So where are the trans-allied radical feminists?

[marjaerwin]

… because there are way too many trans-exterminationist pseudofeminists identifying radical feminism with transphobia and especially transmisogyny.

As a trans womon, I used to identify as a radical feminist, and I have learned a lot from radical feminism, although I already supported intersectionality and treated my feminism as one part of my support for human liberation.

I sometimes get the impression that trans-allied radical feminists are silent, and thereby enabling trans-exterminationists to identify their politics with radical feminism. I sometimes get the impression that trans-allied radical feminists are also many other kinds of feminists, and don’t usually feel the need to identify as radical feminists, while the trans-exterminationist pseudofeminists aren’t any kind of feminists, but latch onto radical feminism as a sort of slogan.

I should add that the orthodox seventies radfem view of gender, erasing any underlying identity, and of sex-and-gender-based oppression can be misleading. I don’t think we can reduce sex-and-gender-based oppression to one axis, since there are:

* privileging of normative masculinity over everything else

* privileging of gender conformity over gender nonconformity

* privileging of cis bodies over trans and intersex bodies

* privileging of ‘looks’ although these cannot be reduced to one axis

* more homeless men than homeless womyn

* and all the ways sex-and-gender-based oppression intersect with other types of oppression

Comments

[daisydeadhead.livejournal.com]

If the YOUNG PEOPLE weren't so POSITIVELY VICIOUS to older people, maybe there would be a few more online, as allies. As it is, they run us off. Then they bitch about none of us being around!!!!

THERE IS A REASON FOR THAT, you know. I am on the verge of calling it a fucking day myself.

The TERFs have their friends and their usual haunts, and the liberal-fems have theirs. Both groups have online-spaces where they fully belong and feel comfortable. So they are represented, and most importantly, DEFENDED by their friends. The rest of us do not have allies that WE NEED, like you know, OUR OWN AGE. We have to listen to juvenile assholes who were not around in the 70s, talking about Lou Reed, and then when we question them about their facts, we find out THEY WEREN'T EVEN AROUND THEN and yet, it somehow doesn't stop them from knowing every goddamn thing and judging their elders, who dealt with LOTS MORE SHIT THAN YOU WILL **EVER** KNOW. (but you are nonetheless certain that you would have dealt with it MUCH BETTER than we did! of course!)

I am tired of it, thinking of closing my tumblr, since I am just talking to myself anyway. Grandma ain't welcome. And yes, that IS the age of the feminists you seek, its just that most do not feel welcome online and in the areas you travel in. According to this, there are more clueless teenyboppers than grandmas on tumblr: evl8.tumblr.com/post/30998484332/the-average-age-of-users-on-social-media-networks

We are constantly corrected, shamed, marginalized, shunted aside. Our realities are not honored, not like Civil Rights pioneers are. We are VETERANS of our movements; sometimes multiple movements. I went to this peace meeting last week, and we talked about the group "Veterans for Peace"--some guy says "I'm a veteran, too, a veteran of PEACE"--and I thought, yeah, he is... but then so am I. But none of that is honored in the young "social justice" crowd... in fact, an older person can count on *being shamed* for our language instead.

No one is interested in our input. We are usually put down for it and told what we SHOULD have been doing. Young people know everything already and certainly have nothing to learn from us.

In fact, in answer to your post, my first thought was, what have *you* done to welcome the 70s feminist-refugees when we show up? I am regarded by the young trans feminists as some cis-interloper... so I deliberately STAY AWAY. I have been TOLD I do not belong. I have been SHUNNED. Lots of us have been.

Well, how do you like the results? This is what shunning us LOOKS LIKE.

It makes me feel like, hey, I only have a few more decades left. If the kids know so damn much, let THEM clean up the shit. Why don't I just enjoy my time left, stop recycling and get an RV and roam the land, leaving litter and destruction in my wake? THEY certainly don't seem to give a shit, and they will be the ones to deal with it, not me.

At least I have my own community, here in the upstate. And I know they appreciate me and depend on me. If I had to depend on any online-community, well, I would have totally quit by now, and you wouldn't even be reading this. And you know, lots of feminists have quit and left. They go to mommy-forums or lesbian-forums or green-forums or peace-forums or Democratic Party-forums or WHEREVER we are finally made welcome and accepted.

The next time you trash someone for not getting it right (whatever "it" is THIS time), make sure you aren't totally running them off in the process-- and then you look around one day and see that you have no allies. That's how the concept of ALLIES works.

I am not going to defend people who will not defend me in return.

Besides, I'm sure I don't even exist to them.

[marjaerwin]

You're right. I fucked up with the reblog attacking Lou Reed. I don't know what to do about it. I think a lot of us have internalized the idea that the only people we can trust are other trans womyn; that feeds distrust both ways; that fucks things up. I need to avoid slipping into that trap myself. I'd like to help others avoid slipping into that trap too. So, uh, thank you, I have a lot to work on.