your friendly radfem guide!

a source of information, discussion and integration between radical feminists, baby radfems, and curious libfems :-) hate speech will not be tolerated

[elbridch-deactivated20180221]

lol i was criticizing terfs and yet radfems got angry?? okay

[lily-lilac-lavender-blog]

Are you saying that @femfang and @gentlyradical aren’t terfs?

[radicalfaq]

her definition of terf doesn't even exist so i really wouldn't put too much stock in her answer.

[evilterf]

Ay I'm new from ?libfem?I think?? I find myself agreeing with but also confused by a lot of radical feminism. Besides tumblr, do you have any suggestions for accurate sources to learn from?

Theres a radfem forum run by scientific radfem which is really cool, you could ask her about that but other than that I can’t think of anything off of the top of my head :/ 

Any fellow radfems have any recommendations?

[exgynocraticgrrl-archive-deacti]

femmebroadwayvocals:

I haven’t looked much into it myself, (too busy with school) but Andrea Dworkin has a lot of gender critical and anti-porn books. Bell Hooks is also a black woman who has written a lot of books, and her book Ain’t I A Woman deals specifically with the intersections of misogyny and racism. This page (http://radfemresource.tumblr.com/resources) also has numerous sources.

Hope this helps!

On systematic male against female violence:

Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing (Anthology) , http://www.dianarussell.com/f/femicde%28small%29.pdf

THE ORIGIN AND IMPORTANCE OF THE TERM FEMICIDE

December 2011, written by Diana E.H Russell, Ph.D

Femicide – The Power of a Name

The Rise of Femicide: Can Naming a Deadly Crime Help Prevent It?, by  Aaron Schulman. The New Republic. December 29, 2010

On the issues that pornography presents feminists and ways we can challenge them:

Making Violence Sexy (Anthology), http://www.dianarussell.com/f/makingviolencesexy%28smaller%29.pdf

On the psychological and behavioral consequences of pornography consumption:

Ph.D Diana E. H. Russell, “Pornography & Rape: A Causal Model”. Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), Published by: International Society of Political Psychology. 

Exposure to Pornography As a Cause of Child Sexual Victimization

Stolen Innocence: The Damaging Effects of Child Pornography- On and Off the Internet

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/VAW02/mod2-6b.htm

The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality, and Relationships (2007/2008), http://www.antipornography.org/Price_of_Pleasure_doc.html (Warning: censored nudity but some of the content remains graphic and disturbing. Potentially triggering).

Pornography FAQ (http://catwa.org.au/?q=node/67 ):

How is pornography related to prostitution?

Pornography and prostitution are often thought of as completely separate entities. In many parts of the world, this is even reflected in law where pornography and prostitution hold very different positions; pornography is often privileged as a form of ‘representation’. Pornography, however, is filmed prostitution. Both pornography and prostitution involve the sexual use of women in exchange for money. Often, the only difference between the two is the presence of a camera. Pornography can also be seen to increase the legitimacy of prostitution, by depicting the commercial sexual exploitation of women as entertaining, glamorous and acceptable. In addition, pornography is frequently used by pimps to ‘season’ or train women for prostitution and in a rather cyclical relationship, women used in prostitution are often also used in pornography.

Shouldn’t pornography be protected as free speech?

It is important to note that pornography is not speech but rather filmed acts of prostitution. Pornography is not merely the representation of sex acts, but involves the filming of real sex acts, performed by real people. Arguing that pornography is speech, ignores the realities of how pornography is actually produced and also ignores the harm to women that pornography both generates and reinforces.

Read: Only Words, by Catharine MacKinnon Isn’t porn just harmless sex?

There is no such thing as harmless pornography. Many people believe pornography to simply be sex between ‘consenting adults’ rather than understanding pornography as a multi-billion dollar industry. Pornography is not ‘just sex’, it is a particular construction of sex which involves the commercial sexual exploitation of women for the purpose of men’s sexual pleasure. Pornography harms both the women who are directly abused in the making of it, and also women as a group more generally. It promotes a model of sexuality which is incompatible with women’s equality.“[P]ornography plays an important part in contributing to sexual violence against women and to sex discrimination and sex inequality” - Catherine Itzin Pornography: Women violence and civil liberties. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992 (p. 1).

Isn’t pornography a good sexual outlet for men?

The idea that pornography creates a useful sexual release for men, assumes that men have uncontrollable sexual ‘urges’ which require an outlet. It also assumes that pornography use is acceptable and healthy. Neither is the case. Pornography use is harmful to the women used in creating it, and pornography creates and reinforces harmful ideas about women, sex and sexuality; for example, that women enjoy or welcome unwanted sexual contact and sexual assault. Rather than reducing the likelihood that men will act out, it creates a culture in which women are increasingly objectified and viewed as commodities. Such a culture helps to fuel, rather than prevent, acts of sexual violence.

Doesn’t opposing pornography make you a prude?

Many people assume that the only reason to oppose pornography is because you find it personally ‘offensive’ or are ‘anti-sex’. Opposing pornography means that you oppose abusive sexual practices that harm women, not that you must oppose all sex. Nor does opposing pornography have to be about arguing that its content personally offends you. From a feminist perspective, it is not necessarily explicitness or the depiction of sex which is the problem with pornography. It is not about offence and decency, but about harm. “What is objectionable about pornography…is its abusive and degrading portrayal of females and female sexuality, not its sexual content or explicitness” – Diana Russell Dangerous relationships: Pornography, misogyny, and rape. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998 (p. 5).

What is pornification?

Pornification, sometimes referred to as pornographication or ‘raunch culture’ is the increasing distribution and acceptance of pornography as well as the fragmenting and blurring of pornography and pornographic imagery into popular culture. Pornography and pornographic imagery are infiltrating popular music videos, outdoor advertising, fashion and art to name but a few. While pornographication is sometimes viewed as simply the increasing acceptance of sexual themes in media, it is actually the promotion of a particular model of sex which is harmful to women. The mainstreaming of this type of pornographic sexuality which fundamentally objectifies women, is already harming the development of young women and girls. The American Psychological Association, for example, has linked the rise of this unhealthy model of sexuality to increases in mental health problems such as eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression. See: Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (2007). Available from:http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualization.

Legalisation of Prostitution

Brothels without Walls: The Escort Sector as a Problem for the Legalization of Prostitution, by Sheila Jeffreys 2010

What Happens When Prostitution Becomes Work? An Update on Legalisation of Prostitution in Australia. A paper by Mary Sullivan, 2005  (CATWA)  

Submission to New Zealand Parliament, CATWA 2003

Prostitution Culture: Legalised Brothel Prostitution in Victoria, Australia  Sheila Jeffreys 2002. Talk given at Swedish Ministry of Gender Equality Seminar on the Effect of Legalisation of Prostitution. Stockholm, 6 November 2002.

