messi

I've always been a lesbian, ever since I was in the single digits, but I went by 'bisexual' for my adolescent years because performing attraction to men was the only way to survive high school, the only way to be accepted by female peers. I could be "queer" as long as I wasn't "discriminating" against certain kinds of bodies, as long as I was "open-minded" and "acknowledged" that men could be hot too. And once I came out as a lesbian (never having ever dated/been attracted to a man or to penises) I felt so liberated, connected to a history of women centering women, finally giving myself permission to push men out of my life and express love and attraction to the types of bodies everyone else seemed to fear and disdain. And weirdly, it was this choice that enabled me to actually befriend men for real for the first time! I maintained support for trans women and the bodily autonomy of all people, and theoretically stated that I would date a trans woman, but in practice I've never been attracted to one. Of course some trans women pass, but even if I couldn't tell a woman was trans, at this point I don't know if I'm the right person for a trans woman to date, just given my life experiences and my priorities. I don't feel like trans women are the type of women I want to center in my life, and so how could I be a good partner to one?

Anyways, in university I started looking for books to read and women-centered media and ideas. But every time I thought I'd found something it was always ridiculed? I remember so vividly being told Andrea Dworkin is a deranged anti-sex work transphobe, but when I sat down to actually read her work this past year it made so much sense? I wish I'd read it before I was sexually harassed, before getting dragged through my university's Title IX system. I was so young and so ill-equipped. I'm reading things like bell hooks, Caliban and the Witch, Why Does He Do That, We Are Not Born Submissive, and it's all so useful in a way I can't believe I lived without for so long. It doesn't all agree all the time, but that's okay!

I want so badly to love my body and other women's bodies; bodies that are like mine and yet as alien to me as my own body has been made alien to me. I know so little about my female body, but I decided to get pregnant for the first time next year as a single mom. I have no one to talk to about it, and I'm so scared of how my body will be treated as I try to survive bringing my child into the world. I want to discuss with others what it means to build a loving home where I am equipped to fulfill every needed role regardless of "gender", without need of some useless, violent "father". I want to contemplate how I will raise beautiful, bold children no matter their sex. I don't have any non-internet friends my own age, much less fellow lesbians. Small town, I guess. The older women in my life have brought me so much wisdom and care. But I'm still so scared. I volunteer at a domestic violence/sexual assault victim support shelter and it's so bad out there these days. It's just getting worse every year.

So I came on tumblr, where I basically only participate in fandom stuff (I do enjoy a fictional man, albeit tumblr does worship them in excess), and I went to the feminism tag, which I've never done before. And oh my fucking god.

None of it was relevant. And to be fair, posting on the internet is not the place to look for good ideas, I know. But none of it seemed to have anything to do with my life or the challenges I'm facing, or even the challenges a majority of women face? Maybe stuff focused on the massive right-wing resurgence of misogyny and how to combat it instead of playing into it? So much of the tag was people failing feminism 101, and the stuff that was getting a little bit deeper? All tagged radfem or terf. Which I've been taught means it must be racist, must be ableist, must be secretly even more misogynistic, because all radfems think women are weaker and inherently victims and that men are big and strong and bad, which is wrong because men are people too and are not inherently evil.

And okay. I do not like men. A vast majority of men I've known have been violent and misogynistic. But I also have to believe that should I be so lucky as to have a healthy child, I can raise a good son as well as a good daughter. I have to believe that. No one can argue with me on the potential for my son to be a good person, because otherwise how could I justify becoming a mother? But I'd love to have some conversations with people about how to raise a good man, because in this world it seems like a Sisyphean task.

And then I stumbled on your blog. And I thought. It says radfem, but I like Dworkin. Let's just look.

I don't know what I think anymore. I didn't find racism here, or no more so than in other parts of tumblr. I didn't find ableism either. It wasn't a bunch of cringy JKR worship (I never got over the slavery apologia and racist caricatures, which I considered more to do with her being British than anything else). If anything, it was refreshing to be in a place where "bitch" isn't a common-use derogatory term. Where the massive influx of violent pornography (real or AI) is acknowledged as the societal problem it is, the extension of the surveillance state that it is. Where lesbianism isn't a close-minded sexual orientation to be made second-class in every conversation on queerness (good queer women aren't supposed to discriminate based on people's bodies! Sexuality should be fluid, one must deconstruct gender by not limiting who you love! What about non-binary people???)(Except I only love women.)

I've always respected that trans women are women. I always figured it's something we had in common, that we didn't want to be men! But there's always been this reminder in the back of my head that, just because we're both women, doesn't mean we have anything materially or experientially in common. Which isn't unusual! One might argue that I also share very little in common materially and experientially with black women or disabled women, for example. Except... don't I? I read the recent Propublica piece on the black woman who was dragged to zoom court mid-labor to be forced into a C-section and I thought to myself, isn't that me? Sure, it's more likely to happen to women with intersecting oppression such as black or indigenous women, but I'm about to be a lesbian single mom in a small town. I won't have a husband in the room for doctors to defer to for decisions, what if they decide to find a man for me to fill that gap?

