On Radical Feminist Bathrooms
When radical feminists insist that women’s bathrooms should be exclusively for “biological females”, they invariably fail to actually explain how the hell this is supposed to work.
As a purely political term coined by radical feminists, “biological female” is both scientifically and legally meaningless — even radical feminists themselves argue incessantly about which biological features define “biological femaleness”. And then what? Are feminists going to station a nurse with a blood sampling kit at the door of every women’s bathroom, or are they simply going to endorse the ongoing practice of attacking any person who is suspected of being a trans woman based solely on appearance?
For those who say that intersex women are ok but not trans women, which intersex conditions are allowed, what kind of medical documentation is required, and who is allowed to demand papers? For those who insist that trans men should be allowed to use women’s bathrooms, how exactly are trans men to be distinguished from cis men? How precisely do radical feminists propose that the law enforce legal sex/gender segregation by means other than legal sex/gender, especially considering the status quo is that men’s and women’s bathrooms are a social convention without formal standing in the law?
Keep in mind that gender policing against trans women has repeatedly proven itself to also target cis women who are not conventionally feminine, especially (but not exclusively) butch lesbians. Do radical feminists who support policing have any answers there, or are “unfeminine” women acceptable collateral damage in the holy crusade to purge the bathrooms of trans women?
Not only is “sex” more complex and less concrete than most people assume it to be, it’s also not even a useful categorization system for determining who does and does not experience discrimination, ostracization, violence and oppression.
Oppression…
This spectre of rape that cis lesbian “radfems” habitually raise, centered around the supposed inherent threat of the phallus, minimizes the appalling rates of physical and sexual violence committed against trans women, particularly trans women of color and sex workers. It also twists the picture of systemic violence to make it look like trans women are a huge, systemic threat to cis lesbians when in fact trans women as a group face incredible systemic barriers in almost every aspect of life.
Certainly there are individual cases of interpersonal violence that one could bring up involving a perpetrator of any description. But, although I may not be 100% comfortable with the mental image of panty-ripping, I find it ludicrous to suggest that trans women, in pointing out their exclusion from lesbian sexual communities and the relationship between common lack of cis lesbian desire for trans women and the structural problem of cissexism/transmisogyny, are threatening rape of cis lesbians or perpetuating rape culture.
For once, I actually recommend you read the comments. They’re just as awful as usual, but they’re also absolutely hilarious. If you can handle the foaming vitriol, the RadFem flailing is just precious.
My particular favorite is Sharon’s totally straight-faced assertion that she “instictively know[s] the difference between a genetic female and a genetic male” and “can actually feel the male energy from MTF transsexuals.”Well, yeah. We want to steal the female lesbian energy or what the fuck ever, so it makes sense that they can feel the male energy. >_> (life is a video game, we are Ganandorf, I don’t fucking know)
Anyway, reblogging this article with less of the discussion from the reblogs. Really great article. I didn’t read the comments that lyriael mentions because stuff like that generally sours my mood, but if you find such things entertaining, go ahead. :)
Wait, so if you can steal and sense ~*~male energy~*~ and ~*~female energy~*~ does that mean you can also, like, give and take it voluntarily?
Here, I’ll trade you some of that excess ~*~male energy~*~ for some of my ~*~female energy~*~!
Or maybe I should start selling my ~*~female energy~*~ on the black market!
What units do you think ~*~gender energy~*~ is measured in? Is it a metric of time, or quantity? If I buy a lot of ~*~male energy~*~, does it make me super masculine for just a little while, or can I spread it out over a longer period and just be slightly more masculine for a long time? Do I have a limited lifetime supply of ~*~female energy~*~, or does it regenerate at a set rate? I’m a cis woman - does that mean I can steal the ~*~female energy~*~ from other cis women, or is ~*~gender energy~*~ theft a power available only to trans women? Do trans men steal ~*~male energy~*~ from cis men?
Gosh, this is all just so complicated. It’s putting my ~*~female energy~*~ all in a tizzy.
This spectre of rape that cis lesbian “radfems” habitually raise, centered around the supposed inherent threat of the phallus, minimizes the appalling rates of physical and sexual violence committed against trans women, particularly trans women of color and sex workers. It also twists the picture of systemic violence to make it look like trans women are a huge, systemic threat to cis lesbians when in fact trans women as a group face incredible systemic barriers in almost every aspect of life.