The Legalisation of Prostitution: A failed social experiment, by Sheila Jeffreys

Legalising Prostitution is not the Answer: The example of Victoria, Australia by Mary Sullivan and Sheila Jeffreys

Trafficking

Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (2000) (Known as the Palermo Protocol)

A Guide to the UN Trafficking Protocol (2001) 

Sex Trafficking and Human Rights

Marriage Trafficking  

Pornography and Pornification  

The global industry of pornography is growing rapidly. The business of pornography is now worth in excess of $57 billion worldwide. More than $10 billion is generated in the United States alone. Pornography is an industry which, like prostitution, makes its ever increasing profits from the sexual exploitation of women and girls. Women in both the pornography and prostitution industries suffer abuse and violence. Despite this grim reality, tolerance for pornography is increasing in Australia and many other Western nations. Through the ‘mainstreaming of pornography’ or ‘pornification,’ pornographic imagery and even pornography itself are gaining legitimacy and a degree of glamour and cultural chic. Porn stars are becoming household names, advertising mimics pornographic conventions and poses, and Playboy is not just a magazine but a global brand that markets everything from clothing to stationery. The mainstreaming of pornography is also changing our conceptions of sexuality. Women are increasingly becoming required to perform sex acts straight from pornography in their everyday heterosexual relationships, and the pornographic model of sexuality is harming girls’ and women’s concepts of self. As pornography continues to become more prominent and pornographic imagery becomes more ‘mainstreamed’ we become accustomed to living in a pornified world in which it is acceptable that women and girls can be bought and sold.

Boyle, Karen (ed). (2010). Everyday Pornography. Oxford: Routledge.

Dines, Gail. (2010). Pornland: How Porn has Highjacked our Sexuality. Melbourne: Spinifex Press.

Dines, Gail & Jensen, Robert & Russo, Ann. (1998). Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality. New York: Routledge.

Dworkin, Andrea. (1979) Men Possessing Women. New York: Pedigree Books.

Long, Julia. (2012). Anti-Porn: The resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism. Zed Books.

Tankard Reist, Melinda & Bray, Abigail (eds) (2011). Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry. Melbourne: Spinifex Press.

Tyler, Meagan (2011). Selling Sex Short: The Pornographic and Sexological Construction of Women’s Sexuality in the West. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Strip Clubs

Read CATWA’s indepth report on strip clubs in Victoria (2010).

The sex industry and business practice: An obstacle to women’s equality, by Sheila Jeffreys 2010

Jul 2014: Business women suffer discrimination because of the male executive culture of strip club visits.

Jul 2014: Executive director of UN Women Australia calls for zero tolerance of strip club visits

Dec 2010: ABC radio interview with Sheila Jeffreys on ’Why strip clubs are harmful to women and the community’. Includes transcript

Dec 2010: Corporate functions and Christmas parties at strip clubs

On the feminist activist struggles against woman-battering, rape, misogyny (Right Wing and Left Wing), gendered oppression, hatred of lesbians, prostitution, pornography, societal stockholm syndrome, female-only spaces and more.:

Letters from a War Zone, by Andrea Dworkin

Our Blood, by Andrea Dworkin

Right-Wing Women, by Andrea Dworkin

Pornography: Andrea Dworkin (1991) - Documentary

Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by Andrea Dworkin

http://radfem.org/dworkin/

Against Our Will, Susan Brownmiller

Femininity, by Susan Brownmiller

Rape In Marriage, Diana Russell

Women-Only Spaces: An Alternative To Patriarchy, by Jennie Ruby 

Exploring the Value of Women-Only Space, by Kya Ogyn

Women, Health and the Politics of Fat, Amy Winter, in Rain And Thunder, Autumn Equinox 2003,   No. 20

Free Space: A Perspective on the Small Group in Women’s Liberation by Pamela Allen 1970 Download PDF 

Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives by Dee Graham, Roberta Rigsby, Edna Rawlings 1995 Download PDF

Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism by Somer Brodribb 1992 Download PDF

A deafening silence: Hidden violence against women and children by Patrizia Romito (translation by Janet Eastwood) 2008 Download PDF

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis 2003 Download PDF

Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice by John Stoltenberg 2000 2nd Ed. Download PDF

I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde ed by Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Beverly Guy-Sheftall 2011 Download PDF

Beyond the Frame: Women of Color and Visual Representation ed by Neferti X. M. Tadiar, Angela Davis 2005 Download PDF

Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West by Sheila Jeffreys 2005 Download PDF

The Spinster and Her Enemies by Sheila Jeffreys 1997 Download PDF 

The Lesbian Heresy by Sheila Jeffreys 1993 Download PDF 

The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade by Sheila Jeffreys 2008 Download PDF 

The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism Edited by Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice G. Raymond. 1990 Download Full PDF (5MB)

Liberalism and the Death of Feminism, Catharine A. MacKinnon (PDF)

Sexology and Antifeminism, Sheila Jeffreys (PDF)

Woman-Hating Right and Left, Andrea Dworkin (PDF)

Taking Our Eyes Off the Guys, Sonia Johnson (PDF)

Family Matters, Ann Jones (PDF)

Confronting the Liberal Lies About Prostitution, Evelina Giobbe (PDF)

The New Reproductive Technologies, Gena Corea (PDF)

Mothers on Trial: Custody and the “Baby M” Case, Phyllis Chesler (PDF)

Sexual and Reproductive Liberalism, Janice G. Raymond (PDF)

In the Best Interest of the Sperm: The Pregnancy of Judge Sorkow, Pauline B. Bart (PDF)

Abortion and Pornography: The Sexual Liberals’ “Gotcha” Against Women’s Equality, Twiss Butler (PDF)

When Women Defend Pornography, Dorchen Leidholdt (PDF)

Eroticizing Women’s Subordination, Sheila Jeffreys (PDF)

Resistance, Andrea Dworkin (PDF)

Sex Resistance in Heterosexual Arrangements, A Southern Women’s Writing Collective (PDF)

Toward a Feminist Praxis of Sexuality, Wendy Stock (PDF)

Sexual Liberalism and Survivors of Sexual Abuse, Valerie Heller (PDF)

The Many Faces of Backlash, Florence Rush (PDF)

Liberals, Libertarianism, and the Liberal Arts Establishment, Susanne Kappeler (PDF)

You Can’t Fight Homophobia and Protect the Pornographers at the Same Time—An Analysis of What Went Wrong in Hardwick, John Stoltenberg (PDF)

A View from Another Country, Susan G. Cole (PDF)

Women and Civil Liberties, Kathleen A. Lahey (PDF)

Be-Witching: Re-Calling the Archimagical Powers of Women, Mary Daly (PDF)

Not a Sentimental Journey: Women’s Friendships, Janice G. Raymond (PDF)

Femicide Fetishize female vulnerability Handmaidens of the patriarchy Harm reduction/refusal to name the agent Joke’s on women Male bonding over misogyny Male entitlement Mansplaining/women’s perspective is wrong Necrophilia Normalize abuse/neglect Normalize porn/prostitution PIV-centric narrative — Goal is to “land a man” — Normalize exaggerated/simulated female pleasure — Normalize reproductive stress and pain — Pathologize menstruation — Pathologize older women and menopause/fetishize female youth — Rape and rape culture Pornify girl children/infantilize adult women Primacy of the nuclear family Reversal Support patriarchal institutions (medicine/religion/law) Woman as “useful object”

Crimes Against Women: The Proceedings of the International Tribunal

On the feminist analysis of beauty standards and oppressive femininity:  Beauty & Misogyny, by Sheila Jeffreys

On the feminist analysis of queer theory:

Gender Hurts, by Sheila Jeffreys

Unpacking Queer Politics Download PDF,

LibFem vs. RadFem views on Gender

On the feminist analysis of the sex industrial complex:

The Industrial Vagina Download PDF,

Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry. (Anthology),

Accounting for Pornography, Prostitution, and Patriarchy. by Pala Molisa, PhD student, 

Women, Lesbians, and Prostitution: A Workingclass Dyke Speaks Out Against Buying Women for Sex, by Toby Summer, in Lesbian Culture: An Anthology, Julia Penelope and Susan Wolfe,  eds

Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography, Christine   Stark and Rebecca Whisnant, eds.

