According to this hierarchy

Jane Clare Jones on trans activism and intersectional feminism:

As many of you know, there was an act of vandalism by trans activists on an historic building where women were meeting to discuss the GRA proposals.

In Plymouth, on Saturday.

One of the posters the TRAs stuck up was this, which got me thinking (again) about the connection between trans activism and intersectional feminism.

intersect

When trans ideology first came on the radar (or my radar) around 2011/12, it came in a kind of trans activism/intersectional feminism pincer movement. This wasn’t an accident. So, my question is: what work is intersectional feminism doing to support trans ideology?

So, first off – CAVEAT. Nothing I’m about to say really has much to do with Crenshaw’s original thought. Intersectionality as an analytic method is basically unimpeachable. FEMINISTS – PAY ATTENTION TO HOW OTHER AXES OF OPPRESSION INFLECT THE THING YOU’RE LOOKING AT. As I say, unimpeachable. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about what I call ‘Tumblrized Intersectionality.’ And that’s not a method – it’s a dogma. In fact, it’s a catechism.

The first thing that’s really noticeable about that catechism, is how un-intersectional it is. It’s not about looking at any particular thing and trying to understand how all the axes interact. It’s a rigid set of views (pro-trans, pro-sex-work, anti-White Feminism TM etc) and a rigid point-scoring table which produces a hierarchy of who is allowed to speak and who must listen. According to this hierarchy, trans people are more oppressed than everyone else, and hence, their oppression must be prioritized over everyone else. In the context of feminism (and particularly in connection to the leveraging of the cis/trans binary) this produces the thought that feminism should centre the oppression of trans women over the oppression of non-trans women. That is, intersectional feminism functions to displace women’s oppression from the centre of feminism.

Emphasis added.

I keep wondering who set up that hierarchy and what it’s based on and why we’re required to agree to it and why anyone puts up with it for a single second.

What it works out to in practice is that trans women get to count themselves twice: as women and as trans, and thus Oppressed squared. With other intersections it’s just added, but with trans for some reason it’s multiplied by. Trans women are at the top and they’re at the top by a huge unbridgeable margin, because reasons.

Mere women, on the other hand, because they don’t have this magic multiplier, are not even really an oppressed class any more, because let’s face it, they’re…well, not good enough. They’re cis, they’re not trans, they’re women – kind of a triple whammy, you know? To be completely honest we hate them, so really it’s better if they just go away, lest we be forced to slaughter them all.

Read the whole thing.

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