid, you no more encourage their delusions of gender and cope with your pain at their pain by telling them they can be what they’re not, and especially not by offering up a sacrifice of the womb of your other child than you would hold their head underwater in the bath until their tail appears. Parenting is not always about making your child happy at any cost. It is certainly never about lying to your kids, or swapping truth for make-believe and placatory promises, because you, the adult, cannot control your emotions in the face of their distress. And creating family myths that become ‘truths’ is extremely irresponsible parenting: Jazz has been convinced that they knew they were female at 16 months old. This is developmentally impossible. A child of that age has no concept of gender or even sex, never mind if there’s some sort of perceived problem. Children of that age still think they and mummy are the same, for god’s sake. Oh, and Newsflash! Small boy with a sister wants to share and copy sister’s toys, clothes and activities – not exactly a Nobel-worthy breakthrough in understanding gender play, is it?

Transing children does not offer them a way to ‘truly be who they are’, as we are constantly told. It does the exact opposite of that. Everything opposite to that. Telling a boy he must be a girl because he likes pink is no different than telling him he can’t like pink because it’s for girls. The only difference is cowardly semantics, self-delusion, and a nicer intention. The message remains the same. What transing children does is offer parents the chance to see themselves as the good guys, the best parents, to deny their ignorance, narrow-mindlessness and bigotry, however unconscious they may be. The only true transformation is for the adults. In this crass new world, where fairytale is the new reality, transing kids is just the new way in which the witch can fatten Hans for the oven and get Gretl to open his mouth for her. Transing children is just the modern version of gay conversion therapy – and at least that doesn’t have a potential final outcome of extreme and irreversible genital mutilation surgery. When gay conversion therapy is the lesser of two evils, you really need to step back and think sensibly for a minute.

The really shocking aspect of that interview for me, and all women I know who’ve read it, is the casual discussion of using his sister as the incubator for any future children he may desire. Putting aside his scientific ignorance about conception, and my disgust that an adult female journalist would encourage, much less even tolerate this kind of talk from an interviewee, this is grotesque and proprietary male entitlement at its extreme. There is nothing female about the way he views his sister. This is a boy talking as though the future of his sister’s life and body has been decided in terms of what it can and will do for him and the family as a whole: give him children. He is saying that, even when I become a woman *like* you, I get to keep all my ownership and control over you. Is Jazz’s talking about ‘chucking my hubby’s sperm’ into his sister so a baby can come out of her ‘vag’, any less disgusting than a brother policing his sister’s body and rights in the name of ‘family hnour’? How come we demonise, say, Muslim males with that attitude towards their sisters, yet applaud and encourage Jazz treating his sister like she is no more than his personal breeder?!  A combination of mixing bowl and oven to bake him a baby, not even vaguely human.

Where are HER rights? Where is the celebration of HER actual femaleness? Where is the support for HER dreams? When does SHE get to be a person with agency over her own body, someone who actually matters?

I believe that all the children in that family are, on some level, being emotionally and mentally damaged. The fun and spangles of this obscene indulgence don’t stop this being merely a modern twist on the classic Golden Child/Scapegoat sibling dynamic, and just, if not more, as damaging. Jazz is not just blatantly the favourite child, but he gets to be his own sister better than she ever can. Yet he can never actually be that either. I sincerely hope, however, that I’m wrong, and that Jazz’s sister will receive the same support and acceptance for declining to be his surrogate in the future that Jazz gets for his issues (for, of course, he deserves nothing less, even if I don’t agree with the manner in which its expressed).

Moving beyond Jazz’s family now, what implications does this case, and others like it, have for the female sex as a whole? I didn’t choose ‘A Transmaid’s Tale’ purely because it’s catchy; I really do see a potential for a actual dystopia that mimics Atwood’s sublime classic, where, instead of class separating women into breeders, servants or Wives, false classifications of ‘woman’ will be used so that we will see Transwomen being posited and legally protected as ‘real’ women, with us true, biological females being only of use as breeders for their babies, and skivvies for their homes.

Will people have daughters just to produce children for their Trans-sisters, the way some couples have a child to be a donor for a sick or dying existing sibling? At least one can see a justifiable motive in the latter, whatever your opinion on it as a whole.

What else could we see in the future – girls pretending to be transgirls in order to feel allowed, or even be allowed to have the same freedom, admiration, approval and fun as kids like Jazz, without all that lame and oldskool sense of material oppression? Girls having phalloplasties to look like transgirls?! If the choice becomes breeder-servant-TERF or Transwoman, what would young women do to escape that first fate?! As it becomes clearer every day that equality for women actually just means ‘do as men do, do as men say, but pretend you’ve chosen it for yourself’, are these ideas really so far-fetched? The neoliberal solution to patriarchy seems to be ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. As it’s part of our female socialisation to yield and adapt and accept to whatever extremes men demand of us, this seems like a horribly possible next step.

And we know that porn has so warped the minds of our young people that, when shown pictures of normal, healthy breasts and vulvas, both teenage boys and girls will recoil and presume they are being shown photos of abnormal body parts, with the boys declaring that they’d never have sex with females with bodies like that. Transgirls can have the ‘perfect’ breasts and vulvas required for this porn-poisoned new generation: fake, always available to men, always arousing, and with none of the actual functions they exist for in women. We know that in the UK alone, in just the last few years, the numbers of girls and women under-25 going to their doctors to enquire about labiaplasty has skyrocketed, so unable are they to cope with having lovely, normal vulvas. The same generation of girls and young women who are rightly protesting the horrors of FGM are demanding minor mutilation of their own genitals in the name of empowerment. How far can this cognitive dissonance go?!

What makes all this even more dubious is that it’s an interview for Cosmopolitan, a famous, popular magazine for young women. They’re sending out the message that boys can even do being female better than they ever could. They’ll have all the fun and fame, the glitz and glamour, whilst you just get to be a boring, dull, invisible, servile breeder for them. Have we not heard the last part of that message before?! At least in the bad old good old days, we were told to be servile breeders because that’s all we we’re fit for, not because we are so useless as human beings that even men are better at being women than women are. At least when we were servile breeders in our own right, we got to keep our own children.

Isn’t it time to break the spell? We are in serious danger of transgenderist poison apples ruining, even mutilating, the lives, minds, and bodies of younger generations. This is child abuse, not just of the children being transed, but their siblings and peers, all being taught these hideous new ‘truths’, and it has to end. It is time to close this chapter before it gets even scarier.

The post Thoughts on Jazz Jennings: A Transmaid’s Tale appeared first on Gender Apostates.

By Jaqueline Sephora Andrews

How can I still be a Christian?  It is no secret to those who know me that feminism, in particular Black feminist thought, is the basis of my analysis.  How could I possibly reconcile being a Christian with a feminist analysis?  This is an important question, as women are oppressed under a biblical patriarchy.  The Bible has been used to abuse women and others who are on the margins of society.  The belief that woman are supposed to be “submissive” while men are the heads of their households are attributed to God.  How could I ever justify being a Christian, while maintaining a feminist analyses?  It seems antithetical, right?  The first thing I need to do, and I encourage all Christians who are faced with these questions to do, is to call the Bible into question.

We talk about the Bible as if it is one book, but the Bible is a collection of books.  It is important to note that these books were written by men.  They wrote at specific times for specific audiences.  It is also important to note that they did not have all the answers to life, as has been evident through further research.  Many Christians take what a Biblical writer says at face value, without first understanding who they were writing to and their reasons for writing.  Much of the intended audiences were illiterate, so they relied on the words of the theologians of their day.  We are not living in the first-century Greco-Roman world; we don’t have to accept the words of anyone, even people who claim that their words came directly from God.  When dealing with oppression, the Bible needs to be called into question.

The words of the Bible were influenced by the Greco-Roman culture, as were other religions and writings during this period.  We say that the Bible is misogynistic, but it is the culture that produced the Bible that was misogynistic; the Bible was a reflection of the culture.  In this misogynistic culture, there was one, Jesus, who attempted to change the mindset.  He was different; one of the things that was different about him was that he valued women, so much that he had women as prominent disciples. He also trusted women to give the gospel message.  Women were faithful and were the ones who stayed with Jesus until the end.  It was the men who left Jesus to die, while they ran and hid for fear of their lives.  The women were the ones who weren’t afraid, so Jesus trusted them to give the message.  In a misogynistic world, Christianity was liberating and egalitarian, which frightened the men who wrote the books and letters of the Bible.

The writers did not want to upset the imperialist patriarchy; Christians were often blamed when crisis occurred, due to being “different,” so it was important for them to not “upset the empire.”  In the Greco-Roman world, there were “household codes” (Campbell-Reed, 2001), which were influenced by the teachings of Aristotle.  The idea that a woman should submit did not come from God, but from a Greco-Roman culture that believed a woman’s duty was to submit to a man.  In this misogynistic culture, women were to remain silent in the company of men, which was against the teachings and practices of Jesus.  When Paul wrote his letters, he did not have the benefit of Jesus’ documented teachings, so he taught as he thought Jesus would, in this Greco-Roman culture.

Christianity was a religion where women exercised authority, even over men.  This troubled the writer of the letters to Timothy, who desired to appease the Roman Empire.  This writer didn’t understand Hebrew, and didn’t understand the creation story.  Eve was considered Adam’s “helper.”  The word for helper is ezer.  It is the same term that is used for God, in the various places in the Bible, such as Psalm 121.  The “helper” was the self-sufficient one; the helper was the one who others depended on for their survival.  So, if the creation story is taken literally then Eve was the self-sufficient one, whereas Adam needed Eve for his survival.  This writer did not understand this and probably was teaching the traditions that were handed to him.  This writer was living under the fear of the Roman Empire, and felt that the empire might be suspicious if they saw women openly teaching and even having authority over men, so he wrote, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet” (1 Timothy 2:12 NIV).  Many have taken these words as the gospel, but when did “I” become synonymous with God?  Why are many Christians so afraid to question the words of a man?

First, there is Imperialism.  In our liberation efforts, we cannot discount imperialism and its effects on men and women, especially here in the United States.  Bell hooks, in her book ‘Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center,’ talks about Imperialism and its effect on culture.  Men and women have supported and have been educated under imperialism, so if the focus is solely on overthrowing the patriarchy, then we will still have a society where people feel that it is necessary to dominate others; it will just be different people in control.  Imperialism heavily influenced the writers of the Christian Scriptures and also the way the scriptures have been interpreted throughout the years.  Jesus was considered a threat because he opposed the empire, and people followed him.  Why would a Roman empire crucify him?  They crucified “rebels.”  Jesus was a pacifist, but imperialism caused people to interpret his teachings as supporting the wars of the empire.  Early Christians followed his teachings of peace, but when the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, their peaceful faith became imperialistic.  The empire, rather it was the Roman Empire or the American Empire, loves Christians because the “rulers” know that Christians will serve them faithfully, rather it is support of the wars or the subordination of women.  Jesus, however, died because he opposed the empire.

And then, there is the patriarchy.  The patriarchy was used as a means to control households.  The patriarchy assured that the imperialists would stay in power.  The patriarchy also gave men, who were and are exploited in an imperialistic culture, the opportunity to have a position of power in their homes.  It is imperialism that taught men to dominate, but it is through the patriarchy that this domination is realized.  If men were content with their positions of power in their homes then there would be no need for them to rebel.  Just as men feared the empire, the empire feared them.  The empire feared rebellion, and Jesus was a “rebel.”  He stood against imperialism and the patriarchy, which cause a paranoid governor to consider him a threat.

How can I still be a Christian?  Jesus opposed the imperialist patriarchy.  The empire lived by war and destruction, but Jesus taught love.  The empire believed that women were naturally subordinate to men, but Jesus had women disciples who carried the message to men.  I became a Christian because I believed the message of Christ, which was given before there ever was a Bible.  It is Jesus, who taught me to love everyone and to accept differences.  It is Jesus who led me to build relationships with people who I was taught to hate.  The message of Jesus is not one of oppression but of liberation.  The liberation that  is needed is liberation from the imperialist patriarchy which controls the interpretation of the Bible.  I hold to the message of Jesus because it is a message of love.

The post Liberation from the Imperialist Patriarchy of the Bible appeared first on Gender Apostates.

I am not a person quick to anger. I do not generally believe rants are productive. I believe respectful, honest discourse is the only path to real understanding but I’m tired. I’m sick and tired of what I see within the trans community, the community of which I am supposedly a part. I’m tired of the misogyny and narcissistic rage I see directed at women, and other transwomen. It’s time for it to stop, so I’m going to try to talk to the misogynists among us. I want to have an honest conversation about what you’re doing, or what you think you’re doing, because misogyny is misogyny whether you “feel like a woman” or not.