Sex critical & Kink critical text:

Against Sadomasochism (Anthology)

Ten Lies About Sadomasochism, by Melissa Farley

Unleashing Feminism: Critiquing  Lesbian Sadomasochism in the Gay Nineties, by Irene Reti, ed.

How Orgasm Politics Has Hijacked the Women’s Movement, by Sheila Jeffreys

Intercourse, by Andrea Dworkin

Theological feminist criticism:

Beyond God The Father, by Mary Daly (1974)

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Mary Daly

The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, Marija Gimbutas

Woman, Church and State, Matilda Joslyn Gage

The Women’s Bible, Elizabeth Cady Stanton 

Pure Lust, Mary Daly

On the feminist criticism of sexual liberalism:

“The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism” Anthology, (1987, edited 1990), http://radfem.org/the-sexual-liberals/

Incest: The Great Incest War: Introduction to The Secret Trauma

Making an Issue of Incest, Louise Armstrong (PDF)

Activism:

Lone Radical Feminist Actions

Best Strategies to Advance the Global Struggle Against Femicide

Feminists Threaten Larry Flynt: My Personal Contribution

Bin the Bunny. This is an anti-pornography campaign from London. It began in response the opening of a Playboy shop in 2007. 

Object. A UK group committed to challenging the objectification of women.

No Porn Northampton. This site, based in USA, contains information about campaigns and many papers and resources relating to pornography.

Routes Out. This is a Glasgow based organisation founded to help women exit prostitution. 

Turn Off the Red Light An Irish organisation working for an end to prostitution and sex trafficking in Ireland. It advocates the adoption of the Nordic Model. 

Feminist Coalition Against Prostitution A UK coalition who believe that prostitution is male violence against women and are working to achieve Swedish style legislation. The site contains many useful links and resources.

Abolicion de la Prostitucion. This web site, in Spanish, was set up by a group of 77 women’s organisations to fight prostitution in that country.

Centre for Women’s Human Rights. This Korean feminist organistion was established in 2005.

The Polaris Project. Anti Trafficking organisation with a focus in Japan and USA 

Websites with other resources (video clips, documentaries, quotes, articles, essays, interviews, graphics, etc): http://www.antipornography.org http://www.stoppatriarchy.org/ https://radicalhubarchives.wordpress.com/radfem-101/ http://www.feminist-reprise.org/fembib.html There are WAY more text I could include here. Such as feminist historian Gerda Lerner‘s work and more but I think this is enough for today.

Now let’s just hope the above links all work! :)

[radicalfeminisms-blog]

Also: you can message me if you’re interested in the forum

[caffeinesbian-blog]

#resource

[theresagooseinthemainframe]

I also have a large collection of various ebooks, if anyone is interested just message me and I’ll link you my Dropbox!

Also just from my personal journey into radical feminism coming from liberal feminism, one of the first and most straightforward books I read was Women Hating by Andrea Dworkin, closely followed by Our Blood. It was a good place to start tbh.

If you’re into the whole history of patriarchy thing/anthro/history of women’s oppression vibes, definitely check out Gerda Lerner, she is the absolute boss in that department, also Marilyn French, I have their stuff available too, among other related things :)

[aneurysmsandanalogues]

Protesters at Vancouver Women's Library asked a list of books to be removed. Here they are:

Admission Accomplished - Jill Johnston -Against Sadomasochism - Robin R. Linden, Darlene R. Pagano, Diana E. Russell, Susan Leigh Star -Amazon Odyssey: Collection of Writings - Ti-Grace Atkinson -Buddhism after Patriarchy - Rita M. Gross -The Female Man - Joana Russ -Female Sexual Sl*v*ry - Kathleen Barry -Feminism Unmodified - Catharine A. Mackinnon -First Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening Susan Murcott -Gyn/Ecology - Mary Daly -The Idea of Prostitution - Sheila Jeffreys -The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade - Sheila Jeffreys -Intercourse - Andrea Dworkin -The Lesbian Heresy - Sheila Jeffreys -Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women - Geraldine Brooks -Not a Choice, Not a Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade - Janice Raymond -Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography-Of Women Born - Adrienne Rich -Pornography: Men Possessing Women - Andrea Dworkin -Radical Acceptance - Tara Brach -The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism - Janice Raymond -Women As Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women’s Freedom - Janice Raymond

These are the books they are afraid of women reading. Keep this in mind. Read these books. Share them with others. Keep fighting.

[alaenseegirlbeas-blog]

what exactly makes terfs think that we’re literally forcing them to fuck trans women……. like……………..

[transgender-harms-women]

Here’s a workshop held by men called Overcoming The Cotton Ceiling (the cotton refers to women’s panties)

Here, Sophia Banks tells us that our sexuality can be liberated by “moving past conventional definitions of sexuality” by which he means lesbianism.

This line of thinking - that lesbian women are bigoted and oppressive for being homosexual, that turning down penises is a hate crime, is very common

It’s almost like all these men are obsessed with getting women to fuck them when they’re explicitly not interested. This use of guilt and coercion is part of rape culture.

[benyw]

Whether they force you to call them ‘she’ or ‘he’ makes no difference, all those males above are fucking disgusting and 1000x more dangerous to women than ANY rad fem has ever been to trans women.

‘Trap’ (aka rape) porn??? Wtf?! If that isn’t proof enough for you that these males are just like any other violent male (conspiring to rape women/create fantasies of raping women to cope with our rebelling against their ideologies) then I don’t know what to tell you tbh. And if this doesn’t wake you up to the fact that they hate women then by this point I’d have to guess that you’re being deliberately ignorant. 

[radicalfaq]

i mean you’re literally welcome to peruse the countless examples of lesbians being pressured into sex they don’t want in the name of ~progression~ or you can bury your head further into the sand!

you can despise our movement but you cannot divorce yourself from the reality of hard evidence. interesting that you would deny to “vilify and exclude and entire group of women from a fight for our rights” where there is one, right here, a group of women betrayed by a movement that puts undue pressure and focus on who young girls and women are fucking, how having an innate sexuality is something to be unlearnt and attacked.

i’m aware you’re not asking this question in good faith nor do you truly want an answer, but i implore you to look a little deeper into your (i assume) liberal movement and see a new breed of rape culture emerging. i would be happy to have an open conversation with you, as i’m sure many of us would be.

@thecottongaslight @terfmeanslesbian

[transavant-deactivated20170911]

How do you define woman and transwoman?

(this is a mash-up of a couple of recent posts)

I think that these are really important questions. On the surface they seem quite simple questions but once you start to look at the implications we can start to understand what the real issues might be.

DEFINITIONS

A good place to start with definitions is usually the dictionary.

“woman noun An adult human female.”

I don’t think that the definitions of human or adult are in contention, but let’s look at the dictionary definition of female.

“female noun Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.”

We could just leave it there, and some people would like us to, but I don’t think that would really answer the question and certainly wouldn’t help us to understand why these are contentious words.

