Gender

Open Letter to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Staff and Trustees

Posted on by Claire

With thanks to Jean Hatchet for her feminist documentation and transcription work. This one is for Sally, and all the other women in too vulnerable a position to publicly advocate for single-sex services.

Dear Edinburgh Rape Crisis,


My name is Claire Heuchan. I’m a survivor of men’s sexual violence. And I’m writing this letter to express concerns about the troubling implications of comments made by your CEO, Mridul Wadhwa, at a recent event with SayiT Sheffield. This letter is in no way intended as an attack on Edinburgh Rape Crisis; I have the greatest respect for your organisation, and believe you do lifesaving work. The recorded incidences of rape and attempted rape in Scotland continue to skyrocket, yet the conviction rate is among the lowest for any type of crime – which means that you are, unfortunately, more necessary than ever before. But women who have survived horrific acts of male violence are going without support, self-excluding from your service and others, because these spaces are now mixed-sex.


That’s not an untruth, exaggeration, or story made up to fit a particular agenda. It’s the reality here in Scotland; a reality acknowledged directly by your CEO. Wadhwa admitted that “in Scotland, where you have large groups of survivors, some are not using our services because they see us as trans inclusive and feeling that they may be exposed to an issue that they are not prepared to deal with.” But women aren’t self-excluding because “they may be exposed to an issue.” They’re self-excluding because they may be exposed to males in the aftermath of surviving male violence. Any trauma-informed service – as ERC claims to be – must have the capacity to acknowledge why that is problematic.


Wadhwa recognises that survivors are self-excluding from mixed-sex services. But frames the attitudes of women who have survived male violence, as opposed to the mixed-sex spaces, as the problem. These comments were made by the CEO of ERC – someone with the power to shape the ethos of your organisation and survivors’ experiences within it. Wadhwa’s words have consequences, as does the attitude they embody.


The feminist policy analysists Murray Blackburn MacKenzie “wrote to Scottish Women’s Aid to ask whether they were aware of any work undertaken by any of the violence against women and girls organisations in Scotland that sought to quantify the scale of potential self-exclusion by women from both specialist and mainstream services should they admit transwomen.” They received no response. Transparency and public accountability would both go a long way towards resolving the conflict of interests where self-ID is concerned.


Therefore, I would like to know: has Edinburgh Rape Crisis undertaken a change impact analysis or any other study into the consequences of making your services mixed-sex spaces? And, if so, will the findings be made public? In the absence of data from Rape Crisis or Women’s Aid, Women and Girls Scotland undertook their own research. And this is what they found:


“A majority of women (80.1%) said that female victims of male violence should be able to access female-only survivor support services and refuges, and a majority (71%) said that if they had reason to use survivor support services or a refuge, they would not be comfortable if the service was inclusive of trans-identified males.“


Since 2018, Women and Girls Scotland have pointed out to both Rape Crisis Scotland and Scottish Women’s Aid “that failures to be clear regarding whether or not their network of providers will offer their services on a female-only basis for those who need it, has led to women self-excluding from their services.” I don’t know how many women have self-excluded from Rape Crisis or Women’s Aid services because they are mixed-sex. Apparently, nobody outside of these organisations does. But I would argue that if even one woman self-excludes from these services, that is one woman too many.


No woman is disposable. And it is nothing short of Orwellian that women are now self-excluding from services because of policies made in the name of ‘inclusivity.’ It’s not inclusive if it doesn’t work for women. And ‘women supporting women’ was a banner founding members of Edinburgh Rape Crisis marched under. It was a founding principle of your organisation. Nobody says it better than Caroline Burrell, who led ERC before Wadhwa:


“Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre was founded by a group of women who wanted to create a safe and confidential space for women who had experienced sexual violence.”


Burrell’s successor has deviated from these principles, arguing that “being really radical in our inclusion of those who are marginalised does not discriminate against those who have relative privilege in our society.” But what “privilege” does this mean, when at least 1 in 4 British women will experience male violence? Two women a week are killed by a current or former (male) partner in England and Wales alone; and approx. 85,000 women experience men’s sexual violence every year. Male violence against women and girls happens at a similar rate in Scotland – and, indeed, around the world. No other demographic is assaulted and killed on this scale; not in Scotland. Therefore, I’m concerned that ERC’s CEO seeks to create a hierarchy of survivors by positioning women and girls as an advantaged party.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre: Women Supporting Women


When it comes to male violence, women as a sex class are the least ‘privileged’ demographic on the planet. Yes, the vulnerability of some women is heightened by race, class, migration status, disability, faith, or sexuality. And specialised services do vital work, with significantly less funding than mainstream organisations. But sex is the commonality between women’s experiences of male violence, and feminist analysis must reflect that.


Wadhwa also suggests that “organisations might… have open conversations with survivors if they wish and are willing to engage around what equality and diversity means.” But the women’s sector exists to support women through the aftermath of male violence, not do EDI training with survivors.


The SayiT Sheffield event is not the first time Wadhwa has advocated services carry out a form of EDI training with survivors. Speaking on the Guilty Feminist podcast, Wadhwa stated that “sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well. And so, you know, it is not a discerning crime. But these spaces are also for you. But if you bring unacceptable beliefs that are discriminatory in nature, we will begin to work with you on your journey of recovery from trauma. But please also expect to be challenged on your prejudices.”


As Raquel Rosario Sánchez points out, this directly contradicts ERC’s claim that your services are “trauma-informed” and “non-judgemental” through “judging victims by informing them that they had to ‘reframe’ their trauma so they could overcome the entirely natural fear and distrust that male violence induces on victims and survivors.” Somehow, it’s never men that are asked to do the heavy lifting in terms of trans inclusion – even though they perpetrate the violence that put women and trans people both at risk. But, in this case, that work is put upon women who are trying to make sense of perhaps the worst trauma they will ever experience.


I am far from the first feminist to highlight this issue. For Women Scotland described Wadhwa’s Guilty Feminist appearance as “a masterclass of gaslighting”; and they’re not wrong. FWS have also been consistent in championing survivors’ right to access single-sex services in the aftermath of male violence, and – if the content of this letter has not already made it abundantly clear – that’s a cause I will support until my dying breath. Without a trace of shame or regret. But Wadhwa accuses women who want single-sex services of “associating with fascists and those who would want to eliminate anybody who is not cisgendered and white in our society.”


To whom is Wadhwa referring? Such unsubstantiated claims and veiled comments only add to the toxicity of gender discourse in Scotland. Lorde knows I have little time for the single-issue Gender Critical crowd. But, to the best of my knowledge, not a single woman among them has given even tangential support for the genocide of people of colour and/or LGBT people. And Wadhwa’s claim pours gasoline on a public discussion that was already explosive.


I advocate women-only space as a Black lesbian feminist. And in so doing I would much sooner stand beside Women and Girls Scotland (spearheaded by working-class feminists) or For Women Scotland than a Rape Crisis CEO who prioritises their own interests above the needs of survivors. Some may point out that these WGS and FWS are new and relatively untested, to which I would say that grassroots feminist groups emerge from need – in this instance, a need that is not being met by established and government-funded feminist organisations.


In her book Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation, campaigner Julie Bindel warns against the dangers of “femocracy”; the corporatisation of the sort of feminist activism that built the women’s sector from nothing. When feminist organisations “became fearful of offending their stakeholders”, Bindel argues, “the form of feminism they espoused became tamer and less threatening to the establishment.” And as I read these words for the first time, I thought of Edinburgh’s feminist organisations – was this why you stayed unanimously silent when Julie was attacked in your city after giving a talk about male violence against women?


More to the point, I wonder: is it fear of public retribution that led to Edinburgh Rape Crisis shifting towards a mixed-sex team and spaces? Is it fear that you will lose your funding? Or a combination of the two? I am not without sympathy. The cost attached to advocating women-only space is now disproportionate as it is vicious. And generations of feminists fought tooth and nail to build the women’s sector into what it now is – if defunded, that infrastructure is not easily replaced. Especially not while the politics of austerity govern Britain.


That being said, what about the women self-excluding from your service and others? When are we going to have an open discussion about the consequences of making services mixed-sex? Where is the research into the efficacy of mixed-sex services? These are all questions in desperate need of an answer.


Edinburgh’s feminist organisations have demonstrated an unwillingness to engage with women’s concerns about self-ID or the Scottish Government’s proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act. In this, Edinburgh Rape Crisis is certainly not alone. Engender were scheduled to hold a meeting about the GRA and women’s rights. It was postponed… indefinitely. And I still wonder, if they’d held that meeting, how might gender discourse be different in this country? Let’s face it, this conversation can’t get much uglier.

Engender’s cancellation statement


I think that if Scotland’s feminist organisations had facilitated open and mutually respectful public discussion around this subject – instead of leaving two marginalised groups of people to get locked into a cycle of conflict over social media – we might have reached something close to consensus by now.

But instead we are here: where women self-exclude from a Rape Crisis service, and the problem goes unaddressed. Something has clearly gone wrong in the Scottish women’s sector, when the CEO of a Rape Crisis Centre can repeatedly make comments such as Wadhwa’s without reprisal; especially when, as Wadhwa recognises, some women choose to carry trauma alone rather than accessing support via that service. But it is fixable. If I didn’t think this problem could be resolved, I would have spent my Saturday swimming and reading lesbian books instead of wading further into a public discussion that is utterly thankless and, frankly, excruciating.

I’m writing this letter because I believe it is possible for there to be a range of services that meet the specific needs of women and the specific needs transgender people both; and that, one day, we can build a world where neither set of services is needed because patriarchy has been dismantled. And in the short term it is my hope that these words will open up the space for discussion; between Edinburgh Rape Crisis staff and trustees; between Edinburgh Rape Crisis and the women alienated by the actions of their CEO; perhaps even between Rape Crisis centres across Scotland. The herstory of Scotland’s Rape Crisis movement is one that we can all be proud of; that herstory does not need a “wash and clean”, as Wadhwa suggests, but rather a radical reclaiming as women build this movement’s future.


One last point. Several feminist organisations seem to have taken the ostrich approach to public discussions around sex, gender, and women’s spaces. But this approach relies on the assumption that it will all blow over sooner or later; that we women who want single-sex spaces and services will simply give up and decide not to make a fuss. But that’s not going to happen. Too much is at stake. #WomenWontWheesht. And we’re ready to talk when you are.


Yours in sisterhood,


Claire

Further Reading

Shonagh Dillon (2021). A Scottish Sister Speaks.

Karen Ingala Smith (2021). Counting Dead Trans People.

Karen Ingala Smith (2019). Counting Dead Women – and counting people who identify as transgender

Eileen Maitland (2009). Woman to Woman, An Oral History of Rape Crisis in Scotland 1976-1991. Hampden Advertising Limited

Women and Girls Scotland (2019). Female Only Provision: A Women and Girls in Scotland Report

Keeping Faith: Towards a More Compassionate Gender Discourse

Posted on by Claire

This is the ninth part in my series of essays on sex, gender, and sexuality. It’s dedicated to my dear friend Rosa Freedman, as thanks for our wonderful conversations about feminism and faith.

I’ve been thinking about faith recently. Faith means a lot of different things to different people. When I think of the word faith, it’s Red Dead Redemption 2 that springs to mind first – specifically, the outlaw Dutch Van Der Linde screaming at his followers to “have some goddamn faith!” as he makes increasingly erratic decisions that jeopardise their lives. But for my grandmother, a committed Catholic, faith has a wildly divergent connotation. She doesn’t think of a video game, she thinks of church.

Faith has, at times, been a point of tension in our relationship. When I left the church aged twelve, against her wishes; when I came out in favour of abortion at fourteen, beginning to develop feminist consciousness; again, when I came out as lesbian in my early twenties, expressing the view that same-sex couples should have the right to marry. She’s a devout Catholic. And I’m a radical feminist. We do not see eye to eye on many social issues. But we don’t have to in order to hold love and respect for one another, or to connect in a meaningful way.

Faith has brought my grandmother a great deal of comfort over the pandemic. She livestreams mass from her younger sister’s church, and often calls me over to catch a glimpse of the aunt for whom I was named. There is also an adorable little Black girl being fostered by members of the congregation – not knowing her name, we refer to the child as “that wee cutie” – and the sight of her often prompts my grandmother to share her recollections of when I was small. These are not unpleasant experiences, despite her belief and my lack of it. Listening to the priest in the background as I go about my about my morning is akin to ASMR. It’s relaxing, so long as I didn’t listen too closely to the sermon’s contents.

I don’t agree with the beliefs or tenets of Catholicism. Yet I still set up mass on YouTube whenever my Nana asks. Every Sunday without fail, and on a number of week days too. Why? Because I’ve long outgrown that puerile Richard Dawkins school of atheism that dictates every mention of organised religion must turn into a debate. But also because I’m a grown woman who recognises that different beliefs – even when contradictory – can peacefully coexist. Maintaining this belief in the current political climate has been a challenge.

With Stonewall pedalling the line of “no debate” when it comes to gender identity, and the Scottish Government having abdicated all responsibility to facilitate open-spirited public discussions around their proposed reform of the Gender Recognition Act, the situation only ever seems to get uglier. In England, academics such as Rosa Freedman and Jo Phoenix “have been threatened with violence, disinvited from speaking and even blacklisted” for the supposed thought-crime of “asserting that there are two sexes — male and female — and for insisting that some spaces are legally allowed to be organised according to sex and not gender identity.” Selina Todd, an academic specialising in feminist and working-class histories, needs security to attend her place of work after threats made in the name of transgender rights.

Here in Scotland, the poet and programmer Jenny Lindsay has been subject to a sustained campaign of smears and targeted harassment. That her latest collection explores themes of menstruation and sexual violence was – in the eyes of some – sufficient evidence for Jenny to be condemned. Joanna Cherry – an openly lesbian politician opposed to self-ID – was threatened with corrective rape by a young man belonging to her own political party, the most extreme example among the tide of abuse she has received. Despite urging from 120 SNP women, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon failed to publicly condemn the targeting of Joanna Cherry.

Ann Henderson – only the second woman to hold the position of Rector at the University of Edinburgh – spent most of her tenure being slandered by students after sharing a tweet encouraging legislators to attend a Fair Play for Women meeting on her personal Twitter account. And Julie Bindel, when she spoke about women’s rights at Edinburgh Uni, was attacked as she left the premises. We had an hour-long security briefing before that event. And only the intervention of security guards prevented Julie from being beaten. Edinburgh’s vibrant community of feminist activists, organisations, and commentators remained almost entirely silent on the matter.

“There had been a protest outside earlier, but that had gone so he was obviously waiting for me. He was shouting and ranting and raving, ‘you’re a fucking cunt, you’re a fascist bitch, you’re a fucking TERF’, and the rest of it. We were trying to walk to the cab to take us to the airport, and then he just lunged at me and almost punched me in the face, but a security guard pulled him away. I got my phone out to film him for evidence and he went for me again. It took three security guards at this stage to deal with him.”

Julie Bindel, in The Scotsman

I could go on. The list of women deemed hateful and therefore hate-worthy for acknowledging the consequences attached to our sex only ever grows. And it is always women. The beliefs of a left-wing woman who believes that sex is the material basis of her own oppression are met with stronger backlash than the views of a right-wing man who actively upholds the oppression of women and trans people both. And I do not think that is a coincidence. Who wins, when feminist women are so viciously targeted? Patriarchy, of course.

I do believe that a better discourse around gender is possible. And perhaps maintaining that faith is foolish, given all the evidence to the contrary. I have lost a great deal more than I have ever yet publicly admitted because of my contributions to gender discourse. But radical feminism is fundamentally a politics of hope. So, I will continue to write, to speak, to connect the dots between how all of these women have been mistreated and the wider socio-political context of patriarchy. And I will do it in the hope of reaching some point of connection with people whose views on gender do not align with my own, so that these words might serve as a bridge towards mutual respect.

Faith is a word that crops up regularly in gender discourse. More specifically, whether an argument is made in good or bad faith. I promise that every word I have published or spoken on this subject is made in good faith. I also recognise that there are bad faith actors on both ‘sides’ of this discussion, which is why some may be reluctant to believe me.

On one hand, there is an extreme fringe of Gender Critical women who believe that trans-identifying people are predatory fetishists. On the other, there is an extreme fringe of transgender rights activists who persist in framing women they deem so-called ‘TERFs’ as legitimate targets of violence. In my previous work I have drawn a connection between “punch a TERF” rhetoric and physical attacks made against Maria MacLachlan, Helen Steel, and Julie Bindel. I will not rehash that argument (though I do absolutely stand by it). What I will say instead is that the extreme fringes of both ‘sides’ of the schism surrounding gender do more harm than good, bringing cruelty and prejudice to a public conversation that is already fraught with tension.

The bad faith actors do so much damage because they intentionally stand in the way of any shared understanding being reached, or consensus being built. For example, when writing about radical feminist responses to gender identity, Sara Ahmed claimed that “there cannot be a dialogue when some at the table are in effect or intent arguing for the elimination of others at the table.” Similarly, in an open letter to Mary Beard, Natacha Kennedy expressed the view that “one side is effectively being forced to argue for their entire existence against a group of people… who would like to see us dead.” This hyperbole is as extreme as it is dishonest.

No radical feminist would ever advocate violence against transgender people. I believe that people identifying as trans deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, to live free from discrimination and male violence. And I have never met another radical feminist who would say differently. The radical feminist goal of abolishing gender is not a call for the “elimination” of anybody, as Ahmed describes it. Nor does it involve, as Kennedy tries to make out, wishing harm on anybody. Quite the opposite. Radical feminists want a world without gender so that everybody – whether they’re female, or someone who identifies as transgender – can live a full life that is unblighted by male violence.

When I say that I wish we lived in a world without homelessness, I am not suggesting that all homeless people should be exterminated. Rather, I am calling for the provision of good quality social housing that is freely available to all who need it, including migrants and people seeking asylum; a welfare system that allows every single person to live in dignity and comfort; a dismantling of the class hierarchy that forces people into abject, inter-generational poverty then treats them as disposable.

Similarly, when I say that I wish we lived in a world without gender, I am not calling for the elimination of people identifying as transgender – or women, for that matter, who are also gendered subjects under patriarchy. Rather, I am calling for an end to the brutal system of oppression that exists as both a cause and consequence of male violence. The UK femicide census shows that 1,425 women were killed by men in the space of a decade. That’s what gender does. That’s what gender is: hierarchy that places men at the top and women at the bottom – costing us our safety, our freedom, our bodily autonomy, and even our lives.

Having survived more than one brush with male violence, I would much rather live in a world where it did not exist. On that, Ahmed and Kennedy and I should all be able to agree. Should being the operative word. Both of them chose hyperbole over truth. There is far more common ground between those who do and do not believe in gender identity than the people making these bad faith arguments would have their readers know.

Another example of a bad faith actor is Bex Stinson – Stonewall’s former Head of Trans Inclusion – who published an extraordinary piece on the charity’s official website claiming that “some people simply don’t believe trans people exist.” Her argument is fundamentally dishonest.

Of course people who identify as transgender exist. Nobody disputes that reality, which is proven by an abundance of empirical evidence. Some people, however, question the orthodoxy that dictates people have an innately held gender identity – as Stonewall states in their glossary of terms.

Stonewall’s definition of gender identity

In a way, the concept of gender identity is rather like a faith. I will use the example of Catholicism, because it is the church in which I was raised and the only organised religion on which I am qualified to comment. Some people believe that we all have an innate gender identity, just as some people – like my grandmother – believe that the Eucharistic elements turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Other people believe that gender (to borrow Raquel Rosario Sánchez’s brilliant definition) is the social construction of sexist stereotypes, just as there are people who – like me – believe that the wafer and wine are unchanged in nature by the priest’s consecration.

I recognise that the bread and wine exist, just as I recognise that people who identify as transgender exist. While I may dispute the nature of that existence with theologians or queer theorists, I recognise it without hesitation. One need not ascribe to the theories of transubstantiation or gender identity to recognise that the people holding both sets of beliefs deserve to be treated with respect and compassion.

Yes, differences in faith can be a source of conflict. The west coast of Scotland continues to be divided by sectarianism. I grew up hearing nasty rhymes about “Cathy cats” and “Proddy dogs”, malicious comments about “Fenians” and “Huns.” Boys from the local Catholic school and non-denominational (unofficially Protestant) school would constantly fight. And those boys grew into the kind of men who rampaged through Glasgow last month, spreading unrest and violence under the flimsy pretext of a football match’s outcome.

This division based on religion reminds me of nothing so much as the schism around gender. People have done all kinds of ugly things in the name of faith, convinced that they will be remembered on the “right side of history.” Men in particular. That is the commonality between the divides around religion and gender: the conflict in our lives is almost invariably escalated into abuse by violent men.

I am beyond tired of the extremism within gender discourse: of women being hounded out of opportunities to speak or publish, being denied academic freedom, losing out on their livelihoods, needing security guards to do their jobs, being threatened with rape or murder. It is wildly irresponsible to position feminist speech, as opposed to male violence, as the root of harm against those identifying as transgender. And it is unacceptable that the violent misogyny women are now subject to is being reframed as a form of protest. Protest is a resistance of the dominant, patriarchal culture – not a recreation of that culture.

The blame for violence against women and trans-identifying people both lies squarely with the perpetrators: men. And the sooner we recognise that truth, the sooner we can stop wasting vital energy on this conflict and resume the urgent work of dismantling patriarchy. A better, kinder gender discourse is possible. One build upon a foundation of mutual respect. We only have to keep faith. As Angela Davis said: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”

Bibliography

Ann Henderson. (2021). Reflections on the University of Edinburgh. IN Woman’s Place UK

Jane Clare Jones. (2015). ‘You Are Killing Me’: On Hate Speech and Feminist Silencing. IN Trouble and Strife

Jenny Lindsay. (2020). The Anatomy of a Hounding. IN Dark Horse Magazine, Issue 42

Race, Place, and Feminist Space

Posted on by Claire

A brief foreword: this is a personal reflective essay about my recent trip to Liverpool for Writing on the Wall, the experience of being in this city, and the thoughts it shaped in me.