I've been thinking a lot about that "Free Birthing" movement that got a bunch of mothers and babies killed for avoiding medical care. And I feel like there's an obvious throughline there from medical misogyny. Weren't those women driven out of the hospitals by the husband stitch? By the zoom call with lawyers? By the end of roe v wade? And I'm worried that the same thing is happening to me. Am I being driven to the radfem side because that's who will actually address my concerns? What principles do I hold that I'm not willing to break? What's more malleable than I thought? What is it about contemporary popular queer thought that alienated me, and does it make me a bigot?

I had a professor in University. They used any pronouns, and told us that in the 90s they were a butch lesbian, in the 00s they were a trans man, and now they were none of our fucking business, because there was political work to be done for LGBT+ people. I think about that a lot, and how contextual identities are to the current cultural moment and the political needs of a community. What will my children want to be called when they grow up? I don't feel like any of my beliefs damage the political needs of transgender people. I want people to be able to wear whatever they want, change their names, and have less draconian ID laws and surveillance. I understand how the anti-trans movement is part of a wider political movement against minorities. But I'm starting to wonder if what I believe about gender and what others believe about gender are the same thing. And I think I need to figure that out before I start having kids.

Maybe I'll regret sending this. What I can say right now is: I've been asking my entire life where all the butch lesbians are. And if they're here? Then I guess it's better than anywhere else.

I apologize for dumping this in your inbox. Don't feel obligated to do anything with this. It's just been a really rough year to be a woman.

Thank you for your long message and your kind words about my blog. I'm glad I have been able to reach you and to introduce you to radical feminism! There are a few points here I'd like to respond to.

1.) The Erasure of Female Homosexuality

Homosexuality is real. Attraction to women, as in females, is as real as male-homosexuality. No one questions gay men when they gawk at vaginas. But when it's a vagina as the object of worship and not a penis, suddenly everyone has a problem. This is a consequence of our culture that idolizes and centers men, and our culture of treating penises (a tool of penetration and domination) as essential to our societal understanding of sex. The love between two women is not seen as real sex because of the lack of penis. Queer ideology recognizes male homosexuality but not female homosexuality. This is because Queer ideology is not a feminist ideology; it is muddled with misogyny and lacks the feminist voice. Queer ideology will say it's okay for gay men to say "fishy pussy and saggy tits" but it's transphobic for women to say they don't want to interact with a penis in their sexual practice. The push for lesbians to accept trans women is similar to the push you felt in your adolescent years to identify as bi. What you have to understand is that anyone who hasn't done the long, arduous work of understanding women's position, of understanding our brutal and complex history as subhuman sex-slaves, never has the interest of women in mind. They are mentally manipulated every day on this Earth to devalue women and cater to the needs of men and become blind to all the subtle ways in which male domination seeps into society. Male domination is a colonization of the mind. Historically, we never had any land, any property, anything of value to them other than our bodies (which they owned). Now that ownership of our bodies (in some parts of the Earth) is largely outlawed, the only thing we have is our minds and that is what men use to control us. 2) Having a son - I imagine there are different opinions on this within the radfem community but here is my take:

There is no guarantee that he will be a good man (very few exist). There will be no way to shield him from unimaginable forces coming at him at every stage of his life. there is no way to stop him from tapping into the unlimited power available to men if he decides to embrace the domination position the world wants him to. There is no stopping him from watching porn behind your back. If you raise him as a feminist (which I'm sure you will) he will likely become defiant in his teenage years, he may succumb to influence of his male peers, he may succumb to the rabbit holes of misogyny on every page of the internet - he may even become violent and overpower you at the age of 13. My best advice for this would be to look into sex-selective IVF. Personally I don't think this world needs any more men. They've done enough damage.

3) Radfems being racist and ableist There is a caricature of the radfem as being white and fat and ugly and whiny and lonely and unhappy.. i could go on. This is all to discredit us and to silence us - and to dissuade liberal feminists or other women from identifying as radical feminist. As you spend more time in the radfem space, you will occasionally encounter bigotry (as you will everywhere on the internet) but you will find that radfems are a diverse group of women from all areas of the Earth. There will be disagreements on just about everything, but we all are intelligent, opinionated women and we all recognize that we are in a collective war against male domination for the benefit of all women.

4) "I've always respected that trans women are women" I believe my understanding of gender and sex correlate to most radfems. Sex is obviously real, female and male with extremely rare deviations (intersex). Gender is a social meaning of sex. It's twofold: gender is a set of stereotypes about a sex AND it's how we are situated in the social world and how we internalize the world around us. Trans women are not women because they only meet the criteria on the first aspect of gender (the part that most people take issue to and want to abolish). They lack the social positioning and internalization that gender prescription provides. When I was born, I was female. I was labeled as a girl. Being a girl meant I was placed in a set of expectations, a set of roles that I was expected to participate in. I was socialized with other girls to reinforce these expectations. I internalized the world through a subordinated lens. This is our shared experience as women. It is inherently connected to biology as our gender prescription (girl/boy) at birth is decided by our genitalia. So women can only exist as female. Therefore men who believe they are women are not women. This does not make you a bigot; it's the reality of what it means to be a woman and what so many people have difficulty understanding and communicating - and why no matter how hard they try - trans women will never be able to fully understand the woman experience. Also, their incessance of being included in every conversation, every feminist event, every area in society where women have fought for private spaces (bathrooms, sports) all reek of male-centered behaviors. I will always stand up for the millions of women who feel uncomfortable with a male in their bathroom, locker room, or any private space, and I will never sacrifice the safety of these women to protect the feelings of a few annoying men.