Let us start with the obvious. I am not the first person to point this out. Women, and some men, have been chronicling the misogyny within the transgender community for years. The community has taken a “circle the wagons” approach to deflecting criticism. The community, especially its leaders at GLAAD and elsewhere, are desperate to show that we are simply people wanting to live our lives. We are not sexual predators, nor freaks to be ostracized. Guess what? I mostly agree with that. Most transwomen and transsexuals only want to live quiet, ordinary lives.

However, the community is also a haven for those possessed of narcissistic rage, sexual predators, and beta male misogynists. Wander through any online transgender community and you will see post after post, tweet after tweet directed at women and bizarrely enough at other transwomen, accusing them of all sorts of vile things up to and including the eradication of all transwomen. There are tweets demanding “TERFS” (a shifting acronym in the tradition of “witch” or “feminazi”) die, burn, suck a transwoman’s dick, and all other manner of threats. For an archive, which isn’t even the tip of the iceberg, click here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ann Lawrence wrote a fantastic essay on “Shame and Narcissistic Rage in Transsexualism” , which explores the source of this rage as a manifestation of shame within a developed narcissistic personality disorder.

If there is a disagreement I have with Lawrence’s essay is that she relies too heavily on Bailey’s “The Man who would be Queen” which relies too heavily on Blanchard theories of transsexualism. I don’t believe there is a simple topography that delineates all transwomen based solely on sexual orientation. Orientation itself is more complex than the “born this way” dogma would suggest. It’s also tempting to dismiss both Blanchard and Bailey’s ideas as “gender essentialism” Too often their words conflate traditional feminine behavior and personality traits as female. It’s a similar error many transgenderists make by using a fondness for “girl things” to validate their identity. If we can look past Bailey’s theories, I think there is a clear portrayal of the transgender narcissist.

Lawrence states:

After gender transition, the situation often becomes no better and may become worse. Nonhomosexual MtF transsexuals who transition to live as women want to be regarded as women and treated as women. The male-typical aspects of their appearance and behavior, however, often make it difficult for them to be seen as other than transsexual women. Sometimes they may be seen simply as men pretending to be women. This makes it likely that they will experience frequent unempathetic reactions, including overt disrespect or derision, harassment, denial of basic civil rights, or violence, as Dreger observed. Because their feelings of being or wanting to be women are so central to their sense of self, they may experience the negative reactions of others as implying that they are inadequate in a deep and fundamental way, leading to further feelings of shame (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Autogynephilic transsexuals may also find it harder to fully identify with women after transition than before, because the differences they inevitably observe between themselves and natal women become harder to rationalize after transition. Before transition, these differences can be attributed to the necessity of temporarily maintaining a socially acceptable masculine persona; after transition, when this excuse evaporates, autogynephilic transsexuals may be forced to confront reality. Nonhomosexual MtF transsexuals often seem to expect that, with enough effort, they will be able to pass undetected as natal women after transition; but because their appearance and behavior are rarely naturally feminine, this expectation usually proves to be unrealistic. Tangney and Dearing (2002) observed that persons prone to narcissistic disorders ‘‘typically develop many unrealistic expectations for themselves…that, in effect, set the stage for shame. With each failure to achieve ambitions—ambitions that are often grandiose— the narcissistic individual is apt to feel shame’’

The most striking thing about the essay is how antiquated the concept of “transition” is. Transition, in the traditional sense, or at least my understanding of it, involves the physical and social transition out of one gender role into that of the other. It is a journey made at great monetary and personal cost, but involves abandoning masculinity as much as is possible. Womanhood is not a declaration. Transition is not a declaration. I’ve witnessed males, (and lest you think I’m making a value judgment we’re all males. There is no way around that.) With full beards, or scruff, put on eyeliner and a bra and shout down women. I’ve watched them aggressively claim their femininity, their womanhood.   They will even claim to be “Butch.” as a way to turn the essentialist essence of Blanchard and Benjamin on their ears. They will use feminist ideas about gender, so long as it benefits them, but forget them when they do not. If a woman dare challenge them, they are labeled a transphobe, bigot or TERF. They are the ones who are ridiculed for not “accepting” a person whose outward appearance fully indicates male as a woman. This has to stop.

(And yes I know hormones are expensive, and hair removal is expensive, and transition takes time and is awkward, but too many use those very real economic conditions as an excuse. Playing the victim is easier than honesty.)

We are not women. We are not female. We will get nowhere by badgering everyone into agreeing with us. We must be open and honest about our feelings, our history, and our true nature. Indulging in this delusion not only harms our relationship with women, but it harms us as the lack of data and understanding about our healthcare leads to both awkward and possibly dangerous encounters with medical professionals.

But let me talk to the ragers themselves. The world doesn’t owe you anything. Nobody is required to accept you, and if they do not, bullying them will not change their minds. I fail to understand how so many who believe they are women, who want to be women, can treat women so terribly. How they can spend their time online badgering, stalking, harassing, and bullying the very same people they claim to be. When you take a step back, and look at the behavior and demands of both the transgenderist and MRA communities, they look nearly identical. This should cause every self-identifying transwoman shame. They should look at their community, their peers, and their “sisters” and be horrified by what they see. Yet they do not. Attack dogs are praised or ignored. The truly harmful, the mentally unstable, are embraced and cloaked in an extra layer of victimhood.   Transwomen should call on fellow transwomen to stop harassing women. They should stop trying to make everything about us and realize whom the enemy is, and how we need to ally with women.

I know you may be hurt. I know you may have suffered. I know you feel you are a woman and maybe you are jealous of those you deridingly label cis. I understand. I truly do. Being trans is difficult. But you have to realize these women have done nothing to you. What you are feeling is your male socialization and entitlement. Being raised male, we are taught how to view women. It is very difficult to recognize these influences let alone eliminate them, but it can be done. It has to be. It is the most important part of transition. The rage you may feel toward women for questioning your identity or actions is your male socialization. Men are taught we are entitled to certain things, and frankly women are not. The next time you feel angry towards a woman, the next time you want to tell a woman to “die in a fire” or “suck your girldick” I want you to think about why you feel that way. I want you to think about how masculine that feeling is, and I want you to walk away. Just close the window and let it go. You’ll find that the first step towards transitioning away from masculinity is to stop acting “like a man.”

The post Transwomen and Narcissistic Rage appeared first on Gender Apostates.

by Jaqueline Sephora Andrews

The horror I have faced.  I hear the trans community talk about doxxing, even accusing certain radical feminists, but there is no one who doxxes like trans activists.  I have experienced their doxxing because I stood up to a bully who had threatened a woman and her children.  I then stood up to him again as he was tweeting about feminists, saying some very disgusting things.  I did not know that he was a professional hacker, and how my life would change because of his stalking and hacking.  But it happened.  It was his hate for women which led him to doxx me, in order to shame me.  This has had such an effect on me that the sight of his name in my twitter mentions always make me nervous.  I am afraid to talk about relationships or who I might be interested in, for fear of being watched.  He says he doesn’t care anything about me, but yet he manages to find his way into my twitter mentions.  He tries to use the information he has of me as proof that I am a hypocrite, even though the information he has is before I was gender critical.  This has caused me pain, but it also taught me something about trans activism.  If you are labeled as a TERF or TERF token, then you are not considered human; they treat you as they see fit.

The first doxx and shaming attempt had to do with my sexuality, and the kind of man I tend to be attracted to.  What this has to do with this particular man threatening women, I do not know.  The new shaming attempt that has arisen is that I am an aspiring Shemale porn star, who is taking divinity classes.  In actuality, Divinity is my master’s program, and I never has aspired to be a shemale porn star.  The shemales who also harass me because of my stances, usually targeting my looks, could tell you that much.  I don’t even use this term, but it doesn’t mean that I have never had conversations about a career in pornography, or prostitution for that matter.  What my harassers/doxxers won’t mention, is the hardship I have had since I came out.  I have suffered rejection from family and friends.  I have struggled to find employment in spite of being able to complete my degree, in Sociology.  I have been homeless, sleeping in my car.  I have suffered from depression and loneliness, which has had an effect on my decisions.  Trans activism believes in “agency,” so surely every act that I have done was based on my freedom to choose.  Pornography and prostitution are awful, and I have never done either.  However, I was still not spared the harm of a “sex positive culture.”

My sexual horror began when I met a man who was very in to Bondage, Domination, and Sadomasochism (BDSM).  I was his submissive.  I never called myself his slave, but he thought of himself as my master.  I could not call him by his name, but had to refer to him as “Sir” or “Daddy.”  He sought to control every aspect of my life.  He would give me assignments and a book to read that would “help” me in my development as a submissive.  I was always afraid to talk to him because I never knew what mood he would be in.  Sometimes he was nice, but that could all change if I said something that he deemed wrong.  He loved to drink beer, which made him unbearably mean.  I hated those times when he was drunk; I could never do anything right, and he was very critical of me.  He would beat me, but of course it’s all a part of BDSM.  They tell us to use safe words, when the pain is unbearable.  However, he would sometimes beat me ten to fifteen times after I had used a safe word.  In his face, I could see anger sometimes as he beat me.  This was quite normal and BDSM is a loving act between consenting adults, right?  I often said yes to him, but my mind and my emotions were saying no.  I absolutely hated this life.

But my horror did not end here.  It was a span of about three days.  My brother had just been killed, so I was having a really difficult time.  My dom came over to “comfort” me, but this time he brought someone, a mutual friend.  He was there to videotape us having sex.  My dom was very much into pornography and had aspirations of making movies.  At this point, other than the videotaping, everything was how it always was.  After our “friend” left, then my dom in his drunken state began to humiliate me.  I videotaped cleaning in nothing but pantyhose and high heels.  This was such an awful feeling that I began to cry.  I was allowed to put clothes on to take out the trash, but I was forced to wear heels.  It was a long walk, as the trash was at the other end of the apartment complex.  I remember as I was walking back, with tears in my eyes, a woman saying “I don’t know how you do it girl, walking in those heels!”  I said “oh yes” with the fakest smile I have ever had.  And after this humiliation, I had more sex to look forward to.

The next day, my dom called our friend over again to do what they call a “drive by,” which meant that they would both have sex with me.  As the submissive, I was to let them do whatever they felt like doing to me.  This was the roughest sex I have ever experienced, and afterword I was in pain.  I still remember the feeling like it was yesterday.  The pain was greatest when I used the bathroom.  I was actually afraid of using the bathroom because of the pain I felt.  That night, I needed to recover.  I knew that my dom would understand and respect my wishes.  After all, I was told that “the submissive is the one with the real power.”  Did he respect my wishes?  Please, take a guess.  All he ever cared about was sex and he often demanded it.  This time was no different.  When he began to demand sex, I told him about my condition.  I thought he would at least care about me and my body.  He became so forceful, that I gave in to his demands.  Again, I remember it like it was yesterday.  I felt pain the moment he entered me, and I repeatedly told him that I couldn’t handle this pain and to please stop.  It hurt so bad that all I could do was cry.  How was this me exercising my agency?  Why would someone accept BDSM as a “normal” way of affection?  To the submissive: you were not meant to be beaten; there is value to your life and body.  To the dominant: why do you feel the need to beat the one you supposedly care about and even love?  The answer should not be to glorify this abusive act, but to seek professional help to be able to deal with internal issues that might cause someone to justify this abuse.

I truly love everyone who may read these words.  I wish the very best for you, and I want you to know that trans activism is harmful to women.  Within trans activism there is a deep hatred for women, which is expressed through the promotion of pornography, prostitution, BDSM and other sexual acts that glorify the objectification of women.  If you stand up to their misogyny and abuse of women then they will target you with harassment and doxxing.

To transwomen: you might feel like this is a wonderful community, but they only accept you if you heed to their ideology.  The moment you begin to challenge their dogma, then the very same lifestyle that they promoted is what they’ll use against you.  In their mind, it is all about agency; the sex industry is always a choice, which enables them to blame the victim.  Your life will be better if you leave them and become a part of a community that will value you for the beautiful person that you are.

The post Trans Activism and the Promotion of Sex appeared first on Gender Apostates.

[Editorial note from Aoife: I published this article previously on aoifeschatology. Given the recent harassment and hectoring of academics like Drs Dreger and Reilly-Cooper, I am now writing the second part, which I will post soon. Thank you.]

The theory of historical materialism has brought to light some important truths. Humanity is not an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is an antiphysis – in a sense it is against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of nature but rather takes over the control of nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is accomplished objectively in practical action.

–Simone de Beauvoir

I feel a touch sorry for Simone de Beauvoir . . . or at least for the legacy of Beauvoir. The commentariat carousel of plastic-stallion postmodernism has quoted her with gusto, haste, but most of all circular reasoning. She remains often cited, but rarely read.