Content warning: this essay explores themes of violence against women & girls, including rape and FGM.

 

Getting There

This year I’ve said no to a lot of things. Girls aren’t typically taught to say no, and women are discouraged from setting boundaries, so getting into the habit of saying no not only felt like some much needed character development but a way of unpicking the threads of gendered socialisation that tie women to the role of pleasing others at the expense of our own needs. This year I decided to prioritise two things: my writing and my mental health, which mostly complement one another but can be in conflict as deadlines draw in. And I’ve said no to everything likely to compromise either or both of those things, including a few panels. I think a couple of people have felt slighted by my no, cushioned as it was in politeness, but ultimately that’s their issue. Leaving my home to speak before people can cost quite a lot of energy, especially if it involves long hours of travel and an overnight stay away from home. The mental and physical resources aren’t always mine to spare.

Still, there are times when saying yes is impossible to resist – when the cost -benefit IMG_-ki1vps.jpganalysis balances out. Last week I was part of Glasgow International for After Dark, a creative conversation between LGBT artists of colour. I’d never been called an artist before, and still don’t see myself as one. Writer, yes – I feel that in my bones, and have external validation from the publishing industry. But, artist? Funnily enough, another participant questioned his own right to the label of writer because of the way Black people go largely unrecognised as ‘legitimate’ cultural critics. Or not so funny. A recurring theme, whatever the medium we worked with, was that none of us had been encouraged to think of ourselves, our work, our voices as having authority. But it was satisfying to connect, to talk about our work and the lives that inform it. Opportunities to meet other creatives who are both LGBT and people of colour are a rare, exquisite thing.

As a girl I’d never have imagined a future where I’d enter the Gallery of Modern Art under the label of artist. The GoMA is a beloved part of Glasgow’s cultural landscape. But,IMG_20180515_101715.jpg like so many of the city’s architectural wonders, the building was funded by the labour of enslaved Black people. Growing up amidst the tensions created by that repressed history, it was impossible for me to develop a sense of belonging. When Blackness and Scottishness are often treated as two mutually exclusive identities (a seemingly endless number of white Scots can’t get their head around Black people being born ‘here’, raised ‘here’, from ‘here’), how could it be otherwise? It felt powerful to sit and talk and eat and drink in the Gallery, to claim a space that was never meant for us.

Another event I couldn’t resist saying yes to is Beyond #MeToo, a panel at Writing on the Wall – Liverpool’s longest running literary festival. I like the North of England: it has a higher Black population density than Scotland, and is cheaper and less affected than the South. And, like a great many feminists, I’m passionate about talk of women’s rights, bodies, and boundaries. The other panellists – Winnie Li, Hibo Wardere, and Vanessa Olorenshaw – are all women I’ve been keen to meet. Going felt instinctively right. So I did.

Usually my journeys to unfamiliar places involve a constant companion that goes by the name of anxiety, but getting to Liverpool is actually alright. I crochet a few rounds of a blanket and listen to St. Vincent (since taking up white gay Twitter’s recommendation, I’ve been hooked). Even through delay and disruption, it is possible to hold onto a sense of calm – which is uncharacteristic, but feels like a good omen. I’m getting there; getting there in the literal sense, physically approaching Liverpool on the third and final train of the journey; getting there in my head, too. When I’ve been struggling with mental health problems and am starting to reach a place of wellbeing, “getting there” is the answer I give when anybody asks how I am. It’s not a bullshit answer the way “fine” is, but the fine layer of euphemism coating the honesty makes it feel safe.

Beyond #MeToo

I get to Liverpool later than planned, but still with enough time to drop off my bag and draw on my brows before the event. In the hotel lobby I meet Vanessa, and we immediately click. Her vision of maternal feminism and no-nonsense approach to sexual politics grab my attention, and I make a mental note to track down a copy of her book. There’s something deeply enriching about engaging with feminist perspectives coming from a standpoint that’s different to your own, learning about women’s experiences and politics that don’t necessarily mirror what you have lived or known. Then Winnie joins us, and she’s even more of a badass than Twitter has led me to believe – I say badass, because speaking openly in public about your experiences of sexual violence the way she does takes serious guts. She has a self-possessed quality, a way of occupying public space, that I can’t help admiring. Much like saying no, a woman carrying herself in this way is not an intended outcome of female socialisation. We talk, during the taxi journey to the Women’s Organisation, about everything from our writing habits to the FiLiA conference. Their company is galvanising in a way that’s unique to space shared between women.

Hibo, the last remaining panellist, is waiting for us at the Women’s Organisation – or maybe that should be first, because she was at the venue before us. But Hibo is the last of the women I meet in person. She is every bit as resolute in her opposition to violence against women and girls, every bit as resplendent, as she appears on Twitter. When we compliment her, Hibo laughs and says “I am a rainbow walking. Always in colours.” During the panel Hibo reveals that for years after undergoing female genital mutilation she hid herself away, and wearing bold colours was a way of celebrating being in her body. To my thinking, it is an act of resistance for any woman whose body has been made into a site of trauma to reclaim herself; to find ways of being fully present and perhaps even taking delight in her physical self.

IMG_20180510_001036.jpgWe get to know each other over pizza (which should be mandatory in every green room), sharing bits of our lives without glossing over trauma. So much is possible when women come together and talk openly about violence. When you have the support of feminist women, and are free from the worry of whether your disclosure will be shamed or disbelieved, it is much easier to get to the root of how and why violence against women happens. There is also a lot of joy in those connections.

The panel goes well. Maggie O’Carroll, Chief Executive Officer of the Women’s Organisation, has a gift for chairing – an unaffected warmth that stops the event from feeling too formal. It’s also worth pointing out that one advantage of doing panels without men is you are much less likely to be spoken over. Women, especially those who are part of the feminist movement, tend to be good at holding space for one another to speak. And speak we do, about our writing and activism and everything in between.

Dark-Chapter-by-Winnie-M-Li-_-Legend-PressWinnie reveals that she loved writing as a child, but never anticipated that her first book – Dark Chapter – would be based on the story of her own rape. The perpetrator left her with 39 separate injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Winnie quit her job, went about the business of putting herself back together, and rebuilt her life. Her writing perfectly captures the reality of experiencing sexual violence. In an interview with the Guardian she said that “it’s like you’ve been gutted like a fish – it was like somebody had gouged the Winnie out of me,” words which have stayed with me ever since. Winnie talks about the layer of silence that surrounds sexual violence, even between female friends, and her determination to break it. Winnie’s point about that silence resonates. Before I started spending time in feminist spaces, building friendships with feminist women, it would have been unthinkable to talk about my experiences of male violence.

Rather poignantly, Winnie says she was “‘lucky’ to be a victim of stranger rape”, believed by those around her and the criminal justice system because she met society’s standards of a perfect victim. It’s a terrible indictment of this world that any woman would feel fortunate to experience one type of violence over another. But the reality is the majority of women who are raped fall into the category of imperfect victims. At least 70% of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. Most of us knew and perhaps even liked or trusted our rapists beforehand, meaning that – despite this being a common pattern of sexual violence – it is easier not to believe us, the imperfect victims. Believing that only strangers are rapists means you don’t have to confront the full extent of the problem, the reality that male violence against women and girls is endemic. It means you don’t have to sit with the difficult knowledge that rapists are not shady monsters, but average men: men we know socially or professionally, men who are husbands or boyfriends or fathers. This is the ugly truth of life under patriarchy: women & girls are at risk of sexual violence – overwhelmingly committed by men – and the few of us who get believed are comparatively lucky.

Hibo recounted her experience of FGM and how it has influenced the trajectory of her life. She said “I can remember every little detail of that day, the smell of my blood in the cut-one-womans-fight-against-fgm-in-britain-today-9781471153983_lgroom.” A procedure that took 45 minutes would have repercussions for the rest of her life. Hibo underwent type three FGM, which she wrote about in her memoir Cut. Of this experience, Hibo says “you don’t heal from it, you learn to cope with it.” During her work in schools, Hibo was compelled to start challenging FGM when she realised young girls were at risk. Explaining her advocacy, Hibo says “I used my trauma as a tool for education.” Her work has changed how the education system, the British government, and even the FBI approach the issue of FGM. Hibo is proud of how attitudes have begun to shift against FGM in recent years, a change to which her work has greatly contributed, but is adamant there’s still a long way to go before this particular battle is won. Every 11 seconds a girl is cut. FGM has been illegal in Britain since 1985, but nobody has yet been prosecuted for carrying the procedure out on a girl.

IMG_-c2bx6e.jpgNext it’s my turn to speak. I have boundless respect for the other women on this panel and feel honoured to sit alongside them. Yet there are no pangs of imposter syndrome, which is another recent positive step. I tell the audience about the context that shaped my work, the isolation of growing up Black in Scotland, the ways in which gas-lighting is used to cover up racism – which the country has long since struggled to acknowledge as a social, political reality. It’s easy enough: there’s no scarcity of women of colour in the room. I talk about the importance of having found feminist community in digital spaces; that it felt natural to raise a dissenting voice online in a way that it didn’t in person, offline. I share my motivation in creating a learning resource for women trying to engage with feminist politics, how it’s done with the goal of helping build a truly anti-racist feminist movement that really is committed to the liberation of all women. And then I turn to Vanessa.

In her own words, Vanessa advocates for “women’s rights, as mothers, in the public Liberating Motherhoodsphere.” Before having children she was a barrister, which shows in how she forms an argument. As a new mother, no longer practicing her profession, she was conscious that “my political power was gone, my economic power was gone, my body had changed.” She struggled against the idea mothers are not political, a misconception “which Mumsnet prove wrong.”  To Vanessa there is no doubt that women’s bodies exist as the site of oppression in patriarchal society. She calls for an embodied feminist politics that recognise the significance of sex in determining how we experience the world. Vanessa points out that boys begin assaulting girls from a young age, highlighting the patterns of violence that emerge through gendered socialisation.

In particular, Vanessa calls for greater recognition of care work and models beyond outsourcing domestic tasks – often to women who are working class and/or of colour. Despite being vital to the continuation of humanity, care work is devalued as feminised labour and made invisible through essentialist claims that nurturing is a natural part of being female. When her first child was born, Vanessa was asked relentlessly when she planned to go “back to work” – nobody who asked recognised that she was constantly working to look after a new baby, as she wasn’t getting paid to do it. Ideas of what counts as ‘real’ work are upheld by the pillars of patriarchy and capitalism. Vanessa cites Adrienne Rich as an inspiration for her work, crediting Of Woman Born as an essential read on motherhood and feminism.

The Q&A is as interesting as it is challenging. Mandy Vere, a bookseller at News From Nowhere, asked our thoughts on the relationship between shifts in language and feminist politics. Winnie felt this most keenly in the difference between ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ in discussions of sexual violence. She thinks the shift towards ‘survivor’ is a “push to use the word less full of horror and trauma”, that ‘survivor’ offers a more positive and media-friendly spin. Most importantly, Winnie points out that surviving sexual violence is not a linear experience. Ten years on, she sees herself as a survivor, but is conscious that she could struggle again and identify more with the term ‘victim.’ “Trauma can return.” Hibo talks about vagina – specifically, the stigma attached to the word and the sexism in making it unspeakable. She is quite right in observing that without vagina none of us would have been born, so a bit more appreciation is due.

I pick up on the shift from ‘lesbian’ to ‘queer’ in recent years. While it’s a positive thing that more people are finding language that fits them, lesbian gets dismissed as “old fashioned” in a way that’s deeply harmful and ultimately lesbophobic. For hundreds of years, lesbian lives and loves have been erased or broken apart, often with violence. Lesbian is a less palatable word than queer because it is a sexual boundary that explicitly excludes men from women’s desire, whereas queer is ambiguous – and so less threatening to the status quo. Patriarchy depends on men having access to women’s sexual, reproductive, and domestic labour. Lesbian says no to all of that. Lesbian is women directing our love and energy towards women. It’s a powerful word, and an important one to use. Vanessa critiques the term “gender based violence” on the grounds that it obscures the power dynamic typically in action. She says “we don’t commit violence with our gender, but with our bodies” – often male bodies against female bodies.

People ask about everything from ethics to the implications of self-identification. But the comment that most stands out comes from a woman, let’s call her Valerie, who shares that she is a survivor of sexual violence. She speaks up because she doesn’t want Winnie alone to carry that burden of being ‘out’, and because she is conscious that many women in the room will be in the same boat. Valerie’s courage is powerful to witness. Her voice shakes, and mine does too as I clutch the microphone and tell her she’s not alone. After the event, Valerie approaches me. She says that being Black was a huge factor in why the police didn’t support her when she went to tell them about being raped. I tell her that knowing how I’d be seen as a young Black woman was a huge factor in why I never alerted the authorities. Ultimately neither of us could heal the other, but throughout our conversation we could hear and understand one another – which made a world of difference.

I do not feel obliged to disclose my experiences of sexual violence. I do not owe those details to anybody – not as a woman or a feminist or a writer. And it’s entirely possible that I won’t ever write or speak publicly about this subject in any greater detail. But it’s there: me too.

Afterwards

Afterwards, we each grab a slice of leftover pizza and head off for dinner and drinks. On our way out of the Women’s Organisation, Winnie and I notice a poster for the panel on the bathroom door: fame at last. Being something of an introvert I had initially planned to spend my evening in the bath, reading a book, looking out at the lights across Liverpool from the vantage of my hotel room. But I’m enjoying spending time with these women and want to share their company for a bit longer. We sit down in a bar and begin the lengthy process of setting the world to rights. It is in here that I make an important discovery: Liverpool has a quality gin scene. Mine comes in a glass that looks like an infinitely fancier variation of the fishbowls that were popular to drink from when I was an undergrad, complete with pomegranate seeds and blueberries. I could grow to like Liverpool very much.

I’ve known Mandy (the radical bookseller) online for what feels like forever, but this is the first time we’ve been together in person. We get to know one another better. She tells me about what it’s like to be part of a radical collective of booksellers (spoiler alert: pretty damn cool), what drew her to Liverpool, and her family. At a few points through the evening, the nature of my accent is queried. It’s exhausting to have a Scottishness that is never assumed and always in need of explanation. Even without malice, as in this context, it must be qualified in a way that invariably leaves me feeling like an outsider looking in on Scottishness. Still, there is belonging to be found in this group of women – transitory though our meeting is. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in patriarchy female friendships are always framed as being of secondary importance to relationships with men, when talking and connecting with women is what enables us to spot the traps gender has laid for us, and for every other woman too. What is gender but a series of restrictions imposed upon a girl, until she learns to restrict herself?

In the morning I have a delicious vegetarian breakfast that fuels my upcoming adventures. It even includes vegetarian black pudding. Never having tasted black pudding before, vegetarian or otherwise, it was a masterclass in creative use of beans and pulses. At the table beside mine, conversation mainly seems to consist of a man talking at his wife, pontificating about everything from Kim Jong-un to the merits of scrambled eggs. I feel sorry for her, until she finally does offer an opinion: that it’s refreshing to see a hotel staffed only by the indigenous population. Indigenous, native, Briton, from here ‘originally’ – there are so many coded ways of saying white, but the racism behind them never varies. A world away from last night, when having a panel that was majority women of colour was a cause for celebration.

I shoulder my backpack and set off to News From Nowhere. Having followed the bookshop on Twitter for years, I am desperate to see it in person. Getting there is easy. For once, I don’t struggle with the map. Above the door is a gay pride flag, and in the window display – alongside the books – is a cardboard cut-out of Theresa May in a police uniform. Yes, I have found News From Nowhere. The shop smells like homemade candles and books – heaven, in short. There’s fiction, feminist theory, biography, zines… There are books on disability rights, sexual politics, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh history, a whole shelf devoted to Liverpool’s own Black community. When I arrive, they’re in the process of changing the display table from books about anti-racist activism to mental health. This is my kind of place. I browse, dreamy and happy, and chat with the booksellers.

Winnie meets me in the bookshop. We talk, lingering by the Women’s Prize for Fiction display, and I recommend Meena Kandasamy’s book When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife. Like Winnie, her writing gives voice to deep truths about violence against women, addressing the link between gender and power. It’s a devastating read, but this book burns with resistance and is exquisitely crafted. It would have been great to talk to Winnie more, but we’ll both be at Bare Lit fest at the end of the month. The booksellers very kindly offer to watch out bags, and we each head out to explore the city.

20180518_151742.jpgI walk to the International Slavery Museum, taking in Liverpool as I go. The architecture is striking against the blue sky, and cherry blossoms line a walkway towards the dock. It’s a beautiful city in spring. There are a number of art spaces and cafés I could happily delve into but this mission, I feel, is important. So many of Scotland’s ongoing problems with racism are rooted in an unwillingness to examine the country’s history with race, a refusal to acknowledge how that past shaped the present reality. Earlier this year I visited Berlin, and there are public monuments to the victims of World War 2 placed throughout the city. Each monument included explanations of how and why these people died, giving history to provide context. It was deeply emotional, but there was something healing in giving public space over to recognising those atrocities. Repressing a history only adds to the trauma – which is why I am determined to visit the Slavery Museum.

The Slavery Museum is “the first museum in the world to deal with transatlantic slavery 20180510_124136.jpgand its legacies”, exploring not only the past but how it has informed life in modern day Britain. Beside the entrance is an invitation for people to write about the thoughts and feelings evoked, and stick their postcard on a wall. I like that people are given the space and encouragement needed to try and grapple with the painful knowledge held here. The realities of the slave trade were horrifying. Black people were beaten and raped and killed and worked to death for the profit of white people. Denying it doesn’t help the African people who were forcibly removed from their homes, and it doesn’t help anybody now either.

On display are chains once used to shackle people, brands that once glowed white and burnt into human flesh. A model plantation shows the horrifying living conditions of the enslaved people, and explains that a group of escapees committed mass suicide rather than going back when capture was imminent. The sound of waves plays on loop, clashing with the testimonies of enslaved people being read. I feel overwhelmed. It is explained in detail that enslaved people were dehumanised to legitimise the violence inflicted upon them by their white owners, to justify that ownership in the first place. And this tactic of dehumanisation continues to influence the ways Black people are racialised today.

There are interactive maps of popular routes for transporting enslaved people, explanations of where they were taken and why (always to the place that would bring white people the biggest profit), and ledgers recording the sale of human beings. Generations of enslaved people lived and died without ever tasting freedom or human dignity. The display I found hardest showed samples of cloth that were traded for African people. With a scrap of material, it was once possible to purchase a human being and have them work beyond the limits of endurance for the rest of his or her life. This horror cuts deep.

On my way out of the museum, I am caught by a stream of schoolchildren on a trip. All of the kids I spot are white. Some of them mess around, the way children do, but I hope that what they see here today plants a seed of awareness that will grow over time. I take a minute to breathe, and then head back to the bookshop. On my way I see a monument to Melusine, the river goddess, and spend a moment by her side to find a sense of peace. It works. I say goodbye to the booksellers, News From Nowhere, and finally the city itself.

20180510_121502.jpg

I liked Liverpool very much, and also the person I felt myself to be here – capable and calm. A return visit is definitely on the cards, next time with a bigger bag for more books and zines. Travel makes life seem full of possibilities, or rather it highlights the possibilities we are liable to forget in the course of everyday life. When Mandy asked about my life in Scotland, I had told her the truth – there are things I deeply love about my home country, but it isn’t a place I can live indefinitely. I’m tired of living in a country where my body, my hair texture, my voice, my presence in public life, must all be justified. It would be nice to walk around with some kind of disclaimer that says “Yes, I’m Black. And my accent – like the rest of me – is Scottish. Those two things can co-exist.” But, in the words of Sonya Renee Taylor, the body is not an apology. And folding my body into the confines of an apology over and over again is not a price that I’m prepared to keep on paying.

Bibliography

Meena Kandasamy. (2017). When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife

Winnie M. Li. (2017). Dark Chapter

Heather McDaid & Laura Jones (eds.). (2017). Nasty Women

Vanessa Olorenshaw. (2016). Liberating Motherhood: Birthing the Purplestockings Movement

Hibo Wardere. (2016). Cut: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dispatches from the Margins: Lesbian Connection & the Lavender Menace

Posted on by Claire

A brief foreword: Every so often, a lesbian will write a message that deeply moves me. They usually start out by thanking me for defending lesbian sexuality in a time when it is contested and then move on to express something deeper – a feeling of loneliness and despair brought about by the way lesbians are treated in progressive spaces, be they feminist or queer. Women around the world carry this feeling, and have reached out to me to express this sense of isolation it creates. I’m also carrying that sadness and, while I can’t alleviate it in myself or others, am capable of unpacking some of the factors that cause it.

Dedicated to Anne. You’re not alone.

I’m losing friendships with straight Black women. And that loss is painful. But it’s not hard to grasp the reason for it. The feminist connections between me & hetero women have never been entirely easy: there’s a kind of distance that comes into being, and obscures shared points of understanding, through their responses to my sexuality. Yet still it is difficult, because there is place and kinship in those friendships along with a lot of joy. For the benefit of those who have never been forced to weigh up the risk of racism before building a relationship, I will also point out that there is a great spiritual ease in knowing that you will not experience anti-Blackness from a friend, because she too is Black. The friendship becomes a place of safety. So much is possible when that soft, vital part of you is open instead of pre-emptively guarding against the likelihood of racism.

