“A TERF is a white supremacist whose gateway to white supremacy is anti-trans bigotry, instead of anti-Semitism or anti-Blackness or anti-migration or misogyny. As with any gateway, many people engaging in this ideology may not be aware of their proximity to white supremacy. This is the standard radicalization pathway that we have seen over and over and over with, for example, anti-Islamic sentiment. Personally, [I] find it is most comparable to how anti-Semitism gateways are used. Often, we see white supremacists exploiting legitimate grievances with the financial systems by turning into an anti-Semitic issue. White supremacists take legitimately frustrated and class-oppressed people’s anger at banks, and carefully plant the seeds of anti-Semitism. They’ll point out the irrefutable fact that there exist Jewish people in executive positions in banking and vilely twist this. TERFs take a legitimate grievance: patriarchal oppression of women and homophobia and turn it into a movement based on systematic exclusion of a specific class of people. This is the redpill. [We] need to stop the good-faith engagements with their ideology and start treating it like the gateway to white supremacy that it is.”
It’s also racist because it defines womanhood using conventionally attractive white women as the baseline.
Women who have facial hair, have thick or “excessive” body hair, have broad shoulders, have “masculine” facial features like angular jaws, have deep voices, are taller than “average”, have receding hairlines, are muscular, etc are immediately assumed to be men because they don’t fit white European ideals of womanhood. And these standards do affect white women of course, whether they’re cis or trans, but they mostly target Black and brown women.
There’s a reason why Black women, particularly athletes, are the ones who get targeted with so many accusations of being men. Why they’re expected to undergo hormone testing. Why they’re accused of having “excessive” testosterone. Why they’re expected to undergo physical examinations to “prove” that they’re “real” women.
Radical feminism, trans inclusive or not, is based around biological essentialist white supremacy whether radfems want to admit it or not.
So with everyone abuzz about the Britney Trial, and appalled and shocked and horrified at what she has had to go through, I want to take the time to state that this is commonplace and a very real threat for neurodivergent folks of all stripes. If you have a paper diagnosis of something it can and will be used against you by abusers. If you are disabled and/or neurodivergent you are owned in the eyes of the law and society by the people you depend on. This obviously and predictably creates situations where abuse is prevalent.
What Britney revealed in this trial did not shock me at all because this is the reality of many many people. This is the threat that hangs over people like me if we dont conform and burn out to please an arbitrary standard of normal and don't lie like hell to doctors.
At any moment if my mother felt like it, she could simply take my autonomy away legally because I can't live alone. If I didn't censure myself all of the time around certain people regarding neurodivergence, I could end up in a similar position because a doctor decided I was too crazy to have rights, and unlike Brittney, there is no mass movement for justice for us common people.
I want everyone to realize that what Britney has said is commonplace for people deemed 'too crazy to function' and disabled people in general. We are abused at startlingly high rates by our caregivers (parents, doctors, etc), society thinks that our rights should be taken away for our own good. I want people to extend the horror and desire to see change to the rest of us who arent high profile and use that horror to enact real change.
Not just hashtag freebritney, but push to pass laws to protect the autonomy and freedoms of those of us who are effected by conservatorships, institutionalization, and general stamping on of the rights of neurodivergent and disabled folks in every area of our lives.
carceral r*dfems claiming abolition is a movement ‘for and by men’ would be hilarious if it wasn’t such a clear example of misogynoir. black women sit at the forefront of abolitionist theorising and organising (kaba, gilmore, davis); their contributions to the movement are not just substantial, but integral. as is the case for survivors. how unsurprising that ‘r*dical’ feminists do not merely fall into carcerality, but embrace it through constant acts of epistemic violence.
this is such a great point, even off the top of my head, the prominent recent prison abolitionist works that come to mind are by black women (Michelle Alexander with The New Jim Crow and many other books + Ava DuVernay with 13th and When They See Us). Angela Davis who you mentioned has a writing credit on basically every major book on the subject!!
it’s the same with mariame kaba—i’d be genuinely surprised if someone had actually researched police abolition in any kind of depth and had never heard of her work, as she’s constantly credited with shifting the conversation around policing in america. but i suppose it’s naïve to expect these people to do any research outside of their cult-like social media echo chambers.
the op made a good point on that post by noting the radfem tendency to reduce everything to (a narrow & crude understanding of) patriarchy, and i suppose this extends to their understanding of other people’s politics too. they deny the existence of nuanced abolitionist politics in the same way that they deny the existence of trans-inclusive feminists and lgb people, and sex workers and their allies, with revolutionary politics. for radfems to accept these things would be to accept that they simply do not have the range!