And by rarely read . . . I should perhaps say hardly read at all.  Quick-draw gender idolators lift a single line from the entire corpus of Le Deuxième Sexe in service to their blown-bubble cause.

And actually by quote — I should just say ripped naively out of context with wilful intellectual disingenuousness by people who haven’t actually read her book. 

So I don’t so much feel sorry for Beauvoir, but rather a feminist indignation at the wanton and willful application of her complex, paradigm shattering philosophy in service to male short-term memory and total textual-deficit in regards to what she actually wrote.

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

“On ne nait pas femme; on le devient.”

A shallow solipsism, as a mealymouthed replacement for Beauvoir’s rigorous phenomenology, loves to throw down such a line of course. Ignoring that the surrounding analysis that frames this passage is written with an emphasis on passivity — “one becomes” rather than “one is becoming” — identarian thrill-seekers instead insist this line initializes an existentialist commandment to just do it!

Be the woman. Redefine realness. You do you.

And once the wicked step-sisters of materiality and dialectics have been dismissed, the glass-slipper becomes a one-size fits all for the  happily ever after terms of self-indulgence.

Obviously, trans activists are thrilled at the possibility of nicking some verse from a foundational feminist to serve as an open access license to lay claim that biology doesn’t really factor in womanhood. The “feeling is first” mentality of womanhood can thus banish the corporeality of the body for an abstract discussion of “the female” as an idiosyncrasy of individual desire. Hocus pocus identity locus.

Trans activists will have you think that Beauvoir really implies here the existential sense of is making; as opposed to what she is actually analysing: female reality is an imposed, limiting criteria of is made.

Indeed, she had a very precise material analysis, very much driven by the asymmetrical categorizing of sex as somatic reality. Beauvoir begins with the skin in  assessing dominance and control of one group over another. Of the fundamental insufficiency by which women are denied reflexivity and are instead shunted into the margins of fragmented references.

“… FOR MAN REPRESENTS BOTH THE POSITIVE AND THE NEUTRAL . . . . WOMAN REPRESENTS ONLY THE NEGATIVE [LE NÉGATIF], DEFINED BY LIMITING CRITERIA, WITHOUT RECIPROCITY.” — SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, LE DEUXIÈME SEXE

“He is the Subject, the Absolute; she is the Other [il est le Subjet, il est l’Absolu : elle est l’Autre].”

And if one actually reads the preceding context of where the “is made” quote is situated, Beauvoir in fact describes a brutal physicalism, not a romantic idealism:

(Beauvoir is a “TERF”, it would seem. But let’s put that demeaning and trite slur aside that reduces decades of feminist writing to a retweetable heckle.)

Beauvoir’s classificatory system was simple and immediate: male humans of the species exercising consistent, insistent, and incessant abuse and dominance over human females as a process of imposition and definition based upon physical embodiment.

It’s not that Beauvoir wished to affirm the immutable reality of biology as destiny; she forcefully accuses masculinism of instituting, as an historical project of authority and subjugation, that woman is an afterthought.

And this project’s blueprint of this according to Beauvoir: “Biological considerations are extremely important. In the history of woman they play a part of the first rank and constitute an essential element in her subjugation” (The Second Sex 65). Beauvoir accuses this unchallenged biological predestinationism built according to males who are controlling the teleology of females: “it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine” (SS 295). To “be made” is not agency in any sense! It is an inflicted degradation of femaleness on females, fashioned according to the essentialness of man and the inessentialness of women.

Thus, the absolute core of feminist practice must begin with the liberation for female humans — not by metaphysical escape into ideas and identities but as a confrontation with material control: “Biology is not enough to give us an answer to the question before us: why is the woman other?”

When Beauvoir says that a woman is made, she is referring to the entirety of a project of gender (of ‘femininity’ as a false flag). According to Beauvoir, gender is that mythological archive of all the misdeeds that males have done to females as a compilation account of cruelty and control. Men have always had the power to define themselves independently of women; however, such a self-sufficiency of dominance demands that women are forcibly redefined relationally to the man to account for their erasure and imperfect othersness. Males set the rules, creates the myth, emboldens the patterns. Females exist as contingents to what those parameters requite. So when Beauvoir describes the “myth” of the woman, she is pointing to gender as an exploitative management protocol for treating the female body as a token of exchange for male libidinal economies. She cites Aristotle, the Bible — the ancient classics — as irrefutable evidenced throughout The Second Sex of this one alienating reality:

. . . it has never been a good outcome when non females define women for females; more precisely, when males stipulate the constitution of femaleness for females — on the contrary, the results have been catastrophic and always will be . . .

Indeed, it’s almost as if people born with testes are assigned the dominant class FOR LIFE and people born with ovaries are assigned the subjugated class FOR LIFE.

Very radical? No, very realistic.

Any serious understanding of Beauvoir, and the fundamental critique of feminist analysis, must begin with the systematic violence of imparity between males and females, not as coincidental side effect but as deliberate historical enactment: “she is simply what man decrees” (SS 15).

What men capriciously delineate.

Pioneer 11 was dropped kicked on a trajectory to leave our solar system in 1973; and the male engineers in command of its mission implanted a message on its gold-anodized membrane.  The laudable possibility of contact inspired these gentlemen to present, in as a presumably universal semiotics as possible, the story of the human race — of people, our planet, and our place upon it. The result was the Pioneer Plaque, as seen below:

HOWDY! I haz penis!

Note the male: foregrounded, penis-bearing, hand raised. And then the woman. Passive, retreating, secondary, following, and … look closely … biologically erased. Her sex. Her physicality. Her partial vanishing before the censoring male gaze.

They deleted her vagina. Her vulva. On purpose.

This is the commandment of masculinism’s ideological empire: deny female reality, blank out femaleness, expunge the content of female self-awaress as a corporeal event of oppression. So really, the Pioneer engineers enacted the ancient patriarchal dictum: man is made in God’s image, and women is made (not born) in the image of man (who is, in the name of the Father, the proxy of God). Just as Beauvoir says that patriarchy does. Pioneer’s deleted vagina … telling off abortion rights groups to STFU for referring to ovaries as female . . . the pattern is obvious to those who suffer because of it.

As Pioneer projects its self-confident asymmetry to the edges of the unknown, the deletable woman is made to inform the universe for those who would encounter its proclamation.

A woman is not born. She is made.

So who makes her?

The patriarchal strategy in which man tells the whole of humanity as an assertion first and foremost fomented in erasure.

The post The Deleted Vagina (Part One) appeared first on Gender Apostates.

I am a transsexual who is critical of transgenderist politics. This puts me at odds with both much of Radical Feminism (which sees me as a womanfaced appropriator of the female form for gendered leverage and sexual gratification) and queer activism (which views me as truscum heretic, a hypocritical denier of trans identities, or strangely a ‘radical feminist’).

I am not a radical feminist, nor a liberal feminist. Or any feminist. However, at least for a time, I was most infamous as a critic of that misogynistic cultural hallucination known quaintly as gender(*) identities, and the deceitful liberal politicking that excuses it called “transgenderism”. I find it utterly disagreeable that trans activism arrogantly rejects outright ‘female bodied’ as a classificatory category of fact. My views on the ethics of sex differentiation have changed dramatically in the last year. I am still learning.

My blog has specifically argued against transgenderists and their women-erasing psychosexual brinksmanship. In my view, ‘gender identity’ and its harmful effects are a political gambit of biological denialism.  Because it is an act of aggression and a denial of consent to demand women accept ‘identity’ as the sole criteria for a queer ideology developed and enforced by males in opposition to female boundaries and dignities.

Not quite following me like? because you’re unfamiliar with genderspeak? Let me put it to you this way:

I’m not signing any political movement that mandates that 14 year old girls use a locker room with boys.

I was born male — that’s just the way it is. Breaks my heart, but it’s an empirically neutral fact. Sex is not gender. Gender is Jenga: the pretence of foundations gradually topples through a lack of critical reasoning and common sense; but even as the words wobble they insist it’s totally stable, right until the end. Gender is so disastrously inept one wonders how its perpetuation is ever present. Gender isn’t an identity: as a form of colossal social power, it’s a vicious, femicidal collision of sexual male domination over female embodiment. The women-hating manipulation of gender motivates pornography, prostitution, and every other way in which women are hurt, degraded, and brutalized in this evil world.

My writing is informed by several gendercrit perspectives. I know that biology is real.

I believe that sex is relevant and immutable: I was born male. I socially navigate my current life as Aoife, a rather nerdy bespectacled transsexual, often found in bookshops, wandering around in my giant skirts, knit cardigans, and nubby scarves. Yet in my day to day life I almost never mention my trans status. I am socially encoded as an approximation of the gender norms that impact us all. I “pass”, as the nomenclature goes, consistently, enough so that I comfortably negotiate my social embodiment as an approximation of womanhood. I have been accused of being an appropriator online, but in my interpersonal life no one seems to notice or care as to my preferred form of presentation. Calling myself a ‘man’ or ‘masculine’ is patently absurd in any epistemological sense, given my current corporeal self . . . the way I am in the world, the way I am for others, the way they are for me. Not so much an identity, as a contradictory beingness.

What can I do but be honest? I can be a transwoman and live my life freely and truthfully without launching a full-frontal assault on the hard won victories of decades of women’s battles for safety, dignity, and protection. I will transition . . . I had a mental health imperative to do so . . . but with truth. I ask for understanding and acceptance from women (adult human females); I don’t demand it of them.

Trans accommodations need not further add to the already calamitous oppression of women and their bodies that our sexualized, misogynist culture already inflicts on them.

Identity politics has appropriated and conflated gender and sex dysmorphia, which are psychiatric conditions resultant from the perverse culture of Gender, in politically exploitative ways. Trans* is an unconscionably diffuse term, a badly incoherent form of identarianism  that’s inflating exponentially. And the refusal to even hold a discussion is suggestively alarming. Is there no allowance for a critical pause? Are emotions our only theatrical affect of activism? Is this just about us? Who’s afraid of the Gender Crit? The toxic absurdity of ideological totalism in transland was cultic. It’s consistently hostile and nasty. And it’s nastiest to women (you know, what we mean when we coyly say “cis people”.)

Because I am not The Woman. No. Not fully In a psychoanalytic or political sense. Yes, in routine conveyance patriarchy is cognizant of me as ‘within the female caste spectrum’. My innermost reflections have shaped the woman I now present; but appearances, impressions, perceptions — do not they ever constitute the ‘woman’ either? There is no woman, but when man enables her to appear. This is the law of Gilead and its theocracy of the subjugated bodies as signs and machines. Since trans is necessarily created as a space of departure and exemption, I can never be the Woman in patriarchy. I can never be the Woman in patriarchy. Patriarchy is material reality as well as imaginative panoptic.. If I were institutionally assessed as woman — why do I have to fight to get my birth certificate changed? This is biopolitics. We are all embodied in the parameters of the biopolitical.

My sex by any facticity will always be male; but it’s hardly so that I am ‘masculine’, and therefore ‘man’ no longer holds coherency as a gendered social category, even as biology retains the chromosomal sense of ‘adult human male’. We don’t really know in any uniform sense what transsexuality is, but the imaginary laws of gender certainly act as trigger. And it’s undeniable that sex dysmorphia exists, a resultant condition of minds, bodies, and the laws of gender in collision. I don’t know the exact causes. But we cannot deny the transsexual phenomenon, though we also need not endorse transgenderism. Crucial to me is how transwomen have the opportunity to demonstrate gender nonconformance, but this must be honestly and critically conducted. (Ie: We are not the same as women born women!) we must be truthful and accurate. Self-awareness must reject fashion. Trans can open up an emergent contextual and historical event that demonstrates a reworking of the caste of gender. Transwomen’s lives can be pro-feminist — but not automatically so and often the very opposite. Men’s rights activism is rife in queer theory’s capitalizing on female bodies as sublime objects of passivity. This is a part of rape culture. And I cannot and will not support doctrinarian identity politics that work against feminism.

Given that transgenderism’s prime directive is to outright ignore women’s requests to respect boundaries — you won’t be surprised to hear that my views are extremely rare amongst trans people. Trans activism is a cult of groupthink, and its vaporous entitlement, backed by male privilege and neoliberal greed, must not bafflegab legitimate feminism into NewSpeak dissonance.

I don’t believe in gender identity. I don’t believe in gender. Gender is not an identity. It’s a nightmare. Realistic discussions about transwomen must acknowledge that we are biologically male and that as a sex caste within the patriarchal schema of gender’s tyranny over the physical body.