Quite a few of my friendships with white lesbians, some fledgling and others fully formed, have disintegrated too – over those women’s approach, or lack of, to race. Although experiencing racism is never a picnic, I am used to receiving it from white women and have adjusted my expectations accordingly. It’s less of a pressing concern because I am not particularly invested in whiteness. I learned from a very early age that when you are surrounded by a group of white people, it’s a question of when rather than if the racism is going to manifest. There is no reason to imagine that white lesbians are the exception to whiteness by virtue of their sexuality. However, I think the reason deep friendship with white lesbians remains an ongoing possibility for me is that their radical feminist politics can enable the critical, reflective work required to unlearn racism.

For the last year I have felt pulled between the expectations that straight Black women and white lesbian women have put upon my feminism. At multiple points, it seems as 20171029_152443though what one group values about my feminism is a point of contention for the other. In the eyes of a number of straight Black women in my life, I am too radical – my unwillingness to divorce gendered aspects of the personal from the political creates a rift. With some of the white lesbians in my life, I am insufficiently radical – too invested in exploring grey areas and the pesky politics of race to fit with their understanding of lesbian feminism.

You can’t please everybody, and I haven’t the slightest desire to try. No person who lives authentically can be universally liked. Yet this split does not feel like a mere matter of liking, and neither does it feel coincidental. In fact, it can usually be traced back to the positionality of everyone involved.

At one of the conferences for women of colour I attended last year, I had the pleasure of eating lunch around a table with two other Black women, fellow speakers. Their company was at once thrilling and reassuring: because they saw my perspective as being relevant to the event and were interested in my ideas, it was possible to untie the knots in my stomach for long enough to avail myself of some delicious stew and give a talk unimpeded by nerves. There’s magic in how being seen by other Black women enables one to shake off the imposter syndrome that develops through being made continuously Other. I hope my belief in those women, my excitement in their ideas, provided a similar kind of affirmation. It was uplifting. We talked between sessions, as is the way of things. As we started to feel familiar, one asked whether I had a man and children.

It was a weird moment. I had imagined the only way I could look more obviously lesbian was by wearing a Who Killed Jenny Schecter? t-shirt. But not everyone reads lesbian presentation, least of all heterosexuals. For a second I hesitated, conscious that my honesty would remove some of the assumptions of similarity that had enabled our tentative bond. I didn’t know how to explain, and didn’t want to expose the part of myself that dreams of one day having and being a wife – less still the fledgling hope that one day I’ll have sufficiently stable mental health for us to raise a daughter together. It was painful to think the women with whom I’d shared understanding might find these aspirations alien or repellent.

Audre taught me the power in a name, in claiming the word lesbian. She never let that part of herself be erased or dismissed, even when it would have been convenient for her as a woman and as a feminist. I wouldn’t – couldn’t – deny it either, but at the same time I never relish spending the mental energy required to come out to a relatively unknown person. The risk and reward don’t necessarily balance out in within those transient connections, or any other for that matter, but within those fleeting friendships it can seem like a lot to give. Coming out isn’t just a one-time thing, as Mary Buckheit once wrote. It’s the work of a lifetime, repeated over and over again – assuming it is safe enough to do so in the first place.

I’ve been out for a few years now. In that time, I’ve become a bit too familiar with that little fission – the peculiar sensation when someone’s perception of me changes in the moment they learn that I’m a lesbian. And I felt it in that moment. There was a before, and there was an after. While I do generally share an affinity with my fellow Black women, more than any other demographic, issues of gender and sexuality do bring some tensions to the surface. The obvious solution would be to invest more time & energy in Black lesbians. Unfortunately, Scotland’s Black population density is pretty low – which makes finding other Black lesbians even harder. There are a lot of white lesbians, a few lesbians of colour, and a tiny number of Black lesbians in my life. For now, at least, I must play the hand geography has dealt me. This involves following a lot of Audre Lorde’s advice and using difference creatively – as something to be explored and learned from.

Broadly speaking, the feminism of straight women and lesbian women tends to be different. Straight and lesbian are not the only two categories into which a woman’s sexuality may fall, and certainly not the only feminist standpoints worth considering, but this particular difference requires some exploration. I’m not inclined to go down the purist path of a certain political lesbianism and claim that one is stronger or worthier somehow than the other – feminism isn’t a competition, and the variety in women’s perspectives only ever enriches the movement. All the same, there are differences in those feminisms brought about by a difference between how heterosexual and lesbian women experience the world.

Straight women are sheltered by the social support system that accompanies heterosexuality (Frye, 1983), not exposed to the precariousness of a lesbian life. Every significant relationship developed during my adult life falls into the category of “fictive” kinship, nameless ties not recognised as real by a heteronormative society. Lesbian connections are positioned as lesser, unreal, unnatural. Conversely, straight women are rewarded for forging ties of “true” kinship through marriage and blood, ties which society deems legitimate because they exist in relation to men. Building a life in which men are central – prioritised, desired, and considered essential companions – is fundamentally different to building a life that is woman-centric.  Each path holds contrasting limitations and possibilities for how a woman lives her feminism, which is not necessarily a bad thing for the movement. It is the approach to difference, as opposed to the difference in itself, which determines the depth of what is possible between women.

…we sometimes find it difficult to deal constructively with the genuine differences between us and to recognize that unity does not require that we be identical to each other. Black women are not one great vat of homogenized chocolate milk. We have many different faces, and we do not have to become each other in order to work together. – Audre Lorde, I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities

I think that as mainstream feminism’s scope has narrowed from a collective to an individual scale, becoming more about choice than structural analysis, space for women to explore the political significance of their lived realities has dwindled. There is a lack in contemporary feminism, a lack which has led us to stop pushing for liberation and instead settle for tepid notions of equality. As a result, feminism has an ever-shrinking scope and we are encouraged to abandon feminist practice that goes beyond what is comfortable or easily explained. Those complex avenues of thought, which lead us to ask immensely complicated questions about the relationship between the personal and the political, are not places women receive great encouragement to explore. And in a way it’s convenient, because we are spared the uncertainty held within radical possibilities – but we also lose out on the freedom those possibilities offer. If we pick comfort over challenge, the safety of the familiar over the potential of the unknown, the power of the feminist movement dissipates: a radical restructuring of society remains beyond our reach.

The area where feminists have become most restricted, hemmed in by fear and inhibition, is gender. Nothing will change to the benefit of women or trans/non-binary identifying people until an armistice is reached on the so-called TERF wars. Just as the sex wars blighted feminism of the 1980s, the TERF wars undermine the modern day movement. I believe that a willingness to ask difficult questions, of ourselves and each other, is the only way feminists holding any belief about gender will be able move past this stalemate. Naturally, this involves thinking challenging and uncomfortable thoughts. To practice radical honesty, instead of thinking only what falls within the walls of convenience and straightforwardness, will at least allow feminists of differing perspectives the space to connect and understand one another better.

In calling for greater honesty around the subject of gender, in advocating a deeper radicalism, I do not mean cruelty. Scrutinising gender does not and should not require cruelty towards anyone trapped by that hierarchy. If anything, radical practice demands compassion in every direction. And there is a definite shortfall of compassion within conversations about gender and sexual politics.

There are a great many things to find upsetting about how gender discourse now happens. What I find hardest to bear is watching friendships with straight Black women unravel, fray, and snap, pulled apart by gender politics. It hurts. It’s weighing on my mind. And I don’t have the energy to resist anymore. There is a particular malice that is projected onto the motives of lesbian women critiquing gender. Responses to lesbian feminist perspectives on gender often fail to recognise that it is a system oppressing us twice over, on account of both our sex and sexuality. By some twist of logic, the harm gender does to lesbians is erased – though marginal on multiple axes, we are assumed to be the oppressive force within an LGBT context.

The way straight feminists approach queer politics suggests that a significant number do not have a solid understanding of what LGBT+ organising is actually like for the women who do fit under the rainbow umbrella. In collective organising of the 1970s and ‘80s, lesbians were marginalised by the unchecked misogyny of gay men (ed. Harne & Miller, 1996). A lot of LGB spaces were male-centric, treating masculinity as the default way to be gay or bisexual. Women’s lived realities and political interests were not a priority unless actively centred by lesbian feminists (Jeffreys, 2003). While it’s easy to get caught up in the narrative of lesbians being deliberately difficult, it’s important to remember that cooperation meant being complicit in your own oppression instead of resisting it. When the T was added onto LGB, concerns of sexuality and identity were rather clumsily amalgamated – which means there are even more competing interests under the rainbow umbrella. Somewhat predictably, women’s concerns – especially the concerns of lesbian women – have become ever more peripheral. In today’s queer context, we’re more likely to be told the term lesbian is outdated or invited to re-examine the parameters of our sexuality than receive a modicum of solidarity. Straight feminists, who don’t live or organise under the rainbow umbrella, are perhaps not best placed to pass judgement on the lesbian women who do.

Life under the rainbow isn’t all fun and games. These conflicts directly affect our lives in ways that can be hard to carry, and we’re yet to reach consensus on any possible solution. Lesbian women and gay men were recently lambasted for suggesting that we return to organising around issues of sexuality – an unfortunate backlash, in my opinion. Collective organising around sexuality and collective organising around identity would enable each respective group to pursue their political needs more effectively. Without the in-fighting, there would be potential for a new and true mode of solidarity Screenshot_20180211-104222.jpgunhindered by the tensions of today. Where there’s common ground, there would be room for coalition. Where there’s none, there would at least be an absence of competition. I’ve seen more than one queer activist make the case that “it should be just the TQ+” as “the LGB part has already been normalized into heteronormativity.” Although this perspective doesn’t account for radical lesbian and gay organising, there is a case to be made for untangling the alphabet soup.

Queer politics have brought about this myth that gays and lesbians have achieved liberation. It goes the same way as rhetoric used (often by men) to explain why feminism is now redundant: women are basically equal now. Women are not equal to men, much less liberated from them – don’t bother trying to convince me otherwise until the pandemic of men’s violence against women and girls comes to an end. Patriarchy remains part of society’s foundation. Gender, which exists as a cause and consequence of patriarchy, gives rise to heterosexism and homophobia. It’s all connected.

In a recent conversation with my mother, she spoke about why she has remained at the same place of work for nearly two decades. The company has excellent policies safeguarding the rights of gay and lesbian employees – she told me that, even if people didn’t like her sexuality, she felt confident they couldn’t express anti-lesbian sentiment towards her because of strictly enforced consequences for discrimination. I know that’s hardly the ultimate struggle, and there is a certain privilege in having been able to build a lengthy career with one organisation, but it broke my heart a bit that whether or not she would be supported against lesbophobia factored into my mum’s decision making process in choosing her job. (Yes, she is a lesbian, which makes me lucky enough to be a second generation gay.) To be a lesbian does not bring a woman any great power or socioeconomic privileges – in fact, it does the opposite. Which is why it’s disheartening that mainstream feminism has ceased to treat us as worthy recipients of compassion.

Lesbian women are not viewed as “natural” subjects of empathy, despite being marginalised, because we do not live “natural” lives. Our way of living – which involves loving, desiring, and prioritising women – is not simply outside of heterosexist values, but a direct challenge to those values (Rich, 1980). The lack of empathy we receive from straight women is influenced and enabled by lesbophobia. I invite straight feminists to consider why their go-to assumption is that a lesbian feminist perspective on gender is motivated by malice, and to ask themselves why it is easy to imagine an innate cruelty in lesbian women.

Increasingly, I see straight feminists treating their lesbian sisters in a way that they could never condone behaving towards their trans siblings. Perhaps this disparity in compassion is because trans-identifying people do not overtly challenge the foundations of a heterosexual feminist life, whereas sharing spaces with lesbian feminists invariably brings the institution of heterosexuality into sharper focus – and in so doing raises uncomfortable questions. At times straight feminists speak about certain lesbian feminist theorists in such a way that you would be forgiven for thinking they described repeat violent offenders, not women in their sixties and seventies. Linda Bellos, a committed Black lesbian feminist, was vilified for speaking about the conflict between lesbian and queer politics. If we do not speak about it openly and honestly, that horrible tension is only going to grow – but I fear that scapegoating lesbian feminists is easier than engaging with what lesbian women have to say.

lavender menace

Lesbians are more likely to be described as unfeeling or – more ridiculous still – dangerous than straight feminists who analyse gender as a social harm. We are pathologised even within the feminist movement, lavender menaces once more. Radical feminists – many of whom are lesbian – consider gender as a vehicle for violence against women and girls. Therefore, we aim to eliminate gender in order to liberate women and girls from violence. Being a gender abolitionist has nothing to do with cruelty or prejudice, and everything to do with wanting to make this world a better, fairer place – somewhere all women and girls can thrive. I wish that more straight women could find ways to critique the gender politics of any lesbian feminism without resorting to Othering. There is scope for disagreement without subtly pathologising lesbian desires or perspectives.

An ever-growing number of Tweets muse about the correlation between lesbian IMG_20171116_231114.jpgsexuality and “TERF” politics, including such dubious pearls of wisdom such as this: “repeated use of the word ‘lesbian’ is also a dog whistle for TERFs.” If even saying lesbian can be taken as proof of transphobia, something has clearly gone wrong in this conversation. As Black feminist theory has long held (Hill Collins, 1990), self-definition is an essential step in the liberation of any oppressed group – including lesbians. And yet straight feminists are often willing to be complicit in lesbian erasure or, worse still, deny that erasure is happening even as lesbians challenge it.

For the most part I try not to write in anger, but there is something uniquely galling about being asked to consider how lesbian sexuality upholds oppressive practices by women who are married to and raising children with men. Lesbians experiencing same-sex attraction is casually problematised in conversations about gender – often by women who are exclusively attracted to the opposite sex and consider partnership with men to be the “natural” trajectory of their lives. And because relations between men and women are positioned as “natural” in heteropatriarchy, they are not subject to a fraction of the scrutiny that lesbian (and, increasingly, gay) sexuality faces. It’s sad but predictable that heterosexuality is rarely critiqued as part of gender discourse, even as expression of lesbian sexuality is treated as evidence of transphobia.

As the tension between gender and sexual politics grows, the mainstream feminist movement tends to forget that lesbians are women doing our best to survive life under patriarchy – perhaps even to break free from it if we’re lucky. Lesbians are not and never have been the women mainstream feminism is concerned with protecting: our vulnerability, unlike that of heterosexual women, evokes no great sympathy. Straight women treat lesbians as expendable to the feminist movement, although we have always been at the heart of feminism, in order to create enough distance to safely avoid being branded lesbian themselves.

The terror of Black Lesbians is buried in that deep inner place where we have been taught to fear all difference – to kill it or ignore it. Be assured: loving women is not a communicable disease. You don’t catch it like the common cold. Yet the one accusation that seems to render even the most vocal straight Black woman totally silent and ineffective is the suggestion that she might be a Black Lesbian.  – Audre Lorde, I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities

There is irony in straight women condemning lesbian feminists for our gender politics: it is, of course, our very refusal to live within the confines of gender that makes us the legitimate targets of their Othering. The distance between straight and lesbian feminists stems from het women’s failure to use that difference as a mine of creative energy. Difference can function as a source of solutions, not problems, if we are bold enough to seize upon it.

Ultimately, it’s not difficult to see why so many straight Black feminists are receptive to the notion of gender as identity. White lesbians ask me about this routinely – why so many heterosexual Black feminists have embraced queer gender politics – and my answer revolves around the following points. White women’s gender politics have historically been antagonistic towards Black women, compounding the racist oppressions we experience. Black women know what it is to be positioned outside of the acceptable, recognised standard of womanhood. Therefore, some sense parallels between the struggles of being born into Black womanhood and finding transwomanhood. The shared pains and challenges that come with being an outsider act as a bridge. What’s more, single-issue, gender-only feminism was only ever a viable option for the most privileged white women. Gender might not even be the most keenly felt form of oppression that manifests in a Black woman’s life, and so accepting its continuation may seem like a viable political compromise when it brings about fresh potential for solidarity.

The part I do not understand – or rather, do not want to understand – is the reluctance of some straight Black women to extend the same empathy or willingness to understand towards their lesbian sisters. Shared similarities between straight and lesbian Black women do not mean that I will hesitate to challenge an Othering approach to our differences. But it is not a criticism that I relish having to make. With certain women, there is a choice to be made: I can have my principles, or I can have those friendships. Principle wins every time. It’s simple, but also excruciatingly complicated.

Bibliography

Marilyn Frye. (1983). The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory

Lynne Harne & Elaine Miller, eds.. (1996). All the Rage: Reasserting Radical Lesbian Feminism

Patricia Hill Collins. (1990). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment

Sheila Jeffreys. (2003). Unpacking Queer Politics

Audre Lorde. (1988). A Burst of Light: And Other Essays

Audre Lorde. (1984). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Adrienne Rich. (1980). Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Womanhood: On Sex, Gender Roles, and Self-Identification

Posted on by Claire

A (not so) brief foreword: this essay was originally commissioned by an independent publisher looking to release an anthology on gender. In 2017 they asked if I’d be interested in writing an essay on womanhood. I was a little surprised, the publisher being explicitly queer and me being a radical feminist, but ultimately pleased: their goal was to publish a collection with plural perspectives on gender, and I believe wholeheartedly that having the space for plural perspectives on any issue is essential for healthy, open public discourse. I knew that my lesbian feminist essay would probably be in a minority standpoint, and felt comfortable with it being published alongside contradictory perspectives. Given the extreme polarity of gender discourse, which results in a painful stalemate between queer activists and radical feminists, it was encouraging to think we had reached a point where multiple views could be held and explored together.

So I wrote the essay, made the requested edits, and produced a final draft with which the publisher and I were both delighted. Their words: “We’re really happy with the edits you’ve done and the areas you’ve developed on upon our request. You did a splendid job refining the essay.” However, certain people objected to the inclusion of my essay before having read it. Some early readers gave the feedback that they were unhappy to find a perspective that they were not expecting, and alarmed that I had connected my personal experience of gender as a woman to the wider sociopolitical context we inhabit. Backlash escalated to the point that the publishing house faced the risk of having their business undermined and their debut collection jeopardised.

They gave me the option of writing another essay for the gender anthology, or having this essay published in a future collection. I declined both choices, as neither felt right – fortunately, there are more projects on my horizon. That being said I have great sympathy for the publisher’s position, and find it regrettable that their bold and brilliant venture should be compromised by the very people it was designed to support. Furthermore, I wish the publisher every success with this project, and all future endeavours. As for the essay, controversial even before being read, I have instead decided to publish it here as the seventh part of the series on sex, gender, and sexuality. It is, in my opinion, a good essay and deserves to see the light of day.

If you enjoy or learn from this essay, and can afford to do so, please consider donating to cover the lost commission of this work. [UPDATE: the publisher has offered partial payment depending on the success of their crowdfunding campaign. Thank you to everyone who has supported me. It means a great deal.]

 

Where there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. – Ntozake Shange

I absolutely love women. I love women in a way that leaves me breathless, in a way that catches just behind my ribs and gently tugs at my heartstrings until they unravel. I love women with a depth and fervour that is fundamentally lesbian. And in loving women I find extraordinary reserves of strength, the will to keep on challenging white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks, 1984), the motivation to chip away at every hierarchy and oppression that acts as a pillar upholding the ills of society. A love of women is central to my feminism, for bonds between women – links of solidarity and sisterhood in particular – have a revolutionary power unequal to any force on this earth.

According to Adrienne Rich, “the connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.” The connections shared by women, and all that flows across connections between women, open the possibility for radical social change – which is why lesbian existence and feminist politics are complimentary forces in a woman’s life.

Loving women as I do, I have spent a great deal of time musing upon what it is to be a woman, from where the appeal of women springs. As many young lesbians do, I speculate about the nature of the draw which compels us to watch all sorts of random crap on television simply because the middle-aged actress we fancy has a small role in the production. Having grown up in this world as a girl and subsequently learned how to negotiate this world as a woman, I have also reflected upon the social and political significance of the category – the weight which is undeniable. The question of what it means to be a woman has been central to feminist discourse for hundreds of years: establishing what womanhood is, pinpointing the means and motive behind woman’s oppression under patriarchy, and working out how to end that oppression are central feminist concerns.

At present the feminist movement is split in two over how to conceptualise woman and woman’s oppression. The tensions between queer ideology and sexual politics have proven every bit as divisive as the sex wars of the 1980s. The source of the split lies within gender – specifically, whether gender ought to be conceptualised as a hierarchy or as an identity within feminist analysis. Feminists have historically identified gender as the means of women’s oppression: patriarchy is reliant on gender to establish and maintain a hierarchy that enables men to dominate women.  But by the turn of the century queer theorists such as Judith Butler and Jack Halberstam began to suggest that gender may be subverted and experimented with until the very fabric of society is no longer recognisable.

Owing to the mainstreaming of queer ideology, we have entered an unprecedented era governed by the logic of postmodernism – a time in which the relationship between the physical body and material reality is untethered by the politics of identity.  As such, those engaging with the progressive politics – be they liberal or radical – begin asking ourselves anew: what does it mean to be a woman?

Woman as a Sex Class

A key element of feminist analysis is the recognition of woman as a sex class. By this I do not mean that all women’s experiences meet the same universal standards, or that all women are positioned similarly within the world’s power structures: factors such as race, disability, social class, and sexuality all shape where a woman is situated in relation to power. Rather, this perspective offers an acknowledgement of the role in which patriarchy plays in determining the power dynamic between women and men. Women’s struggle against patriarchy is collective, and emancipation from systemic oppression cannot be found through individualising a structural issue. Women of all colours and creeds, women of all classes and castes, are actively subjugated from birth – a political analysis which fails to incorporate this reality cannot truly be thought of as feminist. Women’s oppression is a direct result of having been born female-bodied into a patriarchal society. Considering woman as a sex class is, therefore, fundamental to meaningful feminist critique of patriarchy.