The words man and woman are imbued with social connotation.

“imbue verb inspire or permeate with (a feeling or quality).”

“connotation. noun an idea or feeling which a word invokes for a person in addition to its literal or primary meaning.”

In our society the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ mean so much more than their literal meanings. The word ‘woman’ is imbued with what we understand women to be in relation to our culture and our social environment.

We live in a society where we have very distinct expectations of what men and women are expected to be. We have commonly accepted rules for what are considered acceptable and unacceptable behaviours for men and women.

So what is gender? Well here is where it starts to get tricky because even just looking at dictionary definitions we seem to get into a bit of a mess.

“gender noun

The members of one or other sex

The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).

The behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex”

The first definition isn’t really very helpful as it is just the same as sex.

The second definition is a bit of a mess and actually encapsulates the confusion that we often get into. If ‘female’ denotes the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs how can the state of being female have anything to do with social differences rather than biological differences? It’s a contradiction in terms.

The third definition I think pretty much nails it and that is what I mean if I refer to gender from now on.

Ok. Still with me? Good. So armed with this we know that the dictionary definition of ‘woman’ is an adult human female, but it has connotations of gender i.e. it invokes the idea of the behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with females.

In this sense it is quite easy to define gender identity and transgender (and apologies in advance for the repetition that is coming)

“Gender Identity is how a person identifies with the behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.”

“Transgender is used to describe a person of one sex who identifies with the behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with the opposite sex.”

“A transwoman is a male who identifies with the behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with females.”

That last sentence is probably quite provocative to transwomen but it isn’t meant to be. I understand that saying that a transwoman is male hurts a lot of trans people and I understand why. But it isn’t meant to hurt. It’s a rational and honest way of describing the situation. Of course there is merit in deconstructing this further and stopping to explore why it hurts so much, but that would be a whole post in itself. We could also explore the fact that the experiences of some transwomen feel like so much more than identifying with certain traits and it’s a feeling that the whole body is wrong and that this totally ignores the feeling of body dysphoria. These are valid points for discussion also.

PROBLEMS WITH THESE DEFINITIONS

Now if everybody agreed on these definitions of gender identity and transwoman we could stop here, but actually these definitions are problematic to different groups in different ways. There are two key groups that are invested in this issue. Transactivists and Radical Feminists. Before we can understand why these tems are problematic, it’s necessary to understand the goals of the two groups. Contrary to popular opinion, there are are lots of areas of commonality, but each group has a very different approach to achieving these common goals, and there are also some important conflicting goals.

Some of the common beliefs and goals are:

Genitals do not dictate personality.

Grouping people into two social groups based on genitals is bullshit.

We should all be freed to live authentic lives and embrace our personalities and embrace the cultural artefacts of our choosing irrespective of our genitals.

Some humans may prefer things traditionally labelled masculine, or feminine, or both. Again this has nothing to do with genitals.

People should not be discriminated against because of their genitals.

People should not be discriminated against because their behaviour and expression doesn’t match that which society traditionally associates with a given set of genitalia.

TRANSACTIVIST VIEW

There are lots of different people within both groups and so lots of different views. I can’t possibly cover all views and certainly can’t get claim to not get some things wrong, but I’ve tried to summarise the most common views that I’ve picked up.

The transactivist group has adopted the view that “transwomen are women”. I think that this has come about (in part) because of the need for us to be accepted within society and to no longer feel marginalised. Within our current society we aren’t accepted by men as part of that social group and we don’t want to be because we don’t identify with them. So instead we want to be accepted wholly as women - the group that we identify with. “Transwomen are women” makes sense in the context that we live in a society which is heavily based on gender and so we are more closely aligned with the superficial traits associated with females than those associated with males and seek to integrate with that social group. The argument is that trans people just want to be free to get on with their lives without rejection or stigma and so the tolerant and compassionate thing to do is to accept us as women. It is how we identify and how we attempt to live.

With regard to the points above, the argument is that the words man and woman / male and female are socially constructed and the link between sex and behaviour should be challenged so let’s screw with patriarchy by really fucking around with those words and divorcing them from genitals.

However, this community has become increasingly invested in promoting any scientific evidence that suggests that there are physiological factors in play i.e. that there are measurable differences between male and female brains and that trans people must have more female brains. This is inconsistent with the notion that male and female are socially constructed and so attempts to shift the definition of male and female from genitalia to the posession of male identity and female identity.

So in my opinion, the need for this redefinition driven in part because of an attempt to challenge gender, but is primarily driven out of the need for validation and acceptance.

RADICAL FEMINIST VIEWPOINT

Again, I don’t claim to be a radical feminist and can only convey what I understand from my interactions with women.

The feminist community rightly points out that women have been oppressed for millennia not because of their ‘gender identity’, but because of their sexual and reproductive capacity as females. Feminists, especially radical feminists are also opposed to the concept of “lady brain” as this has been used as a justification for the oppression of females and instead assert that male and female brain function is inherently the same, and that any differences are a result of socialisation. This community tends to reject the assertion that the scientific evidence presented of measurable differences between female and male brain function is evidence that the differences are  innate rather than socialised. Instead they point to the growing evidence that there are no real innate brain differences and that gendered behaviours are entirely socialised.

An important point is also that radical feminists see gender (as described in the third definition above) as being a tool of oppression. The traits and behaviours expected of males and females places women (as a class) in a position of being subjugated by men (as a class). As a result many adopt a position of gender abolition and believe that the emancipation of women can only be achieved through abolishing the rules that constrain the acceptable behaviours of males and females.

They believe that changing the definition of male and female to be based on gender identity rather than reproductive biology is both an erasure of this sex based oppression, and a reinforcement of the definition of women in terms of socially constructed stereotypes.

So whilst there are some overlapping beliefs, we can see how these two viewpoints conflict.

GENDER ABOLITION

Gender abolitionists want to break the association between sex and behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits and so find the implication that women are defined by these things as both insulting and regressive. Hence they reject the assertion that males who identify with these traits are women as that reinforces the association that they reject.

Having spent years thinking about these things and exploring them, I believe that the aims of gender abolition actually serve women and transwomen equally. Both sides want a world where we can all be free to not conform to the behaviours and traits assigned to us because of our genitals.

The transactivist view is problematic to me in that there are logical inconsistencies between “sex is a social construct” (inferring that man and woman are meaningless) and “transwomen are women”. It’s also problematic in that there are some people who claim to be women whilst simoultaneously displaying male socialisation, being sexually predatory towards women (particularly lesbians), and displaying extremely misogynistic behaviour to women (eg. “choke on my girl dick”). Some trans people will say that these people aren’t truly trans and so the necessary tenet of self definition becomes unsustainable. Others think that these behaviours are totally justified which is even more scary and reinforces exactly why women need to be able to maintain their own boundaries.

The other problem with the transactivist view is that it actually does nothing to challenge toxic masculinity. Don’t meet the expectations of “real man”? No problem. We’ll label them as women instead. The group called “men” are still this bullshit notion of “real men” and toxic masculinity goes unchallenged. I think a much bigger challenge to patriarchy would be people like me saying yeah I’m a man. Men can be like this. Get over your gendered expectations?