Look — I think we all know that there are conversations not being had; because there is a tranz-comitatus controlling (force marching) the discourse.

That’s why I am a proponent in gender abolition, as well as feminism’s argument against queer identity politics and transgenderist men’s rights activism. That’s why I quit teaching in the horrendously neoliberal, queer capitalist university system that is snidely anti-feminist in its sanctimony. As one RadFem blogger put it — and most accurately as I would concur:

“Queer Theory, which has hijacked every Women’s Studies program (as far as I’m aware) in the U.S., is nothing but Deconstructionist Literary Theory applied to human beings – the “science” of “because I say so.” 

Because I am a transwoman, and I am received as such. But that requires more than conjecture. And many will say I am not a woman. To me, the question is not what ‘is’ or ‘is not a woman’, but ‘how does a woman become’? Material feminism informs my analysis, not trans activism.

Dear fellow transwomen: threatening, cajoling, badgering, and begging women to validate us won’t erase dysphoria. Women aren’t here to justify us. Feminism does not exist to centre us, cater to our rare situation, and to appease our distraught self-perceptions …

I couldn’t do it anymore. I just could no longer put bad faith in ‘gender identity’ and ‘always was’ narratives. I refused to substitute bad faith fictions for decades of gender-based grief.

Feminism, and its exact, bottomline analysis of misogyny, demonstrated to me that sexism and gender were inseparable, since they were identical.

If pausing to question is trans critical, then let’s be critical. In amazes me how so many devoutly sceptical thinkers will treat gender identity as a sacrosanct infallible. In my personal experience, transsexuality was a medical condition, and that’s a very complex topic. It’s a topic of body, phenomenology, language, patriarchy, and the limits of narrative subjectivity. Others describe it differently. But for me the sense of who I ‘always’ was is far more multivalent than “always was”. The trans phenomenon can be a challenge to patriarchy’s conceptual ordering of masculine and feminine, as trans ‘gender identities’ are never actualized as ‘wo/manhood’ in their system. Or their codes. I am not a woman because patriarchial prescriptions always set the impermeable limit. Trans is a process, not an identity, in my view. My own personal assertive feelings are those, mine. I seek recognition of them as an ethical perspective.

My analysis holds that gender is inherently a caste structure, of the mind, of the mind-in-body, in the minded body in society. I would like to see the absolute abolition of gender as symbolic order. But as a psychoanalytic researcher I know it’s complex, stratified, and pervasive. I am shedding neo-liberal hallucinations about ‘free choice’. And I suppose it’s true enough to say that — for me — being trans isn’t exactly a life situation I would have deliberately selected. (My family, who no longer speak with me, no doubt wish I hadn’t transitioned.) Yet without this set of very dynamic influences of experience, I wouldn’t be who I am now under the sign of the Feminine in the zodiac machine of masculinism. And I love myself: as contradictory result of a gendered external world and an intense private suffering from sex dysmorphia. I am alive, and in love. And that love, as an ethic of self-care, is not predicated upon commanded validation. Gender is symptom, not identity. It takes on ‘identity’ when imagined into relational being by the consuming subject as a sign-symptom in the machine. Imagine there is no Woman. You be you. I’ll be me. “To become conscious of a being is then always for that being to be grasped across an ideality and on the basis of a said” (Lévinas). Yes, I do wish I were “AFAB”; yet my variation of womanhood is not rendered immediately equivalent to all others by virtue of my self-awareness or “feeling”.

Gender is a non-consensual hallucination for the fears of the poisoned mind:

“Each sex has a relation to madness. Every desire has a relation to madness. But it would seem that one desire has been taken as wisdom, moderation, truth, leaving to the other sex the weight of a madness that cannot be acknowledged or accommodated.”
― Luce Irigaray

Whatever else happens … This is my existence as well as “analysis”. Because I am a transwoman who can never be Woman. Yet I live and write, accutely aware that every act is a controversial construction — the pragmatics of survival, the politics of contempt.
—————————————————————————————————–

Successfully annoying both sides of the gender divide on Reddit: 

The post On Living and Surviving as a Controversial Construction appeared first on Gender Apostates.

There’s a lot of understandable confusion out there regarding what “gender crit” (gender critical) means, so here’s a concise chart to which you can refer as needed – also available as a one page PDF here.

PATRIARCHY: enforces gender stereotypes to keep women dependent on men,
thus ensuring men’s access to women’s bodies & labor

*No, a hysterectomy does not render a woman no longer a woman. We know humans are bipedal mammals and we don’t think amputees lose their humanity. Get a grip.

FEMINISM: gender recognized as harmful social construct and abolished

TRANSGENDER IDENTITY POLITICS: patriarchal gender stereotypes determine sex (basic reproductive biology erased)*

*I am not going into “non-binary” here. Feel free to go down that rabbit hole on Tumblr, along with otherkin etc.

**Some AFTAs claim they do not like “feminine” things, as well as not wishing to undergo physical transition, in which case one must ask why they so vociferously claim to be women – the answer is, of course, to access (and dominate) women’s spaces, language and politics. As ever, more evidence and analysis at thenewbacklash.blogspot.com.

The post Gender Crit Cheat Sheet appeared first on Gender Apostates.

Assigned Male is a propaganda cartoon that puts genderist nonsense into the mouth of a little “trans girl.” Because I take issue with this propaganda, I will be accused of “hating trans people.”

I do not hate transsexual people. I don’t hate any group of people suffering from a rare medical condition. There are several transsexual people – many writing here, in fact – who have become very dear to me. I think sex dysmorphia is an understandable though heartbreaking result of the gender straightjacket. Furthermore, I do not oppose medical transition for adults who suffer from sex dysmorphia – not that my opinion would sway the medical-pharmaceutical complex in any way.

But I do hate that non-dysmorphic males are using transsexual people as their human shields. I furthermore hate that so many so-called Leftists are more interested in using transsexual people as their disgust-tolerance merit badges than in doing any real power analysis of gender and male violence. And I especially hate that we are now seeing gender non-conforming children being referred to (*shiver*) gender clinics. Instead of letting go of the pervasive gender stereotypes that cause people to feel alien in their own bodies, we are now actively inducing sex dysmorphia in our kids, and calling that progressive.

Hey Leftists, you know how we don’t “support our troops” by sending them into wars that only kill innocents and line the pockets of war profiteers? Well, we don’t support transsexual people by spreading their suffering to the next generation and lining the pockets of medical/pharmaceutical profiteers.

With all that said, my take on Assigned Male Fail:

Their propaganda:

My response:

Their propaganda:

My response:

Their propaganda:

My response:

I am no artist, but my final word (graphic, rather) on the matter:

The post Assigned Fail appeared first on Gender Apostates.

Imagine being unable to describe yourself, unable to give voice to your thoughts, your sense of being. Imagine being told your body is wrong, that you are a freak for simply describing your reality. Though it may sound as if I’m describing the cruel world transpeople face, I am not. This is the reality women now enjoy. This is the tyranny of ‘cis.’ I’ve thought a great deal about this label of late.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but I abhor its use. As a transwoman, I find it unnecessary to further distinguish others from myself.  “Woman” works just fine.  I am a transwoman, they are women. Besides, most women do not wish to label themselves ‘cis.’ Who am I to insist they should? Recently, I have taken to re-reading Simone De Beauvoir’s feminist classic ‘The Second Sex’. On this particular read through, the following passage leapt out at me:

No subject posits itself spontaneously and at once as the inessential from the outset; it is not the Other who, defining itself as Other, defines the One; the Other is posited as Other by the One positing itself as One.

Suddenly the insidiousness of the cis label became readily apparent.  I felt it must be so obvious, to everyone, and maybe it is.  I am always willing to confess my own ignorance and blinkered thinking. So forgive the naivety and potential obliviousness. Sometimes you hear a song a thousand times before truly hearing it for the first time.

In ‘The Second Sex’, De Beauvoir talks at length about the oppositional nature of minority classes. For example, blacks possess an alterity to whites.  Homosexual people possess an alterity to heterosexual people, etc. As such they can be said to be “Others” in relation to the Normative or ruling class. Another word for the ruling class would be the “One.”  In the quote above De Beauvoir posits that no person, no group considers itself the unnecessary, secondary, or inessential. They do not define themselves as the Other.  It is only the ruling class who can name the oppressed class Other. They do this when they proclaim themselves “normal.” When they are the default, everything oppositional to them is othered.

So what about trans people who insist upon the use of ‘cis’ for non-trans people?  It’s a special case, fascinating in the attempted inversion of oppression.  Transwomen frame themselves as the default. Though they wrap themselves in the mantle of victimization and oppression, they rely on their male privilege to push a narrative which flips the normative. Alterity would suggest that trans and cis are simply oppositional descriptive terms. As a minority, transwomen should lack the power to push a cis label onto anyone. Remember, only the One, the default, can name the Other.  Transwomen are not used to being the other.  They are uncomfortable being the minority.  Male privilege and entitlement has taught them the world is their’s for the taking.  ‘Cis’ is a way of claiming the default. As males, they retain the power of naming.  Not only will they define what a woman is, but they police who is allowed to call themselves woman. Transwomen have flipped the narrative. The Other is defining the One in hopes of becoming the One.

Perhaps things are still unclear.  De Beauvoir is writing from a different time, with different societal norms. At no point does De Beauvoir mention transgenderism or transsexuality. Such things simply didn’t exist. She speaks of men and women.  She speaks of power and oppression. What we have today is no different, though the shadings may be different. To observe the power dynamics, it is important we look at how ‘cis’ is used today.

Transgerdist advocates will claim this internet meme is nothing more than a post-punk metaphoric neologism for the destruction of gender.  I could get behind that, but it isn’t.  The transgenderist movement does not wish to abolish gender, they strive to enshrine it. The transwomen who adopt this worldview, who wrap themselves in this flag of “trans pride” view themselves as our evolutionary betters.  They are are the new mutants, the X-Men.  They are the next stage in human development. They hold the non-trans world, 99% of the population, in contempt. They believe themselves central to all concerns. Their specialness must be acknowledged, except when it shouldn’t be, or is inconvenient. (Non-Binary has its privileges.) They proclaim that the suffering they endure, the hate and abuse heaped upon them, often through language alone, is far greater than any other people face. The threat of actual physical violence, predominately experienced by trans women of color, and almost universally by women is almost irrelevant, except as an endless source of mana to appropriate..

Twitter is hardly ground zero for the misogynistic movement that is ‘cissexim’ but it’s a good source of examples. This is but the tip of the iceberg. The Orwellian use of ‘cis’ would be astonishing, if it were new, but naming women is an age old trick. Transgenderists are simply following the tricks of their fathers.  Following transgenderist logic, Transwomen are women.  Female people are “ciswomen.” Therefore, the only “women” who have the right to call themselves women are transwomen. Through these language games transwomen further the othering of women. They define womanhood, just as men have done for centuries before them. It is not the place of transwomen, or men, to define what woman is.

Transpeople and their allies need to stop using the term ‘cis.’  As transpeople are we so delicate, are we so fragile that we cannot handle truth?  Must we behave like MRAs and other misogynists who seek to silence women? Of course we don’t. We’re strong. It takes strength to transition and challenge gender norms, but we are not challenging anything if our “radical actions” maintain, and reinforce, the patriarchy. Adopting language that silences women, denies them their biological reality, and contributes to their othering is the action of men.   We could be in the vanguard challenging gender, gender roles, and what it means to be men.  Instead we cower, fearful of language, of hurt feelings, of the truths and the awkwardness which is central to our condition.

I will never refer to any non-trans person as ‘cis.’  I will not demand anyone refer to themselves as “cis.” “Cis” is not an identity.  It is not the opposite of trans.  It is an Orwellian silencing tactic.  It is male entitlement wrapped in a frock. If someone refers to you as ‘cis,’ if someone insists you label yourself as such, think about what they are asking. Think about how they are trying to define you.  You do not have to bear a label, because transwomen are uncomfortable with themselves. You do not have to wear an identity someone else has handed you.

Dearest allies, by using ‘cis’ you are not helping the trans community, you’re enabling it.  You are not being a good ally, a feminist, or a radical.  We are not simply women and men  We are transwomen, and transmen. We are male and female. We are strong enough to embrace this, help us to do so. Be honest about what we are, speak the truth. We’ll all be better off for it.

The post ‘Cissexism’ and You appeared first on Gender Apostates.

(from aoife)

“The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project”.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Following from the peripheries as I have on recent efforts to eliminate sex-specific protections for female pupils in the Edmonton school system — I’ve seen the liberal cadres line up to dole out the platitudes.