This mode of analysis – radically feminist analysis – can grate when misapplied by white women who seek to deny any difference between women’s lives. But when carried out correctly, with rigour and consideration, it has the potential to change the world.

My own womanhood is hardly conventional, Black and lesbian as it is. I do not meet white Eurocentric standards of female beauty or womanhood and no longer aspire towards those standards, which are rooted in racism and misogyny. Owing to skin pigmentation and hair texture, my Blackness is impossible to conceal – even if it were possible, having begun to unpick the misogynoir I have internalised from an early age, I would not choose to hide it in order to assimilate. To be visibly Other is to live with an increased vulnerability, to be perpetually open to manifestations of structural oppression. For a time I despised both my Blackness and my womanhood as a result of the painful alienation misogynoir brought into my life. I have since learned to place the blame firmly where it belongs, with the source of these cruelties: white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy. Since embracing radical politics I have learned to love both Blackness and womanhood, to love myself as a Black woman, in a way that was never possible during my pursuit of conventional beauty standards.

My lesbian presentation (Tongson, 2005) is a further rejection of those beauty standards. I style my hair in a fashion that is distinctly lesbian and have maintained a crisp undercut since coming out. At various points certain members of my family have attempted to enforce compulsory heterosexuality by shaming any outward presentation of a lesbian aesthetic, endeavouring to guide me back into the feminine role. I am told that returning to conventionally feminine presentation would render me “softer”, “more approachable”, and closer to the ideal of beauty. And while I could choose to pass for heterosexual, allowing an assumption that I am available and receptive to men to cushion me from a degree of marginalisation, I do not. I have no desire to appear soft or approachable, least of all to men – the oppressor class. Alice Walker proclaimed that “resistance is the secret of joy”, and she was quite right: there is a feeling of pure elation that flows from resisting the trap and trappings of heteropatriarchy.

Like every single woman living in a patriarchal society, I experience systematic oppression as a consequence of being female. Women – all women – are bound by the rigidity of the gender role ascribed to us on the basis of our biological sex. We are socialised from birth to be soft, compliant, nurturing so that we are primed to adopt the caring role required for upholding the domestic sphere owned by a man, be he husband or father. As Mary Wollstonecraft notably lamented, women are actively discouraged from pursuing our full potential as self-actualised human beings. Instead, women are subjected to a deliberate social (and often economic) pressure designed to create in us an ornamental source of sexual, reproductive, and domestic labour for men.

From Sojourner Truth to Simone de Beauvoir, there is a long and proud tradition of feminists critiquing the role of femininity. During her time as an abolitionist orator, Truth deconstructed womanhood to great effect, asking “ain’t I a woman?” Arguing against the hierarchies of race and gender that determined how the category of woman was understood in North American society during the heights of the transatlantic slave trade, Truth offered her own story as testimony to the falsehood of femininity. Truth used her own strength and endurance as empirical evidence, asserting that womanhood was in no way dependent on or related to the characteristics which construct femininity. Her opposition to gender essentialism and white supremacy continues to influence feminists’ perspectives on womanhood to this very day.

Feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir further critiqued femininity, connecting the socialisation of gender to the oppression of women by men. She theorised that man was the normative standard of humanity and woman understood purely in relation to him:

Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female – whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

That woman is relegated to the Other, lacking in positive definition, mandates a life that is male-centric. If woman exists as the negative image of man, she is forever bound to him. Self-definition has long been recognised as a necessary tool for the liberation of an oppressed group, and if women remain dependent on men for definition then the root cause of our oppression can never be fully tackled. Adrienne Rich once claimed that “until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves” – as is often the case, her words contain more than a little truth.

Gender is normalised through essentialism, positioned as a natural and inevitable part of life. From the get-out-of-accountability-free card that is ‘boys will be boys’ to the constant refrain of “she was asking for it” when men act upon the cultural conditioning that assures them they are entitled to women’s bodies, the hierarchy of gender maintains the gross power imbalance at the root of sexual politics. Here is how I understand the connection between biological sex and gender roles:

Gender is a socially constructed trap designed to oppress women as a sex class for the benefit of men as a sex class. And the significance of biological sex cannot be disregarded, in spite of recent efforts to reframe gender as an identity rather than a hierarchy. Sexual and reproductive exploitation of the female body are the material basis of women’s oppression – our biology is used as a means of domination by our oppressors, men.

We teach boys to dominate others and disavow their emotions. We teach girls to nurture others at the expense of their own. And I think this world would be a better place if we encouraged more empathy in boys and more daring in girls. If gender were abolished, if we raised boys and girls in the same way, patriarchy would crumble. Like a great many feminists before her, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie advocates the elimination of gender:

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognising how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations… Boys and girls are undeniably different biologically, but socialisation exaggerates the differences, and then starts a self-fulfilling process. – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All be Feminists

It is impossible to consider the position of women in society, the reality that we are second-class citizens by design of patriarchy, without acknowledging the extent of the harm done by gender. Womanhood is caught up in the constraints of the feminine gender role, prevented from escaping male dominion. In the abolition of gender lies a radical alternative. In the abolition of gender lies women’s liberation.

Therefore, recent reframing of gender as an innately held identity has proven problematic in ongoing feminist struggle. Gender identity politics rely on essentialism that feminists have fought for hundreds of years, an essentialism that argues women are naturally suited to the means of our oppression. If gender is inherent – a natural phenomenon after all – then the oppression of women under patriarchy is legitimised.

Womanhood

During the second wave of feminism, it was argued that woman simply meant a biologically female adult human. Feminists (Millett, 1969; French, 1986; Dworkin, 1987) made the case that womanhood could and should exist purely as a biological category, unfettered by the feminine gender role – a vision of women’s liberation. This perspective is directly contradicted by a queer understanding of gender, which primarily focuses on gender as self-expression:

The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of gender as a constituted social temporality. – Judith Butler, Gender Trouble

A queer notion of gender presents it as a matter of performativity, arguing that dominant power structures may be subverted through transgressing the barriers of masculine and feminine gender roles. Identification with the characteristics associated with a gender role is taken as belonging to the category. Those who identify with the gender role ascribed to their sex class are described as cisgender. Those who do not identify with the gender role ascribed to their sex class are described as transgender. From a queer standpoint, sex is not a fixed category but rather an unstable one. Queer politics are formed gender as a mode of personal identification. Radical feminist analysis, in which gender is understood as a hierarchy, is dismissed as old-fashioned.

If one cannot say with absolutely clarity what is woman and what is man, the oppressed and oppressor classes are rendered unspeakable. Subsequently the hierarchy of gender is made invisible and feminist analysis of patriarchy grows impossible. Without words used as markers to convey specific meaning, women are deprived of the vocabulary required to name and oppose our oppression. Postmodernism and political analysis of power structures make uneasy bedfellows.

Here is where the controversy lies, where gender discourse grows explosive beyond the point of reconciliation between queer and radical feminism. If gender is a matter of personal identification, it is a purely individual matter and, therefore, depoliticised. The power differential between oppressed and oppressor is negated by a failure to consider man and woman as two distinct sex classes. Gender ceases to be visible as a means of oppression, further obscured as the categories of man and woman are considered immaterial. If sex classes are unspeakable, so too are the sexual politics of patriarchy.

If womanhood can be reduced to the performance of the feminine gender role and a personal identification with that gender role, there is little scope for distinguishing between the oppressor and oppressed. Womanhood ceases to be indicated by the presence of primary and secondary sex characteristics and instead becomes a matter of self-identification. The oppressor may even benefit from a lifetime of the privilege conferred upon men through the subordination of woman and then claim womanhood. Dame Jenni Murray, presenter of BBC Woman’s Hour, came under fire for highlighting that prior to transition, transwomen benefit from the social and economic privileges accorded to men in patriarchy. Shortly afterwards, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received backlash for differentiating between the experiences of women born as such and transwomen:

 I think if you’ve lived in the world as a man, with the privileges the world accords to men, and then switch gender – it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experiences with the experiences of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman, who has not been accorded those privileges that men are. I don’t think it’s a good thing to conflate everything into one.

If it is no longer possible to consider the experiences of those born female, to analyse the relationship between sex and socioeconomic power, feminists can no longer identify or challenge the workings of patriarchy. This is a particularly unfortunate consequence of embracing queer ideology. Women’s rights are human rights, as the slogan goes – inalienable and absolutely worth fighting for. The injustices faced by women around the globe are intolerable: one in three women will be subject to male violence within her lifetime. Yet, if the linguistic tools necessary to critique patriarchy are removed from the feminist lexicon, women’s liberation hits an insurmountable stumbling block: you cannot challenge an oppression you cannot name, after all.

The cultural significance attached to the word woman is in a state of flux. As queer politics would have it, womanhood is simply the performance of the female gender role. As radical feminism would have it, the female gender role exists purely as a sexist stereotype of woman rooted in essentialism and misogyny. The only escape queer politics offers women from patriarchal oppression is for all those who are biologically female to identify out of the category ‘woman’. To claim the label of non-binary, genderfluid, or transmasculine – anything other than a cisgender woman, who is naturally suited to her status as a second-class citizen – is the only route queer politics offers biological women to being recognised as fully human.

Women, by queer logic, cannot be self-actualised and have no meaningful inner-lives. We are simply Other to men. It is for this reason that queer ideology has been able to reduce women to “non-men” – to “pregnant people”, “uterus-havers”, and “menstruators.”  It is worth asking: does trans-inclusivity depend upon women being written out of existence? While queer theory has reflected upon the nature of masculinity, it has not deconstructed the category of man beyond the point of recognition. Just as in mainstream patriarchal society, man is the normative standard of humanity and woman defined in relation to him. The positive definition of womanhood is treated as expendable within queer discourse.

As linguist Deborah Cameron asserts, women’s power to self-define is of immense political significance:

The strength of the word ‘woman’ is that it can be used to affirm our humanity, dignity and worth, without denying our embodied femaleness or treating it as a source of shame. It neither reduces us to walking wombs, nor de-sexes and disembodies us. That’s why it’s important for feminists to go on using it. A movement whose aim is to liberate women should not treat ‘woman’ as a dirty word.

However one understands the category of woman, its erasure can surely be recognised as a disastrous impediment to the liberation of women.

Lesbian Sexuality

The controversy over how womanhood is defined manifests most acutely around lesbian sexuality. An unfortunate consequence of queer politics is the problematising of homosexuality. Lesbian women and to a lesser extent gay men (for it is women’s bodies and sexual practices that are fiercely policed within patriarchy) routinely face allegations of transphobia within queer discourse. A lesbian is a woman who exclusively experiences same-sex attraction. It is the presence of female primary and secondary sex characteristics that create at least the potential for lesbian desire – gender identity is of little relevance to the parameters of same-sex attraction. As it is governed on the basis of biological sex rather than personal identification with gender, the sexuality of lesbian women is under scrutiny within queer discourse.

These words are not written with detachment. It is not an abstract concern alive only in theory. The reality is, this is a particularly uncomfortable window of time in which to be lesbian. We face mounting pressure to expand the boundaries of our sexuality until sex that involves a penis is considered a viable option. And sex that involves a penis quite simply isn’t lesbian, whether it belongs to a man or a transwoman.

I am deeply concerned by the shaming and coercion of lesbian women that now happens within queer discourse. The queer devaluation of lesbian sexuality – from the insistence that lesbians are a boring old anachronism to the pathologising of lesbian sexuality that occurs when we are branded “vagina fetishists” – is identical to the lesbophobia pedalled by social conservatives. Both the queer left and religious right go out of their way to imply something is wrong with lesbians because we desire other women.

Lesbian women are attracted by the female form. In addition to sharing a profound emotional and mental connection with other women, lesbians appreciate the female form – the beauty of women’s bodies is what sparks our desire. If biological sex ceases to be recognised as determining womanhood (or, indeed, manhood), it can no longer be said that there is such a body as a woman’s body. If the distinct set of sex characteristics which combine to form womanhood are rendered unspeakable, attraction inspired by those characteristics – lesbian desire – is made invisible. Something vital is lost when women are deprived of the language to articulate how and why we love other women (Rich, 1980).

Lesbians are being coerced back into the closet within the LGBT+ community. We receive strong encouragement to abandon the label of lesbian, which we are told is comically archaic, and embrace the umbrella term of queer in the name of inclusivity. But no sexuality is universally inclusive – by definition, sexuality is a specific set of factors which when met offer the potential for attraction. It is unreasonable – and frankly delusional – to imagine that sexuality can be stripped of any meaningful criteria.

A queer woman is less challenging to the status quo than a lesbian, easier for men to get behind, for queer is a vague term that deliberately eschews solid definitions – a queer woman may well be sexually available to men, her sexuality in no way an impediment to offering men the emotional, sexual, or reproductive labour upon which patriarchy is dependent.

Queer stigmatising of lesbians is a tactical manoeuvre designed to undermine acknowledgement of the female sex category. If there is no need to address same-sex attraction between women, the significance and permanence of sex categories demands no scrutiny. That encouraging lesbian women to consider sex that involves a penis has become newly acceptable, a legitimate line of discourse within the progressive left, is a terrible puzzle. The logic of it is straightforward enough, yet the underlying truths about what is happening within LGBT+ politics are not easy to look at. Yet still I cannot help turn it over and over in my mind, working at the ideas like a Rubik’s cube until the pieces fall into place. Queer ideology seeks to enforce compulsory heterosexuality in the lives of lesbian women just as surely as the standards set by patriarchy. By denying the possibility of lesbians exclusively loving other women, by delegitimising lesbians living woman-centric lives, queer politics undermines our liberation.

Conclusion

There is a persistent thread of misogyny running through queer politics, from the inception of queer to its present incarnation. Queer was the product of gay men’s activism, concerned primarily with sexual freedom and transgression: as such, queer did not represent the interests of lesbian women when it came into being during the 1980s and does not represent the interests of lesbian women now (Jeffreys, 2003). Queer is less about collectively challenging structural inequalities at their root than an individualised subversion of social norms.

Though it promised a radical, exciting alternative – one which many women have embraced, along with men – queer politics are ill equipped to dismantle systematic oppressions. Queer erasure of womanhood, queer disregard for women’s boundaries if they happen to be lesbian, and queer obscuring of the gender hierarchy breathes a new lease of life into patriarchy, if anything.

I dream of a world without gender. I dream of a world where men can wear dresses and be gentle without either being treated as a negation of manhood. But much more than that, I dream of a world where no assumptions are made about what it means to be woman beyond the realm of biological fact. And if that makes me a heretic in the church of gender, so be it – I’m an atheist.

Gender roles and the hierarchy they maintain are incompatible with the liberation of women and girls from patriarchal oppression. It is because I love women, and because I am a woman, that I cannot afford to pretend otherwise. Embracing gender as an identity is the equivalent of decorating the interior of a cell: it is a superficial perspective which offers no freedom.

Bibliography

Simone de Beauvoir. (1949). The Second Sex. London: Vintage

Judith Butler. (1990). Gender Trouble. London: Routledge

Andrea Dworkin. (1987). Intercourse. New York: Free Press

Marilyn French. (1986). Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals. California: Ballantine Books

Sheila Jeffreys. (2003). Unpacking Queer Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press

Jack Halberstam. (1998). Female Masculinity. Carolina: Duke University Press

bell hooks. (1984). Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. London: Pluto Press

Kate Millett. (1969). Sexual Politics. Columbia: Columbia University Press

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. (2014). We Should All be Feminists. London: Fourth Estate

Adrienne Rich. (1979). On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978

Adrienne Rich. (1980). Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.

Ntozake Shange. (1982). Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo. New York: Picador

Karen Tongson. (2005). Lesbian Aesthetics, Aestheticizing Lesbianism. IN Nineteenth Century Literature

Mary Wollstonecraft. (1792). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects

 

Binair of een spectrum, gender is een hierarchie

Posted on by Claire

Binary or Spectrum, Gender is a Hierarchy is now available in Dutch! The original essay is available here. By her request, the translator remains anonymous – I am extremely grateful for her work.

Een kort voorwoord: dit is het vijfde essay in mijn serie over geslacht, gender and seksualiteit. Deel 1, 2, 3 en 4 zijn hier bij Sister Outrider te lezen. In dit essay, bestrijd ik het idee dat gender begrepen kan worden als iets anders dan een hiërarchie. Dit essay is opgedragen aan E, een ster van een lesbiënne en feminist.

 

 “Het is onmogelijk onderdrukking te benoemen en bestrijden als er geen benoembare onderdrukkers zijn” – Mary Daly

Wat is gender?

Gender is een verzinsel, gecreëerd door de patriarchaat, een hiërarchisch systeem opgedrongen door mannen om hun dominatie over vrouwen te garanderen. Het idee van een binair gender werd ingesteld om de ondergeschikheid van vrouwen te rechtvaardigen door de onderdrukking door mannen als de natuurlijke stand van zaken af te schilderen. Door gender als natuurlijk af te schilderen, wordt niet alleen de hiërarchie gedepoliticeerd, maar overtuigt er eveneens vrouwen van dat radicale weerstand ten opzichte van gender, het middel van onze onderdrukking – vergeefs is door uit te gaan van essentialisme. Deze hopeloosheid leidt tot apathie, wat sociale verandering meer ondermijnt dan onomwonden verwerping van gender. Als het afschaffen van gender (en daardoor het ontmantelen van het patriarchale systeem) een onbereikbaar doel is, hebben  vrouwen geen andere keuze  dan hun status als tweede klas burgers van de wereld te accepteren.  De visie op gender als een aangeboren eigenschap is het accepteren van de patriarchale blauwdruk voor de samenleving.

gender imageGender is een hiërarchie die het mogelijk maakt voor mannen om dominant te zijn en creëert de condities voor de ondergeschikte positie van vrouwen. Omdat gender een fundamenteel onderdeel is van de witte, kapitalistische samenleving (Hooks, 1984), is het is bijzonder ontzettend om te constateren dat elementen van het ’queer discours’ beweren dat gender niet alleen in het aangeboren en onveranderlijk,  maar zelfs heilig is.

Het ’queer maken van gender’ is verreweg een radicaal alternatief voor de status quo, in plaats daarvan versterkt het de normen die door het patriarchale systeem zijn opgedrongen door middel van het repliceren van patriarchaal essentialisme. Een queer begrip van gender daagt het patriarchaat niet op een zinvolle manier uit – in plaats van mensen aan te moedigen om de door de patriarchie gestelde normen te weerstaan, biedt het hen een manier om deze normen juist te omarmen. Queer politiek daagt  traditionele geslachtsrollen niet zo zozeer uit, maar blaast deze nieuw leven in– en hierin schuilt het gevaar.

Door te stellen dat gender ’queer’ kan of moet worden gemaakt, verliest men uit het oog hoe geslacht functioneert als een systeem van onderdrukking. Hiërarchische systemen kunnen per definitie niet worden opgenomen in een politiek van bevrijding. Structurele machtsongelijkheid kan niet omgebogen worden tot deze niet meer bestaat – de1600-Genderbread-Person opvatting van  gender als een kwestie van performativiteit of persoonlijke identificatie ontkent haar praktische functie in een hiërarchie. Elke ideologie die gender niet als een manier van onderdrukking van vrouwen onderscheidt, kan niet als feministisch worden omschreven – inderdaad, aangezien queer ideologie grotendeels onkritisch blijft ten opzicht van machtsverschillen achter de seksuele politiek, is anti-vrouw.

De logica van geslachtsidentiteit is fundamenteel gebrekkig, gebaseerd op het uitgangspunt dat gender aangeboren en essentieel is. Zoals feministen al decennia lang hebben beweerd, is gender sociaal geconstrueerd – een fabricage ontworpen om de dominatie van vrouwen door mannen mogelijk te maken. De opvoeding van kinderen, in zelfs voor de geboorte al ingedeeld in man/vrouw, dient de seksen te verdelen in een dominante en ondergeschikte klasse. Feminisme erkent dat biologisch geslacht bestaat terwijl het tegelijkertijd essentialisme bestrijdt, het ageert tegen het idee dat seks bepaalt wie of wat we kunnen zijn als mensen. Feminisme beweert dat ons karakter, kwaliteiten en persoonlijkheid niet bepaald worden door de vraag of we man of vrouw zijn. Queer theorie stelt daarentegen dat een reeks kenmerken intrinsiek mannelijk is en een andere reeks kenmerken inherent vrouwelijk, en dat onze identiteit afhankelijk is van hoe we met deze eigenschappen overeenkomen.

In plaats van te erkennen dat er veel manieren zijn om man of vrouw te zijn, schuift queer theorie mensen in een steeds groter aantal categorieën georganiseerd door stereotypes. Er is geen wetenschappelijk bewijs om het bestaan van typisch mannelijke of vrouwelijke hersenen te ondersteunen, en claims voor het bestaan van mannelijke of vrouwelijke hersenen zijn het product van neuroseksisme (Fine, 2010). Toch positioneert queer ideologie gender als een aangeboren identiteit, waarbij wordt gesteld dat gender is ’wat je voelt’.

