If you really thought they were women

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Jane Clare Jones nailing things down:

This argument is not, therefore, an appeal for empathy with the damage done to us by male power and projection, by the immemorial and immovable demand that we efface ourselves before the needs of more important others. We know our pain doesn’t count in your economy, that it only registers on your balance books as a sly deceptive weapon or a vicious wilful harm to the interests of the only kind of people given credit. That you’re so certain of the justness of your accounting, you never seem to notice, that this one obvious fact, gives the lie to the ‘validity’ of your catechism. If you really thought that they were women, their pain would be a nought to you as well.

If you really thought that they were women, you would ignore them and talk over them, at best, just as you do us. If you really thought that they were women, you would bully and threaten them as you do us. If you really thought that they were women, you would unleash violence against them, at worst, just as you do us.

In response to your demands, for our existence and its words, all we’ve said is ‘no.’ We haven’t threatened, or intimidated, or besieged, or tried to cancel. We’ve explained, millions of times, why we’re saying no, why we won’t let you take our words, because we need them. But the economy of entitlement that belies all your claims to gender non-conformity, will not respect our boundary. The boundaries here are literal, around our spaces, around the de-lineation of our words, but they are, above all, figurative. They arise from the expression of our own subjectivity. The naming of our needs and interests. They arise when we say ‘no,’ and ‘I don’t want,’ and ‘you can’t have.’ In an ethical economy it should be understood that the demand ‘I want to take’ never, between adults, has right of force over ‘I don’t want to give.’ You do not take from others what is not given freely, you don’t coerce them into giving things they do not want to give. Doing so is an act of narcissistic domination. It subordinates an-other’s needs and interests entirely to your own, and in so doing, annihilates their subjectivity. In its core, this is the logic, and the deep traumatic injury, of rape.

Women have a right to say no.

Comments

9 responses to “If you really thought they were women”

  1. Acolyte of Sagan Avatar
    Acolyte of Sagan

    TA: Why won’t you accept that TWAW?

    Women: Well, if we can just talk about our legitimate conc…

    TA: Your concerns can suck my girl-dick, bitches. Now, why won’t you accept that TWAW?

  2. twiliter Avatar
    twiliter

    Exceptionally good essay, bullseye in fact. This whole TRA thing is degenerate and perpetuated by the sexual deviants and social deviants who, thanks very much to fucking twitter, subject us to instantaneous exposure to their hate and nastiness. It’s overwhelmingly male mysogynists, that much is obvious.

    This makes me think of all the uneducated me-too suck ups who put some pronoun or other on their twitter bio, including politicians like Warren and AOC and others. If they knew the iceberg of misogynistic hate that the pronoun tip of it represents, they might not be so quick to join in with the bullshit. They need to read that brilliant and informative article. Bravo, Jane Clare Jones, and thanks.

  3. Papito Avatar
    Papito

    I also thought this was a smashing essay. Thanks for drawing our attention to it. Here are some of my favorite bits:

    We object to male entitlement – to our bodies, to our time, to our attention, to our care, to our service, and now, above all, to our existence and the words that name it. We need to name the reality of sex, for yes, medical reasons, and sporting reasons, and because women are oppressed by conversion into sexual-reproductive resource and your idealist gender-bullshit can’t explain patriarchy in the slightest. But we need to name it most of all, because – as you never seem to grasp – gender is the system of entitlement that runs along the lines of sex. And the system that enforces that entitlement by means of threat or force. We need to name sex because we need to speak the violence males commit against us. Because our ability to speak at all depends on it.

    Gender is the system of entitlement that runs along the lines of sex. Let’s say that again.

    And, of course, the conclusion:

    The fact that much of this violence is enacted by males who are trans, does not transubstantiate it into ‘not violence’ and it doesn’t mean that people coercing female people’s boundaries with the kind of baseball-bat wielding rapey bullshit always used to coerce female boundaries are somehow, alchemically, ‘not doing male-pattern violence.’ And your catechism-that-we-don’t-believe is no defence, not a get-out clause, not some kind of whizz-bang-magic immunising shield that will stop us naming what we see right before of our eyes. We’ve often noted, sometimes caustically, sometimes ruefully, that if people wanted to convince us that they were women, and not a threat, telling us to choke on cocks and hammering down the door with bats was probably not the way to go. We will keep our words, the boundaries that they draw, and the naming of the violence they allow, because the survival of our subjectivities and the possibility of our healing depends on it. And though we may be silenced sometimes, by your animation of our trauma, and your refusal of our power to name, all you will achieve, with your catechistic dictates, in the end, is demonstrating why we wouldn’t let you take our words from the beginning.

    Yes, indeed, “if people wanted to convince us that they were women, and not a threat, telling us to choke on cocks and hammering down the door with bats was probably not the way to go.”

    The TRAs are proving themselves, day by day, to be no more than MRAs in skirts. How do young women get sucked into this hateful, desperate violence?

  4. Blood Knight in Sour Armor Avatar
    Blood Knight in Sour Armor

    Won’t work… there’s none so deaf as those who won’t hear. Short of actually being on the end of the torrent of abuse few if any will lift a fucking finger.

    It makes me despair… I want to do something. Where oh where do I point my sword?

  5. Blood Knight in Sour Armor Avatar
    Blood Knight in Sour Armor

    Read that… not so much advocating violence… but yeah, what do you do? Hell if I know…

  6. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Figurative sword. Understood.

  7. Holms Avatar
    Holms

    Gender is the system of entitlement that runs along the lines of sex. Let’s say that again.

    Sorry, you need to say it five times in all caps via twitter for it to be true.

  8. Sastra Avatar
    Sastra

    We’ve often noted, sometimes caustically, sometimes ruefully, that if people wanted to convince us that they were women, and not a threat, telling us to choke on cocks and hammering down the door with bats was probably not the way to go.

    “You radical feminists! First you say women need to be more assertive and less gender-conforming …. and then you change your mind.”

    /s

  9. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    From the article:

    Although, let’s be clear, people shouldn’t have to give reasons to justify their boundaries, and the fact we feel the need to reveal our trauma to do just that shows how fucked this situation is already.

    Women have been expected to justify every time they say no, sometimes to the point of taking it to court. Now the very act of a lesbian saying “no” has been deemed an act of bigotry. No one should have to justify their boundaries; they are their boundaries, for their reasons. And if a lesbian doesn’t want to have sex with someone, she should not have to justify the no.

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