An entirely different universe
Gender Heretic went to a reproductive rights panel at a progressive conference early in Trump’s dictatorship.
Donald Trump had just been sworn in, Roe v Wade faced its greatest threat since 1973, and activist friends were writing how-to books about home abortion, but the panel discussion was taking place in an entirely different universe.
There were no new strategies for activism on display. Instead, I heard lectures on the importance of pronouns.
Which is odd, because what could be less important in that context than pronouns? Every woman in the country could say her pronouns are he/him, it wouldn’t do a thing to protect abortion rights.
“Inclusiveness” and “intersectionalism” and validation exercises were vital things we all needed to learn and practice and be mindful about in everything we did to advance the cause of abortion rights.
Huh?
The only alternative was right wing bigotry, I was told. Abortion rights could be saved, and the larger progressive agenda succeed, only if activists spoke the cant correctly, in ritual format.
“Gender neutral” language would now replace the staid, second wave language of our foremothers in the new rituals of social justice purity. This meant changing our words and what we meant when we said them.
And what will happen then? We will no longer be able to talk about women’s rights when we talk about abortion! Hooray!
Reminds me of this:
And then it struck me: nobody was talking about women.
The word had not been erased, exactly. It had simply changed its meaning. “Woman” was no longer a kind of biology that is subject to patriarchal oppression because of its role in human reproduction.
The entire premise of reproductive rights activism had become unmentionable once again.
I was learning that “woman” now included men who say they are women, and that I needed to remember that not all people with female bodies identified as women, because avoiding “triggers” is more important than clear communication with someone about their own medical care.
I feel very avant garde, having been “reminded” of all that way back in 2014.
Which itself is a strategy… but one guaranteed to weaken the movement. First, by setting the stage for internecine fighting and splintering the movement. We’ve seen countless examples of this. Second, it hampers efforts of outreach. There are plenty of people in the middle and even the moderate right that can be swayed by argument and evidence, who are not going to be swayed by the bonkers arguments and impossible claims made by the TRA dominated ‘intersectional’ feminism. It is pretty much self sabotage… and it is mostly in the name of getting men into female-only spaces.
At one point, I thought intersectionality made sense. It never occurred to me that it would turn out to mean intersectional with men…and not with women at all, because the movement would become all about men who fantasize as women.
Radical Transgender Ideology makes feminism impermissible. Nobody talks about women because it is no longer allowed. Even stating that women exist is now a heresy, subject to extreme persecution and a Maoist parade of disavowal.
Womanhood is no longer something half the world is born into. Sex has been abolished, and gender is a choice. If rich men can choose to be women, then rich men can consider all womanhood to be a matter of choice, as they consider poverty. Poor women get what they deserve for those choices.
Transgenderism requires the abolition of women’s rights. It is the ultimate commodification of womanhood. There are no rights to being a woman; no equality is required. Womanhood is just a costume, worn well or badly, a personal predilection. Womanhood requires little consideration beyond making sure that access to that costume is granted to all men wealthy enough to purchase it.
That’s exactly it. I’ve been “checking myself” over the last couple of hours, prodding to see if I’m just being a Bigot, etc etc – and that’s why I’m not. I refuse to share feminism with men who claim to be women, I refuse to stop talking about women when I talk about reproductive rights, and I refuse to “center” trans women in my feminism. Fuck all that. No, no, no, and no.
It’s so frustrating to read this because in probably most cases ‘gender neutral language’ is good and valuable thing. I work in a ‘male-dominated’ profession, with a lot of male-default words and assumptions, in a company that is doing an exemplary job of appointing and promoting women (including me) into these kinds of roles. It’s great that we use singular they when talking about unidentified people, and it’s great that we use ‘people’ instead of ‘men’ if we’re not talking about men. But ‘pregnant people’ and ‘abortion rights for people’ is not what I bargained for.
It’s not you being a bigot, Ophelia. It’s them trying to steamroll over women’s rights in the name of a science fictional sex fantasy. Stay strong. You made a space where I feel safe expressing what I see as the truth, among rational, intelligent people. Continue to lead. Our society will overcome this latest form of mass hysteria.
Don’t worry, I’m obstinate at least, which will do as a substitute for strong.
It’s just that I continue to find it so baffling that they don’t see it – that they don’t see for instance what all those tweets calling Rowling a cunt and saying she should be punched say about the nature of this form of activism. That they don’t see how far from “social justice” it is to try to bully women into being “inclusive” of men. That they don’t see that personal beliefs about the self cannot contradict material reality. That they don’t see how hollow and stupid and fantasy-based the slogans are.