Knawing on DW mainly

feminist is not equivalent to woman. this is for one, because anyone can be a feminist, and two, because "being a feminist" (or rather, doing feminism) is not just being a woman or caring about women. it is a dedicated to a movement that seeks gender liberation and the end of patriarchal oppression; to call yourself a feminist, in my opinion, means holding yourself as a feminist to a higher standard in the pursuit of liberation. while we should of course be vigilant about reproducing patriarchal dynamics, we must not conflate the role of feminist with simply being a woman.

feminism has historically been deeply cissexist in a way which prevents full analysis of men and trans people's position under patriarchy. trans men have been involved with women's liberation forever, yet trans men have also been constantly excluded from feminism because of their manhood, despite being no less materially affected by misogyny.

men's liberation cannot be achieved without women's and trans liberation, and ultimately all gender liberation cannot be achieved while we maintain gender segregation. we must be unafraid to be heterosocial, affiliate with one another, and disregard the boundaries of gender in order to demand true freedom. if gender is a tool of patriarchal control which divides us socially and economically, we must turn gender into a tool of liberation by emphasizing inter-gender solidarity and our intertwined, overlapping experiences. we cannot achieve gender liberation by continuing to maintain the illusion that "men's issues" and "women's issues" are separate, especially when for trans and intersex people, this illusion is itself extremely violent and excludes us from feminism ideologically

going off that; women must take the first step and claim men's issues as a feminist concern, in order to take a sledgehammer to that gender segregation. by insisting that men's issues are women's issues, we can also then demand that men recognize women's issues are men's issues, and trans issues are men and women's issues, and men and women's issues are trans issues. many men have tried to do this themselves, but it is very hard for men who recognize women's issues are men's issues to be given enough recognition and validity amongst cis men. this stance means that feminists are not sitting around and waiting for cis men to collectively realize their position; they are demanding men realize it, and they are doing that through very pointed compassion. "you are with us whether you realize it or not; our doors are open, we are concerned for you, and to turn away from us is to reject yourselves."

By the same token, a person on hrt who is forced for whatever reason to go off of it is not detransitioning, they are being forcibly medically detransitioned. The distinction is important. It is vital to distinguish between someone choosing to go back to living as the gender that lines up with their saab, i.e. detransitioning and someone being denied their right to medical transition. Most people forced off of hrt are not going to detransition, they will continue to live as they did before while suffering from being denied nessesary care. This is going a bit off topic now, but I think we should also do more to distinguish between people who chose to detransition freely because the way they feel about their gender has changed and people who detransition due to lack of support and violent transphobia. Lumping the two together tends to confuse discussions about detransitioners a great deal.

when I was in undergrad I had this professor who spontaneously decided in the middle of a class on, as far as I could tell, a completely unrelated topic to go on a bizarre tirade about how human pregnancies are actually 10 months long and saying it's 9 months is a patriarchal attempt to minimise women's suffering. she very confidently justified this by explaining that there are four weeks in a month, so 40 weeks is 10 months.

when someone pointed out that a month (except February) is actually four weeks and two to three days, and that 40 weeks (280 days) is a lot closer to 9 months (275 days) than it is to 10 months (305 days), she told him to stop mansplaining.

This part. This is the part I’m talking about

This is not a woman falling to pieces because her father won’t let her marry a man she just met.

This is a woman born to a life she has very little say in. She has never had a genuine friend (besides a tiger). She is facing a marriage to a man she doesn’t know and doesn’t like but duty (and the law) demands it. So she took a risk, ran away, ran to a world she doesn’t know or understand and when she landed in trouble (serious, serious trouble) a stranger came to her aid. She finally (finally!) made a real connection with someone but they didn’t get much time together before the guards showed up and she had to reveal who she was.

This moment when she’s crying her heart out? It comes after she’s been told that the first person she ever connected with, the first person to be genuinely interested in her for who she is and not what she is, the first real friend she has ever made, was executed… because of her.