#ephjelly

[ephemeraljellyfish]

people tend to project their own experiences and extrapolate from their own experiences. this isn't necessarily a bad thing—it's how people relate to others—BUT when you start positioning your experiences as universal, you risk discounting the experiences of others. this is how some people fall into rigidity and exclusionism. it's how queer poc get shunted to the side and how "confusing" marginalized identities get ridiculed (mspec lesbians, bi lesbians, genderqueer identities, aroallos...etc.). we can acknowledge shared struggles/triumphs AND realize variety in experiences at the same time. identities do not provide borders for experiences.

[ephemeraljellyfish]

need to kill the idea that "white feminism" means feminism that comes from a white woman. no, actually, white feminism is a set of beliefs that fuel white supremacist and colonial ideas about gender. you can be POC and have shit feminist takes that are regressive and uphold structures of domination. you can be POC and still be a TERF. (hell, look at the 4B movement in South Korea. they are not friendly to trans people. they are not above criticism just because they aren't white TERFs.)

there's also a strange notion that strains/offshoots of radical feminism could somehow become good in the hands of people who are not privileged white women because they believe only radical feminism has the ability to conjure the militancy required to exact necessary structural change—BUT. feminism predicated along a single "ultimate" axis of oppression will always harm the marginalized in a community regardless of how much weak posturing there is about recognition of other classes and axes of oppression. additionally, positioning radical feminism as feminism in its most radical form is frankly stupid. it is not radical to uphold the gendered structures created under colonialism and/or patriarchy. you cannot break from the systems of oppression by keeping the foundations they were built on.

[ephemeraljellyfish]

okay i very much appreciate all the people calling for solidarity between trans people. (i love seeing solidarity posts no matter the time of year.) but a lot of the calls for peace imply there’s a transmasc vs transfem thing happening (and by extension a transandrophobia vs transmisogyny as opposing concepts thing). there is not.

most transfems and transmascs here probably get along just fine. imo the real battle isn't between two distinct groups of people but rather, between ideas, and tendencies. yes, you can trace a lot of "infighting" to disputes between people who recognize transandrophobia and those who don’t, but what i'm getting at here is—those stances are built upon fundamentally different worldviews. don't let people convince you it's about semantics (i.e., the "misandry isn't real" bit, the "don't call it transandrophobia" bit) or other surface level bullshit.

if you strip away all the dressing, the actual tension is between a exclusive (often separatist) inclination and an inclusive one. it's conditional queerness and unconditional queerness. it's rigid essentialism posed against “you can do what you want forever.” <insert other relevant battle of abstract ideas here>

moreover, you can't call for solidarity if definitions between groups (who hold the aforementioned ideas) aren't the same. (solidarity as "stand together" based on common interests/goals vs solidarity as "stand with us and our ideas".) there's a reason why calls for trans unity don't always work.

this isn't meant to be a "it's hopeless" kind of post, to be clear. i think things can change and will change through more tangible forms of action than posting online. i just don't find calls for solidarity productive in cases where it isn't on the table to begin with.

[ephemeraljellyfish]

shaking people and begging them to stop projecting cisgendered experiences/frameworks onto trans people.

[ephemeraljellyfish]

whereas there's obviously merit to the idea that some people stick "white" in front of an identity to denote privilege in order to dismiss marginalized groups (i.e., white nonbinary people), this notion IS abused. and frequently. when POC call out white women or white queers for racist tendencies, they will be called misogynistic or homophobic if it serves the interests of another group (white or otherwise).

and i think it's important to learn how to distinguish whether or not someone is actually drawing attention to racism and being critical or if they're simply accusing someone of being "white X group" as a way to shut down conversation. we have to check to see if there's reasonable criticism attached or whether or not they're just buzzwords. who is the message coming from? what are the motivations here? what is the speaker/poster trying to sell you on?

[ephemeraljellyfish]

where people seem to go wrong is thinking that if we find the "most oppressed" group and only focus on fixing their problems, then everything else unravels. it just doesn't work in practice. you can't nail down "the most oppressed"—certainly not as a group. groups are made up of people with a variety of experiences. multi-faceted issues must be unraveled from bottom-up as well as top-down. different theories/frameworks of oppression must co-exist. finding One Grand Theory to cover All the Oppression will never not wind up in a reductive place.

[ephemeraljellyfish]

hopping back into reading queer theory and i am even more convinced that a lot of people online don't know how to make sense of intersectionality outside of a "stacking oppression points" kinda way.

[ephemeraljellyfish]

Unfortunately, the username mortaljellyfish was already taken. I am now more poetic than I wanted to be.

Sideblog. A place to talk freely about queer stuff and feminism. And maybe I'll do the occasional shitpost.

my tag below

#ephjelly