‘De levenslange handboeien van culturele conditionering die me hebben geprobeerd mij te overtuigen dat een geslacht een biologisch feit is in plaats van een sociaal construct, zijn moeilijker te schudden dan ik zou willen.’ – Louise O’Neill, ik noem me een feminist: Opinies van vijfentwintig vrouwen onder dertig

Het probleem met ’gender identiteit’

Ondanks haar essentialisme is het queere begrip van gender steeds vaker in de progressieve en feministische ruimten te vinden. Het is niet moeilijk om te begrijpen waarom. Gender ideologie erkent dat een binaire mannelijke en vrouwelijke genderrol beperkend is voor individuen, maar in plaats van te pleitn voor het uitgebreide project dat nodig is om de hiërarchie van geslacht af te breken, biedt het een veel makkelijker oplossing: een individuele opt-out-clausule waarmee mensen zich kunnen verzoenen met het patriarchaat. Het omarmen van de gender is het omarmen van een verhaal van exceptionalisme .  Het omaremen van gender-ideologie is het accepteren dat er een klasse van mensen is die van nature ingesteld is om hun positie binnen de te accepteren (onderdrukt of onderdrukker) en een groep mensen die uitzonderingen zijn op de traditionele genderregels.

Er is een fundamenteel probleem met queer gender ideologie. Zoals ik eerder heb beschreven, is dat probleem misogenie. Door te beweren dat bepaalde groepen van nature geschikt zijn de geslachtsrol die hun sekscategorie heeft opgelegd, zogenoemde “cis” –personen, moet je misogynie onderschrijven. De vrouwen die als cis worden gecategoriseerd, zijn door de logica van geslachtsidentiteit inherent geschikt om door mannen onderdrukt te worden. Het hele patriarchale systeem wordt derhalve gekleurd door gender ideologie, gepresenteerd als een natuurlijke stand van zaken in tegenstelling tot een systeem van onderdrukking die ontworpen is om mannen de heerschappij over vrouwen te verlenen.

Omdat queer identiteitspolitiek gebouwd is rond een verhaal van exceptionalisme, wordt de machtsdynamiek van seksuele politiek volledig genegeerd. Door de taalkundige verdraaiing van “cis” wordt de onderdrukking van vrouwen als een voorrecht aangevoerd en daarom wordt de bevrijding van “cis” -vrouwen uit patriarchale onderdrukking opgeheven. Seksuele politiek wordt afgewezen door zelfidentificatie, waardoor het lidmaatschap van een seksklasse politiek onzichtbaar wordt gemaakt.

Screenshot_20170904-124333

“Zoveel genders en toch weten we, op magische wijze, welke helft van het menselijke ras verwacht wordt billen af te begen en vloeren te schrobben”  – Victoria Smith

Gender is een gevangenis, en ik heb compassie voor iedereen die daardoor wordt beperkt. Het is afschuwelijk dat mannen ontmoedigd worden om empathisch, vriendelijk te zijn en zich op een creatieve manier te uiten. Er is wreedheid bij het socialiseren van jongens in de mannelijkheid. Er wordt gezegd dat er een verband bestaat tussen gender ideologie en het witwassen van mannelijk voorrecht dat de controle vereist. Dat gezegd hebbende, er is een connectie tussen gender ideologie en het witwassen van mannelijk privilege.  

Dit probleem wordt geïllustreerd door het geval van Ben Hopkins, de helft van het punk duo PWR BTTM. Hopkins is biologisch man en is als zodanig gesocialiseerd in zijn mannelijkheid. Zoals veel bekende mensen die biologisch man zijn, exploitteerde Hopkins zijn roem en macht om zijn vrouwelijke fans seksueel te misbruik.  Volgens een van zijn slachtoffers is Hopkins een “bekend seksueel roofdier die veelvoudig heeft toegeslagen, andere mensen in de queer community heeft gepest en ongewenste advances heeft gemaakt op minderjarigen.” Wat Hopkins onderscheidt van de lange traditie van machtige mannelijke misbruikers is dat hij zich identificeert als genderqueer. Als zodanig zou het queer perspectief, Hopkins acties niet als mannelijk geweld tegen vrouwen beschouwen. Queer exceptionalisme, zoals deze zich manifesteert door de logica van genderidentiteit, maakt het onmogelijk om mannelijk geweld als zodanig te noemen of te bevechten.

 PWR-BTTM-sexual-abuse-screenshot

Mannen worden vanaf hun geboorte aangeleerd dat zij recht hebben op de tijd, de aandacht, liefde, energie en lichamen van vrouwen. Toch ontvangen mannen, in overeenstemming met de logica van genderideologie, ongelukkige, maar willekeurige, in tegenstelling tot een waarschijnlijk gevolg van de gendered socialisatie in de patriarchale samenleving. Ondanks de zelf-identificatie  als genderqueer, heeft het seksuele geweld dat Hopkins tegen vrouwen met dramatisch minder sociale macht dan hij, perfect de logica van mannelijkheid gevolgd. In welke zin kan een man die het meest toxische mannelijkheid gedrag vertoont, beweren dat hij gender queer heeft gemaakt.

Zoals zijn acties duidelijk maken, heeft Hopkins niet bewust de mannelijke socialisatie of zijn recht op vrouwenlichamen afgeleerd. Hoe Hopkins kiest om te identificeren, heeft weinig invloed op de gruwelijke realiteit van de situatie. Door te claimen genderqueer te zijn, probeerde Hopkins het mannelijke privilege waarvan hij profiteerd onder het tapijt te schuiven. Jen Izaakson schrijft voor Feminist Current over de paradox die schuilt in Hopkins’ claim genderqueer te zijn:

“… Hopkins gebruikte glitter, eyeliner en vintage jurkjes om een ​​begrip van en navolging van queer idealen te demonstreren, om een ​​afwijzing van” giftige mannelijkheid” te illustreren evenals een afwijzing van  gendernormen die sociaal toegeschreven worden aan mannen. Maar het dragen van bloemrijke jurken en lipgloss leidt niet tot een feitelijke afwijzing van het mannelijke recht en mannelijke dominantie van mannen onder het patriarchaat. Door middel van zelf-gedefinieerde identiteiten, individuele expressie en performativiteit, in plaats van het mannelijk geweld en ongelijkmatige machtsstructuren te onderzoeken, heeft queer discourse het mogelijk gemaakt voor misogynie om gemakkelijk toegang te verkrijgen tot het feest.”

Evenzo heeft de transactivist Cherno Biko (geboren als man) openlijk bekend dat een transman (geboren vrouw) verkracht te hebben met de fantasie en de bedoeling om deze tegen hun wil te bezwangeren. Ondanks publiek erkend te hebben  seksueel misbruik gepleegd te hebben, werd Biko uitgenodigd om tijdens de vrouwenmars in Washington op het podium te spreken en was de medevoorzitter van de adviesraad van de jonge vrouw in New York. Dit roept vragen op over niet alleen over het schijnbare gebrek aan aansprakelijkheid voor seksueel misbruik binnen het feminisme, maar ook in de mate waarin progressieve politieke bewegingen bereid zijn om geweld tegen vrouwen door de vingers te zien zodra de dader zich als transgender of genderqueer identificeert.

Geweld tegen vrouwen zijn zowel de oorzaak en het gevolg van het patriarchiaat, en ze worden genormaliseerd door de logica van het genderdenken. Genderideologie onderschrijft de machtsongelijkheid van seksuele politiek – een hiërarchie die door gender zelf is ingesteld – en in plaats daarvan beschouwt het gender als een kwestie van zelfidentificatie. Het queer perspectief individualiseert de vraag van identiteit om gender te depolitiseren, waardoor moeilijke vragen over macht en patriarchie worden vermeden.

We worden verteld dat geslacht een diep persoonlijke kwestie is en dient daarom, zoals alle goede liberalen weten, niet grondig te worden onderzocht. Desalniettemin blijkt dat transvrouwen ‘een mannelijk patroon behouden met betrekking tot criminaliteit na een geslachtsveranderende operatie’ en dat ‘hetzelfde geldt voor gewelddadige misdaad’. Gezien het feit dat één op de drie vrouwen in haar leven mannelijk geweld zal ervaren, is dit geen kleinigheid: 96% van de mensen die seksueel geweld plegen zijn biologisch mannelijk. De veiligheid van vrouwen en meisjes is nooit een aanvaardbare prijs om te betalen, zelfs niet in de naam van inclusiviteit. Mannelijke socialisatie speelt een aantoonbare rol in de vorming van houding en gedrag. Als vrouwen het geweld dat we ervaren niet kunnen benoemen noch systeem dat dit mogelijk maakt, kunnen we deze niet bestrijden.

“Toen Simone de Beauvoir schreef dat een meisje niet als een vrouw geboren is, maar eerder een wordt, bedoelde ze niet dat een individu van het mannelijke geslacht, gesocialiseerd in de verwachtingen van de mannelijke genderrol, simpelweg kan beslissen om hormonen te nemen en wellicht operatie te ondergaan en zo ‘een vrouw worden”- Dame Jenni Murray

Door de lens van genderidentiteit kan de onderdrukker zijn mannelijke voorrecht vebergen en de status van onderdrukte opeisen. Door de lens van genderidentiteit kunnen de onderdrukten ook de basis van hun onderdrukking verwerpen door middel van zelfidentificatie. Genderideologie wil een hiërarchie als een identiteit voorstellen. Helaas kan men niet aan structurele en systematische onderdrukking ontkomen – hoewel het queer discours dit als een legitieme route voor vrouwen voorstelt. De man is de standaard voor de mensheid, terwijl de vrouw die zich bezighoudt met ‘Andere’ – gedefinieerd alleen in relatie tot de man (Beauvoir, 1949). Het is geen wonder dat een groeiend aantal vrouwen, ontevreden over de beperkingen die door de vrouwelijke genderrol worden opgelegd en zich bewust zijn dat mensen meer zijn dan het holle stereotype van vrouwelijkheid, stoppen met het zich identificeren als vrouw.

In plaats van de vrouwelijke genderrol als het probleem te identificeren en de genderhiërarchie te ontmantelen, worden vrouwen nu zich niet langer als zodanig te identificeren als ze zich gedragen of voelen zoals mensen nu eenmaal doen. In plaats van vrouwen de middelen aan te reiken om hun geïndividualiseerde misogynie af te schudden, moedigt de geslachtsideologie hen aan om vrouw zijn te verwerpen en zich te beroepen op individuele uitzonderingen op de gendersysteem. Door volledige mensheid en vrouwelijkheid als wederzijds exclusief uit te nodigen, nodigt genderideologie vrouwen uit om deel te nemen aan Ik-Ben-Niet-Zoals-Andere-Meisjes: De Queer Editie.

Het is begrijpelijk dat vrouwen graag de aan vrouwelijke genderrol willen ontsnappen – inderdaad, de bevrijding van vrouwen uit de genderhiërarchie is een kerndoel van het feminisme. Maar het feminisme pleit voor de bevrijding van alle vrouwen van alle vormen van onderdrukking, niet alleen de bevrijding van degenen die stellen dat hun individuele onderdrukking vanwege hun gender verkeerd is – diegenen die “niet een soort ’vrouw zijn’ ambiëren“.

De homofobie van het ’queer’ maken van gender

Ondanks dat er gesproken wordt over een ’queer community’, een alliantie tussen ledengay liberation van de LGBT + alfabet soep, ligt er altijd al homofobie aan de basis van queer politiek. Queer-ideologie kwam op in reactie op  lesbische feministische principes, die een radicale maatschappelijke verandering bepleiten door het transformeren van persoonlijke levens (Jeffreys, 2003). De politieke belangen van lesbische vrouwen en gemarginaliseerde homoseksuele mannen – met name de afschaffing van geslachtsrollen – worden door queer politiek van tafel geveegd. Individualisme voorkomt elke geconcentreerde focus op feministische en homoseksuele bevrijdingspolitiek, wat door queer discours wordt beschreven als ’ouderwets’, ’saai’ of ’anti-seks’.

In de afgelopen jaren is het openlijk anti-homo sentiment gestegen. Pogingen om lesbische vrouwen en homoseksuele mannen uit te wissen zijn nu bon ton in de ’queer’ wereld. Shannon Keating schrijft in een opinie waarin de vraag wordt gesteld of de lesbische identiteit de genderrevolutie kan overleven dat de ’lesbisch’ en ’homoseksueel’ verouderde termen zijn.

“Tegen de steeds kleurrijkere achtergrond van gender diversiteit, begint een binair label als ‘gay’ of ‘lesbisch’ muffig en saai te voelen. Als er zo veel genders zijn, is het dan niet ’close-minded- of erger nog, schadelijk en exclusief- als je je identificeert mete en label dat  impliceert dat je alleen maar aangetrokken bent tot één van hen?”

Er is een volhardende tak van homofobie binnen de genderideologie. Deze manifesteert zich zo regelmatig, omdat deze homofobie verwoven is met genderpolitiek. Aantrekking tussen mensen van gelijk geslacht, wordt halsstarrig geproblematiseerd omdat deze het bestaan van biologisch geslacht erkent, alsmede haar betekenis voor het bepalen voor potentiele aantrekkingskracht – iets wat ingaat tegen de claim dat gender in plaats van geslacht van belang is voor iemands identiteit.

Eerder dit jaar beweerde Juno Dawson, de auteur van The Gender Games, dat het zijn van een homoman eigenlijk niets anders is dan een ‘troostprijs’ voor diegenen die niet bereid zijn om te kiezen voor het leven als een transvrouw. Voor Juno’s transitie leefde en had hij lief als een homoseksuele man, daarom is het is het bijzonder lastig dat Dawson homoseksualiteit verklaarde als iets dat minder respect en erkenning verdient.  Dawson schetste het leven als een homoman als een minderwaardig alternatief, een armzalig substituut, voor de onderdrukking van zijn van een transvrouw. Toen homoseksuele mannen en lesbische vrouwen bezwaar maakten tegen deze homofobie, maakte Dawson een niet-verontschuldiging die een fundamentele waarheid over de politiek van geslachtsidentiteit en seksualiteit blootlegt: “Veel transmannen en- vrouwen leefden voor hun transitie als homoseksuele mannen of lesbiennes dus ik vind het een heel belangrijk punt om te bespreken… ”

Het is ontzettend regressief om te betogen dat homomannen eigenlijk onvoltooide vrouwen zijn. Volgens deze logica is alleen het meest heterosexuele en giftigste van mannelijkheid werkelijk mannelijk. En als homoseksuele mannen in werkelijkheid transvrouwen zijn, bestaat er niet zoiets als een homoseksuele man. Homoseksualiteit is ‘genezen’ – een agenda die traditioneel tot sociaal conservatieven behoorde, maar nu binnen de queer ideologie wordt betoogt. En het is geen toeval dat zoveel van degenen die kiezen voor een chirurgische of medische transitie, homoseksuele mannen of lesbische vrouwen zijn, die na hun transitie als heteroseksueel leven. In Iran, waar relaties tussen mensen van hetzelfde geslacht met de dood worden bestraft, zijn geestelijken bereid om ”het idee te accepteren dat een persoon in een lichaam van het verkeerde geslacht kan worden gevangen”.

Geslachtsideologie is fundamenteel conservatief. Het is gebaseerd op de veronderstelling dat genderrollen absoluut zijn, dat diegenen die afwijken van hun opgelegde genderrol moeten behoren tot een andere categorie. Lesbische vrouwen en homoseksuele mannen dagen genderrollen uit, simpelweg door van iemand van hetzelfde geslacht te houden en  door af te wijken van de heteropatriarchale patronen van dominantie om een ​​seksuele politiek van gelijkheid te creëren. Als we overgaan naar heteroseksualiteit, in overeenstemming met de genderrollen, moeten we ons aanpassen aan de genderrollen zoals die door het patriarchiaat worden voorgeschreven.

Niemand is geboren in het verkeerde lichaam. Een lichaam kan per definitie niet verkeerd zijn. Het systeem van gender is daarentegen onjuist op alle fronten. Het problematiseren van lichamen in plaats van de hiërarchie die ze beperkt, repliceert alleen de destructieve ideologie in de kern van het patriarchiaat. Het keert de benadering van de politiek van bevrijding om, in het beste geval heeft het het patriarchiaat verkeerd begrepen, in het slechtste geval is het er een onderdeel van.

Conclusie

 Kritiek op genderideologie wordt sterk ontmoedigd. Ik vermoed dat dit komt doordat hoe meer men het queere begrip geslacht verkent, hoe duidelijker haar misogynie en homofobie wordt. Zodra de progressieve glans begint te verbleken – zodra het duidelijk wordt dat genderideologie in het beste geval gedienstig is aan het patriarchaat en de schade die deze berokkent aan vrouwen, wordt de queer politiek veel moeilijker om te verkopen aan de algemene bevolking.

 

fuck grEn zo worden de feministen die gender-ideologie bevragen als onverdraagzaam gebrandmerkt, de kritiek en die vrouwen die dapper genoeg zijn om deze te maken, worden als illegitiem weg gezet. Vrouwen die genderideologie in vraag stellen, worden TERF’s genoemd – we worden er telkens verteld dat hun enige motief voor hun kritiek op genderideologie valsheid is, in tegenstelling tot een betekenisvolle zorg voor het welzijn van vrouwen en meisjes. Daarmee citeer ik Mary Shelley: “Pas op; want ik ben onbevreesd en daarom krachtig.” Elke poging om vrouwen te ontmoedigen om onze onderdrukking aan te pakken, is diep verdacht.

 

Geslachtsideologie creëert een valse dichotomie van mensen die vanaf hun geboorte gebonden zijn aan traditionele geslachtsrollen en een uitzonderlijk kleine groep die dat niet zijn. Geslachtspolitiek is het meest uitgebreide en schadelijke voorbeeld van het gebruik van de methodes van de meester om het huis van de meester te ontmantelen. Waarom gender queer maken als wij deze helemaal kunnen afschaffen? Waarom verspillen wij onze energie met het omkeren van onderdrukkende praktijken als we deze helemaal kunnen afschaffen.

 

’Vrouw’ is een geslachtsklasse – niets meer, niks minder. ’Man’ is een geslachtsklasse – niets meer, niets minder. Stellen dat de reikwijdte van onze identiteit wordt bepaald door de genderrol die onze geslachtsrol wordt opgelegd is het legitimiseren van een patriarchaal project. Als feminist, als vrouw, verwerp ik de queerpolitiek en de geslachtsideologie die deze bepleit. In plaats daarvan stel ik dat vrouwen en mannen die buiten het script leven op basis van gender- of het nu queer- of patriarchale classificaties is – omarmd worden als revolutionairen. Alleen door de afschaffing van gender kunnen we ware bevrijding bereiken.

Qu’on le voie comme binaire ou comme un spectre, le genre demeure une hiérarchie

Posted on by Claire

The Vanishing Point: A Reflection Upon Lesbian Erasure is now available in French! Many thanks to TradFem for the translation.

« Il est impossible de nommer l’oppression et d’agir contre elle si aucun oppresseur ne peut être nommé. » (Mary Daly)

Qu’est-ce que le genre?

Le genre est une fiction créée par le patriarcat, une hiérarchie imposée par les hommes pour assurer leur domination sur les femmes. L’idée d’une structure binaire de genre a été créée dans le but de justifier la subordination des femmes en décrivant notre oppression par les hommes comme un état naturel, résultant de la façon dont se manifestent des caractéristiques innées prêtées aux hommes et aux femmes. La présentation du genre comme naturel ne sert pas seulement à dépolitiser la hiérarchie, elle recourt à l’idéologie essentialiste pour convaincre les femmes de la futilité de toute résistance radicale au genre comme mécanisme de notre oppression. Le désespoir engendre l’apathie, laquelle entrave le changement social plus efficacement que toute répression manifeste. Si l’abolition du genre (et donc le démantèlement du patriarcat) est un objectif non réalisable, nous les femmes n’avons d’autre choix que d’accepter notre statut de citoyennes de deuxième classe dans le monde. Traiter le genre comme inhérent à la nature humaine équivaut à accepter un modèle patriarcal comme conception de la société.

GENDER IS LESS

Le genre est moins comme ceci que comme cela…

Le genre est une hiérarchie qui permet aux hommes d’être dominants et conditionne les femmes à l’état de servitude. Comme le genre est un élément fondamental du patriarcat capitaliste de la suprématie blanche (hooks, 1984), je trouve particulièrement déconcertant de voir des éléments du discours queer soutenir que le genre n’est pas seulement inné mais sacro-saint. Loin d’être une alternative radicale au statu quo, le projet de « queerer » le genre, avec son caractère essentialiste, n’a pour effet que de reproduire les normes établies par le patriarcat. Une interprétation queer ne défie pas le patriarcat de manière significative : plutôt que d’encourager les gens à résister aux normes établies par le patriarcat, il leur offre un moyen de s’y rallier. La politique queer a moins contesté les rôles traditionnels de genre qu’elle ne leur a insufflé une nouvelle vie, et c’est là que se trouve le danger.

Soutenir que le genre pourrait ou devrait être « queeré » équivaut à perdre de vue la façon dont le genre fonctionne comme système d’oppression. Les hiérarchies ne peuvent, par définition, être assimilées à une démarche de libération. Les déséquilibres de 1600-Genderbread-Personpouvoir structurels ne peuvent être abolis par une simple subversion : réduire le genre à un enjeu de performativité ou d’identification personnelle nie sa fonction pratique en tant que hiérarchie. Toute idéologie qui ferme grossièrement les yeux sur le rôle du genre comme méthode d’oppression des femmes ne peut pas être qualifiée de féministe. En fait, comme l’idéologie queer reste largement acritique de la disparité de pouvoir qui sous-tend la politique sexuelle, elle est foncièrement anti-femme.

La logique de l’identité de genre est fondamentalement déficiente, puisqu’elle repose sur le principe qui fait du genre une caractéristique innée. Comme les féministes le font valoir depuis des décennies, le genre est socialement construit – il l’est de toutes pièces pour accorder aux hommes la domination sur les femmes. L’éducation des enfants, genrés avant même leur naissance, sert à diviser les sexes en une classe dominante et une classe dominée. Le féminisme reconnaît l’existence du sexe biologique, mais il s’oppose à l’essentialisme, soit l’idée que le sexe dicte qui nous sommes et qui nous pouvons être en tant qu’êtres humains. Le féminisme affirme que notre caractère, nos qualités et notre personnalité ne sont pas définies par le fait d’être hommes ou femmes. À l’inverse, la théorie queer soutient qu’il existe un ensemble de traits intrinsèquement masculin et un autre ensemble de traits intrinsèquement féminin, et que notre identité dépend de la façon dont nous alignons notre vie sur ces caractéristiques.