The difficulty is that most trans people never reach this point of understanding of what gender abolition actually means. Instead, “transwomen are women” is seemingly an easier way of attempting to address the basic human needs for safety, belonging and esteem. But I’m not sure it’s even the best way to do this. Saying that “trans women are women” contributes to GNC males’ self worth hinging on being accepted and validated as being inherently female. In fact, too often I have seen gnc males refer to themselves as “born female, never male”. These people have among the most fragile identities and feelings of self-worth of any people I know.  A single instance of “misgendering” is enough to cause a mental breakdown, thoughts of self harm and even attempted suicide. This is because genderists are telling gnc males a lie. We are not female. We are not women. In my opinion, the best way to help gnc males is to stop lying to us about who we are. I think that transactivists have made a huge mistake by destigmatising a lie rather than destigmatising the truth.

As a result, whilst I can see how “transwomen are women” makes some sense with reference to cultural norms, I support gender abolition as a cause that better serves women and transwomen and so I don’t believe it’s necessary to consider transwomen to be a subset of women in order to support us and free us from constraints and stigma and to address our needs for safety, belonging and esteem in a way that doesn’t compromise those exact same needs of women.

This isn’t just an issue of semantics when there are transactivists being unapologetically reckless with their death threats and pushing women out of spaces they’ve made. There are real life consequences of this.

Now we just need an actionable plan for gender abolition.

[radfeminist-suggestions]

[transgender-harms-women]

Saying no to penis is not hate speech.

1. Introduction

Essential background 2. Sex vs. gender 3. Imagining a world without gender 4. Transsexual people (are not the problem)

Transgender identity politics 5. “Woman” is a feeling: brainsex & female penises 6. “Woman” is a male fantasy: autogynephilia 7. Women are privileged: “cis” 8. Women who resist are witches: burn the TERFs

Why does it matter? 9. When biology=bigotry, feminism=hate speech 10. Documented harms to women 11. Documented harms to children

How did we get here? 12. The knee-jerk sanctimony of the Left 13. The ideological totalism of the Left 14. The misogyny of the Left 15. The male supremacy of the Left

16. Conclusion: moving forward

[hardlydworkin]

Read all of this if you haven’t!! Send it to people!

[flowerlygirls]

Porn sites don't have rape and abuse or pedophilia so

sure because “teenslut gets what she deserved” sure aint any of this. you can go fuck right off i fucking hate you pornsick men.

[kiefbowl]

There’s literally zero regulation in the porn industry. There’s no “real certified” porn sites and then black market porn sites. Deep web porn is porn. That shit gets on regular porn sites all the time. Then on top of that, “regular” porn if you will, will imitate rape, abuse, torture, pedophilia etc etc. How do you know what you’re watching was filmed with any consent? How do you know what happened that day on and off screen? Who makes sure rape doesn’t happen on set exactly?? How do you know the video you watched was filmed on a set or was filmed without the participants knowledge? You literally do not. There’s no Pornography Board Authority, there’s no licensing, vetting, unions, there’s nothing. Right now you can go to most porn sites and upload whatever you want. You could take a video of your cat and upload it right now. So what stops anyone with explicit video of a teenager they coerced from uploading that video exactly??? Why wouldn’t they stop themselves?

[strrawberrys]

i am so fucking tired of rhetoric that says cis women are “allowed” or “encouraged” to abandon femininity.

i’m so sick of seeing this posited as some kind of “privilege.” i always see things like, “cis women can just abandon femininity and they’re seen as empowered but trans women can’t do that and cis women just don’t realize how good they have it!!!”

like, honestly, where the fuck are you living that women can abandon femininity and be celebrated for it? and no, i’m not talking about having unshaved armpits that nobody ever really sees, i’m talking about butch and dysphoric and GNC women and the centuries of abuse and harassment that they have faced. what world are you living in where these women are ~empowered by society~ and not forced into heterosexism, corrective rape, abandonment from family members, the countless slurs used against them? 

would love to know where this is happening, please let me know, thanks 

[profeminist]

Female subordination runs so deep that it is still viewed as inevitable or natural rather than as a politically constructed reality maintained by patriarchal interests, ideology, and institutions.

Charlotte Bunch (via profeminist)

[fyxan-deactivated20180801]

{from feminist current}

[lagoonhag]

From The Whole Woman by Germaine Greer

[human-flesh-search]

I feel like k*nk is almost compulsory now and it scares me a lot

like I was reading this thing in vogue (I know I know) about how to ~Spice Things Up ;-)~ in the bedroom and there was a little story about one guy whose girlfriend wanted him to get rough during sex. He was really uncomfortable with it because, he said, he was raised to respect women or whatever so he didn’t want to hit his girlfriend?? And it was stressing him out and he talked to his friends about it and they were like, “well, you at least pull her hair and slap/spank her already, right?” Which is horrifying. But the story has a happy ending! See he tries slapping her in bed and he gets so upset that he can’t stay hard. I think his girlfriend cries. But then he Keeps Trying, and little by little he starts to get the hang of it! Now I assume he can have violent s*x without going limp, hoo-fucking-ray

but like just the attitude his friends had— “well OF COURSE you’re already chokefucking, her right?” and the way the article was like… idk… written trying to make it sound like his discomfort was just a hurdle keeping him from having Fun and Unrepressed sex or whatever ughughugh… I don’t know why bdsm/rough sex seems to be a mainstream thing right now, but I kind of suspect a lot of people are doing it more out of curiosity/boredom than because they really enjoy it and like that’s 1) super dangerous, and 2) maybe not the only option to explore if ur bored with your sex life?? I just hate it so much like I hate sex positivity I hate kink its so bad

[realsubtle]

just imo, its a symptom of society having become more ‘liberal’ in terms of permissible sexual behaviors but patriarchy and class being exactly where they were before. we are a society that still worships violence and subjugation and that bleeds over into the realm of sex as well

[protheanbeacon]

I saw a post the other day that was like “it’s 2016 stop pretending you don’t like being choked during sex” I wanted to fucking scream!!!

[gothhabiba]

& I think that a lot of women are pressured into allowing themselves to be abused by men in the bedroom by this logic, because of course sex in which no one is being physically harmed or humiliated (and that someone, it’s implicitly assumed, is automatically going to be the woman) is supposedly “boring” or “prudish”….

how many times have we seen advice from women’s magazines and sex-positive feminists alike that goes “if you want to keep your man interested in you, you’ve Got To do things that are painful or unpleasant or humiliating or that you otherwise don’t want to do! it’s empowering!!”

[onlyslightly]

kink as a form of self harm is also very real.

[gentlyradical-deactivated201704]

I don't quite understand radical feminist, to be honest, or the term "gender critical" since I've always heard them used interchangeably with transphobic, TWERF, SWERF, etc. Do you have any resources or could you explain what radical feminism and gender critical means?

okay, nonnie! thank you for being so patient with me. i’m nervous to just throw links out there because not everyone i’m learning from ascribes to the same type of beliefs that i do and i would feel remiss if i sent you astray somewhere… but please DO read and consume things you don’t particularly agree with- it builds the ability to thoroughly understand a counter argument and intellectual honesty. 

this got pretty long, so i’ve put it under a cut.

