my journey out of ‘sisterhood,’ three years on.
Almost two years ago, I wrote a rather lengthy critique of women’s movement and spaces, the female lifestyle empowerment brands, and feminism in general, closing it with this sentence: “No thanks. Count me out of your so-called sisterhood. I’m not interested in your culturally-appropriated ‘goddess’ circles and self-exalting ‘rituals.’ I’m not one of you.”
The gist of it, the tl;dr version is this:
People are divided more by race and class than being united by the biological accident of sex.
Much of what passes for feminism promotes a fantasy of a “global sisterhood” which sugarcoats the insidious problems that keep the affluent white women in the Global North in their positions of privilege while maintaining the oppressive system that dehumanizes and marginalizes the others.
The female lifestyle empowerment subculture, a multi-billion-dollar industry consisting of self-appointed coaches, spiritual teachers, practitioners, influencers, and businesses, capitalizes on cultural appropriation, ableism, classism, and reinforcement of a heteronormative and sexist gender stereotyping, while their fantasy of “the sisterhood” absolves all females of responsibilities and criticism.
Then I concluded, “About a year ago [2018], I made a conscious decision to remove myself from all women-only groups and organizations that I was part of. This was a difficult decision that I did not make lightly, and to a degree, a painful choice because I was part of them for the majority of my adult life. I made quite a few friends through such groups, and at times, they were the only social outlet that I had. But I could no longer keep participating in women-only spaces with a good conscience.”
I wrote this, at the time, in a more or less political language heavy on theories and critique of praxis. I did not, however, discuss what has been going on in my own life personally as it was not my intention or focus at the time.
During much of the previous decade [2010s], I was involved with several women-only organizing spaces -- many of them political, several of them religious. I used to think of myself as a feminist and I uncritically subscribed to the notion of “sisterhood” and all the emotional stuff that came with it. The more I spent time with them the more I found myself increasingly frustrated and ultimately had an awakening: I could not at all relate to women, or their experiences, or their emotions -- what the fuck was I doing.
Partially out of disillusionment, and partly out of disgust and anger, I decided about three years ago that I am nonbinary and therefore free from all that shit.
What I did not understand back then, however, was how neurodivergence informs and shapes who I am far more profoundly than I knew at the time.
Three years ago, I was falsely led to believe in the now largely debunked hypothesis by British neurologist Simon Baron Cohen (a relative of Sacha Baron Cohen, by the way) that autism is a product of an “extreme male brain.”
Maybe that’s why I could not relate to women, I concluded then, and basically gave up on feminism and myself alike.
But that didn’t exactly mean I could understand or relate to men, either. If I were, probably I could’ve felt right at home in the company of “extreme males” (imagine Proud Boys and the likes).
Since then, my understanding of neurodiversity has deepened, thanks to the increased interaction with other autistic people of all genders and sexualities.
I’ve learned that autistic folks generally communicate well with one another and can relate to one another, in the same way how neurotypical folks do among themselves (the phenomenon known as “double empathy”). As I look back, some of the most enjoyable and memorable moments were when I spent time with another autistic individual (even though at the time I was in deep denial about it).
Another thing I have learned since then was there is a huge proportion of the autistic community that exist outside the gender binary (in addition to the disproportionately high percentage of the autistic community that is also LGBTQ+ in comparison with the neurotypical population). Because the lived neurodivergent experiences generally do not align well with the conventional social construct of binary gender and heteronormative ideas of sexuality, there is even a word for it: gendervague, likely coined by activist and lawyer Lydia X. Z. Brown.
Not knowing these, I had beaten myself up rather severely for a couple of years because I felt like such a freak and failed human being. I was nonbinary not because I was proud of it but rather as a consolation prize of a sort. I was having a combination of self-loathing, identity crisis, enormous dysphoria, shame, and regret. Combined with the massive autistic burnout that I was experiencing for unrelated reasons (and exacerbated by four years of President Trump Stress Disorder!), I became depressed, anxious, and withdrawn in a way I hadn’t been in many years.
This also made me aware of how -- between all the misinformation and outright hate speech about neurodivergence, and my excessive exposure to peddlers of the self-improvement industry -- internalized ableism is extremely harmful, just as internalized racism and homophobia are.
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