Certainly there are individual cases of interpersonal violence that one could bring up involving a perpetrator of any description. But, although I may not be 100% comfortable with the mental image of panty-ripping, I find it ludicrous to suggest that trans women, in pointing out their exclusion from lesbian sexual communities and the relationship between common lack of cis lesbian desire for trans women and the structural problem of cissexism/transmisogyny, are threatening rape of cis lesbians or perpetuating rape culture.
For once, I actually recommend you read the comments. They’re just as awful as usual, but they’re also absolutely hilarious. If you can handle the foaming vitriol, the RadFem flailing is just precious.
My particular favorite is Sharon’s totally straight-faced assertion that she “instictively know[s] the difference between a genetic female and a genetic male” and “can actually feel the male energy from MTF transsexuals.”M2Ts rarely pass as female. It is usually painfully obvious that the “woman” in front of you is a dude wearing a dress and some lippy. Even if they look female, the male socialization will give them away almost every time. Dudes pretending to be women think they’re so sneaky, but they’re not.
Even when they manage to look female that day, their voices usually give them away in a heartbeat.
MTFs get pretty mad at a lot of FTMs for this whole issue, I’ve noticed, and tell them that now they have male privilege and “passing privilege” as a way of silencing them within the trans community through making them feel guilty.
…is this… transphobia… on behalf of trans men? da fuq?
also trans men do have privilege over trans women because it is usually easier for them to pass and society is less accepting of trans women…? (a fact which you literally just demonstrated with your post…)
also um it isn’t silencing to point out someone’s privilege over you
that’s like
the exact opposite thing
wat
I don’t even
wat.
This spectre of rape that cis lesbian “radfems” habitually raise, centered around the supposed inherent threat of the phallus, minimizes the appalling rates of physical and sexual violence committed against trans women, particularly trans women of color and sex workers. It also twists the picture of systemic violence to make it look like trans women are a huge, systemic threat to cis lesbians when in fact trans women as a group face incredible systemic barriers in almost every aspect of life.
Certainly there are individual cases of interpersonal violence that one could bring up involving a perpetrator of any description. But, although I may not be 100% comfortable with the mental image of panty-ripping, I find it ludicrous to suggest that trans women, in pointing out their exclusion from lesbian sexual communities and the relationship between common lack of cis lesbian desire for trans women and the structural problem of cissexism/transmisogyny, are threatening rape of cis lesbians or perpetuating rape culture.
For once, I actually recommend you read the comments. They’re just as awful as usual, but they’re also absolutely hilarious. If you can handle the foaming vitriol, the RadFem flailing is just precious.
My particular favorite is Sharon’s totally straight-faced assertion that she “instictively know[s] the difference between a genetic female and a genetic male” and “can actually feel the male energy from MTF transsexuals.”
[TW: Cissexism, radfems insulting every rape survivor on earth]
You know what, I’m going to take hormones, have surgery, lose ‘friends’ and ‘family’, increase my risk of homelessness, joblessness, physical and sexual violence, and spend thousands of hours and dollars navigating a hostile medical bureaucracy; because that way I’ll be able to finally infiltrate the super-secret radical feminist clubhouse and rape them all.
Oh, and as a nice side bonus maybe I’ll absorb some of their ‘feminine energy’ to use for my nefarious patriarchal plot for female subjugation.
"No trans woman ever (via smirkingbenevolence)
Didn’t you know? We’re a vast vampiric patriarchal conspiracy to build Miranda coils everywhere and steal the pink lightning that is uterus magic from all the cis ladies.
(via genderbitch)
Obviously, I mean if you’re going to rape cis women, putting yourself through hellish transition for years–having no idea if you’ll come out the other end alive or ever reach “the other end” at all, while losing everything you hold dear in the process–is the best way to do it. Cis men are such amateurs. They go and rape people (like, actual rape, involving nonconsensual sex and assertion of power and breaking the law and everything) and get back to their cis male lives, free to live off the back of male privilege, zero social stigma, and greater economic stability. So lazy! That’s like, rape on “easy” mode. Ferrealz.
I mean, they even do the physical rape stuff, which is child’s play. It takes a true pro to rape via telekinesis. Like, my magic tranny powers grant me two telekinetic abilities: spoon bending, and rape via merely existing. They’re both great at parties.