The usual suspects, as your man said: prominent journalists pushing monocular views on transgenderism; well-paid professors (usually male), flush with public funds and organizing hostile media scrums; and, princesses of the lot, the transwomen “mum of the year” looking to cash-in their cultural capital while the good ship TS Caitlyn still has some steam left.

What I have not heard from any of these individuals — who collectively have decades worth of education and hundreds of thousands of dollars in income — is a semblance of sensitivity as to why teenage girls would not wish to undress before PE Lesson in front of teenage boys.

Indeed, not a single thought in any of the dozens of op-eds or radio interviews as to how the conflation of male and female spaces has disastrous consequences for female bodies, as the University of Toronto recently discovered in their progressive “bathroom policy“.

As always, girls matter last.

It’s far easier to promote a cheap fabula of vulnerable mermaid (the male transgirl) against the hobgoblins of denial, whether it be witch feminists or ogre Catholics . . . whoever is closest when there’s a target required. Identity über alles

In all of this remixed kerfuffle of “trans girls are girls” and “trans girls were female and are always female” . . . I had to ask them. . . what or who do you think a girl is? or female?

It’s seems a fairly simple question. Surely a professional expert in sexuality studies, Dr Kristopher Wells, could answer. He’s a professor, policy engineer, creative opinion designer, and all around online dragoon on behalf of transwomen — well, the right kind of transwomen.

Sir — I enquired — from your PhD expertise . . . how would you define female? I asked, since he’s so intent on eliminating female-specific space from educational settings. He balked. So I pressed again … how does a male child “identify” as female? What does that entail?

He promptly blocked me henceforth. “Vulnerable youth” doesn’t include females, of course.

I’m not a university pundit; but I’m fairly certain the meaning of “female” isn’t an empty, theoretical debate.

So, in my ongoing quest, I sought out prominent journalist Paula Simons, who believes adamantly that “gender is between your ears”.  What, or who, is a female? She refused, and requested I provide a definition first. Who do I think a girl is?

Sure. “Young female human,” I answered, perhaps pithily, but that’s really what girl means. Female? Sex class of humans capable of childbirth. (By the way, recognizing qualitative conditions does not reduce a subject to said conditions — that is what Beauvoir was arguing against).

“Your turn,” I requested.

Simons refused. Would. Not. Do It. Not a word.

So I turned to Catholic educational trustee, Patricia Grell, who I thought might at least offer a quip or two from the Baltimore Catechism. And the response? Like a deflated football kicked into touch. Grell is at the vanguard of regulating “sex” not as a physical state, but a mental “intuition” — and so I asked her how such a policy might impact actual girls (remember them? the subservient class to gender non-conforming males?) :

Does it not worry anyone — someone out there — that all of these cultural elites . . . the professors, journalists, educators, and administrators who create public policy . . . that all of them refused to explain what they mean by the word “female”? Grell and company would have girls displaced from sport teams, scholarships, field trips, and so forth, to yield to males who ‘identify’ as female.

In this context, “identifying” as female is simply a rhetorical act, an announcement: a male declaring, de facto, “I feel female.”

I’d make it a quip here … but I can’t. This is very serious. There is a female-erasing agenda being driven, like the golden spike, into the hard-won protections women fought for decades to attain . . . in realising the basic feminist fact that sexism is based on sex.

This is an agenda that dare not speak its own name.

Dr Dana Jennett Bevan is a transsexual who champions the rights of male transvestites accessing female spaces while ‘en femme’. A female is all in the clothes, and the right attitude, apparently.

She was, however, the only person willing to define at least one term … no, not female … no, not girl … those words don’t matter  . . . but she was all chips in for asserting transgender:

Dr Bevan claims, via combox,
“Being transgender means that one behaves in a gender behavior category which is incongrent with the gender behavior category assigned at birth based on sex”.

Now the biological denialism becomes exposed.

Quite frankly, I’m aghast that people with advanced degrees keep pushing these house of cards of tautologies — indeed, not only pushing them, but trying to legislate them as universal fact. “Biological sex” is a myth, but phantom FemmeSelf within is transcendental truth.

These are the same parents claiming their sons expressed a female “gender identity” at eighteen months of age . . . by which I think they mean he grabbed a pink blankie. There is, of course, a new form of beauty pageant emerging — the transed male — with eager parents building their own El Dorado of GoFundMe dubloons through exposure. (More on this unsettling development in another post.)

It’s nonsense: “gender behaviour category”. Do people take this seriously?

Is every boy who picks up a doll and likes to wear skirts transgender?

“Gender behaviour” is entirely a construct of expectations, and “non trans” people flout the expectations of gender every single day. Ask a female astronaut who doesn’t want to have children about “gender behaviour” and not being “congruent” with “assigned” schematics of femininity.

They claim I am unable to distinguish sex and gender: rather, I am critiquing their very loose application of the terms. Their lack of political accountability as to how gender is socially constructed (hello patriarchy) is pure idealism.

Sex is material facticity, corporeal embodiment. We are a sexually dimorphic species, organized according to male/female reproductive capacities. “Gender identity” is entirely a late 20th century invention, based upon codification of sex stereotypes prescribed and mapped upon those bodies. Feminine and masculine are political, social formations. Feminism has pointed this out for decades. Gender is not a binary: it’s a hierarchy. They describe a ‘masculine category’, yet the elites seem to believe such appears ex nihilo out of the sky, rather than a subject-formation process that is *externally produced*. There is no such thing as an a priori gender identity: “a woman . . . is made.” We are socialized by gender.

What exactly do they think gender is?

From all I can tell it means “sex stereotypes enforced and ascribed according to expectations of bodies.”

Most lesbians I know report feeling incredible dis-ease with their corporeal embodiment, especially as teenagers, under the regime of ‘femininity’. Gender hurts. Transwomen don’t have a monopoly on feeling alienated by the gendering of bodies. Thus we simply cannot promote the notion of ‘gender identity’ as anything more than personality traits that respond with anxiety, excitement, and discomfort when encountering the rules of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ and who are allowed to possess these traits. Hence why liberals  are much happier to see a ‘trans girl’ than a gender non conforming boy. Truth is: most kids grow out of gender dysphoria. This is the clinical consensus: *most kids who claim to be ‘transgender’ grow out of it.* In fact, most of them become perfectly happy homosexual adults. Thus, they are advocating conversion therapy by rushing gender creative kids into normative models of “you must really be a girl because you like feminine things”.

As for the ‘pathologization’ of transsexuality — this is how we approach and treat psychical situations of discomfort. We pathologize all kinds of situations in order to develop paradigms of treatment and care. We are stigmatizing the seeking of mental health care by saying, more or less, “hey trans people aren’t like them SICKOS over there who need therapy.” Spend some time with actual trans people: concurrent “mental unwellness” conditions are *rampant*, and it’s not enough to place the blame that there still exists, somehow, a basic understanding of physical anthropology: “Transphobia arises from knowing how babies are made, and that penises are male!”

We do know a penis is the male sex organ, yes? A penis that identifies as female or feminine does not convert the embodied state of the subject.

Quite frankly, if one denies the material facticity of sex, and believe that ‘female’ is simply a mental phenomenon … you’re a penis rights activist through the erasure of female-specific realities.

‘Female’ isn’t a feeling; it’s embodiment.

‘Gender’ isn’t an identity; it’s ideology.

The post The Elite Educators who Won’t Define Female appeared first on Gender Apostates.

By Jaqueline Sephora Andrews

I have been accused of being a token for white feminism.  I have even been labeled, by some, Uncle Tom, Uncle Ruckus; I have been called a “kneegrow sellout” for speaking out against Fallon Fox fighting women and Monica Roberts bullying of women.  Let’s forget that my analysis is based in Black Feminist Thought, and it is inspired by Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Audre Lorde and other black feminists.  Because I don’t give in to trans activists’ attacks on women, I am a “sell out,” a “quisling” and these “evil” women are my “TERF masters.”  Women are accused of being racist for being radical feminists, but who are the real racists?  If you look deep within the trans political movement, then you’ll find that it is a movement based in white supremacy.

The trans political movement hides its racism by appropriating the struggles of black people and projecting their racism on to “white feminists.”  Trans activists will say #translivesmatter, however, the social media focus is disproportionately on trans lives; there is no need for a special hash tag.  This appears to be an attempt at appropriation, with trans activists trying to link the oppression of black people to the “oppression” of trans individuals.  Mainstream trans activists try to strip us of the language we use to shed light on our oppression; as soon as society begins to pay attention, here comes white males in disguise, switching the focus to themselves.  This is the height of white supremacy.  There’s the hash tag, #flyingwhiletrans, which is another attempt to link to our oppression, as we have talked about the dangers of walking/driving while black.

Attention transwomen!  You are not oppressed.  Being made fun of for wearing dresses and heels is not oppression.  The majority of transwomen are privileged white males.  It is transwomen of color who are being murdered by homophobic men who don’t know how to deal with their own attractions for men.  The transwomen murdered are almost always poor and/or in prostitution; Rather than focus on this, trans activists want to keep the focus on white males. Many are too lost in white supremacy to realize the attempts of trans activists to replace our struggle with their “history.”  Let’s no longer talk about the history and the real oppression of black people; let’s focus on being inclusive of transwomen, so we don’t have to face the horror of being accused of practicing “white feminism.”

Yes, you’ve heard correct…  I was informed by a white man that white feminism is “feminism that doesn’t include transwomen,” making it possible for a black woman to also be referred to as a “white feminist.”  Transwomen are now the “victims” and black women are the “oppressors.”  How could this be?  White males have sold images which I call “repackaged slavery,” and many black people have fallen for it.  I am called an “Uncle Tom” because I don’t fit this scripted image.  Maybe, slavery was never really abolished.  It was on the surface, but has seeped into the deep levels of the heart and mind.  This is evident in the worship of trans politics, and their image of who we are as black people.  Trans politics allows for white men to have control over your mind; they can’t keep you in chains, but they can control you through your mind.  Once they control  your mind, they can force you to worship at their feet, believing that it is your choice.

After they control your mind, they aim to control  your heart.  Once they have your heart, they’ll have you saying that “cissexism is even worse” than a man who “stores 21 pieces of female genitalia in his freezer.”  This is an example of the brainwashing of trans allies.  To many white males, black people are considered ignorant.  White men feel as though we need to lead us, and they found one they could exploit.  You may believe that you are a wonderful ally, but they are mocking your lack of critical thought.  You are what they have been saying about our people for 450 years.

In white supremacy, there is Monica Roberts who also wrote a hate piece because I confronted her about trying to bully Ronda Rousey into fighting Fallon Fox.  Monica Roberts then wrote about me that, “If you wanted my attention, you self hating rhymes with itch, now your cookie chomping sellout ass has got it, sir,” and then, “I’m going WMMA on your clueless Uncle Ruckus wannabe behind.”  Monica Roberts is playing the role that trans activists want her to play.  She is the “n****r for them.  The only way to abolish white supremacy is to completely reject the image that they have for us.

White Supremacy is our culture; we have to acknowledge it’s existence, so we can completely abolish it.  If you fail to acknowledge that it’s there, then you will live within its confines.  The failure to acknowledge white supremacy within trans activism has allowed it to reign supreme, making the trans political movement a white supremacist movement.  It is with love that I tell you, as a black person, you are not a slave.  Please reject white males who appropriate our struggle, even if they “identify” as women.

The post A Movement Based in White Supremacy appeared first on Gender Apostates.

This was originally posted on ‘Transavant‘ and is reproduced with permission.

“Trans women are women” is a lie that is as dangerous to transwomen as it is to women

When I grew up in the seventies and eighties in the north of England, transgender wasn’t a thing. Men were men, and women were women. Heteronormativity was king. In fact it wasn’t just king, it was everything. It didn’t even need a name back then.

Where I grew up, nobody was gay. Faggots, puffters, bum-boys, up-hill gardeners, queers, trannies, gender-benders, dykes, lesbos and their ilk would not have been welcome or tolerated.

These things were shameful. Unacceptable. Wrong. Unnatural.

I’d seen cross dressing on the TV. I’d seen “that perverted faggot” Danny La Rue. I’d seen Kenny Everett’s ‘hilarious’ bearded lady ‘Cupid Stunt’. Being a ‘tranny’ was not a good thing. It was not something I wanted to be. It was something to hide and deny. I lived in fear. I was afraid. I was scared to be a tranny. Society had instilled in me a deep-rooted, intense internalised transphobia.

I lived with this for many years. I lived with opposing forces that tried to tear me apart. On one hand I needed to feel accepted by society. I had to be a ‘man’. I had to appear to meet society’s strict rules of what it is to be a man. On the other hand, I despised male company and pretty much everything it meant to be a man. Why did men have to be strong, authoritative, have ‘presence’ and treat women as sex objects and domestic servants? Why was I told these things? Why did my managers coach me to be ‘more manly’? Because this was what was required to be successful as a man in society.