Keep reading

[thegynocrat-deactivated20170306]

Liberalism vs. Radicalism 101, Thinking Differently - Lierre Keith - YouTube

Thinking Differently Conference                                                         July 25, 2016                                                                                        

Lierre Keith and I went to London last weekend to speak at the Thinking Differently: Feminists Questioning Gender Politics conference on July 16. This was an herstorical event, the first full-day public conference that we know of on the topic of how gender identity politics harm women and girls. It was organized by London radical feminists Julia Long and Sheila Jeffreys. Let me give you a summary of the conference. Video footage of the event will be available in August.

Session 1: Historicising Transgenderisms

Sheila Jeffreys talked about how transgenderism is a manufactured social contagion being marketed by big pharma, mass media and capitalist medicine. She detailed the history of transgenderism and how this phenomenon took root in our culture.

Session 2: What is Gender

Lierre Keith explained the difference between radical and liberal feminism and detailed how gender is not a choice or innate internal state, but rather gender is the social structure that enforces male supremacy.

Session 3: The Transgendering of Children

Stephanie Davis-Arai gave a chilling talk on how transgenderism is being marketed to children. She explained “the combination of factors which have created fertile ground for the current transgendering of children to flourish: mainstream sexual objectification of women since the 70s; extreme gendered toy marketing over the past decade; child-centered parenting culture over the past two decades based on the belief of the Self as fixed at birth and belief in the psychological frailty of children; and changes in language.”

She explained how groups in the UK are going into schools pushing gender ideology on young children. These groups push ideas that contradict established understanding of brain development and harmful stereotypes about what it means to be a girl or a boy. She talked about differences in who is being transed in childhood. Among children under 10 it is mostly boys, after puberty it is mostly girls. She also talked about the lifelong harms of medically and socially transing children and the erasure of lesbian and gay youth.

Session 4: Transgenderism and the impact on women Jackie Mearns talked about the abuse she experienced as the partner of an autogynophillic man. She detailed how she sought help while being abused and the services she accessed tried to “educate” her out of her “transphobia.”

Julia Long talked about transgenderism as a form of male violence.

Sheila Jeffreys gave an scary/funny talk on transgender porn and the mass media market where autogynophiles sexually fantasize about being turned into women.

Session 5: Mary Lou Singleton: How the Gender Identity Movement is Hijacking the Fight for Reproductive Rights I talked about how women in the USA have no codified constitutional rights other than the right to vote and how we just lost all sex-based protections when the Obama administration declared that everywhere it says “sex” in the Civil Rights Act it actually means gender identity.

I gave an overview of the dismal state of women’s reproductive rights in the US: forced cesareans, women in jail for self-aborting, home birth being illegal, etc. I then explained that all of the funded women’s reproductive rights groups have changed their language and erased the word woman from the discussion of reproduction. Then I talked about the Midwives Alliance of North America removing the words woman and mother from their core competency document and our WoLF resistance to that.

http://womensliberationfront.org/report-from-the-womens-liberation-front-action-at-the-midwives-alliance-of-north-america-conference-2/

Julie Bindel: No platforming, misogyny, and the silencing of radical feminists “The history of no platforming, silencing, and misrepresenting radical feminists, with a focus on the inherent misogyny of the trans cabal and its influence on the liberal left.”

Magdalen Berns: Gender Identity Culture in Student Spaces Magdelen talked about being a recent college student dealing with no-platforming and silencing. She addressed the hostility to lesbians, promotion of rape culture, homophobia and misogyny by trans activists, and the loss of true feminism on campus.

It was such an honor to be part of this event. Over 200 people attended, the hall was full, and we had no problems with disruption from trans activists. I will post the video of the event when it is ready.

In sisterhood, Mary Lou

http://womensliberationfront.org/thinking-differently-conference/

The videos of the conference are now available for full public viewing on YouTube!

[men-sik-isleyarin]

Hey y’all

So the reason I’ve been MIA from tumblr forever now (aside from school starting again) is I’ve been busy making a…

Radical Feminist Online Academic Library!

It’s basically a collection of 900+ up-to-date, quality, peer-reviewed academic journal articles and books (updated as of August 2016) on a whole bunch of subjects relevant to radical feminism. I’ve attached it here as a 325 MB ZIP file for now until I can find a suitable host for all of them, but there’s a READ ME pdf I’ve created that gives an abstract of each article along with tags/keywords so you can easily search for what subjects you’re looking for (plus a link in the pdf to open each file instead of searching for it in the folder!).

Feel free to signal boost and reblog this as much as possible, and send to your friends! This way we can improve the library for future versions :)

[gnc-centric]

Feminist Definitions #7 

Gender Abolitionist: a belief held by gender critical feminists that there should be no social expectations on either sex because of their birth sex; that gender roles and expectations for each sex should be abolished. 

[transgender-harms-women]

The idea that gender is a spectrum is a new gender prison – Rebecca Reilly-Cooper | Aeon Essays

The idea that ‘gender is a spectrum’ is supposed to set us free. But it is both illogical and politically troubling

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper is a political philosopher at the University of Warwick in the UK. She is interested in political liberalism, democratic theory, moral psychology, and the philosophy of emotion, and is currently working on a book about sex, gender and identity.

What is gender? This is a question that cuts to the very heart of feminist theory and practice, and is pivotal to current debates in social justice activism about class, identity and privilege. In everyday conversation, the word ‘gender’ is a synonym for what would more accurately be referred to as ‘sex’. Perhaps due to a vague squeamishness about uttering a word that also describes sexual intercourse, the word ‘gender’ is now euphemistically used to refer to the biological fact of whether a person is female or male, saving us all the mild embarrassment of having to invoke, however indirectly, the bodily organs and processes that this bifurcation entails.

The word ‘gender’ originally had a purely grammatical meaning in languages that classify their nouns as masculine, feminine or neuter. But since at least the 1960s, the word has taken on another meaning, allowing us to make a distinction between sex and gender. For feminists, this distinction has been important, because it enables us to acknowledge that some of the differences between women and men are traceable to biology, while others have their roots in environment, culture, upbringing and education – what feminists call ‘gendered socialisation’.

At least, that is the role that the word gender traditionally performed in feminist theory. It used to be a basic, fundamental feminist idea that while sex referred to what is biological, and so perhaps in some sense ‘natural’, gender referred to what is socially constructed. On this view, which for simplicity we can call the radical feminist view, gender refers to the externally imposed set of norms that prescribe and proscribe desirable behaviour to individuals in accordance with morally arbitrary characteristics.

Not only are these norms external to the individual and coercively imposed, but they also represent a binary caste system or hierarchy, a value system with two positions: maleness above femaleness, manhood above womanhood, masculinity above femininity. Individuals are born with the potential to perform one of two reproductive roles, determined at birth, or even before, by the external genitals that the infant possesses. From then on, they will be inculcated into one of two classes in the hierarchy: the superior class if their genitals are convex, the inferior one if their genitals are concave.

From birth, and the identification of sex-class membership that happens at that moment, most female people are raised to be passive, submissive, weak and nurturing, while most male people are raised to be active, dominant, strong and aggressive. This value system, and the process of socialising and inculcating individuals into it, is what a radical feminist means by the word ‘gender’. Understood like this, it’s not difficult to see what is objectionable and oppressive about gender, since it constrains the potential of both male and female people alike, and asserts the superiority of males over females. So, for the radical feminist, the aim is to abolish gender altogether: to stop putting people into pink and blue boxes, and to allow the development of individuals’ personalities and preferences without the coercive influence of this socially-enacted value system.