Au lieu de reconnaître qu’il existe plusieurs façons d’être un homme ou une femme, la théorie queer enferme les gens dans une gamme toujours croissante de catégories organisées selon des stéréotypes. Il n’existe aucune preuve scientifique pour soutenir l’existence d’un « genre du cerveau »; les prétentions quant à l’existence de cerveaux masculin et féminin reflètent une idéologie neurosexiste (Fine, 2010). Pourtant, l’idéologie queer positionne le genre comme une identité innée, en affirmant que le genre est « ce que vous ressentez ».

« Je trouve très difficile de me défaire des menottes d’une vie de conditionnement culturel qui a tenté de me convaincre que le genre est un fait biologique plutôt qu’un construit social. » Louise O’Neill, I Call Myself A Feminist: The View from Twenty-Five Women Under Thirty

Le problème avec l’identité de genre

Malgré son essentialisme, la lecture queer du genre est de plus en plus répandue dans les milieux progressistes et féministes. Il n’est pas difficile de comprendre pourquoi. L’idéologie du genre reconnaît qu’une distribution binaire des rôles de genre masculin et féminin est restrictive pour les individus. Mais au lieu de préconiser le travail important à abattre pour démanteler la hiérarchie du genre, cette idéologie offre une solution beaucoup plus facile : une clause d’auto-exclusion individuelle qui permet aux gens de faire la paix avec le patriarcat. Adopter l’idéologie du genre équivaut à embrasser un récit d’exceptionnalisme. Adopter l’idéologie du genre est accepter qu’il existe une classe de personnes naturellement adaptées à leur position dans la hiérarchie du genre (soit comme opprimé ou comme oppresseur) en regard d’une autre classe de personnes qui seraient des exceptions aux règles traditionnelles du genre.

Un problème fondamental grève l’idéologie queer du genre. Comme je l’ai expliqué dans un essai précédent, ce problème est la misogynie. Prétendre que certains groupes sont naturellement adaptés au rôle de genre imposé à leur catégorie sexuelle – les personnes qualifiées de « cis » – revient à soutenir la misogynie. Les femmes classées comme « cis », selon la logique de l’identité de genre, seraient intrinsèquement adaptées à être opprimées par les hommes. Tout le système patriarcal se voit ainsi disculpé par l’idéologie du genre, présenté comme un événement naturel plutôt que comme un système d’oppression bâti pour accorder aux hommes la domination sur les femmes.

Comme la politique d’identité queer s’en tient à un récit reflétant une idéologie exceptionnaliste, la dynamique de la politique sexuelle se trouve entièrement passée sous silence. L’artifice linguistique du mot « cis » permet de redéfinir l’oppression des femmes comme un privilège, de sorte que toute libération des femmes « cis » face à l’oppression patriarcale cesse d’être une priorité. La politique sexuelle est mise de côté au profit d’une démarche d’auto-identification, qui rend politiquement invisible l’appartenance de classe sexuelle.

 

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« Tant de genres et pourtant, nous savons encore, magiquement, quelle moitié de la race humaine est censée torcher les derrières et brosser les planchers. » (Victoria Smith, @glosswitch)

Le genre est une prison, et j’ai de la compassion pour toutes les personnes qui s’y trouvent contraintes. Il est odieux que les hommes soient découragés des valeurs d’empathie, de gentillesse et d’expression personnelle créative. Il existe une cruauté réelle dans la socialisation des garçons à la masculinité. Cela étant dit, il faut tout de même examiner le lien entre l’idéologie du genre et l’occultation du privilège masculin.

 

Ce problème est bien illustré par l’exemple de Ben Hopkins, un des membres du duo punk britannique PWR BTTM. Hopkins est biologiquement masculin et, en tant que tel, a été socialisé à la masculinité. Comme beaucoup de personnes célèbres de son sexe, Hopkins a exploité sa renommée et son pouvoir pour violenter sexuellement des fans de sexe féminin. Selon une de ses victimes, Hopkins est un « prédateur sexuel reconnu qui a perpétré de multiples agressions, a intimidé d’autres personnes dans la communauté queer et a fait des avances non désirées à des personnes mineures ». Ce qui est censé différencier Hopkins d’une longue tradition d’agresseurs masculins ayant du pouvoir est qu’il s’identifie comme « genderqueer ».  En tant que tel, une perspective queer soutiendrait que les gestes de Hopkins ne peuvent être considérés comme des violences masculines exercées contre des femmes. L’exceptionnalisme queer manifesté dans la logique de l’identité de genre rend impossible de nommer ou de contester la violence masculine en tant que telle.

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Déclaration d’une survivante affichée sur des médias sociaux: « Hé, avertissement général : Ben de PWR BTTM est un prédateur sexuel reconnu, auteur de plusieurs agressions, etc., et vous devriez éviter d’assister à leurs concerts/boycotter leur musique/ne pas leur donner accès à des espaces sécuritaires. J’ai personnellement vu Ben amorcer des contacts sexuels inappropriés avec des gens malgré plusieurs « Non » et sans avertissement ou consentement, et j’ai entendu au cours des derniers mois plusieurs comptes rendus de Ben disant du mal d’autres artistes queer pour son bénéfice personnel, faisant des avances non désirées à des mineur.e.s même en sachant leur âge et se livrant à des violences psychologiques dans des relations intimes. Presque toutes les victimes de Ben sont queer. »

Les hommes apprennent dès leur naissance qu’ils ont droit au temps des femmes, à l’attention des femmes, à l’amour des femmes, à l’énergie des femmes et aux corps féminins. Pourtant, conformément à la logique de l’idéologie du genre, cette situation est perçue comme malheureuse mais aléatoire, plutôt que comme conséquence normale de la socialisation genrée que reçoivent les hommes dans la société patriarcale. Malgré son identification comme « genderqueer », la violence sexuelle infligée par Hopkins à des femmes ayant beaucoup moins de pouvoir social que lui est parfaitement en phase avec la logique de la masculinité. En quel sens un homme qui exerce le comportement le plus toxique enraciné dans la masculinité peut-il prétendre queerer le genre ou y résister?

Comme ses actions en témoignent manifestement, Hopkins n’a pas consciemment désappris sa socialisation masculine ou son droit d’accès aux corps féminins. La façon dont il choisit de s’identifier a peu d’incidence sur la sombre réalité de la situation. Pourtant, en revendiquant le label de « genderqueer », Hopkins a tenté d’effacer le privilège masculin dont il a continué à bénéficier. Dans un texte rédigé pour le blog Feminist Current, Jen Izaakson énonce clairement le paradoxe de sa prétention de queerer le genre :

« … Hopkins s’est servi de glitter, d’eye-liner et de robes vintage pour démontrer sa compréhension et son adhésion aux idéaux queer, pour illustrer un rejet de la « masculinité toxique » et des normes de genre socialement prescrites aux hommes. Mais porter des robes à fleurs et du lip gloss ne mène pas nécessairement à un rejet réel du privilège et de la prédominance dont disposent les hommes en régime patriarcal. En mettant l’accent sur des identités auto-définies, sur l’expression individuelle et sur la performativité, au lieu d’examiner la violence masculine et les systèmes de pouvoir inégaux, le discours queer a ouvert tout grand la porte à la misogynie. »

De façon semblable, la trans-activiste Cherno Biko (née homme) a ouvertement confessé avoir violé un transhomme (né femme) avec le fantasme et l’intention de l’engrosser contre son gré. Malgré son aveu public de cette agression sexuelle, Biko a pu prendre la parole sur la tribune de la Marche des femmes à Washington et a co-présidé le Conseil consultatif des jeunes femmes pour la ville de New York. Cela soulève des questions, non seulement sur l’apparente absence de prise en compte des agressions sexuelles dans les espaces féministes, mais aussi sur la mesure dans laquelle les mouvements politiques progressifs sont prêts à fermer les yeux sur des cas de violence envers des femmes si l’agresseur s’identifie comme transgenre ou « genderqueer ».

Les actes de violence commis contre les femmes sont à la fois une cause et une conséquence du patriarcat, et ils sont normalisés par la logique du genre. L’idéologie du genre ne tient pas compte de la disparité de pouvoir de la politique sexuelle – une hiérarchie instituée par le genre lui-même – et considère le genre comme une simple question d’auto-identification. La perspective queer s’en tient délibérément à un traitement individuel de l’enjeu identitaire afin de dépolitiser le genre, évitant ainsi des questions ardues sur le pouvoir et le patriarcat.

On nous dit que le genre est une question profondément personnelle et qui donc, comme tous les bons libéraux le savent, ne doit pas être scrutée. Pourtant, la recherche démontre que les transfemmes « conservent un modèle masculin en matière de criminalité après une chirurgie de réaffectation sexuelle » et que « la même chose est vraie en ce qui concerne les crimes avec violence ». Étant donné qu’une femme sur trois subira de la violence masculine au cours de sa vie, cette question n’est pas anodine : 96 % des auteurs de violences sexuelles sont de sexe biologique masculin. La sécurité des femmes et des filles n’est jamais un prix acceptable à payer, même pas au nom de l’inclusion. La socialisation masculine joue un rôle démontrable dans le façonnement des attitudes et des comportements – si nous les femmes ne pouvons pas nommer la violence que nous vivons ou identifier le système qui la permet, nous ne pouvons pas les défier.

« Quand Simone de Beauvoir a écrit qu’une fille ne naît pas femme mais le devient, elle ne voulait pas dire qu’un individu né dans le sexe masculin, socialisé dans les attentes propres au genre masculin, pouvait simplement décider de prendre des hormones et peut-être de subir une chirurgie et de « devenir femme ». » Dame Jenni Murray

Dans l’optique de l’identité de genre, l’oppresseur peut se défaire de son privilège masculin et revendiquer le statut d’opprimé. Dans l’optique de l’identité de genre, les opprimées peuvent également rejeter les bases de leur oppression au moyen d’une auto-identification. L’idéologie du genre vise à réorienter une hiérarchie en termes d’identité. Malheureusement, on ne peut pas échapper par simple choix à une oppression de nature structurelle et systématique – même si le discours queer présente cela comme une voie légitime pour les femmes. L’homme constitue la norme par défaut de l’humanité, la femme étant reléguée au statut d’ « Autre » – uniquement définie par rapport aux hommes (Beauvoir, 1949). Pas étonnant qu’un nombre croissant de femmes, insatisfaites des limitations imposées par le rôle de genre féminin et conscientes que s’autoactualiser permet de dépasser le stéréotype creux de la féminité, cessent de s’identifier en tant que femmes.

Mais au lieu d’identifier le rôle de genre féminin comme le problème et de travailler à démanteler la hiérarchie du genre, les femmes sont encouragées à cesser de s’identifier en tant que telles si elles se comportent ou se sentent comme de véritables êtres humains. En présentant une pleine humanité et la féminité comme mutuellement exclusives, l’idéologie du genre invite les femmes à participer à un jeu traditionnel : Je-Ne-Suis-Pas-Comme-Les-Autres-Filles-Version-queer .

Il est compréhensible que les femmes soient impatientes d’échapper au rôle de genre féminin féminin; en fait, la libération des femmes face à la hiérarchie du genre est un objectif de base du féminisme. Mais le mouvement féministe préconise la libération de toutes les femmes de toutes les formes d’oppression, et pas simplement la libération de celles qui critiquent leur oppression individuelle par le genre – celles qui « n’aspirent à aucun type de féminité ».

Queerer le genre nourrit l’homophobie

gay-liberation Malgré tout ce qui se dit sur une « communauté queer », alliance prétendue entre les personnes LGBT +, l’homophobie a toujours été centrale à la politique queer. En effet, l’idéologie queer a émergé comme mouvement de ressac opposé aux principes féministes lesbiens, qui préconisaient un changement social radical par la transformation des vies individuelles (Jeffreys, 2003). Les intérêts politiques des femmes lesbiennes et des hommes gais marginalisés, à commencer par l’abolition des rôles de genre, ont été rejetés dans les milieux queer. L’individualisme interdisait tout accent particulier sur les politiques de libération féministe et gay, que le discours queer commença à décrire comme démodées, ternes ou anti-sexe.

Ces dernières années, cette dérision s’est accélérée pour devenir un sentiment ouvertement anti-gay. Les tentatives d’effacement des femmes lesbiennes et homosexuelles sont aujourd’hui pratique courante dans les milieux queer. Dans un billet d’opinion posant la question à savoir si l’identité lesbienne peut « survivre à la révolution du genre », Shannon Keating affirme que les sexualités lesbiennes et gays sont obsolètes :

« En regard du contexte de plus en plus coloré de la diversité de genre, un label binaire comme ‘gay’ ou ‘lesbien’ commence à sembler plutôt dépassé et lourd. Quand il y a autant de genres sur la carte, est-ce être fermé d’esprit – ou, pire, oppressif et exclusionnaire – de s’identifier à une étiquette qui implique que seul un genre vous attire? »

Il existe une souche persistante d’homophobie dans l’idéologie du genre. Elle se manifeste aussi régulièrement parce que cette homophobie est intégrée à la politique queer du genre. L’attraction aux personnes de même sexe est constamment présentée comme problématique du fait de reconnaître à la fois l’existence du sexe biologique et sa signification dans la détermination du potentiel d’attraction – ce qui contredit la prétention selon laquelle c’est le genre, et non le sexe, qui constitue l’étalon identitaire déterminant.

Plus tôt cette année, Juno Dawson, qui a signé le livre The Gender Games, a affirmé que l’homosexualité masculine n’était qu’un « prix de consolation » pour les hommes qui ne sont pas prêts à opter pour une vie de transféminité. Avant sa propre transition, Dawson a vécu et aimé en tant qu’homme gay; il est donc particulièrement troublant de le voir proclamer que l’homosexualité est moins digne de respect et de reconnaissance comme orientation légitime. Il a dépeint la vie en tant qu’homme homosexuel comme une alternative inférieure, un substitut déficient à une transféminité réprimée. Lorsque des gays et des lesbiennes ont protesté contre cette homophobie, Dawson a présenté une non-excuse qui a rappelé une vérité cruciale en matière d’identité de genre et de sexualité : « Beaucoup d’hommes et de femmes trans ont vécu auparavant comme gays ou lesbiennes avant leur transition, a-t-il dit, alors je pense que c’est un enjeu vraiment important à discuter … »

Il est tout à fait réactionnaire de soutenir que les gays sont, au fond, des femmes insatisfaites. Selon cette logique, seule la masculinité la plus straight et la plus toxique est authentiquement masculine. Et si les gays sont réellement des transfemmes straight, alors il n’existe pas d’hommes homosexuels. L’homosexualité se trouve ainsi « guérie » – un programme politique qui a longtemps appartenu aux conservateurs sociaux, mais que l’on peut maintenant retrouver dans l’idéologie queer. Et ce n’est pas un hasard si beaucoup de ceux qui choisissent de subir une transition chirurgicale ou médicale sont des gays ou des lesbiennes qui, au début de leur processus de transition, vivent en hétérosexuels. En Iran, où les relations homosexuelles sont punissables de mort, les clercs intégristes sont les premiers à « accepter l’idée qu’une personne puisse être piégée dans un corps qui est du mauvais sexe ».

L’idéologie du genre est fondamentalement conservatrice. Elle repose sur l’hypothèse voulant que les rôles de genre soient absolus et que les personnes qui s’écartent du rôle de genre attribué à leur sexe doivent appartenir à une autre catégorie. Les lesbiennes et les gays défient les rôles de genre simplement en aimant quelqu’un du même sexe, en s’écartant des schémas de domination hétéro-patriarcale pour créer une politique sexuelle d’égalité. Si une transition nous conduit à l’hétérosexualité, en conformité avec les rôles de genre, on nous amène en fait à nous conformer aux rôles de genre tracés par le patriarcat.

Personne ne naît dans le mauvais corps. Un corps ne peut, par définition, être le mauvais. Le système de genre, par contre, est mauvais d’une foule de manières. Le fait de problématiser les corps comme contraires à une hiérarchie qui les limite ne fait que reproduire l’idéologie destructive qui est au cœur du patriarcat. C’est une approche contradictoire à une politique de libération, et elle est, au mieux, malavisée et, au pire, complice avec le patriarcat.

Conclusion

La critique de l’idéologie du genre est fortement déconseillée. Je soupçonne que c’est parce que plus on explore la perspective queer du genre, plus sa misogynie et son homophobie deviennent apparentes. Une fois que le vernis progressiste commence à se fissurer – quand il devient évident que l’idéologie du genre est au mieux complaisante au sujet du patriarcat et des torts que celui-ci inflige aux femmes – la politique queer devient beaucoup plus difficile à vendre à la population en général.

fuck gender roles

MERDE AUX RÔLES DE GENRE

Ainsi, les féministes qui osent remettre en question l’idéologie du genre sont qualifiées de bigotes et ces critiques, et les femmes assez courageuses pour les faire, sont jugées illégitimes. Les femmes qui contestent l’idéologie du genre sont ridiculisées en tant que « TERF » – on nous répète constamment que leur seul motif de critiquer le genre est une malveillance, plutôt qu’une préoccupation réelle pour le bien-être des femmes et des filles. Ce à quoi je réponds par les mots de Mary Shelley : « Attention; car je suis intrépide, et donc puissante. » Toute tentative de décourager les femmes de s’en prendre à notre oppression devient profondément suspecte à mes yeux.

L’idéologie du genre crée une fausse dichotomie entre d’une part des personnes liées de façon innée aux rôles de genre traditionnels et, d’autre part, quelques rares exceptions qui ne le sont pas. La politique de genre est l’exemple le plus élaboré et le plus dangereux d’utiliser les outils du maître pour démanteler la maison du maître. Pourquoi queerer le genre lorsque nous pouvons l’abolir? Pourquoi gaspiller de l’énergie en essayant de subvertir une pratique oppressive lorsque nous pourrions l’éliminer complètement?

La femme est une classe de sexe – rien de plus, rien de moins. L’homme est une classe de sexe – rien de plus, rien de moins. Prétendre que l’ampleur de notre identité est fixée par le rôle de genre imposé à notre classe de sexe équivaut à légitimer le projet de patriarcat. En tant que féministe, en tant que femme, je rejette la politique queer et l’idéologie de genre qu’elle préconise. Au lieu de cela, je prétends que les femmes et les hommes qui vivent en dehors du scénario établi par le genre – que ce soit en versions queer ou patriarcale – devraient faire figure de révolutionnaires. Ce n’est que par l’abolition du genre que nous pourrons réaliser une véritable libération.

Bibliographie

Simone de Beauvoir. (1949). Le Deuxième sexe.

Cordelia Fine. (2010). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference.

Lynne Harne & Elaine Miller (eds.). (1996). All the Rage: Reasserting Radical Lesbian Feminism.

bell hooks. (1984). De la marge au centre: Théorie féministe.

Sheila Jeffreys. (2003). Unpacking Queer Politics.

Audre Lorde. (1984). Sister Outsider: Essais et propos d’Audre Lorde.

Cherríe Moraga & Gloria E. Anzaldúa (eds.). (1981). This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.

Bonnie J. Morris. (2016). The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture.

Victoria Pepe (ed.). (2015). I Call Myself A Feminist: The View from Twenty-Five Women Under Thirty.

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper. More Radical with Age.

Translation originally posted here.

Original text initially posted here.

À propos de notre disparition: réflexions sur l’effacement des lesbiennes

Posted on by Claire

The Vanishing Point: A Reflection Upon Lesbian Erasure is now available in French! Many thanks to TradFem for the translation.

C’est une époque étrange où être une jeune lesbienne. Eh bien, assez jeune. Durant le temps qu’il m’a fallu pour évoluer du stade d’apprentie baby dyke à celui de lesbienne complètement formée, la tension entre la politique d’identité queer et la libération des femmes est devenue tout à fait insupportable. Facebook a ajouté le drapeau de la fierté gaie à ses emojis de réactions le même mois où ils ont commencé à bannir des lesbiennes pour s’être identifiées comme dykes. À mesure que sont progressivement normalisés la législation sur le mariage pour tous et les droits d’adoption de conjoints du même sexe, on voit le droit des femmes lesbiennes à s’auto-définir et à tracer leurs limites sexuelles être sapé au sein même de la communauté LBGT+. Si de telles contradictions sont caractéristiques de l’époque actuelle, cela ne les rend pas plus faciles à vivre au jour le jour.

L’amour est l’amour, à moins que vous vous trouviez à être une lesbienne, auquel cas love-is-lovevotre sexualité sera déconstruite implacablement parce que soupçonnée de faire preuve d’ »exclusion ». Comme je l’ai écrit dans un texte précédent, toute sexualité est par définition exclusive. La sexualité est un ensemble de paramètres qui régissent les caractéristiques auxquelles nous sommes potentiellement attirées chez les autres. Pour les lesbiennes, c’est la présence de caractéristiques sexuelles féminines primaires et secondaires qui créent (mais ne garantissent pas) la possibilité d’une attirance. C’est le sexe et non le genre (ni même l’identité de genre) qui est le facteur clé. Mais dans un contexte queer, comme dans la société patriarcale traditionnelle, le mot lesbienne devient une étiquette litigieuse.

