my commentary on anti trans women art
i get what the intent is behind it trying to show “trans women aren’t real women” but i don’t like how, in this kind of art, them not being real women is defined by their looks. i feel like art like this really defeats the idea that women don’t have to fit into a certain category in order to be deemed as women, no?
i guess the point is like “ur just a man in makeup” but idk. it’s one thing to use the biology argument, i think it’s another to comment on looks.
open convo 🤷♀️
Memes like this and discussions that center only around trans people’s looks distract from the actual point that radical feminists are trying to make. They make people think that our opinions are shallow, based only on how “good” someone looks.
It implies that if a tim looked like an actual female, dressed and acted like an actual female, then feminists wouldn’t care that he’s male. By painting us as shallow and looks-obsessed, they delegitimize the actual argument of radical feminists, which is that it doesn’t matter how a male looks, how well they fit in with women, or what their sexuality is - None of them are actual women, they should not be centered or even included in feminism, and none of them have claim to female spaces, competitions, or awards.
Yeah, like I get where deadfish is coming from, but we can't base what we do on irreverence, alone. We have to do the right thing whether in the presence or absence of incorrect judgment, and memeing 'ugly' people hurts women, too. It objectively is shallow whether or not an antagonistic audience judges us. That's why you won't catch me participating in the spread of those memes (I have before where there was really important commentary, but I'd always add a disclaimer in my tags.) Sure, TRAs think we're shallow no matter what we do, or whether or not we're actually judgy--but are we actually being shallow/petty/mean-spirited? That does matter to me.
"They already think we're shallow, so we may as well act it," just feels so weak and dangerous as an ethics principle. Ugliness can affect women, too (think about what comprises the definition of 'ugly': age/wrinkles, body fat, hair loss, facial hair, failure to meet modern white western beauty standards... it's not just maleness/male features that are being made fun of in these.)
There's nothing 'joyless pit', as she put it, about finding different ways to engage in whimsy & humor (in the same way that you can still make good comedy without punching down on some minority--and what's more genuinely shallow than value-ranking looks?)
It also seems we should examine why so many of our sisters act so desperate to hold onto their lookism, their fatphobia, their racism, their abelism...(We know quite a few radfems are just here to stroke their hateboners and haven't actually joined to support women so much as to dunk on men. 'Perpetuate stigma against some other downtrodden group to get at men' has never been good praxis.)