I'm not talking about Bidoof's law, like I'm genuinely wondering why there is this prevalent psychological attachment to porn from people who are massive US military sympathizers
a lot of those people tried to join the military but got rejected, so the closest they'll get to feeling like a soldier is imagining someone else fucking their wife
looking at other women in public always has me like:
that is such a look.. that is such a look… now that is such a look… that’s a look… elegant… beautiful… yet another good look… stunning… i’m taking notes… that’s a good look… another good outfit…wow
I wrote this a while ago for FB after someone asked "wait, what is the song really about, I thought it was about an abusive relationship?" Thought I would share here.
“Had the [Republican National Convention] requested another song, “You Want it Darker,’ … we might have considered approval of that song,” e
This is your obligatory PSA that Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen is a DEEPLY and undeniably Jewish song.
Cohen was born, lived, and died as an Orthodox Jew - he also embraced elements of Buddhism, but contrary to what people may assume, that doesn't mean he stopped being a religious Jew. He himself said so in interviews - that he was content with his religion and identified as Jewish.
A lot of his music is informed by his Judaism and by the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. For example, Abraham's famous line of "hineni" or "here I am" being used as the refrain in "You Want it Darker." Cohen's "Who By Fire" is a pretty literal interpretation of the Unatoneh Tokef prayer from the Yom Kippur liturgy, about inescapable morality. His work is often very literally and directly informed by his Judaism.
Hallelujah is perhaps the ULTIMATE example of Judaism in Cohen's work. It uses two famous stories from the Tanakh - the imagry of "bathing on the roof" comes from King David (of secret chords and psalmistry) and his adulterous lust for Batsheva. The lyric about tied down and having ones hair cut is an allusion to Delilah cutting Shimshon/Samson's hair, betraying him and stealing his strength.
Hallelujah itself is a Hebrew word - "Hallel" means praise, the "u" ending makes it a vocative command, and "Jah" represents the Divine, the object of praise. It means "you should/let us praise the Divine."
Cohen wrote DOZENS of verses for the song, and most people covering the song use the ones selected by Jeff Buckley for his cover. However, if you look at the original verses Cohen sang, you'll find even MORE Jewish sentiment.
"They say I took the name in vain, but I don't even know the name." Blasphemy or taking G-d's name in vain has a very different meaning in Judaism - we can't use G-d's sacred Name unless we are directly addressing G-d, and even then, only the high priest can use it, and only in the most sacred place in the Temple at the most sacred time of the year. But because the Romans destroyed the Temple and exiled us, the high priest line was broken, the Temple doesn't exist, and the Name is believed to have been passed down secretly in Babylonia until as late as 600ce, when it vanished entirely.
In a real sense, the original way that we communicated with G-d in Judaism has been destroyed by outsiders, and we've had to adapt. Judaism moved on, now a religion of text instead of Temple, but there's still a GREAT sense of loss and displacement around that issue.
"There's a blaze of light in every word, it doesn't matter what you heard, the holy or the broken hallelujah" - not to get too deep into it, but, this is a reflection of Kabbalah, Jewish ontological mysticism. One explanation of creation is that G-d, the Eternal, withdrew in order to make space for the universe to be born. As G-d collapsed inwards, everything in the universe emanated out from G-d's person like shafts of light. Everything that exists came from one of these 10 eminations of divinity or the 22 letters of the Hebrew language. There's a blaze of light in every word - a spark that reflects how G-d used light and words to create everything.
This gets very very interesting when you get to the idea of "the holy or the broken." Kabbalah conceives of those eminations as vessels that hold the divine light of G-d, but that the reason evil exists in the world is that long ago, the vesseks cracked and the sparks all fell out. Now, each positive aspect like love, strength, harmony, has a negative aspect, like death, sadness, corruption. Tikkun olam, or repairing the world, is the job of doing more and more good deeds in the earthly realm so that we can gather up all that light and positivity and repair what's been broken in the world, on a personal level but also a cosmological one. So, while there's a holy hallelujah - joy, thanksgiving, gratitude, praise - there's also brokenness, sorrow, despair. But even that is part of the world, an empty shadow of the good aspects of existence, and you have to take the bad with the good and just try to make the world better.
