The nail-studded bat

This is one way we know trans women are not women.

That’s not “activism.” It’s not struggle, it’s not consciousness raising, it’s not social justice. It’s just an image of an angry man brandishing a bat studded with nails, by way of telling us we are under orders to agree with him that he is a woman, and that refusal will be met with murderous violence.

I don’t want to be any kind of ally with men who threaten to smash women to death for failing to agree that the threatening men are women.

We’re stuck in a tight circle here. That nail-studded bat simply underlines and entrenches the impossibility of 1. seeing the bat guy as a woman and 2. agreeing to pretend the guy is a woman. The threat is supposed to make us surrender but all it does is make us say: “See? This is just same old male violence and domination, so hell no.”

A second thing. That “not up for debate” trope is supposed to suggest the obvious justice of the claim and the irrationality of failing to agree with the claim. But how can it? How can we be expected to agree that men claiming to be women is just obviously both true and progressive? It’s not that kind of claim. The “activists” want to pretend it is, but it isn’t.

It’s not a human right to force people to agree that you’re a woman when you’re obviously a man. It just isn’t. Knowing the difference is a very basic bit of animal knowledge, and forcing us to pretend otherwise is not a right.

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