A response to Daisy's Dead Air on Dworkin

[marjaerwin]

http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2009/08/andrea-dworkin-on-transgender.html

Since comments aren't working there, I'll post here:

I agree that Andrea Dworkin seems to have been a supportive ally, at least at this stage, but she doesn't seem to have understood trans experience, and she doesn't seem to have realized she didn't understand. We don't often get to speak for ourselves, and we can have trouble when allies [and queer theorists] speak for us without understanding our experiences or our needs. I call it 'allyjacking.' [Edit: I don't want to suggest that Dworkin was allyjacking, but just that it is something to be careful about.]

I think there's also a deeper issue involving different people's different needs in terms of feminist theory. For Dworkin, the important thing is to show the artificiality of the social distinction between sexes and say sex shouldn't matter, as class shouldn't matter, and should be abolished. But for many other people it's just as important to reclaim the life-renewing potential of our lived sexed experiences/sex identities: to say "I am a womon, and this is also a womon's experiences," or "I am a man, and this is also a man's experiences," or "I am a unique sexqueer person, and this is my experience," and so on. A lot of people, and most trans people, reach a point where we have to say that; transition makes more sense in this context than in the narrowly androgynous context. Unfortunately some people choose to say "I am a womon, and you are not a womon," from Jan Raymond on, and we get infighting instead of a more inclusive feminist movement which, to begin with, finally squares the circle of androgyny and originality.

Comments

[daisydeadhead.livejournal.com]

As I said on GenderErratic, just learning that transphobia is its own dynamic and not "piggybacking" on sexism (it can, but not always)...this has been due to my friendship with South Carolina Boy, my surrogate son. :)

I have experienced his transition in my own life, and this has taught me so much.

I also commented on your radfem quiz post, which I enjoyed.