I am in love with Renegade Evolution
Ren wrote this post in response to the discussion on Bastante Already about radical feminism.
[W]e all get told how much our activism of any sort does not matter. If you happen to not be against, or are even ambivalent towards, or maybe involved in sex work (and not the perfect poster girl victim), what you do doesn’t mean shit. It’s nothing, not good enough; after all, you haven’t seen what they’ve seen, and you are enabling it, even personally making it happen! It doesn’t matter if you bust your ass every day trying to find a woman on the run from an abusive ex a place she can afford to live. It doesn’t matter if you spend hours working with lesbians who have been kicked repeatedly by society trying to help them feel comfortable in their own skins. It doesn’t matter if you’ve scrubbed the blood and grey matter of a woman shot by her boyfriend off your floors or stood over the casket of a co-worker killed by her boyfriend in a jealous rage. It does not matter if you’re a transwoman who has been beaten or raped. It doesn’t matter if you’ve fucking lived aspects of any of these lives on your own in order to put food on the table and come through it realizing that every persons situation is different and that there is no universal experience when it comes to all women. It does not matter. You’re not good enough. Right enough. Pure enough. What you do means nothing, no matter how much of that nothing you do or how much of that nothing you’ve lived or how much of that nothing has helped other people.
Yeah, that.
The radical feminists I talk about in this blog, who write the most transphobic things are the same radical feminists who say the above – who dismiss the work Ren does because Ren does sex work – because she’s a stripper. Their bigotry is not limited to just one or two things, but a spectrum of experiences and lives that they vehemently disapprove of – BDSM, pornography, women of color who actually speak for themselves, women with disabilities. Anyone who raises uncomfortable questions about the definition of oppression in radical feminist terms – that the root of all oppressions is gender, that women are invariably oppressed, and that all these things represent oppression. BDSM reifies heteronormative patriarchal sex roles. Transsexualism reifies the patriarchal gender binary. Pornography makes women nothing more than sex objects. All women have a common experience of oppression as women, and so the pain that a black woman suffers when the violation she suffers is defined as “not really rape” and “a theft of services” is the same pain that a black woman from Mali suffers when she is refused political asylum to protect her daughters from FGM. It’s the same pain that a Russian woman who’s been trafficked into sex slavery suffers. It is the same pain that a latina woman suffers when she is separated from her daughter before deportation. These are all the same pain that a white middle-class woman feels when she reads about these stories. Or so some radical feminists might say.
This denies that all women have our own diverse experiences, that we experience life differently, that we’re oppressed in many ways because of race, disability, class, and sexual orientation. That my experience as a white woman is not the same as a black woman’s, or that black woman’s experiences are not the same as mine because she is cissexual and I am transsexual. That we have intersections that stack and multiply the social complications we face, and that it is impossible to separate “race” from “gender” for women of color, or “disability” from “gender” for women with disabilities.
Instead of looking for a common thread that binds all women together, we’re better served trying to address the real experiences that real women live. A form of feminism that runs women who don’t share that common thread out on a rail isn’t really a feminism I can get behind. Especially not one whose proponents try to silence voices like these.
We have a word for people for whom every action must be weighed on a political scale – totalitarian.
Jin
27 Nov 07 at 7:30 pm
Yeah, pretty much. They do take quite the totalitarian approach to feminism.
Lisa Harney
27 Nov 07 at 7:44 pm
Ooo yes, thank you. This was right on the money.
I think the main problem with this branch of feminism is that they take a theory and try to fit it to life – rejecting the bits of life that don’t fit the theory, instead of taking real life and rejecting the stupid theories that don’t work in the actual world.
It’s ass-backwards.
Vanessa
27 Nov 07 at 10:39 pm
Yeah, exactly. If you don’t fit the Theory, you must be repudiated.
I wanted to say something about how it elevates white middle class women so they can join white men, but does very little for women with other intersections. I mean, I have a theory that any activism that benefits women of color specifically ultimately benefits all women. This might be me misapplying a microcosm (any activism that benefits trans women of color ultimately benefits all trans people, because addressing their problems ultimately addresses everyone’s problems) to a macrocosm, and I need to read and listen more before I can be sure.
Still, I’d follow BFP or BA into Hell, but I wouldn’t follow Heart to the convenience store.
Lisa Harney
27 Nov 07 at 10:50 pm
> They do take quite the totalitarian approach to feminism.
Heh. There are days when it really seems that memes self-propagate: http://gorgonqueen.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/borderlands/
And thanks for yet another link to a strong, sharp voice in the ‘sphere. It really does give a little hope.
gorgonqueen
28 Nov 07 at 3:55 am
I hate the whole “Pain Game” that gets played so often with some people. It’s as if they feel that they have a prize for anguish, and they’ll be put out of the running if they don’t hurry up and negate what everyone else has experienced. In the real world, some experiences are more horrific than others. Me being smacked around by my parents is not the same as some girl whose genitals were ripped apart. It’s not even on the same playing field. Why isn’t it ever enough to say “What you’ve been through is horrible and I can’t even begin to imagine such suffering, but I’m here to help”? Oh… wait. That’s right, it’s because that would be acknowledging that someone’s won the pain game, and everybody knows the world hates losers.
Sorry, I know this is a bit ranty. This is just one of my biggest pet peeves.
tina
28 Nov 07 at 5:43 am
Feminism is supposed to make the world better, not worse. They are failing at being feminists pretty badly because they’ve forgotten what it’s for.
Jin
28 Nov 07 at 10:55 am
Tina, because gender trumps everything else, because sexism is the root of all oppression.
And one of my biggest peeves too.
Gorgonqueen, yeah, definitely.
Jin, I think it’s mainly about power for them, rather than about equality.
Lisa Harney
28 Nov 07 at 1:18 pm
Probably true. Luckily, they will never have any sort of power. They haven’t noticed that if you want to sell an ideology, it actually has to be appealing in some way. They’re like the Daleks.
Jin
28 Nov 07 at 7:39 pm
Well, one of them is running for president… but yeah.
Lisa Harney
28 Nov 07 at 7:41 pm
Jin–heh, i just now started watching Dr. Who for the first time (having been suckered in through Torchwood). i get it! woo!
EX-TER-MIN-ATE!!
belledame222
28 Nov 07 at 10:44 pm
Yea, no matter how bad things are, you can always think of the Daleks to imagine how it could be worse. My favourite quotes are:
SEEK – LOCATE – EXTERMINATE
Obey! – Obey!! – OBEY!!!!
Jin
29 Nov 07 at 10:10 am
She has about the likelyhood of winning the presidency as I do, and I’m not running, or an American citizen for that matter :)
Jin
29 Nov 07 at 10:18 am
I was joking, really. I know she has no chance to win the election, it just amused me to say it. :)
Lisa Harney
29 Nov 07 at 12:21 pm