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gravityeyelidsvia http://ift.tt/2awwgVo:
tumblespace:
tumblespace:
I have said this before, but I am constantly confused by (what it pains me to even call) feminist theory that excludes or denies the existence of transwomen, especially since a transwoman’s fight is implicitly a feminist one. To demand and fight for rights over our bodies, to demand and fight for rights over our lives is the same fight; whereas adopting the oppressive language of the patriarchy, to accept its violence, and to be absorbed further into the roles it has set for us is exactly the opposite. And as a feminist my fight starts by reclaiming the land inside myself, which has been colonized by the patriarchy’s metaphors of being “abled and female bodied.” Being “abled and female bodied” only means anything when I don the language of my oppressors, and as a woman I refuse to surrender to the symbol of the “perfect vagina” and its related, functioning parts. I refuse to give this as a definition of a woman because it is not.
Like, what worries me about the “vagina experience” as a feminist approach is that, regardless of whatever statistics someone might find showing how rare or common it is for a biologically “marked” woman to be born without the “necessary” parts, it still excludes women from the fight, and it inevitably brands some women as “disabled but female bodied” (and consequently useless to the patriarchy). This approach does not support or include all women. And, like, if I am not fighting for the minority of women too, then I am not fighting for all women, which makes my feminism really weak and complacent.
Not to mention that it sources the vagina as both cause and solution to many of the problems women face, and I think that is just kind of a grotesque way of approaching a woman’s relationship to anything. Like, when I was attacked, I wasn’t attacked because of my vagina or my ability to bear children. I was attacked because I live in a society that codes me and anyone like me, anyone who is not a certain kind of Male, as lesser and weaker and open to attack. That’s the whole reason. Society has coded me as open to attack. Period.
So saying a woman is a woman because of her vagina, because of the “shared vagina experience,” is simply another way of saying “Yeah, the oppressive structures encoded into society really work for me and I don’t intend to examine how they have shaped my understanding of the world.” Defining a woman’s identity around the existence, abilities, and functions of her vagina happily submits to the bullshit belief that a woman cannot possibly be a woman unless she [can] be penetrated and give birth. However, when we do remove the vagina from the discussion, not out of shame but out of deference to other women, we can examine the violence inflicted and enacted on women much more freely, and with our own language, and we can see that the violence extends beyond our “bodied” periphery.
I feel compelled to bring this post back whenever I see something about terfs and their insistence that women are exclusively vagina bearers. Like, that approach is so toxic, unsupported by science, upholds the patriarchy, and is just trash, rubbish, derelict, and it hurts my brain. The “vagina experience” is not the “woman experience.” Just stop. Σταμάτα. Σκάσε.
tumblespace:
tumblespace:
I have said this before, but I am constantly confused by (what it pains me to even call) feminist theory that excludes or denies the existence of transwomen, especially since a transwoman’s fight is implicitly a feminist one. To demand and fight for rights over our bodies, to demand and fight for rights over our lives is the same fight; whereas adopting the oppressive language of the patriarchy, to accept its violence, and to be absorbed further into the roles it has set for us is exactly the opposite. And as a feminist my fight starts by reclaiming the land inside myself, which has been colonized by the patriarchy’s metaphors of being “abled and female bodied.” Being “abled and female bodied” only means anything when I don the language of my oppressors, and as a woman I refuse to surrender to the symbol of the “perfect vagina” and its related, functioning parts. I refuse to give this as a definition of a woman because it is not.
Like, what worries me about the “vagina experience” as a feminist approach is that, regardless of whatever statistics someone might find showing how rare or common it is for a biologically “marked” woman to be born without the “necessary” parts, it still excludes women from the fight, and it inevitably brands some women as “disabled but female bodied” (and consequently useless to the patriarchy). This approach does not support or include all women. And, like, if I am not fighting for the minority of women too, then I am not fighting for all women, which makes my feminism really weak and complacent.
Not to mention that it sources the vagina as both cause and solution to many of the problems women face, and I think that is just kind of a grotesque way of approaching a woman’s relationship to anything. Like, when I was attacked, I wasn’t attacked because of my vagina or my ability to bear children. I was attacked because I live in a society that codes me and anyone like me, anyone who is not a certain kind of Male, as lesser and weaker and open to attack. That’s the whole reason. Society has coded me as open to attack. Period.
So saying a woman is a woman because of her vagina, because of the “shared vagina experience,” is simply another way of saying “Yeah, the oppressive structures encoded into society really work for me and I don’t intend to examine how they have shaped my understanding of the world.” Defining a woman’s identity around the existence, abilities, and functions of her vagina happily submits to the bullshit belief that a woman cannot possibly be a woman unless she [can] be penetrated and give birth. However, when we do remove the vagina from the discussion, not out of shame but out of deference to other women, we can examine the violence inflicted and enacted on women much more freely, and with our own language, and we can see that the violence extends beyond our “bodied” periphery.
I feel compelled to bring this post back whenever I see something about terfs and their insistence that women are exclusively vagina bearers. Like, that approach is so toxic, unsupported by science, upholds the patriarchy, and is just trash, rubbish, derelict, and it hurts my brain. The “vagina experience” is not the “woman experience.” Just stop. Σταμάτα. Σκάσε.