When I asked questions about the impacts of commercial decisions on the lives of real people I was quickly cut down as being either a “lefty” or for being “such a girl”. So my need to fit in and be accepted, and more importantly, to pay the bills, became the dominant force.

I complied. I adopted a persona. I learnt from my mentors. But I still despised it. I was terrified of exposing my real personality so to protect myself I put up invisible walls. I censored my interactions with others. I found myself unable to interact in a personal or intimate way.

People say life begins at forty. It seems like this is a time when many of us find ourselves able to rediscover ourselves. To become more self-aware. To see the distinction between what society has made us and who we really are. I was about 38 when I started to do this.

The world had changed a lot in those 25 years. Cupid Stunt and La Rue were figures from a bygone age. Gay pride was so big it had become a commercial venture. My god, we even have Internet! People who were formerly isolated could find each other and share experiences.

Guilt and shame were being replaced with compassion and support.

I found online forums where I learnt that “trans women are women”. That we have always been women. We have women’s brains in men’s bodies. Of course! This was it! It made perfect sense. In fact my whole life suddenly started to make sense. It explained why I could never fit in with men. Why I always felt more comfortable in the presence of women. Why I’d always been acutely aware of the misogyny of so many men. Why I preferred women’s clothes. It made complete sense that for some unchosen, unavoidable reason my brain was more female than male.

This would mean it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t need to be ashamed!

I became aware of the concept of transition. Of the things I could do to attempt to eliminate the masculinity I had grown to despise. Hair removal. Hormones. Surgery. These thoughts totally overwhelmed me. They consumed me and debilitated me. I was suffering from the sex dysphoria I had read about.

But I had responsibilities and I desperately needed not to be this. I fought it, and fought it, and wanted it to go away. I NEEDED it to go away. But it doesn’t go away. It never does. It has always been part of me. After a couple of years I became deeply depressed and couldn’t fight any more. I needed professional help.

This was when I encountered the medical profession. I saw an NHS psychosexual counsellor. I was told that the person she saw in front of her (and I presented in male attire) did not seem like a man. She saw a woman. I felt so validated. This was a healthcare professional who sees people with gender issues all the time. She confirmed that I’m a woman. I was so relieved.

I had lots of counselling and this was aimed at repairing my self-loathing that I had developed. It was to keep me safe. I learnt that there was nothing wrong with me. I did not need to feel shame. I should be proud of who I am. That if anyone had a problem with that, it was their problem not mine. This probably saved my life.

And so I began the process of transition. A difficult decision which I still believe was the least bad option for everyone involved.

So I was set up to face the world. I’m a woman born in the wrong body if anybody doesn’t like that it’s because of their own issues. I started to meet other transsexuals through support groups. It seemed the world was a tough place, full of bigots and transphobes. Full of people who thought that those of us who looked, sounded and acted like males were not proper women. It became so important to pass. The more we looked, sounded and acted like woman the less likely we were to get “violently misgendered” by the public. I heard tales of transwomen being called “guys” and the transwomen involved being deeply hurt by this. My friends were being hurt all of the time and this took an enormous toll on their validity and their ability to see themselves as worthy members of society. It seemed that those people closest, wives, partners and parents found it the hardest to accept that the person they knew is actually a woman. Being told you’re a man by the people you love hurts the most.

Some people, who were known as “TERFs” thought it didn’t matter how much we pass or integrate, it doesn’t make us women. Despite what we’d been told by medical professionals. Despite what it said in official NHS literature. Despite what is said by every trans support group out there. It’s so easy to see why the words “transwomen are not women” are so hurtful and triggering. They cut at the very foundations of everything that has helped to build a level of self-worth and to finally deal with the shame.

I couldn’t understand it. Why would these so called TERFs do this? Why would they think it’s OK to be so hurtful? So, I engaged with these women who think that transwomen aren’t women. I was ready to expect the worst.

I was shocked by what I found. I found some people who would instantly shut me down, call me a man and part of the oppressor class and block me.

But I was also shocked by the number of intelligent and compassionate women who were being labelled TERFs and receiving abuse after abuse from people claiming the protection of the transgender umbrella. What on earth was happening here?

And so I engaged, and challenged others, and challenged my own beliefs. I listened to the women who were being abused. I listened with open ears and an open heart. And, slowly, I started to understand, what gender is. We live in a society where we are all constrained by gender.

The rules for what men are allowed to be and what women are allowed to be are reinforced from birth.

These behaviours are rewarded from an early age at home, in school, in what we see all around us on TV, in the shops and so on. Behaviours from the wrong side of this are punished.

To many this is silent, unseen, occult even. Many are not even aware that this is exacerbated by socialisation and truly believe that this is the true natural order of things. I don’t know, but I suspect that even without socialisation there would be innate differences between the distribution curves of some of these traits in the male and female populations. But our socialisation restricts those of us whose traits deviate from the norm for our sex.

So, what does it mean to identify as a woman? I think for many of us it is that the personality traits that we identify with are on the wrong side of the line. They are the ones that we associate with being female. So this further supports our belief that we are actually female.

But this is a lie, it’s a vicious lie that is as dangerous for transwomen as it is for women. It’s a lie that sets us up to be triggered every time we are called he, or “guys” or somebody dares to suggest that we have male biology. Even a cursory glance from a stranger can cut to our very core. The very foundations of our self-worth are fragile.

You see, males don’t naturally all fit on the right hand side of the line, and females don’t naturally fit on the left hand side of the line. We are all unique valuable human beings. We aren’t valid because we are women so that makes it OK to be who we are. We are valid and worthy and perfect however we are. Our personality, our choices, our empathies and our identities are worthy even if they are on the wrong side of the line. The line is made up. It’s not the natural order. Men can be anything. Women can be anything.

I’ve come to regard myself as a gender non-conforming male. My foundations are solid. I’m able to have honest, open respectful conversation and debate about things that are important without taking things as a personal assault on my validity.

I don’t claim to be right. I see things through the filter of my experience. But I desperately want the world to be a better place. I want transwomen, or gender non-conforming males to be happy. To have solid self-worth and self-love. I want women to be respected and listened to. I want women, and men to be free to be whoever they want. There is no need to think transwomen are women for this to be true.

I have found peace and I wish that on others.

The post “Trans women are women” is a lie appeared first on Gender Apostates.

I have written a very detailed blog about transgender identity politics, which is meant to be read from page 1 through page 16, located here: thenewbacklash.blogspot.com. Blog stats tell me not many people get to the end, so I am taking the liberty of posting page 15, which is about the male supremacy of the Left, here:

For AFTAs, the benefit of transgender identity politics is the ability to perform their fetish for women’s subjugation in public, while still exercising their male privilege by forcing women to comply. They use the category “woman” as a kind of S&M Barbie vacation.

However, AFTAs are a very small group of people. We’re much better served by looking at the benefits of transgender identity politics for the much larger group of people who, you know, run the Left: men.

Transgender identity politics A) work to make male privilege unnameable, while simultaneously B) framing the male violence that props up male supremacy as inevitable, which C) allows the men of the Left to get their blatant sexism on, all in the name of “trans inclusion” (which really just means the inclusion and prioritization of be-penised people in all female spaces!)

A. Making male privilege unnameable

The necessary flipside of making femaleness and female oppression unspeakable is the inability to name male people, and talk about male-specific privilege.

Misogynists on the Left use transwomen as human shields against feminists who insist sex-based socialization matters – and when that doesn’t work, they also like to point at the men of the conservative Right, as if that is women’s only other option – suck all the Left Wing cock or get back in the Right Wing kitchen.

Misogynists on the Left spend all this time pointing their fingers at other people, be they human shields or bogeymen, because they’re desperate to take any critical focus off men.

Screw that. We’re gonna talk about the social category “man.”

~~~

AFTAs and their allies love to accuse feminists of being “obsessed with genitals,” because we point out that people born with penises are male and male people have male privilege:

This is as ridiculous as accusing anti-racism activists of being obsessed with skin color.

Just where exactly do they think male privilege attaches?

Let’s conduct a brief thought exercise. We’ll use SPH and OPH (sperm-producing humans and ova-producing humans) instead of the now-objectionable terms “men” and “women”. You can attempt to derail via the tiny percentage of people born intersex, or with cries of sensitivity for the infertile—it does not matter, because this statement still stands:

SPH control the world. Not just the “global south.” Everywhere.

Politics, law, law enforcement, commerce, media, medicine, science, technology, even the arts … all dominated by SPH. Why?

Do world leaders use their penises to perform diplomacy? Maybe they use their penises as microphones when making important speeches? Do lawmakers sign bills with their penises? Do police actually use their penises as guns? Are businessmen joining important conference calls via the Bluetooth in their penises? Maybe bankers discuss pie charts using their combination penis/laser pointers. Do doctors perform surgery with their penis-scalpels? Are artists painting with their penis-brushes? Et penis cetera?

No? Yet all these fields are dominated by people-with-penises. I see three possible explanations:

1) The vast majority of people who identify themselves and are identified by others as talented in these fields just *happened* to be born with penises. This is all just a big, centuries-long coinkydink.

2) SPH are naturally superior to OPH in all these fields. (If this is your opinion, kindly fuck off out of feminism.)

3) SPH have been unfairly privileged and OPH have been oppressed (sane people call this sexism,) in which case we can all stop pretending genitalia doesn’t matter.

~~~

People born with penises are raised by their families and encouraged via media, merchandisers, schools, workplaces, governments and the general public to think of themselves as both [superior to] and [entitled to the servitude of] people born without penises (which is to say, with ovaries+uteruses+vaginas+clitorises, as there’s not actually an endless sucking void betwixt our legs.)

We’re disallowed from discussing this fact so nakedly because naked male genitalia is… hilariously stupid, as far as a symbol of superiority goes:

Yes, through millennia of rape men have made the phallus a symbol of sexual violence – but it is only via men’s lifetimes of sex-based social entitlement and women’s lifetimes of sex-based social subjugation that rape can stand as a (for all intents and purposes, accepted) cultural practice. The absurd banality that “penises don’t rape people” is meaningless precisely because people born with penises are for that reason alone raised to consider themselves entitled to female bodies. It is therefore no wonder they so often use those penises as weapons against those female bodies. And it is therefore unthinkable that women should ever act like the possession of a penis doesn’t really matter.

My favorite male-genitalia-related story: I was dating a fella, and when we would rassle, he would say “Darling, do you really think you could stop me?” The first time he said this, my blood ran cold. I warned him, “Don’t ever say that to me again.” The second time he said it, I responded, “Fair warning: you may have superior upper body strength, but your genitals are on the outside. Don’t make me prove I can stop you.” The third time he uttered that vile, threatening phrase, I brought my knee up and lightly tapped his balls. He fell to the ground and rolled around in pain. It was the most pleasure his crotch ever gave me.

I do NOT tell this story to shame any woman who was not able to utilize this technique to escape sexual assault, though some opportunistic victim-blamers may take it that way. I tell this story because it is important to note that this man, a self-identified Leftist who supposedly cared about me, felt such impunity in “playfully” threatening me, even after repeated warnings. It *never* occurred to him that I would *ever* harm his magical, sacred male parts.

Just as male supremacists, ever experts at reversals, would have us associate shame and weakness with the female organs that CREATE HUMAN LIFE, they would also have us associate male organs, frightfully vulnerable as they are, with unassailable power. And apparently these days, unnameable power. Do not say p—s. P—s is whatever p—s says. Do not look behind the curtain/zipper. DO NOT SAY VOLDEMORT’S NAME.

I will bet you one million dollars these people have penises:

It should not be a shock that we end up here:

Or here:

You can pomobate (that’s short for postmodern intellectual masturbation, obvs) about the words “woman” and “man” all you want; whenever [a person born into a body with a reproductive system meant to produce sperm] tells [a person born into a body with a reproductive system meant to produce ova] that [being born into a body with a reproductive system meant to produce sperm] entitles him to dominate her – whether via economic control, or threats of violence, or the emptying of her language, including her right to say “no,” (just for examples) – he is being an obnoxiously entitled sexist pig. And he is obnoxiously entitled because he was socialized to be that way, because of the genitalia with which he was born.

And that is as inescapably true as it is inescapably absurd.

The human penis is:

1) The MALE organ of sex and peeing.

2) Out of context, rather unimpressive (sorry not sorry).

3) In context:

1. A) A lifelong lightning rod of unearned (and most often, unexamined) privilege, and
2. B) A universal marker of membership in a violently oppressive class.

