Well, is it?
Brilliantly done.
What is left?
Is it left wing to say that white male billionaire is a member of the most oppressed group in the world but a working class mother has 'cis privilege'? pic.twitter.com/vTTptLTXs9— Asteroid (@AlessandraAster) May 16, 2020
Is it left wing to say that making fun of Muslim women is Islamophobic but forcing them to share toilets with males against their religion is not? pic.twitter.com/RxTwqCxP8B
— Asteroid (@AlessandraAster) May 16, 2020
Is it left wing to argue that cooking a Mexican dish is cultural appropriation but demanding to be treated as a woman when you are a male is not? pic.twitter.com/ommtsdPCcL
— Asteroid (@AlessandraAster) May 16, 2020
Is it left wing to say breast ironing for female children is bad but full mastectomy for female children is good? pic.twitter.com/mnVrqBVwZ9
— Asteroid (@AlessandraAster) May 16, 2020
That hits the libfem nail on the head.
I know it’s an old tweet by MacKinnon, but I just can’t get over the irony of a trans person lecturing other people to “get over” their “genital hangups.” Imagine if a trans person was denied access to reassignment surgery on that basis! We would never hear the end of how this was the murderiest murder that was ever murdered.
It’s so typical of McKinnon. Épater la cisserie sort of thing.
Yeah, I mean, McKinnon’s openly stated that any sexuality other than pansexuality is immoral. So …
It is a well-presented argument, logically and emotionally…but I do have to wonder about the first one. I could replace the image on the left in the first tweet with Beyonce, or Oprah, and write ‘can we argue that the woman on the right has ‘white privilege’?’ What would be a way to frame this statement/contrast that would mitigate this counterargument? In any case, I think for form’s sake I think I’d use a more modern image for the person on the right, and might use a woman of colour as well–given that the dude on the left might very well attempt to argue with a straight face that any ‘cis’ woman has more privilege than him. But we have these kinds of conversations all the time about ‘axes of privilege’–we may, in this argument, have to instead somehow express that ‘cis privilege’ is not a thing.
Also, is it left wing to insist that the discrimination biological females face specifically as biological females go forever unaddressed and unopposed because even acknowledging biological females as an oppressed group in its own right with its own specific issues that are not entirely reducible to those faced by biological males who prefer to be called “woman”/”she” is a hate-crime?
MacKinnon also seems to be further confirmation of the rule that “anyone who isn’t an M.D. yet insists on referring to themselves as ‘Dr.’ other than in formal settings is grasping for unearned credibility and is best ignored.” There are lots of Ph.D.s on Twitter, but I’m hard-pressed to think of any respectable ones who insist on calling themselves “Doctor” in their handles.
Eh, not sure I agree with that…there was a thing back in the day for women with PhDs to put them in their Twitter handles, because women are inherently non-credible. It is a really egregious thing–I can still remember reacting negatively to hearing, not women per se, but women with more ‘feminine’ voices, being interviewed on the radio or podcasts as experts about science, technology, or politics. Fortunately I think I’m over that, but I definitely remember discounting the credibility of women whose voices didn’t sound ‘authoritative’ enough to me. (Speaking of which I have no idea how Rachel Mackinnon sounds–not sure I’m interested enough to go find out at the moment, but am idly wondering whether he sounds basically the way he grew up sounding or if he’s adopted a cutesy falsetto.)