"And even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the Lord of Song, With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah." In Judaism, we don't need an external source for salvation. You do the best you can, you apologize when you do wrong and try to do better, and if you still suck, you go to the equivalent of purgatory for 11 months max. Thats it. No hell, and no Jesus required.. Many Jewish people don't believe in an afterlife at all, or believe in other options like reincarnation. But anyone who does believe in a positive afterlife (analogous to heaven or paradise) believes it's available to anyone who simply tries to be a good person.
Now, one of the biggest problems actually comes from people adapting Jeff's version. The verse "Maybe there's a God above" was written by Cohen, but he didn't sing it. Jeff Buckley chose to include it in his rendition. "Maybe" theres a G-d is a VERY Jewish sentiment. We are a religion, NOT a faith. Belief in G-d is more or less optional. No one, even in Orthodox circles, will ever ask you about your personal belief in G-d. That's none of their business, it's quite rude, like asking about money or something. Everyone sorts out their spiritual journey on their own, and Judaism makes a LOT of space for questioning, doubt, multiple conflicting viewpoints, even downright disbelief. As a result, there are many agnostic and atheist Jews who are still deeply religious and fully observant. However, in an ire inducing brand of Christian hubris, most Christian artists choose to change this to "I know that there's a God above," TOTALLY stripping the Jewish context from that line because doubt is not culturally acceptable in their faith-centric system.
Unfortunately, Christians often go even farther than inserting a forced and obligatory belief in G-d - I have heard renditions of Hallelujah with the lyrics totally changed, so that it becomes an Evangelical worship song about the love of Jesus, a Christmas song about the birth of Jesus, or even (horrifyingly) a Passion narrative song for Easter about the death of Jesus. There are THOUSANDS of songs on those topics already. Stealing a Jewish song for a Christian purpose is ironically just like the story of the rich man with many sheep who stole the poor man's only sheep. Which is a metaphor for David stealing Batsheva from Uriah. WHICH IS LITERALLY IN THE SONG. It's the biggest religion on earth stealing something from one of the smallest. To make matters worst, juxtaposing it with the crucifixion is BEYOND tone deaf, considering one of the origins of antisemitism is the accusation that Jews killed Jesus. No one in history has mistreated, exiled, exterminated, and abused the Jewish people to the extent that Christians have - and still, they have the nerve to take a fundamentally Jewish song and appropriate it for their purposes.
Hallelujah is a beautiful song, and many people of all backgrounds relate to it. That's because, though it is a deeply Jewish song, its fundamentally about the tension between beauty and brokenness - in love, life, humanity, the divine, and the universe. Everyone relates to that. But thats THE central and foundational message of the song, onto which other messages are applied.
To make it about Christmas, Jesus, or the crucifixion STRIPS that message and replaces it with (what Judaism essentially considers) idolatry.
To use this song at the RNC in support of the Trump campaign does the same thing. Though the lyrics were unchanged, the true message was stripped away, leaving behind an undeniable message - praise Trump. This is idolatry, this is blasphemy, this is appropriation, this is theft, this is defilement and violation and assult.
And, since the internet is awash in bad, uninformed, goyische takes about the meaning of the song, here are some articles from Jewish people:
Leonard Cohen's Five Most Jewish Songs
Leonard Cohen’s Jewish-infused poetry, songs inspired generations
I was thinking about the movie adaptation of Interview with the Vampire and was about to make a “Here’s my review: not gay enough” meme about it, and I’m having a fucking stroke because I guess I’d never seen an unedited version of the meme but it turns out its origin was actually Interview with the Vampire
in the wake of all this JK Rowling terf shit, I'm just gonna say cis LGB people have a responsibility to confront people using gay relationships as a reason for why trans people can't exist. if somebody says "sex has to exist for same-sex relationships exist" you come in and say "I'm a gay person and don't use me for your transphobic argument". you owe it to your community members to step in.
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