This view of the nature of gender sits uneasily with those who experience gender as in some sense internal and innate, rather than as entirely socially constructed and externally imposed. Such people not only dispute that gender is entirely constructed, but also reject the radical feminist analysis that it is inherently hierarchical with two positions. On this view, which for ease I will call the queer feminist view of gender, what makes the operation of gender oppressive is not that it is socially constructed and coercively imposed: rather, the problem is the prevalence of the belief that there are only two genders.

Humans of both sexes would be liberated if we recognised that while gender is indeed an internal, innate, essential facet of our identities, there are more genders than just ‘woman’ or ‘man’ to choose from. And the next step on the path to liberation is the recognition of a new range of gender identities: so we now have people referring to themselves as ‘genderqueer’ or ‘non-binary’ or ‘pangender’ or ‘polygender’ or ‘agender’ or ‘demiboy’ or ‘demigirl’ or ‘neutrois’ or ‘aporagender’ or ‘lunagender’ or ‘quantumgender’… I could go on. An oft-repeated mantra among proponents of this view is that ‘gender is not a binary; it’s a spectrum’. What follows from this view is not that we need to tear down the pink and the blue boxes; rather, we simply need to recognise that there are many more boxes than just these two.

At first blush this seems an appealing idea, but there are numerous problems with it, problems that render it internally incoherent and politically unattractive.

Many proponents of the queer view of gender describe their own gender identity as ‘non-binary’, and present this in opposition to the vast majority of people whose gender identity is presumed to be binary. On the face of it, there seems to be an immediate tension between the claim that gender is not a binary but a spectrum, and the claim that only a small proportion of individuals can be described as having a non-binary gender identity. If gender really is a spectrum, doesn’t this mean that every individual alive is non-binary, by definition? If so, then the label ‘non-binary’ to describe a specific gender identity would become redundant, because it would fail to pick out a special category of people.

To avoid this, the proponent of the spectrum model must in fact be assuming that gender is both a binary and a spectrum. It is entirely possible for a property to be described in both continuous and binary ways. One example is height: clearly height is a continuum, and individuals can fall anywhere along that continuum; but we also have the binary labels Tall and Short. Might gender operate in a similar way?

The thing to notice about the Tall/Short binary is that when these concepts are invoked to refer to people, they are relative or comparative descriptions. Since height is a spectrum or a continuum, no individual is absolutely tall or absolutely short; we are all of us taller than some people and shorter than some others. When we refer to people as tall, what we mean is that they are taller than the average person in some group whose height we are interested in examining. A boy could simultaneously be tall for a six-year-old, and yet short by comparison with all male people. So ascriptions of the binary labels Tall and Short must be comparative, and make reference to the average. Perhaps individuals who cluster around that average might have some claim to refer to themselves as of ‘non-binary height’.

However, it seems unlikely that this interpretation of the spectrum model will satisfy those who describe themselves as non-binary gendered. If gender, like height, is to be understood as comparative or relative, this would fly in the face of the insistence that individuals are the sole arbiters of their gender. Your gender would be defined by reference to the distribution of gender identities present in the group in which you find yourself, and not by your own individual self-determination. It would thus not be up to me to decide that I am non-binary. This could be determined only by comparing my gender identity to the spread of other people’s, and seeing where I fall. And although I might think of myself as a woman, someone else might be further down the spectrum towards womanhood than I am, and thus ‘more of a woman’ than me.

Further, when we observe the analogy with height we can see that, when observing the entire population, only a small minority of people would be accurately described as Tall or Short. Given that height really is a spectrum, and the binary labels are ascribed comparatively, only the handful of people at either end of the spectrum can be meaningfully labelled Tall or Short. The rest of us, falling along all the points in between, are the non-binary height people, and we are typical. In fact, it is the binary Tall and Short people who are rare and unusual. And if we extend the analogy to gender, we see that being non-binary gendered is actually the norm, not the exception.

to call oneself non-binary is in fact to create a new false binary

If gender is a spectrum, that means it’s a continuum between two extremes, and everyone is located somewhere along that continuum. I assume the two ends of the spectrum are masculinity and femininity. Is there anything else that they could possibly be? Once we realise this, it becomes clear that everybody is non-binary, because absolutely nobody is pure masculinity or pure femininity. Of course, some people will be closer to one end of the spectrum, while others will be more ambiguous and float around the centre. But even the most conventionally feminine person will demonstrate some characteristics that we associate with masculinity, and vice versa.

I would be happy with this implication, because despite possessing female biology and calling myself a woman, I do not consider myself a two-dimensional gender stereotype. I am not an ideal manifestation of the essence of womanhood, and so I am non-binary. Just like everybody else. However, those who describe themselves as non-binary are unlikely to be satisfied with this conclusion, as their identity as ‘non-binary person’ depends upon the existence of a much larger group of so-called binary ‘cisgender’ people, people who are incapable of being outside the arbitrary masculine/feminine genders dictated by society.

And here we have an irony about some people insisting that they and a handful of their fellow gender revolutionaries are non-binary: in doing so, they create a false binary between those who conform to the gender norms associated with their sex, and those who do not. In reality, everybody is non-binary. We all actively participate in some gender norms, passively acquiesce with others, and positively rail against others still. So to call oneself non-binary is in fact to create a new false binary. It also often seems to involve, at least implicitly, placing oneself on the more complex and interesting side of that binary, enabling the non-binary person to claim to be both misunderstood and politically oppressed by the binary cisgender people.

If you identify as pangender, is the claim that you represent every possible point on the spectrum? All at the same time? How might that be possible, given that the extremes necessarily represent incompatible opposites of one another? Pure femininity is passivity, weakness and submission, while pure masculinity is aggression, strength and dominance. It is simply impossible to be all of these things at the same time. If you disagree with these definitions of masculinity and femininity, and do not accept that masculinity should be defined in terms of dominance while femininity should be described in terms of submission, you are welcome to propose other definitions. But whatever you come up with, they are going to represent opposites of one another.

A handful of individuals are apparently permitted to opt out of the spectrum altogether by declaring themselves ‘agender’, saying that they feel neither masculine nor feminine, and don’t have any internal experience of gender. We are not given any explanation as to why some people are able to refuse to define their personality in gendered terms while others are not, but one thing that is clear about the self-designation as ‘agender’: we cannot all do it, for the same reasons we cannot all call ourselves non-binary. If we were all to deny that we have an innate, essential gender identity, then the label ‘agender’ would become redundant, as lacking in gender would be a universal trait. Agender can be defined only against gender. Those who define themselves and their identity by their lack of gender must therefore be committed to the view that most people do have an innate, essential gender but that, for some reason, they do not.

Once we assert that the problem with gender is that we currently recognise only two of them, the obvious question to ask is: how many genders would we have to recognise in order not to be oppressive? Just how many possible gender identities are there?

The only consistent answer to this is: 7 billion, give or take. There are as many possible gender identities as there are humans on the planet. According to Nonbinary.org, one of the main internet reference sites for information about non-binary genders, your gender can be frost or the Sun or music or the sea or Jupiter or pure darkness. Your gender can be pizza.