I don’t normally like being that flippant about these sorts of things, but how else to highlight the ridiculousness of that point of view? As a survivor of extreme abuse, it angers me just how far they’re willing to go to appropriate the rape survivor narrative for bigoted purposes. It’s so disgusting I have no choice left but to laugh.
(via amydentata)
The problem I have with many of the more militantly vocal advocates of “gender as a social construction” … is that they take “social construct” to equal “imaginary,” and then try to use that to prove that being trans isn’t really possible.
Other popular social constructs include law, government, police, money, economics, corporations, marriage, family, property, territory, nations, entertainment, fidelity, morals, ethics, taxes, language, courtesy, and so on.
"Anonymous asked: What are “radscum?”
Radscum are a particularly nasty breed of radical feminist (i.e., those that are scum.) There’s a common misconception that “radical feminism” just means … well, any feminism that is radical. However, it refers to a specific kind of feminism that, in my experience, is characterized by rampant transmisogyny and a fuckton of internalized misogyny.
(To be fair, I’m sure there exist some radical feminists that aren’t scum. I just … haven’t met any.)
Most, if not all (actually probably all) radscum identify with some form of the “Womyn Born Womyn” movement, also known as the “If You Don’t Have a Vagina I Will Never Give Any Shits About You Ever” movement. They actively attack, belittle, and oppress trans women, and treat trans men as disappointments at best, traitors at worst. In short, they are scum.
They also seem to believe that any woman who is not a radical feminist is not smart enough to make decisions for herself. Most of them are anti-pornography, anti-burlesque, anti-femme, anti-heterosexuality, anti- … okay, they’re just anti-women-claiming-their-sexuality. Interactions with radscum in this context usually go like this:
Me: *wears makeup/wears a dress/shaves legs/etc.*
Radscum: HEY! DON’T DO THAT! STOP THAT! YOU’RE SUPPORTING THE PATRIARCHY! YOU’RE COOPERATING WITH THE ENEMY!
Me: Uhm, actually, even though I understand that mainstream beauty standards originated from the patriarchy to oppress and sexualize women, I’m actually doing this as a femme reclamation and a refusal to allow them to dictate my appearance. Also, outside of a feminist context, I just really like how this looks and it makes me happy.
Radscum: NO! WRONG! YOU CAN’T DO THAT! IT WILL ALWAYS BELONG TO THE PATRIARCHY! YOU DON’T REALLY WANT THAT, YOU’RE BRAINWASHED!
So basically what they’re saying is that a woman cannot make her own choices because her opinion will never outweigh a man’s opinion (not using inclusive language here because I’m referring to THEIR bullshit definition of “woman”), and that female-presenting people can never reclaim anything because anything that we attempt to reclaim belongs to men and always will.
Which, uh. Doesn’t sound very feminist to me.
And for people who screech so much about how gender/sex divisions are harmful and evil, they seem very very very concerned with policing who’s a “REAL WOMYN!!!!!!!!” and who isn’t.
Anyway, I’m rambling. Long story short is that they are very very unpleasant people and I don’t like them.
((rebloggable by request!))
“feminazi” vs “radscum”
It’s disgusting to see feminists actually using the term “radscum”. How can you actually fucking justify this when you’re so vehemently against “feminazi”? Do you not understand that they both refer to women (and sometimes men) as less than human because we stand up for the rights of other women?
Where’s the unity?Yes, let’s all unite under the banner of White Middle-Class Able-Bodied Cisgender Heterosexual Western Feminism
How totally inclusive
Also, way to appropriate the fucking Holocaust, you shitweasel.
Feminazi is a term that people who have no understanding of feminism use to dismiss the entire movement for invalid or false reasons. The problem with Feminazi is not that it describes women as “less than human”, the problem is that it appropriates the name of a horrifying, mass-murdering dictatorship and applies it to people who are trying to get equal treatment.
Radscum is a term used by people who know Feminism to describe a certain type of feminist who is genocidal in their cissexism, racism, and also often ableism. It is a name used by those who understand feminism and have a problem with it (or certain elements of it) for valid reasons.
Don’t try and pretend the people calling you radscum are uninformed or oppressive.
Yes, because it’s so fucking offensive, using a mildly insulting term to call out “fellow feminists” for being exclusionary, privileged, bigoted pieces of shit. God forbid!
White Femynism 4eva!!!!
jesus christ people suck so much
