#xposts

[therealhermaphrodite]

Orientalism has a lot of parallels in anti-indigenous racism. In both cases we are seen as exotic and savage animals needing to be saved from ourselves, more resource to be plundered than racism. Our personhood is inconvenient, our aesthetics stolen and fetishized, and our voices completely erased.

[therealhermaphrodite]

When a white person describes their own oppression (with gender, queerness, etc) well but badly fumbles or outright ignores how race complicates or even completely changes that experience, I don't think it's always malicious. White supremacy is dedicated to our invisibility.

However, what is always malicious is the way these people react when they're confronted with it. They get angry, they sigh, they add a snarky little comment about how they totally support us but we just didn't hear, and of course it's not their fault. They didn't mean it. They forgot. They're just venting. They're just focusing on their own (more important, more real) oppression that we wouldn't understand. Their theory is for us, too, if we just squeeze ourselves in and don't ask for any more.

It must be convenient to not have to worry about that. Can I forget, even for a second, that I am not white? What parts of me are untouched by my own race? What parts are you going to ask I cut off- figuratively or literally- so I can keep you comfortable? A theory that doesn't consider race is only fit for people who get to be the default race: white.

[therealhermaphrodite]

(wokely) I only associate with people who share my exact life experiences and are like me. Don't ask how I handle racial experiences btw that's different

[therealhermaphrodite]

In light of recent news about Ethel Cain: I believe people who were racist can change. I also want proof. She is capable of putting her money where her mouth is and compensating those she's hurt.

She did not deserve transmisogynistic stalking and harassment. That's disgusting and unacceptable. Her racism and antiblackness is equally disgusting and unacceptable. Her experiencing violent transmisogyny doesn't negate her active and willing participation in violent white supremacy. You need to acknowledge both. I've seen some (white) people downplay her racism to focus only on what she's experienced.

Ethel Cain, and all white people who have dismissed her behavior as "not that harmful" or an "edgy phase" or "mistake" benefit from white supremacy at the cost of our safety. I feel pain for her experiencing targeted harassment. I also feel pain for myself and my siblings in the trans community because we're once again left behind.

[therealhermaphrodite]

Your tags have me howling. I was not expecting them but kshdjdjd

(I do hope our tags help other white folks who are browsing the tag see exactly why the name demand sentiments are weird)

-gettinontopics main

I joke but there's something truly stunningly racist in complaining we don't have racial enough names. English proficiency and white names have a major and proven impact on everything from job applications to housing to criminal sentencing. I was trained to never speak in an accent and hide my hairstyles so I'd get a job when my uncles couldn't. The audacity of complaining we don't act "right" for our race when we've often had to act white just to survive is disgusting. We get our culture beaten out of us and then people whine that we don't dance like caricatures.

If I do "act my race", I don't get respected. I can either be a real person OR my race, because bipoc aren't considered human to racists.

[therealhermaphrodite]

"Read Whipping Girl" is a great start. I did. And I found that if I wanted anything out of transfeminism I needed to start prioritizing trans voices of color or I would get white women whitesplaining my own gender to me.

I don't think Whipping Girl is awful. It makes a well-meaning start. But it does approach gender from a primarily white position, and that gets grating. Oppositional sexism is an issue. It's even worse for POC because we never get to choose whether or not we defy gender roles: perversion of white gender is something inherently seen in us. Femininity is killed and maligned (I'd know) but masculinity of color is also a reason to kill us. The idea that marginalized masculinity is rewarded rather than seen as a threat (especially to white women) is willfully ignorant.

There are hard-won truths of racialized femininity and masculinity that I'm not going to toss out just so I can be accepted by white gender theory. I physically cannot fit into white ideas of gender, even when those ideas are from trans people. It's a nice start that, like all theory pioneered without regard for race, cuts me and my siblings out.

Whipping Girl is not a raceless book: it is white because it was meant to be raceless. Instead, it ends up only fitting white people perfectly, and forgetting about the inconvenient. I've read Whipping Girl. I think white people should hear our stories on gender too.

[therealhermaphrodite]

Remembering the absolutely baffling post I saw from a white trans woman stating that it was technically in her best personal interest as a white person to uphold white supremacy, and that's why she didn't trust men because it was in their best interest to uphold patriarchy. This was a rhetorical statement attempting to parallel these two.

My serious response is: Being allowed to challenge gender is inherently tied with the liberation of POC and all trans people will benefit from it. Once we're no longer sexualized third-gender subhumans, it'll likely be easier for white people to challenge those norms without being degendered as well. So it's a dumb idea that white trans people would somehow benefit more from white supremacy than from liberation, but white people would rather cry about how their privilege makes them feel sad instead of actually helping us, I guess.

My non serious response is: what the fuck, girl. No. That's literally just you. Stay away from me.

[therealhermaphrodite]

So did all of those explanations about the racism in radical feminism go completely over your heads? Do we need to sit down again and explain how gender essentialism is a part of white supremacy? Do you think your radical feminism is special and anti-racist because it's trans inclusive?

One of the major parts of gender and biological essentialism is that men and women are a certain unchangable way. Women are feminine and men are masculine and behave appropriately. Or more accurately, white men and white women are this way, which is why they're considered real, worthy people.

Black and brown people are masculinized and brutalized for it. Asian people are feminized and brutalized for it. We don't get to be "real" men and "real" women because our entire race is seen as biologically incapable of doing so. Our inability to have a normal gender is seen as biological and unchangeable in the same way that white women and men are seen as biologically, unchangeably women and men.

There are a lot of other ways radfems are racist (for example, they keep saying racial slurs) but it's important to know that the ideology cannot be anti-racist. Even when it includes trans people, it is racist. Even if you think you reeeeeally need this ideology because you're trans, it is racist and never stopped being racist, and you've once again left me behind to focus on your white sisters.