Les lesbiennes sont plutôt encouragées à se décrire comme queer, un terme si vaste et si nébuleux qu’il en devient dépourvu de sens particulier, en ce sens qu’aucune personne munie d’un pénis n’est perçue comme étant entièrement au dehors de nos frontières sexuelles. Jocelyn MacDonald décrit bien cette situation :

« Les lesbiennes sont des femmes et on enseigne aux femmes que nous sommes censées être sexuellement disponibles comme objets de consommation publique. Nous passons donc beaucoup de temps à dire « Non ». Non, nous ne baiserons pas des hommes ni ne nous associerons pas à eux ; non, nous ne changerons pas d’avis à ce sujet ; non, notre corps est un no man’s land. Que nous soyons lesbiennes, hétéro ou bisexuelles, nous les femmes sommes punies chaque fois que nous essayons d’affirmer une frontière. Le queer comme expression indéfinie rend vraiment difficile pour les lesbiennes d’affirmer et de maintenir cette limite, car il rend impossible de nommer cette frontière. »

À une époque où la simple reconnaissance du sexe biologique est traitée comme un acte d’intolérance, l’homosexualité est automatiquement problématisée – et les conséquences imprévues de la politique d’identité queer s’avèrent de très grande envergure. Ou plutôt, il serait plus exact de dire que c’est la sexualité des lesbiennes qui est rendue problématique : l’idée de femmes réservant exclusivement nos désirs et nos énergies l’une pour l’autre demeure suspecte. Étrangement, le modèle des hommes qui placent d’autres hommes au centre de leur vie ne subit jamais la même réaction hostile. Ce sont les lesbiennes qui constituent une menace pour le statu quo, qu’il s’agisse de l’hétéropatriarcat ou de la culture queer. Lorsque les lesbiennes rejettent l’idée de prendre un partenaire muni d’un pénis, on nous qualifie de « fétichistes du vagin » et de « gynéphiles » – puisque la sexualité lesbienne est systématiquement qualifiée de pathologique dans le discours queer, tout comme la sexualité lesbienne est traitée comme pathologique par le conservatisme social. Je ne trouve donc pas surprenant que tant de jeunes femmes succombent à la pression sociale et abandonnent le terme de « lesbienne » au profit de celui de « queer ». L’effacement est le prix de l’acceptation.

« Ce n’est pas un secret que la peur et la haine des homosexuels imprègnent notre société. Mais le mépris pour les lesbiennes est distinct. Il est directement enraciné dans l’horreur éprouvée envers la femme qui se définit, se détermine, la femme qui n’est pas contrôlée par le besoins, les ordres ou la manipulation des hommes. Le mépris envers les lesbiennes est le plus souvent une répudiation politique des femmes qui s’organisent en leur propre nom pour acquérir une présence publique, un pouvoir significatif, une intégrité visible.

Les ennemis des femmes, ceux qui sont déterminés à nous nier la liberté et la dignité, utilisent le mot « lesbiennes » pour attiser une haine de femmes qui refusent de se conformer. Cette haine retentit partout. Cette haine est soutenue et exprimée par pratiquement toutes les institutions. Lorsque le pouvoir masculin est remis en question, cette haine peut être intensifiée et enflammée au point de la rendre volatile, palpable. La menace est que cette haine va exploser sous forme de violence. La menace est omniprésente car la violence faite aux femmes est applaudie culturellement. De sorte que le mot « lesbiennes », lancé ou chuchoté comme accusation, sert à concentrer l’hostilité masculine sur les femmes qui osent se révolter, et il sert également à effrayer et intimider les femmes qui ne se sont pas encore révoltées. » (Andrea Dworkin, « Words », publié dans Letters from a War Zone)

À en croire la politique d’identité queer, le fait que des femmes biologiques soient exclusivement intéressées à se lier à d’autres femmes serait un signe d’intolérance. Ne gaspillons pas de paragraphes en équivoque. Ce monde contient bien suffisamment de silences sur la question du genre, et ce sont toujours les femmes qui paient le prix le plus élevé pour ces silences – dans ce cas-ci, les femmes qui aiment d’autres femmes. Et donc je vais parler clairement : la raison pour laquelle la politique queer qualifie de « transphobes » les lesbiennes qui nient catégoriquement la possibilité de prendre un partenaire muni d’un pénis est parce que cette position ne comprend pas les transfemmes dans la sphère du désir lesbien. Quant à la lesbophobie inhérente à la réduction de la sexualité lesbienne à un simple facteur de validation, elle ne suscite, bien sûr, aucune objection.

Pourtant, la sexualité lesbienne n’exclut pas nécessairement les personnes qui s’identifient comme trans. La sexualité lesbienne peut s’étendre à des personnes biologiquement féminines qui s’identifient comme non binaires ou genderqueer. La sexualité lesbienne peut s’étendre à des personnes biologiquement féminines qui s’identifient comme transhommes. Comme une proportion relativement élevée de transhommes auto-identifiées vivaient comme lesbiennes butch avant leur transition, il n’est pas inusité que des transhommes fassent partie de relations lesbiennes.

Où se situe la frontière entre une lesbienne butch et une transhomme ? Au cours de ses réflexions sur la vie lesbiennes, Roey Thorpe note que « … il y a toujours quelqu’un qui pose la question : ‘Où sont passées toutes les butchs ?’ » La réponse courte est : du côté de la transmasculinité (et la réponse longue appelle un billet à elle seule). À quel point dans le spectre de l’identité est-ce que finit la butch et commence la transhomme ?

cover The Argonauts

Cette frontière est amorphe, mais Maggie Nelson tente avec imagination de la tracer dans The Argonauts. Son amante, l’artiste Harry Dodge, est décrite par Nelson comme une « butch débonnaire sous testostérone ». Aux yeux de Nelson, « la seule similarité que j’aie remarquée dans mes relations avec des femmes n’est pas l’uniformité de la Femme, et certainement pas l’uniformité des parties. C’est plutôt la compréhension partagée et écrasante de ce que signifie vivre en régime patriarcal. » Dodge affiche un genre fluide et une présentation masculine. La testostérone et la mastectomie ne suppriment pas une compréhension de ce qu’est que d’être située, dans ce monde, en tant que femme. Ces vérités coexistent.

L’idée que les lesbiennes sont transphobes parce que nos frontières sexuelles ne s’étendent pas jusqu’à accueillir le pénis est aussi fallacieuse que phallocentrique. Et la pression exercée sur les lesbiennes pour leur faire déplacer ces frontières est franchement terrifiante ; elle repose sur un sentiment de droit envers les corps des femmes, un droit qui fait partie du patriarcat et qui se reproduit maintenant dans l’espace queer. Il faut rappeler que les lesbiennes n’existent pas comme simples objets sexuels ou facteurs de validation, mais comme êtres humains auto-actualisés ayant leurs propres désirs et frontières.

Parler de politique queer avec des amis gays de mon âge est une expérience révélatrice. Ces conversations me rappellent deux choses : avec les hommes, « non » est accepté comme mot de la fin. Avec les femmes, le mot non est traité comme l’amorce d’une négociation. La plupart des gays que je connais sont tour à tour horrifiés et amusés par l’idée que les paramètres de leur sexualité pourraient ou devraient être modifiés par les prescriptions de la politique queer. Certains (chanceux dans leur ignorance) ne connaissent pas le labyrinthe de la théorie queer. D’autres (les nouveaux initiés) sont, sans surprise, résistants à la problématisation queer de leur homosexualité. L’un d’entre eux est même allé jusqu’à suggérer que les gays, les lesbiennes et les bisexuels devraient rompre avec la soupe alphabet de la politique queer et s’organiser spontanément en fonction de critères sexuels. Compte tenu qu’une foule de dykes ont été ciblées comme TERFs dans cette nouvelle chasse aux sorcières pour avoir lancé la même suggestion, j’ai trouvé à la fois encourageant et déprimant d’entendre un homme extérieur au féminisme radical exprimer les mêmes opinions sans crainte de censure.

Je suis heureuse de dire qu’aucun des gays que j’appelle mes amis n’a opté pour ce qu’on pourrait appeler la stratégie Owen Jones : celle de rejeter comme intolérantes les préoccupations des lesbiennes dans l’espoir de se mériter de savoureux biscuits à décoration arc-en-ciel pour alliés fiables. La tendance des hommes de gauche à miser sur la misogynie pour mousser leur réputation est une histoire aussi ancienne que le patriarcat. Que cela se produise dans le contexte de la communauté queer n’est pas surprenant, car cette culture est dominée par des hommes.

La communauté queer peut finalement s’avérer aliénante pour les lesbiennes. Même si j’ai participé à des espaces queerau moment de mon coming-out, je me suis de plus en plus éloignée de ce contexte au fil du temps. Je ne suis nullement seule en cela : beaucoup de lesbiennes de mon groupe d’âge sont conscientes d’être effacées et repoussées dans les milieux queer, auxquels on nous dit pourtant que nous sommes censées appartenir. Ce ne sont pas seulement les lesbiennes plus âgées qui résistent à la politique queer, même si Dieu sait qu’elles nous ont prévenues de sa misogynie. Mon seul regret est de ne pas avoir prêté l’oreille plus tôt, d’avoir gaspillé beaucoup de temps et d’énergie à essayer de combler le fossé idéologique entre les féminismes queer et radical.

Le discours queer utilise ce qui ressemble à la tactique de la carotte et du bâton pour amener les jeunes lesbiennes à se conformer : nous pouvons soit embrasser le queer et trouver un sentiment d’appartenance, soit demeurer des outsiders sans rapport, à l’instar de vieilles lesbiennes ringardes. Cette approche, lourde d’âgisme et de misogynie, a échoué à me dissuader : je crois qu’il n’y a rien que je voudrais être autant qu’une lesbienne plus âgée, et il est formidable de savoir que c’est l’avenir qui m’attend. La profondeur des réflexions que m’adressent les lesbiennes âgées, leur façon de me mettre au défi et de me guider dans ma prise de conscience féministe, joue un rôle essentiel en façonnant à la fois mon sentiment du monde et la façon dont j’y comprends ma place. Si j’ai vraiment de la chance, j’aurai un jour ces conversations aériennes (et, parfois, intellectuellement éprouvantes) avec des générations futures de baby dykes.

Bien que j’apprécie le soutien et la sororité des lesbiennes plus âgées (de loin ma préférée parmi les catégories démographiques d’êtres humains), je dois dire qu’à certains égards, j’envie la relative simplicité de ce qu’était la vie des lesbiennes pendant les années 70 et 80. Pourquoi ? Parce qu’elles ont vécu des vies lesbiennes avant que la politique queer ne devienne généralisée. Je ne dis pas cela à la légère, ni pour laisser entendre que le passé a été une sorte d’utopie pour les droits des gais et des lesbiennes. Ce n’était pas le cas. Leurs générations ont connu l’article 28 (qui bannissait la promotion à l’école de l’homosexualité comme normale), alors que la mienne a obtenu le mariage pour tous. Les gains dont bénéficie ma génération sont le produit direct de leur lutte. Pourtant, elles ont pu vivre au moins une partie de leur vie à une époque où, de tous les prétextes pour lesquels le mot lesbienne rencontrait du dégoût, l’accusation d’être « trop exclusionnaire » ne faisait pas partie de la liste. Il n’y avait pas d’incitation, dans un contexte féministe ou gay, à « queerer » la sexualité lesbienne.

Certaines choses n’ont tout de même pas beaucoup changé. La sexualité des lesbiennes est encore régulièrement dépréciée. Les dykes lesbiennes servent encore de faire-valoir aux femmes qui disent « Ne vous inquiétez pas, je ne suis pas ce genre de féministe… » Mais aujourd’hui, lorsque je vérifie mes messages reçus sur Twitter, cela me prend vraiment un moment pour déterminer si mon identité lesbienne a offensé quelqu’un de la droite alt-right ou de la gauche queer. La distinction est-elle vraiment significative ? La lesbophobie emprunte le même format. La haine des femmes est identique.

There will be no revolution

Au moment des défilés de la Fierté gaie, on a vu circuler sur les médias sociaux, l’image d’un transfemme souriant, portant un t-shirt ensanglanté où l’on pouvait lire « I punch TERFs ». Cette image avait pour titre « Voici à quoi ressemble la libération gay ». Cette prétention est particulièrement douteuse, dans la mesure où celles d’entre nous qui vivons à l’intersection de l’identité homosexuelle et de la féminité, les lesbiennes, sont souvent qualifiées de TERF pour la seule raison de notre sexualité. Comme nous vivons dans un monde où une femme sur trois subit des violences physiques ou sexuelles au cours de sa vie, je ne peux trouver cette image amusante – il n’y a rien de révolutionnaire ou de contre-culturel à faire une blague sur le fait de frapper des femmes. C’est un endossement irréfléchi de la violence anti-femmes, présentée comme un objectif de la politique de libération. Et nous savons tous que les TERF sont des femmes, car les hommes qui font respecter leurs limites sont rarement soumis à ce genre de vitriol. Bien sûr, le fait de souligner cette misogynie entraîne un nouveau déluge de misogynie.

Il y a une réplique à la mode réservée aux féministes qui critiquent les politiques sexuelles liées à l’identité de genre, une réplique qui rappelle davantage des adolescents agressifs que quelque véritable politique de résistance. C’est « Suck my girldick » (Suce ma bite de fille). Ou, si leur malice tente de se parer d’originalité, « étouffe-toi avec ma bite de fille ». Se faire dire de s’étouffer avec une bite de fille n’est pas ressenti comme différent d’être invitée à s’étouffer avec une bite classique, mas cette insulte est presque devenue une figure obligée des propos sur le genre affichés dans le réseau Twitter. L’acte reste le même. La misogynie reste la même. Et il est révélateur que, dans ce scénario, la gratification sexuelle découle d’un acte qui bâillonne littéralement les femmes.

 

Un vers célèbre de Roméo et Juliette de Shakespeare proclame que « ce que nous appelons une rose embaumerait autant sous un autre nom ». En gardant cela à l’esprit (car il y a beaucoup plus de tragédie que de romance dans la présente situation), je prétends que même sous un autre nom, un pénis serait sexuellement repoussant pour des lesbiennes. Et c’est très bien. Le désintérêt sexuel n’équivaut pas à une discrimination, une oppression ou une marginalisation. Par contre, le droit d’accès sexuel que veulent s’arroger certains a précisément ces effets : il joue un rôle fondamental dans l’oppression des femmes et se manifeste clairement dans la culture du viol. La perspective queer ne laisse pas place à des discussions de la misogynie qui autorise certains à se juger en droit d’accéder aux corps de lesbiennes. La moindre reconnaissance du problème est tout de suite jugée outrancière ; par conséquent, la misogynie se voit protégée par des couches et des couches de silence.

Ce n’est pas une époque géniale pour être lesbienne. La réticence de la politique queer à simplement accepter la sexualité lesbienne comme valide à part entière est profondément marginalisante; elle va parfois jusqu’à considérer le désir de faire l’amour comme plus valide que le droit de s’y refuser. Et pourtant, la connexion lesbienne tient bon, comme elle l’a toujours fait. Les relations lesbiennes continuent de nous nourrir, tout en offrant une alternative radicale à l’hétéropatriarcat. Ce n’est pas parce que cette alternative n’est pas particulièrement visible en ce moment, parce qu’elle n’a pas la popularité répandue (c’est-à-dire patriarcale) de la culture queer, que cela signifie qu’elle n’existe pas. Les lesbiennes sont partout – cela ne changera pas.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. (Ne laisse pas les salauds te réduire en poussière)

Bibliographie

Margaret Atwood. (1985). La Servante écarlate

Andrea Dworkin. (1978). « Words », dans The Andrea Dworkin Online Library

Cherríe Moraga. (2009). Still Loving in the (Still) War Years : On Keeping Queer Queer

Maggie Nelson. (2015). The Argonauts

Adrienne Rich. (1976). Naître d’une femme : la maternité comme expérience et institution

Translation originally posted here.

Original text initially posted here.

‘Punch a TERF’ Rhetoric Encourages Violence Against Women

Posted on by Claire

A brief foreword. This is the sixth of my essays on sex, gender, and sexuality. (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 available here.) I suspect it’s also the least polished, as I was shaken by the assault of Maria MacLachlan and wrote this to work through my thoughts, but it was written from a place of truth.

My grandmother is a brilliant woman. She is clever, compassionate, and unfailingly kind. She is selfless, generous with her time, and loyal to those she loves. I have lived with my grandmother since birth – during childhood she read me Swallows and Amazons at night, sat by the pool during my swimming lessons, and took me to the cinema to see Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – the film which opened my eyes to the magic of cinema as a child. Nana also sat through Shrek and, with thinly-veiled disgust, Shrek 2. If that’s not love, what is? My grandmother and I have always been close. Since my grandfather died last year, and it has been just the two of us in the house, we have grown closer still – we live like what I’d describe as an infinitely more interesting version of the Gilmour Girls.

I’ve also noticed that my grandmother has grown a bit more radical in that time. She has stopped trying to convince me that men have their uses, which she often did after I came out to her as lesbian. She now has faith in my ability to do what were once considered “man jobs”, like building furniture or running heavy things to the dump. She will readily call racism by its name is and receptive to having racism pointed out. She has identified an abusive relationship and asked me for the relevant details about shelters to pass on and how best to support the woman in question as she left the relationship – I’m very proud of her for that.

My grandmother is also pro-life. She does not believe that abortion is legitimate or morally acceptable. She’s a committed Catholic and gets letters from SPUC every so often. I once joked to her that with my advocacy of abortion and her opposition to it, the output from our household basically cancelled itself out. It’s quite strange to think that Nana is roughly the same age as Angela Davis. I used to reason that, being of a different generation, it was to be expected that she held those views. But then, especially as I grew familiar with feminists who were active during the Women’s Liberation Movement and read more feminist books from the ‘60s and ‘70s, it seemed ridiculous to reduce her politics to a matter of age. Either way, I don’t agree with Nana about abortion. She certainly doesn’t agree with me. But we love each other very much and that disagreement – the most fundamental disagreement in our relationship – doesn’t alter the fact we’re ride or die.

what_is_gender_flyerOn our way out this afternoon, she gently pointed out that I seemed a bit down. My depression has been severe this year, and I know Nana worries. At first I didn’t say much. But months of therapy have made it substantially easier to divine the root cause of a problem. I told her that a 60 year old woman was beaten yesterday in London – that Maria MacLachlan was punched and choked for going to a talk about the Gender Recognition Act. I explained that the original venue, New Cross Learning, had backed out after being harassed into cancelling – the intensity of protest had the library worried about safety of staff, volunteers, and those accessing the community space. I briefly outlined the schism between a queer and a radical feminist understanding of gender. Mostly, I told Nana that I felt heartsick that a woman had been beaten.

Nana didn’t ask if I knew the woman in question, and I loved her for that – for getting that a woman being assaulted, any woman being hurt, was painful to hear of. What she did ask is if the police caught those behind the attack, if feminist women were challenging it. The mechanics of digital media are as much a mystery to Nana as her daily Sudoku puzzles are to me, but she sees me glued to my phone all day long and understands enough to know that if women gather our energies to make a fuss over injustice then something will come of it. And I told her the truth, a truth that left me even more heartsick: not exactly. There are women who have rallied, and there are women who have looked the other way.

Maria MacLachlan, bruised
Credit to Jen Isaacson

And my Nana said what dozens and dozens of seasoned feminists lack the courage to say: that the attackers were brutes. She asked what sort of horrible, small-minded person would deliberately hurt a woman in her sixties.

For a split-second I wondered what the response to describing those behind the attack as ‘horrible’ or ‘brutes’ would be on Twitter. TERF, obviously – that’s trans-exclusionary radical feminist, for the uninitiated. Maybe Nazi. (More and more, I’ve noticed radical feminists who are lesbian described as Nazi – without the slightest recognition that lesbian women were persecuted, rounded up as “asocials” for their refusal to produce blonde-haired blue-eyed babies, and killed by the Nazi regime.) And then I knew, as is so often the case, that my grandmother was right. They are horrible. They are brutes.

The footage is difficult to watch. A group of women gathered at the Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, where they had arranged to meet before moving on to the venue – which had

IMG_20170915_114529

“NO TERFS ON OUR TURF!” Shared by Sisters Uncut

been kept secret owing to the risk involved. The protest – organised by Action for Trans Health London, Sisters Uncut, and Goldsmiths LGBTQ+ Society – is in full swing. There’s a lot of shouting. The atmosphere is febrile. Amidst the clusters of people, Maria MacLachlan holds a camera to document the proceedings. She is set upon by someone substantially bigger than her. Two more attackers join in after MacLachlan pulls down her assailant’s hood so that they may be identified, as though the beating of a sixty year old woman is too great an undertaking for one man alone. MacLachlan gave her account of her assault to Feminist Current:

[She] had been trying to film the protest when some of the trans activists began to shout, “When TERFs attack, we fight back.” She asked them, “Who’s attacking?” At this point, MacLachlan says a young man in a hoodie tried to grab her camera. “I think he knocked it out of my hand but it was looped to my wrist. He turned back and tried to grab it again. I hung onto it.” As the two struggled, MacLachlan pulled back the hood of the man holding her camera, so onlookers could photograph his face, and another man ran over and began punching MacLachlan. Wood and a third man pushed her to the ground, where she says she was kicked and punched.

The whole incident is disturbing. There is a long history of violence being used to discourage women from collectively organising, and the assault of Maria MacLachlan FB_IMG_1505469664006opens the latest chapter of a story called patriarchy. Both the violence and the context that enabled it to happen must be scrutinised.