The good news, women, is that every time you stubbornly insist on seeing, naming and analyzing male privilege, you are metaphorically punching patriarchy right in the dick.

B. Framing male violence as inevitable

If gender is just “how you feel inside,” and if that feeling is totally self-defined and above critique, then what can we do about men who “feel” entitled to maintain dominance through violence? After all, if gender identity is innate, so is masculinity– which is simply the “gender identity” ascribed to “cis” men. And when masculinity is viewed as innate rather than socially constructed and validated, male violence is viewed as inevitable and is therefore always-already excused. And if male violence is always-already excused, we will never dismantle male supremacy.

We expect gender-conforming males to attack gender-non-conforming males because we all know how much men hate and fear the idea that the human qualities/tendencies we label “feminine” – whether gentleness or self-objectification or what have you – do actually exist/occur in male bodies. So transwomen say, “But we’re not men. We’re just women trapped in men’s bodies,” and everyone goes along with it. Femininity = not a man. Woman = garbage box for not-men. As long as “real” men’s superior position in the patriarchy remains their biological right as “real” men, nobody has to die.

Except: they’re still killing. Men are still killing transwomen. Men are still killing women. Men are still killing children. Men are still killing each other. Because the gender hierarchy is still in place, and it doesn’t just keep women subordinate. The gender hierarchy strips men of their empathy, and tells them the way to prove their worth is through dominance. We’d all be much better served if, instead of this constant, absurd deconstruction of “What is a woman?” we started asking “What the hell is wrong with men, and how can we change it?”

Let’s take the question of shelters. “Transwomen need access to rape resources” cries one “activist,” hell bent on shutting down a female-only shelter. What goes unsaid in that statement is that 1) transwomen are male victims of male violence; 2) the resource in question was built and is sustained by female people; and 3) the female victims in that shelter matter, and have the right to female-only space. The sentiment can be restated more accurately and honestly as “female people must put male victims of male violence first.” Refusing to name male violence and assuming female care-taking and self-subordination is not “transing” gender roles – it’s enforcing them. Why can’t Leftist MEN take on the problem of male-on-male violence?

Another common battle cry is that transwomen must be allowed to use women’s bathrooms and changing rooms because they face violence in male spaces. Again, we must never name the basic problem there — that men may behave violently when faced with another male who defies gender norms. We simply assume that women will be the ones to solve the problem, by giving up our boundaries. There’s an obvious flaw in this logic, of course: what are transwomen afraid of in the men’s room? Violent males. Hmm.

In the above picture, a woman and her transwoman friend are headed to the ladies room. An unknown male (the red figure) looms. What is to stop that male from entering the ladies room? According to transgender identity politickers (and their bathroom bills) all he has to do is say he “feels like a woman” – if asked – though asking itself is verboten:

As long as any male person can legally access female spaces based solely on his say-so, neither women nor (actual) transwomen are safe in those spaces. Yet the entirely reasonable compromise of allowing access with documentation of medical treatment for transsexuality is rejected as transphobic [see page 4 for links]. This is very obviously not about safety, for women or transwomen – this is about appeasing men, both those men who get a kick out of exposing their genitalia to women and girls [see page 10 for links] AND those men who refuse to grow up enough to accept the presence of a “feminine” male person in their spaces. Any true “gender outlaw” would be aiming their pistols at those men, rather thandemanding women ignore the gift of fear that comes from our lifetimes of experience with male predation.

C. The same old sexism, in a shiny new rainbow-sparkle package

Just as no man must enact male violence against women on an individual level in order to benefit from the male privilege that such violence enforces for men as a class, individual men on the Left do not have to engage transgender identity politics in any meaningful way in order to reap the benefits provided by widespread social acceptance of those politics, which enable Leftist men to:

*Label other male people Not Real Men, thus making themselves feel like Yes Real Men in comparison.

*Excuse themselves from feeling any guilt about their male privilege. After all, as long as they don’t want to call themselves women, they were simply born with manbrains and thus destined to be the Manly Men in Charge!

*Enjoy watching women being forced to confess to “cis privilege” – one can only assume this is because they agree with MRAs that we have it easy, that we are spoiled princesses with no real complaints.

*Reap the rewards of transwomen insinuating themselves in women’s spaces to make sure male feelings and orgasms are centered within feminism. And when they support AFTA efforts to fully colonize feminism, they get to feel right-on!

*Use [the violence inflicted by homophobic males on gender non-conforming males] to shame women for not being “empathetic” enough. Blaming women for male-on-male violence means they get to 1) put us back in our place of mandatory care-taking and self-abnegation and 2) excuse themselves from confronting that violence, even though they are members of the class that both inflicts and experiences it.

*Perhaps most importantly, sit back and let the Paris “I would rather have a ‘sticky fuck’ than analyze oppression” Lees of the world show women how “woman” should be done – See woman number four, below.

*And finally, transgender identity politics enable Leftist men to casually dismiss as “TERFs” any feminists who might make them question any of the above.

The post How transgender identity politics serve Leftist men appeared first on Gender Apostates.

by Jaqueline Sephora Andrews

People matter and are more important than any movement could ever be.  It is very dangerous to become so taken by the movement that you to fail see the value in people.  My analysis is based in Black Feminist, and I am critical of the system of gender with the aim of completely abolishing it.  Of course, one would call me a hypocrite for being a transsexual, but I survive in a gendered world; I don’t need gender to survive.  I do, however, feel that the term “gender critical” is sometimes abused by transgenderists who are seeking to be validated by radical feminists.  Do you really believe that being gender critical is a luxury? If you really want to be “gender critical” then please understand that you will be hated by people from different sides.  People who even hate each other, will join together in their hatred of you.  When radical feminists didn’t fall for their schemes, some transgenderists became really violent, with one stalking and threatening a woman and her children.  The issue wasn’t participating in the movement, but it was in not valuing a person’s life.  People are more important than any movement.  It is not about attracting feminists, but fighting oppression, and how can you fight oppression at the expense of other people?  It defeats the purpose.  No movement will become more important than the people within it.

People are important.  When you value life, you can honor and respect opposing view points.  Some might not like that I’m a transsexual, or feel that I too appropriate other realities. I can disagree with other opinions, but their lives matter regardless of how their comments make me feel.  The world doesn’t revolve around my feelings.  The lack of respect for people, especially women, is why it was necessary for me to leave the trans movement.  I saw that it was a misogynistic movement that expected women to be obedient.  Women who don’t obey are labelled Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) and targeted with abuse.  Regardless of how you feel, transwomen, radical feminists are people and entitled to their analysis.  If what they are saying isn’t true, then why do you work so hard to try to silence their voices?  You have fallen for your political agenda that you fail to see the value in people.  People deserve safety.  Women are entitled to their safe spaces.

What is safety? For me, I had never really been in a place of safety.  I respect safe spaces for women, but I myself had never really felt safe in any space I was in.  I live a life always on guard feeling like I need to keep a protective shield around me.  It wasn’t until I spent time with a dear friend that I could truly say I felt safe.  It was so wonderful; for the first time, I could truly be me.  I could finally pour out my heart, without any fear.  It was even a time of healing for me.  Even though my dear friend is a friend for life, this time is a memory that I will always keep in my heart.  For me, safe spaces are in relationships because how could you truly be safe if you’re not safe with the people in your “safe space.”  I thank the Lord for my “safe space.”

And how awful would it be if someone would dare call my friend a TERF?  A person who has shown me all the love I could ever hope for in a friend?  A person who I love, dearly?  Think about my reaction; it wouldn’t be a wonderful place for you to be.  Why?  Because she matters to me.  It is in relationships where you find safety.  For the sake of a movement, some will seek to take people away from the people who love them and in many cases will abuse the people they have isolated.  This is the danger in valuing a movement over the people within the movement.  If you would attempt to attack my friends then you should know that you are not attempting to attack an isolated person.  My friends matter to me.  When are you going to stop using people for your political agendas?  I am not anyone’s puppet; I am not seeking anyone’s validation.  I believe that true friendships are worth cherishing and defending.  I believe that if you call someone a friend then you should really be their friend.  Friendship is a bond that no movement can break.  How can you call someone your friend if you turn your head when they are being attacked?  I could not see my dear friend, who I love like she was my actual sister, hurt and turn my head; it is not in me to turn away, even if the ones attacking her just happened to be feminists.  My sister comes first before any movement, and the love is such that I would be there in her support and defense at any time.  Why?  Because she matters to me.  How she feels matters to me.  I don’t listen too well when I hear someone say that I shouldn’t take sides.  When it comes to my sister, I will always take sides.  Why would I even call someone my friend and sister if I wasn’t going to be real?  I don’t need anyone’s validation or approval.  I just know that friendships, especially concerning my sister, are bonds that can’t be broken.  When are you going to stop using people for your political agendas?

Then I have other people who come to me with an issue of who I have in my life and who I consider my close friends.  They will say that “feminism is for white women; you need to focus on black liberation.”  Black liberation sounds nice, but who is really being liberated?  Who would really be liberated in a black liberation movement, in a misogynistic society?  Black liberation would really be black male liberation.  My analysis is based in Black Feminist Thought.  There is no common oppression among black and white, so to address the needs and concerns of black women, you need to acknowledge that there is a reality for black women that white women have not experienced.  It is also necessary to acknowledge the historical oppression of black women, and that even white women have also been oppressors of black women.  I believe that black liberationists will agree with me on this, but here is where we differ.  Black men have also been oppressors of black women, mostly because many black men have been chasing after their slave masters since before anyone can remember, but they also have been denied their “rightful” entry into the patriarchal hierarchy.  The only place where they were allowed dominance was in the home.  Why is this so important for me to say?  Because I am sick and tired of misogyny in the black community.  Who is going to stand up and say enough is enough.  I will, right here, right now.  My analysis is Black FEMINIST Thought.  If you really supported black liberation, then you would support black feminism.  In black feminism, men are considered “Comrades in the Struggle” (bell hooks).  The issue is that you haven’t broken your masters chain.  In order to be free, you need to reject your master and his “way of life.”  As with other movements, black liberationists who value the movement over people’s lives have taken people away from the ones who love them and care for them.  No movement will ever come before someone I love, regardless of their race.

Why say you love someone, if you are going to throw them under the bus the first chance you get?  I don’t need your praise.  I don’t need your cookies.  I know that when I say that I am your friend then I am going to be your friend.  And even deeper than friendship, is someone I call my sister.  When are you going to stop using people for your political agendas?  People are real, and their lives matter.  The movement is important, and I will defend the movement.  However, the movement will never come before the people I hold close to my heart.

The post The Value in People appeared first on Gender Apostates.

In honor of Caitlyn Jenner being named Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine, I thought I would repost my thoughts upon her unveiling.  And if I may say a few words to the award winner…Caitlyn, you deserve every word of this.  Your continued work in destroying whatever good will transwomen have earned is unparalleled. You inspire future narcissists everywhere with your shallow, sexist ways. In short, you are everything I’d thought you would be, and more.  Now go away.  Leave us all alone.  We’ve had enough.

Originally posted on 06/02/2015

I never wanted to write about Caitlyn (Bruce) Jenner.  I have run from this story for months, trying to stay one step ahead of the monster. Don’t look back.  You can never look back. Through the rumors and tabloid stories, through the interview I stood strong. I persevered as long as I could, but yesterday I broke. I looked back. I can no longer resist. I must write or risk becoming a gibbering fool.  The following is not an analysis of the cover, of Caitlyn herself. It is not an exploration of feminism, class, gender, or celebrity, though all are present. For a better analysis than I could ever conceive, read my friends Aoife , Transy, and Miranda. Brilliant transsexual women, at different stages in their lives, equally affected by Caitlyn’s reveal. This is an exploration of my feelings and the herculean effort to come to terms with the emotional maelstrom within. Wish me luck.

I was sitting outside my therapist’s office when the first tweet appeared. The twitter client had cropped the image so only a crotch appeared; a lumpy silken crotch. It was the perfect introduction to Caitlyn Jenner. The day rolled on. The internet exploded. Friends sent me notes of congratulations as if I’d done something, as if I cared. An aging reality star spent more money than I will see in my lifetime to make himself into a pin-up queen and this is cause for celebration? I didn’t respond to any of them. I watched my progressive male friends police the words of others.  “It’s She not He!” “It’s Caitlyn not Bruce!” I suppose they think they’re helping, but I’ve never asked for it. All of them are more concerned about their progressive bone fides over my actual feelings.