But if this is so, it’s not clear how it makes sense or adds anything to our understanding to call any of this stuff ‘gender’, as opposed to just ‘human personality’ or ‘stuff I like’. The word gender is not just a fancy word for your personality or your tastes or preferences. It is not just a label to adopt so that you now have a unique way to describe just how large and multitudinous and interesting you are. Gender is the value system that ties desirable (and sometimes undesirable?) behaviours and characteristics to reproductive function. Once we’ve decoupled those behaviours and characteristics from reproductive function – which we should – and once we’ve rejected the idea that there are just two types of personality and that one is superior to the other – which we should – what can it possibly mean to continue to call this stuff ‘gender’? What meaning does the word ‘gender’ have here, that the word ‘personality’ cannot capture?

On Nonbinary.org, your gender can apparently be:

(Name)gender: ‘A gender that is best described by one’s name, good for those who aren’t sure what they identify as yet but definitely know that they aren’t cis … it can be used as a catch-all term or a specific identifier, eg, johngender, janegender, (your name here)gender, etc.’

The example of ‘(name)gender’ perfectly demonstrates how non-binary gender identities operate, and the function they perform. They are for people who aren’t sure what they identify as, but know that they aren’t cisgender. Presumably because they are far too interesting and revolutionary and transgressive for something as ordinary and conventional as cis. 

The solution is not to try to slip through the bars of the cage while leaving the rest of the cage intact, and the rest of womankind trapped within it

This desire not to be cis is rational and makes perfect sense, especially if you are female. I too believe my thoughts, feelings, aptitudes and dispositions are far too interesting, well-rounded and complex to simply be a ‘cis woman’. I, too, would like to transcend socially constructed stereotypes about my female body and the assumptions others make about me as a result of it. I, too, would like to be seen as more than just a mother/domestic servant/object of sexual gratification. I, too, would like to be viewed as a human being, a person with a rich and deep inner life of my own, with the potential to be more than what our society currently views as possible for women.

The solution to that, however, is not to call myself agender, to try to slip through the bars of the cage while leaving the rest of the cage intact, and the rest of womankind trapped within it. This is especially so given that you can’t slip through the bars. No amount of calling myself ‘agender’ will stop the world seeing me as a woman, and treating me accordingly. I can introduce myself as agender and insist upon my own set of neo-pronouns when I apply for a job, but it won’t stop the interviewer seeing a potential baby-maker, and giving the position to the less qualified but less encumbered by reproduction male candidate.

Here we arrive at the crucial tension at the heart of gender identity politics, and one that most of its proponents either haven’t noticed, or choose to ignore because it can only be resolved by rejecting some of the key tenets of the doctrine.

Many people justifiably assume that the word ‘transgender’ is synonymous with ‘transsexual’, and means something like: having dysphoria and distress about your sexed body, and having a desire to alter that body to make it more closely resemble the body of the opposite sex. But according to the current terminology of gender identity politics, being transgender has nothing to do with a desire to change your sexed body. What it means to be transgender is that your innate gender identity does not match the gender you were assigned at birth. This might be the case even if you are perfectly happy and content in the body you possess. You are transgender simply if you identify as one gender, but socially have been perceived as another.

It is a key tenet of the doctrine that the vast majority of people can be described as ‘cisgender’, which means that our innate gender identity matches the one we were assigned at birth. But as we have seen, if gender identity is a spectrum, then we are all non-binary, because none of us inhabits the points represented by the ends of that spectrum. Every single one of us will exist at some unique point along that spectrum, determined by the individual and idiosyncratic nature of our own particular identity, and our own subjective experience of gender. Given that, it’s not clear how anybody ever could be cisgender. None of us was assigned our correct gender identity at birth, for how could we possibly have been? At the moment of my birth, how could anyone have known that I would later go on to discover that my gender identity is ‘frostgender’, a gender which is apparently ‘very cold and snowy’?

Once we recognise that the number of gender identities is potentially infinite, we are forced to concede that nobody is deep down cisgender, because nobody is assigned the correct gender identity at birth. In fact, none of us was assigned a gender identity at birth at all. We were placed into one of two sex classes on the basis of our potential reproductive function, determined by our external genitals. We were then raised in accordance with the socially prescribed gender norms for people of that sex. We are all educated and inculcated into one of two roles, long before we are able to express our beliefs about our innate gender identity, or to determine for ourselves the precise point at which we fall on the gender continuum. So defining transgender people as those who at birth were not assigned the correct place on the gender spectrum has the implication that every single one of us is transgender; there are no cisgender people.

The logical conclusion of all this is: if gender is a spectrum, not a binary, then everyone is trans. Or alternatively, there are no trans people. Either way, this a profoundly unsatisfactory conclusion, and one that serves both to obscure the reality of female oppression, as well as to erase and invalidate the experiences of transsexual people.

The way to avoid this conclusion is to realise that gender is not a spectrum. It’s not a spectrum, because it’s not an innate, internal essence or property. Gender is not a fact about persons that we must take as fixed and essential, and then build our social institutions around that fact. Gender is socially constructed all the way through, an externally imposed hierarchy, with two classes, occupying two value positions: male over female, man over woman, masculinity over femininity.

The truth of the spectrum analogy lies in the fact that conformity to one’s place in the hierarchy, and to the roles it assigns to people, will vary from person to person. Some people will find it relatively easier and more painless to conform to the gender norms associated with their sex, while others find the gender roles associated with their sex so oppressive and limiting that they cannot tolerably live under them, and choose to transition to live in accordance with the opposite gender role.

Gender as a hierarchy perpetuates the subordination of female people to male people, and constrains the development of both sexes

Fortunately, what is a spectrum is human personality, in all its variety and complexity. (Actually that’s not a single spectrum either, because it is not simply one continuum between two extremes. It’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, humany-wumany stuff.) Gender is the value system that says there are two types of personality, determined by the reproductive organs you were born with. One of the first steps to liberating people from the cage that is gender is to challenge established gender norms, and to play with and explore your gender expression and presentation. Nobody, and certainly no radical feminist, wants to stop anyone from defining themselves in ways that make sense to them, or from expressing their personality in ways they find enjoyable and liberating.

So if you want to call yourself a genderqueer femme presenting demigirl, you go for it. Express that identity however you like. Have fun with it. A problem emerges only when you start making political claims on the basis of that label – when you start demanding that others call themselves cisgender, because you require there to be a bunch of conventional binary cis people for you to define yourself against; and when you insist that these cis people have structural advantage and political privilege over you, because they are socially read as the conformist binary people, while nobody really understands just how complex and luminous and multifaceted and unique your gender identity is. To call yourself non-binary or genderfluid while demanding that others call themselves cisgender is to insist that the vast majority of humans must stay in their boxes, because you identify as boxless.

The solution is not to reify gender by insisting on ever more gender categories that define the complexity of human personality in rigid and essentialist ways. The solution is to abolish gender altogether. We do not need gender. We would be better off without it. Gender as a hierarchy with two positions operates to naturalise and perpetuate the subordination of female people to male people, and constrains the development of individuals of both sexes. Reconceiving of gender as an identity spectrum represents no improvement.

You do not need to have a deep, internal, essential experience of gender to be free to dress how you like, behave how you like, work how you like, love who you like. You do not need to show that your personality is feminine for it to be acceptable for you to enjoy cosmetics, cookery and crafting. You do not need to be genderqueer to queer gender. The solution to an oppressive system that puts people into pink and blue boxes is not to create more and more boxes that are any colour but blue or pink. The solution is to tear down the boxes altogether.