How have we reached a point where beating a 60 year old woman can be credited to the politics of liberation? How have we reached a point where feminists can ignore that a 60 year old woman was beaten? How have we reached a point where some self-proclaimed feminists read about this assault and questioned whether a woman was lying about violence, if it really happened, or – if it did happen – she provoked the attack? The silence and disbelief of other women, women who call themselves feminist, is like salt in a wound. Our whole movement is built around the belief that no woman should be subject to violence, and that those women who do experience violence are fully deserving of our support.

The deeper we go into feminist politics and spaces – especially digital feminist spaces – the easier it becomes to forget about certain realities of feminist struggle. The gap between ideas and reality, between the theory being developed and the everyday unfolding of women’s lives, grows until something vital is lost through the cracks of that in-between space. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that queer politics and gender ideology have flourished in the internet age; when so much of our lives are lived online, it is easier to lose focus on the significance of material reality.

While it is certainly shocking that Maria MacLachlan was beaten by trans activists, it was not altogether unpredictable. Last year a transwoman called Dana Rivers murdered an interracial lesbian couple and their son. Not long before committing triple homicide, Rivers protested the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival on the grounds that it was trans-exclusionary. For the last few years, a steady flow of violent rhetoric has been levelled against women, in particular lesbians – much of it from self-identified feminists. Kill all TERFs. Punch all TERFs. Knife a TERF. Burn a TERF. Rivers shot and stabbed the Wright family before setting fire to their house, violence that is mirrored by the language directed towards the women denounced as TERFs. The violence trans activists and allies enacted when Vancouver Women’s Library launched was similarly normalised by misogynistic, abusive language. Given that “punch a TERF” has become something of a rallying cry for those invested in upholding gender ideology, women cannot afford to feign surprise when it actually happens.


Radical feminists have warned against the violent rhetoric attached to the term TERF for years, and been dismissed as bigots for our trouble. Jokes and threats involving violence against women, often indistinguishable, are now commonplace on queer corners of the internet. Etsy stock badges that conflate trans liberation with violence against women. We have reached a bizarre point at which violence against women is circulated as a bold message of resistance by people who claim to be feminists.

Painful disagreements and challenging ideas need not result in abuse. I can’t imagine a single woman campaigning for abortion rights and access to reproductive healthcare beating up my grandmother for her opposing views. Nor could I imagine any of the campaigners who have got in touch with my grandmother beating pro-choice women, even if they do think we’re heading for an afterlife of eternal damnation. The conversations I’ve had with Nana about abortion have been hard for both of us. Realistically, we’re never going to agree. But that doesn’t mean those conversations have to be destructive.

Screenshot_20170914-220321There must be a way to talk about the tensions between gender ideology and sexual politics without abusive language or acts of violence. The subject is fraught, uncomfortable, and certainly not abstract for anyone involved with gender discourse – which is all the more reason to bring empathy to the table. Dehumanising women to the point where we are considered legitimate targets of violence only upholds the values set by patriarchy. We do not approach the subject of gender from a position of power – gender has been used, for hundreds upon hundreds of years, to oppress women. That gender is fundamental to the oppression of women is too often overlooked in gender discourse.

No matter what your politics, we should all recognise that beating up a 60 year old woman doesn’t liberate. It’s violence against women. If your politics justify violence against women, they are shitty and misogynistic politics. It is not complicated. There is no justification. Women are not legitimate targets of violence. Not for having different views to you. Not for listening to or engaging with ideas you disagree with. Never. Plenty of the progressive left looked the other way at “punch a TERF” rhetoric normalising violence against women, and this is what it led to: a woman being beaten.

Violence against women has no place in the politics of liberation. If you ignore this Screenshot_20170915-132601assault to keep your ally cookies on queer identity politics, you’re complicit. If you give language that normalises violence against women, you’re complicit. Violence against women has no place in any context. That is what radical feminists consistently argue. Radical feminist women are depicted as violent simply for our ideas about gender – meanwhile, those who perpetrate physical acts of violence against women are framed as our victims.

When radical feminists critique gender, we are accused of debating trans-identified people’s right to live free from violence or even accused of exterminating trans-identified people. Aside from being falsehoods, these claims serve to discredit radical feminists’ explorations of gender. Writing for Trouble and Strife, Jane Clare Jones unpicks queer misrepresentations of radical feminism:

[Gender] debate is not academic for anyone involved. For both trans and non-trans women, what is at stake is the ability to understand themselves in a way that makes their lives livable. For feminist women, the axiom ‘trans women are women,’ when understood to mean ‘womanhood is gender identity and hence, trans women are women in exactly the same way as non-trans women are women’ is experienced as an extreme erasure of the way our being-as-women is marked by a system of patriarchal violence that aims to control our sexed bodies.
This system of patriarchal violence also marks the lives of trans women, who are indubitably victims of the kinds of male violence feminists have spent years attempting to resist. To cast certain feminists as the principal threat to trans existence, it is therefore necessary for trans-ideology to sideline the patriarchal violence that affects both women and trans people, and instead, position feminists at the apex of a structure of oppression.

Reframing women’s oppression as a form of privilege has enabled the disciples of gender ideology to target women as the oppressor and feel legitimate in doing so. But this perspective fails to consider the reality of the situation: women are an oppressed class, marginalised as a result of having been born female into a patriarchal society. Women do not hold a wealth of structural power over trans-identified people, and claiming that women challenging the means of our oppression are enacting anti-trans violence is ludicrous. Radical feminists are the staunchest and most consistent critics of male violence, which is the cause of transphobic attacks.

If you’re a feminist who has ever used the term TERF to describe a radical feminist, stop and think about the violent misogyny it’s used in conjunction with. Think about how “punch a TERF” led to Maria MacLachlan being assaulted. Think about whether you want to be complicit in violence against women, or play a part in challenging that violence – I suspect it’s the latter.

And if you’re going to keep branding women TERFs, remember: you cannot beat dissent out of women. Trying to do so only recreates patriarchal values, which started the pattern of using violence to render women compliant. It isn’t decent human behaviour, never mind feminist. Women are resilient – we have to be, to make it through life under patriarchy. And we will not fall silent.

 

Bibliography

Marilyn Frye. (1983). The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory.

Audre Lorde. (1983). The Master’s Toois Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.

Binary or Spectrum, Gender is a Hierarchy

Posted on by Claire

A brief foreword: this is the fifth essay in my series on sex, gender, and sexuality. Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 are available here on Sister Outrider. With this essay, I challenge the notion that gender can be repurposed as anything other than a hierarchy. This one is dedicated to E, a stellar lesbian and feminist.

 

“It is impossible to name and act against oppression if there are no nameable oppressors.” – Mary Daly

What is Gender?

Gender is a fiction created by patriarchy, a hierarchy imposed by men to ensure their dominance over women. The idea of a gender binary was established in order to justify the subordination of women by positioning our oppression by men as a natural state of affairs, the result of how characteristics innately held by men and women manifest. Framing gender as natural not only serves to depoliticise the hierarchy, but uses essentialism in order to convince women that radical resistance to gender – the means of our oppression – is futile. Hopelessness breeds apathy, which undermines social change more effectively than any overt challenge. If abolishing gender (and therefore dismantling patriarchy) is an unobtainable goal, women have no choice but to accept our status as second-class citizens of the world. To treat gender as inherent is to accept a patriarchal blueprint for the design of society.

gender imageGender is a hierarchy that enables men to be dominant and conditions women into subservience. As gender is a fundamental element of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks, 1984) it is particularly disconcerting to see elements of queer discourse argue that gender is not only innately held but sacrosanct. Far from being a radical alternative to the status quo, the project of “queering” gender only serves to replicate the standards set by patriarchy through its essentialism. A queer understanding of gender does not challenge patriarchy in any meaningful way – rather than encouraging people to resist the standards set by patriarchy, it offers them a way to embrace it. Queer politics have not challenged traditional gender roles so much as breathed fresh life into them – therein lies the danger.

To argue that gender could or should be “queered” is to lose sight of how gender functions as a system of oppression. Hierarchies cannot, by definition, be assimilated into the politics of liberation. Structural power imbalances cannot be subverted out of existence – reducing gender to a matter of performativity or personal identification denies its practical function as a hierarchy. Any ideology which flagrantly disregards gender as the method of women’s oppression cannot be described as feminist – indeed, as queer ideology remains largely uncritical of the power disparity behind sexual politics, it is anti-woman.

The logic of gender identity is fundamentally flawed, resting on the premise that gender is innately held. As feminists have argued for decades, gender is socially constructed – a fabrication designed to grant men dominion over women. The upbringing of children, 1600-Genderbread-Persongendered even before birth, serves to divide the sexes into a dominant and subservient class. Feminism recognises that biological sex exists while opposing essentialism, opposing the idea that sex dictate who or what we are capable of being as humans. Feminism asserts that our character, qualities, and personality are not defined by whether we are male or female. Conversely, queer theory argues that one set of traits is inherently masculine and another set of traits is inherently feminine, and our identity is dependent on how we align with those traits.

 

Instead of acknowledging that there are multitudes of ways to be a man or a woman, queer theory pigeonholes people into an ever-increasing range of categories organised by stereotype. There is no scientific evidence to support the existence of gendered brains, and claims of inherently gendered brains are the product of neurosexism (Fine, 2010). Yet queer ideology positions gender as an innately held identity, claiming that gender “is what you feel.”

“The manacles of a lifetime of cultural conditioning that has tried to convince me that gender is a biological fact rather than a social construct are more difficult to shake off than I would like.” – Louise O’Neill, I Call Myself A Feminist: The View from Twenty-Five Women Under Thirty

The Trouble with Gender Identity

Despite its essentialism, the queer understanding of gender has grown increasingly mainstream within progressive and feminist spaces. It is not difficult to understand why. Gender ideology acknowledges that a binary of male and female gender roles are restrictive for individuals, but instead of advocating the extensive work required to dismantle the hierarchy of gender, it offers a far easier solution: an individual opt-out clause that enables people to make peace with patriarchy. To embrace gender ideology is to embrace a narrative of exceptionalism. To embrace gender ideology is to accept that there is a class of people naturally suited to their position within the hierarchy of gender (be it oppressed or oppressor), and a class of people who are exceptions to the traditional rules of gender.

There is a fundamental problem with queer gender ideology. As I have previously written, that problem is misogyny. To claim certain groups are naturally suited to the gender role imposed upon their sex category – “cis” people – is to endorse misogyny. The women categorised as cis, by the logic of gender identity, are inherently suited to being oppressed by men. The whole system of patriarchy is therefore whitewashed by gender ideology, presented as a natural occurrence as opposed to a system of oppression built to grant men dominion over women.

As queer identity politics are built around a narrative of exceptionalism, the power dynamics of sexual politics to be ignored altogether. Through the linguistic twist of “cis”, women’s oppression is reframed as a privilege and therefore the liberation of “cis” women from patriarchal oppression ceases to be a priority. Sexual politics are negated by self-identification, through which membership of a sex class is rendered politically invisible.

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“So many genders and yet we still know, magically, which half of the human race is expected to wipe arses and scrub floors.” – Victoria Smith, @glosswitch

 

Gender is a prison, and I have compassion for everyone constricted by it. It is abhorrent that men are discouraged from empathy, kindness, and creative self-expression.  There is real cruelty in socialising boys into masculinity. That being said, there is a connection between gender ideology and the laundering of male privilege that demands scrutiny.

This issue is exemplified by the case of Ben Hopkins, one half of the punk duo PWR BTTM. Hopkins is biologically male and, as such, was socialised into masculinity. Like a great many famous persons who are biologically male, Hopkins exploited his fame and power to sexually abuse female fans. According to one of his victims, Hopkins is a “known sexual predator who has perpetrated multiple assaults, bullied other people in the queer community, and has made unwanted advances towards underage minors.” What allegedly sets Hopkins apart from a longstanding tradition of powerful male abusers is that he identifies as genderqueer. As such, queer perspective would have it that Hopkins’ actions cannot be considered male violence against women. Queer exceptionalism as it manifests through the logic of gender identity makes it impossible to name or challenge male violence as such.

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Statement from Survivor

Men are taught from birth that they are entitled to women’s time, women’s attention, women’s love, women’s energy, and women’s bodies. Yet, in accordance with the logic of gender ideology, unfortunate yet random as opposed to a likely consequence of the gendered socialisation men receive in patriarchal society. Despite identifying as genderqueer, the sexual violence Hopkins enacted against women with dramatically less social power than him follows perfectly the logic of masculinity. In what sense can a man who carries out the most toxic behaviour rooted in masculinity claim to be queering or resisting gender?

As his actions make clear, Hopkins has not consciously unlearned male socialisation or entitlement to women’s bodies. How Hopkins chooses to identify has little bearing upon the grim reality of the situation. Yet in claiming the label of genderqueer, Hopkins attempted to erase the male privilege from which he continued to benefit. Writing for Feminist Current, Jen Izaakson clearly articulates the paradox of Hopkins claiming to queer gender:

“…Hopkins used glitter, eyeliner, and vintage dresses to demonstrate an understanding of and adherence to queer ideals, to illustrate a rejection of “toxic masculinity” and the gender norms socially ascribed to males. But wearing flowery dresses and lip gloss does not necessarily lead to an actual rejection of the male entitlement and male dominance of men under patriarchy. By centering self-defined identities, individual expression, and performativity, instead of scrutinizing male violence and unequal systems of power, queer discourse has allowed misogyny easy access to the party.”

Similarly, trans activist Cherno Biko (born male) openly confessed to raping a transman (born female) with the fantasy and intention of impregnating them against their will.  Despite having publicly acknowledged committing sexual abuse, Biko was invited to speak on stage at the Women’s March in Washington and served as Co-Chair of the Young Women’s Advisory Council for New York City. This raises questions not only about the apparent lack of accountability for sexual abuse within feminist spaces, but also the extent to which progressive political movements are prepared to overlook instances of violence against women if the perpetrator identifies as transgender or genderqueer.

Acts of violence against women are both cause and consequence of patriarchy, and they are normalised by the logic of gender. Gender ideology disregards the power disparity of sexual politics – a hierarchy instituted through gender itself – and instead considers gender purely as a matter of self-identification. The queer perspective deliberately individualises the issue of identity in order to depoliticise gender, thereby avoiding difficult questions about power and patriarchy.

We are told that gender is a deeply personal matter and therefore, as all good liberals know, not to be scrutinised. Yet research demonstrates that transwomen “retained a male pattern regarding criminality following sex reassignment surgery,” and that “the same was true regarding violent crime.” Given that one in three women will experience male violence in her lifetime, this is no small matter: 96% of people who commit acts of sexual violence are biologically male. The safety of women and girls is never an acceptable price to pay, not even in the name of inclusion. Masculine socialisation plays a demonstrable role in shaping attitude and behaviour – if women cannot name the violence we experience or identify the system that makes it possible, we cannot challenge it.

“When Simone de Beauvoir wrote that a girl is not born a woman but rather becomes one, she did not mean that an individual born into the male sex, socialised into the expectation of the masculine gender, can simply decide to take hormones and maybe have surgery and ‘become a woman’.” – Dame Jenni Murray

Through the lens of gender identity, the oppressor may shed his male privilege and claim the status of oppressed. Through the lens of gender identity, the oppressed may also reject the grounds of their oppression by means of self-identification. Gender ideology aims to repurpose a hierarchy as an identity. Unfortunately, one cannot simply opt out of an oppression that is structural and systematic in nature – although queer discourse presents this as a legitimate route to women. Man is the default standard of humanity, with woman relegated to “Other” – defined purely in relation to men (Beauvoir, 1949). Is it no wonder that a growing number of women, dissatisfied by the limitations imposed by the feminine gender role and conscious that self-actualised human beings are more than the hollow stereotype of femininity, cease to identify as women.

Instead of identifying the feminine gender role as the problem, and working to dismantle the hierarchy of gender, women are encouraged to stop identifying as such if they behave or feel as human beings do. Instead of giving women the tools to unlearn internalised misogyny, gender ideology encourages them to disown womanhood and claim to be individual exceptions to the rule of gender. Through positioning full humanity and womanhood as being mutually exclusive, gender ideology invites women to participate in I’m-Not-Like-Other-Girls: Queer Edition.

It is understandable that women are eager to escape the feminine gender role – indeed, women’s liberation from the hierarchy of gender is a core feminist objective. But the feminist movement advocates the liberation of all women from all forms of oppression, not simply the liberation of those who believe their individual oppression through gender is wrong – those who “don’t aspire to any kind of womanhood.”

The Homophobia of Queering Gender

gay liberationDespite talk of queer community, an alliance between members of the LGBT+ alphabet soup, homophobia has always been at the root of queer politics. Queer ideology emerged as backlash to lesbian feminist principles, which advocated radical social change through the transformation of personal lives (Jeffreys, 2003). The political interests of lesbian women and marginalised gay men – primarily the abolition of gender roles – were dismissed within queer spheres. Individualism precluding any concentrated focus on feminist and gay liberation politics, which queer discourse began to describe as old-fashioned, dull, or anti-sex.

In recent years, this derision has escalated into openly anti-gay sentiment. Attempts to erase lesbian women and gay men are now standard practice within a queer setting. In an opinion piece that questions whether lesbian identity can “survive the gender revolution”, Shannon Keating claims that lesbian and gay sexualities are obsolete:

“Against the increasingly colorful backdrop of gender diversity, a binary label like ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ starts to feel somewhat stale and stodgy. When there are so many genders out there, is it closed-minded — or worse, harmful and exclusionary — if you identify with a label that implies you’re only attracted to one?”

There is a persistent strain of homophobia within gender ideology. It manifests so regularly because that homophobia is woven into queer gender politics. Same-sex attraction is relentlessly problematised because it acknowledges both the existence of biological sex and its significance in determining the potential for attraction – a contradiction of the claim that gender, not sex, is the defining unit of identity.

Earlier this year Juno Dawson, author of The Gender Games, claimed that being a gay man was merely a “consolation prize” for those unprepared to opt into a life of transwomanhood. Prior to transition, Dawson lived and loved as a gay man – therefore, it is particularly troubling that Dawson proclaimed homosexuality to be anything less than worthy of respect and recognition as legitimate. Dawson positioned life as a gay man as an inferior alternative, a poor substitute, for repressed transwomanhood. When gay men and lesbian women objected to this homophobia, Dawson delivered a non-apology which hit upon a fundamental truth about the politics of gender identity and sexuality: “Lots of trans men and women previously lived as gay men or lesbians prior to transition so I think it’s a really important thing to discuss…”

It is wildly regressive to argue that gay men are really unfulfilled women on the inside. By that logic, only the most straight and toxic of masculinities is authentically male. And if gay men are really straight transwomen, there is no such thing as gay men. Homosexuality has been ‘cured’ – an agenda that traditionally belonged to social conservatives, but can now be found within queer ideology. And it is not coincidence that so many of those who choose to undergo surgical or medical transition are gay men or lesbian women who, upon undertaking transition, live as heterosexuals. In Iran, where same-sex relationships are punishable by death, clerics are prepared to “accept the idea that a person may be trapped in a body of the wrong sex.”

Gender ideology is fundamentally conservative. It is based on the premise that gender roles are absolute, that those who stray from the gender role ascribed to their sex must belong to another category. Lesbian women and gay men defy the gender roles simply by loving someone of the same sex, by deviating from the heteropatriarchal patterns of dominance to create a sexual politics of equality. If we are transitioned into heterosexuality, into compliance with gender roles, we are made to conform to the gender roles mapped out by patriarchy.

Nobody is born in the wrong body. A body cannot, by definition, be wrong. The system of gender, on the other hand, is wrong in every way. Problematising bodies as opposed to the hierarchy which confines them only replicates the destructive ideology at the heart of patriarchy. It is an upside-down approach to the politics of liberation, misguided at best and complicit with patriarchy at worst.

Conclusion

Critiquing gender ideology is strongly discouraged – I suspect this is because the more one explores the queer perspective of gender, the more apparent its misogyny and homophobia become. Once the progressive veneer begins to crack – once it grows clear that gender ideology is at best complacent about patriarchy and the harms patriarchy visits upon women – queer politics become much harder to sell to the general populace.

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And so those feminists who do question gender ideology are branded bigots, the criticisms and those women brave enough to make them rendered illegitimate. Women who question gender ideology are derided as TERFs – we are told time and time again that their only motive in critiquing gender is malice, as opposed to meaningful concern for the well-being of women and girls. To that, I echo the words of Mary Shelley: “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” Any attempt to discourage women from addressing our oppression is deeply suspect.

Gender ideology creates a false dichotomy of people who are innately bound to traditional gender roles and those exceptional few who are not. Gender politics are the most elaborate and harmful example of using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. Why queer gender when we can abolish it? Why waste energy trying to subvert oppressive practice when we can do away with it altogether?

Woman is a sex class – nothing more, nothing less. Man is a sex class – nothing more, nothing less. To claim the scope of our identity is defined by the gender role pressed onto our sex class is to legitimise the project of patriarchy. As a feminist, as a woman, I reject queer politics and the gender ideology it advocates. Instead, I argue that women and men living outside of the script set by gender – be it the queer or patriarchal classifications – should be embraced as revolutionaries. Only through the abolition of gender can we achieve true liberation.

Bibliography

Simone de Beauvoir. (1949). The Second Sex.

Cordelia Fine. (2010). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference.

Lynne Harne & Elaine Miller (eds.). (1996). All the Rage: Reasserting Radical Lesbian Feminism.

bell hooks. (1984). Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center.

Sheila Jeffreys. (2003). Unpacking Queer Politics.

Audre Lorde. (1984). Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.

Cherríe Moraga & Gloria E. Anzaldúa (eds.). (1981). This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.

Bonnie J. Morris. (2016). The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture.

Victoria Pepe (ed.). (2015). I Call Myself A Feminist: The View from Twenty-Five Women Under Thirty.

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper. More Radical with Age.