I could barely keep up. The internet was relentless as was television. I watched a movie to distract myself. It didn’t work. All the while, the image of Caitlyn gnawed at the back of my mind. I am Caitlyn’s infinite closet. I am Caitlyn’s heaving bosom. I am Caitlyn’s lumpy crotch.  I couldn’t get away. Every twitter refresh, every website, every television commercial, there she was. I sought refuge with my friends. Their words supported me even as the ground shook beneath me. I felt as if piece of me was torn out, stomped on, and left bleeding on the ground. I could not comprehend why, and then a friend, a friend who has taught me so much about what it means to be a transwoman, wrote this:

I want to be able to have my own story, to be who I am. To be a person, but what becomes more and more clear each day is that I will not have this small, small privilege. I cannot be a bird. I must be the kite on a string, defined by the wind…am I an object? Am I a human? I will forever after today be described to people as “Like Bruce Jenner.” I am no more.

I broke.

Tears streamed down my face as I read and re-read her words. I couldn’t read any longer.  I turned off the computer, picked up my headphones and crawled into bed.  I lie there for hours, Dark Side of the Moon spinning in my ears.

All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel.
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All you save.
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy,
beg, borrow or steal.
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say.
All that you eat
And everyone you meet
All that you slight
And everyone you fight.
All that is now
All that is gone
All that’s to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.

YES

Everything we are. Everything we were.  Everything we struggled for, fought for, and hurt for is gone. We are eclipsed by our own shadow. Whatever we were, we are no more. We are all reflections of an aged wealthy conservative living out his own personal gender passion play. Like a perfumed Pontius Pilate, he has condemned is all.

Did I misgender Caitlyn? Honestly, I don’t care anymore.  None of it matters. I have spent the last twenty years in transition. Jenner has enough money and fame as to be insulated from everything. Jenner will never experience what it is like to live as a woman in society, or even what it’s like for most to transition. Yet Caitlyn is now our queen; the standard all transwomen will be measured against henceforth. I feel as if my life and struggle has been ripped from beneath me, tarted up, and paraded about for the world to gawk at. It is the Real Housewives version of the transgender experience.

As for the photographs themselves, breast augmentation, facial feminization, professional hair and make-up, photoshop, they are everything a proper woman needs. The whole spread is an exercise in wealth, privilege, styling, and photo shop. This is what every young transwoman now has to strive for. Only after you have visited the facial feminization doctor will you be complete. Assimilation? Who cares! it’s all about the photo shoot.  It is the transformation salon fantasy played out across our media, with a societal stamp of authenticity; Narcissistic indulgence as political act.

And yet there are many who feel the Vanity Fair cover is empowering, that it “increases awareness” of trans people. To that I say, Fuck you. Come to the city and we’ll visit young transwomen, mostly transwomen of color, homeless on the streets because their families cast them out for living their “true authentic selves.”  They did not wait to amass personal and financial security, nor have millions of dollars of plastic surgery. Such a thing is impossible and yet I’m supposed to view Caitlyn’s actions as brave? Here’s bravery for you: For the past fifteen years, Bruce Jenner has been the member of a male only golf club.  So brave. So feminist.

I don’t know where we go from here. Everything has changed. This is the peak, or the valley. A backlash is coming. I hear the whispers. I read the writing of transwomen dissatisfied at their leadership. Angry at the failings of their so called political representatives like HRC or GLAAD. I witness more and more women recognizing liberal feminism for what it is. The emperor has no clothes, and people are starting to realize it. I’m not depressed anymore.  I am not hurt.  I am angry. I am tired of sitting back and watching while non-dysphoric males usurp my life, my struggle, and my pain. I will be silent no longer. Caitlyn Jenner may be your queen.  She will never be mine.

The post You Can Keep Your Queen appeared first on Gender Apostates.

^can you spot the difference?^

Early on in my transition, when I was living in Vancouver, I was physically assaulted whilst boarding a bus. My back had been turned, my hands occupied with digging in my purse for a ticket . . . when a solid fist struck me from the side, a peripheral sucker punch in the form of a hockey player’s slug.

He yelled “TRANNY!” and trotted away at a mild gait, unhindered by any witnesses.

This thug’s annoyance resulted from me having just declined his offer of a nugget of crack cocaine (or meth, as if I can tell …) in exchange for an alleyway blowjob. Since I was a transwoman waiting for public transit, I was clearly available to be propositioned for sex.

One thing I know for certain as I look back on that incident: this viscious bloke had never read Simone de Beauvoir. He had never read Germaine Greer.

He was a homophobic arsehole whose insecurities and male privilege entitled him to random acts of violence.

But, in the butterfly-effect politics of transgenderism, an academic lecturing in Wales who can define woman (adult human female), without mealymouthing around the issue, is somehow responsible for me getting smacked on the skull in YVR … and more so for the murder of transwomen (too often poor and of a racial minority) by savage men (always by men).

Let’s be honest about liberals and their armchair activism:  slagging off older women on twitter or from the ivory tower is a hell of a lot easier than confronting actual male violence.

As is well known . . . and I’m right glad it’s well known: people are finally paying attention . . . Germaine Greer, global bestselling author, is the latest in the almost weekly occurrence of prominent feminists being no-platformed in the very spaces they should most be free to speak: publicly funded universities.

Greer’s thoughtcrime? The smug rational for this uni perversity of censoring one of the most respected, prominent, paradigm-shattering feminists that the English-language has given us? The justification for gagging a renowned writer whose words and activism paved a path of liberation for generations of young women?

Because Greer is firm and candid in her analysis as a feminist: a feminism that centres females (re: what feminism actually is). She speaks plainly of her unwillingness to reject the entire field of physical anthropology, and the understanding that oppression is based on female biological sex, to satisfy the egocentric whims of trans identity politics.

She knows male and female are not a mythology, but a corporeality.

Greer is rejecting a world in which a bepenised Jenner is dubbed woman of the year . . . without having actually lived as a woman for an entire year . . . indeed, arguably, hasn’t lived fully “as a woman” at all, given his penchant for being a bro amidst the old boys’ club of the golf course.

I thus signed a petition in support of Germaine Greer, because I support her right to speak. As an academic: I’m not afraid of lively and vigorous dialectics. As a transsexual: I’m tired of my experience being erased in service to genderism.  And most importantly I signed as a human person: I would like a world without gender, where we’re free to express ourselves regardless of sex. Imagine there is no gender. I have no investment in servicing ‘gender’ as a system of rules imposed upon bodies to restrict personality according to artificial, harmful prescriptions. Whatever myself and Greer disagree on, we both acknowledge that making up new words doesn’t end oppression. I concur with Greer and Daly as to the motivations driving men to empty “woman” of any corporeal or material referent . . . it’s the ideal prelude to perfect and enshrine the femme-fantasy of all access erotic phantasm of ideation.

This was Daly’s prescient promise: men will take women’s words in order to take their bodies. We’re told “gender is not sex” like a mantra bereft of enlightenment. Well, what is gender? They never answer. Where did it come from? They never answer. Perhaps an outward gaze rather than inward self-idolatry? Reality is that male/female sex dimorphism is how mammals reproduce. Define gender, I ask. They can’t.

Gender is a socially constructed hierarchy of sex based norms imposed onto bodies. There. That wasn’t difficult, was it?

It’s only difficult because trans activists, to maintain their house of cards tautologies, must abstract into oblivious this one essentialist claim: a male must ‘really’ be female if ‘she’ possesses a subjectively-identifiable cache of feminine personality traits. And, by command, she was always female, will always be female, regardless and despite any lack of material correlation or correlative. To transgenderists, biological sex is a fantasy, but “I feel; therefore, I am” is the sole ontology.

Now, it’s pretty obvious that such is absurd immaterialism. “Inner, transcendental gender essence” can’t hold under scrutiny, according to any understanding of self and subjectivity.

Transgenderists well know this.

So, to protect this essentialism, transgenderists bully anyone — women or transsexuals in particular — who know females (women) and male transwomen have differences. A mature political movement would negotiate and address these differences honestly. But transgenderists threaten, cajole, bludgeon, manipulate, and thrash. Instead of critical discussion, they turn to the most regressive of chauvinism: to aggressively enforce silence. This is so much so that, recently, an American professor sought to ban the word female from the classroom, since it might hurt male feelings.

I kid you not: Biology is now considered offensive.

It can seem Wonderlandy at first, if you’re new to gender identity politics, and feeling overwhelmed by it all . . . but just ask yourself: why are trans so abusively opposed to debate? Not even debate — just a request for an honest conversation in which transwomen and women acknowledge our similarities, and our very obvious differences? Why is it so verboten to reference that transwomen and women have a lot in common, and a lot not in common?

And if you do dare question, despite their riot act?

Transactivists: actually threatening in a way that Radfems are falsely accused of doing and getting no-platformed for.

Come on now: let’s be real. Who’s the one inciting violence?

Likewise, because I support Greer, transgenderists — realising I’m a threat and no longer useful — routinely harass me.

The noose is a reference to my suicide attempt in 2011, which I’ve written publicly about. The weight comment refers to my #anarecovery (I’m doing great by the way — my doc is really pleased and so am I!)

As of this morning, I’ve yet to see a single transgenderist confront @cateatsu for urging my suicide and telling me I deserve to die. We know what would happen were a woman to have uttered the exceptionally vile abuse that was hurled at me, right? Why do trans get free license?

Can we be truthful, without affect hustling in lieu of an actual rational argument?

It’s not transphobic to have a definition of woman that doesn’t include males, no matter how arbitrarily feminine their inner disposition.

By addressing that sex is material facticity, and not imaginary “assignment,” Greer is stating an anthropological truth. You may not fancy her tact, rhetoric, discourse, tone, vocabulary . . . but those are ancillary details to actual engagement with the political opus of the gender-obsession she critiques. We are stymied in intellectual dishonesty: convert to newspeak or be condemned as a heretic:

“Young liberal feminist women have been given terms like “queer” and “cis” to confuse them into believing that their suffering is not real or, if it is real, it does not result from being born female.” (Phonaesthetica)

But transgenderists have an agenda: to ‘redefine realness’ in service to their ideology, regardless of whom this pseudo reality hurts.

24/7 language surveillance

Pop feminism has willfully abandoned political analysis for the feel-good factor of disposable aphorisms. See for example Laurie Penny (@pennyred) who recently performed the ultimate no risk “coming-out” of announcing she’s a femme-presenting, female-assigned at birth, no-transition “genderqueer” . . . which is the LGBT equivalent of claiming one retroactively looooved punk rock before it was mainstream.

And to prove her gendercred to her fans, she’s been eager to defend Caitlyn Jenner’s perpetual womanhood — that Bruce was female when winning the decathlon. Egregiously, Penny backs this up with the usual cut-and-paste misinterpretation of Simone de Beauvoir.

I’ll say it again: Beauvoir is spinning in her tomb over the intellectually dishonest, quote-mined appropriation of her life’s work. It is simply wrong that Beauvoir means “one … becomes a woman” as an endorsement of gender/femininity as empowering to female persons. It is embarrassingly clear that Penny, and her cadre of  retweeters, hasn’t actually bothered to give Beauvoir the decency of a good read.

Such is what academic feminism has become.

Because even the most cursory of glances at the context reveals that Beauvoir insists ‘woman’ is an invented configuration imposed on female bodies. Beauvoir, following Virginia Woolf, is rebuking the sexist/sexualizing formulations imposed INVOLUNTARILY on female persons.

It’s really simple: women (female humans) are oppressed as a class in distinct ways because female embodiment is possessed of specific reproductive capacities. That’s why the book is called The Second Sex and not The Second Gender.

Gender is a synthetic ideology cruelly imposed on sex. To claim male-persons expressing strongly coded feminine preferences must actually be female inside . . . that is to reinscribe in an essentialist manner what is obviously a harmful rubric of sex-based stereotypes. In the introduction to her brilliant collection of essays on feminist phenomenology, Iris Marion Young cautions us: “We reduce women’s condition simply to unintelligibility if we ‘explain’ it by appeal to some natural and ahistorical feminine essence” (29).

Such a reduction is of course the very foundation and mandate of transgenderist misogyny.

Why are people afraid of Greer? Because she says no.

The bottom line here beneath the headlines is that more and more women are saying “No, enough. Stop!” to male transwomen robbing the power of naming from them, as Daly warned. And we well know what happens when women assert themselves through the word no. As a friend pointed out to me, “No is the most feminist act; society defines woman as the receiver/yes giver.”

I agree. That’s why the last word of Joyce’s Ulysses, the “greatest” novel of the twentieth century, is a woman saying “Yes”, not out of personal empowerment, but acquiescence to circumstance.

Who’s afraid of Germaine Greer?

Gender, and its idolators, are afraid of Germaine Greer.

The post Who’s Afraid of Germaine Greer? appeared first on Gender Apostates.