Riki Anne Wilchins, one of the leaders in the protests against Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival explains how she gets off on a cis woman character (played by Miranda Richardson) being shot by a trans woman character in The Crying Game. [x]
i remember when someone here said i was illiterate for captioning this in this way and said that this creepy ass screed was a perfectly normal thing to write. i am thinking about all those feminine, self-satisfied dismissive young jewish girls i grew up with, went to synagogue with, hated and lusted for and lost sleep over and i swear i am practically coming in my pants here on the theatre seat as jaye finally pulls the trigger on that non-transsexual bitch…
is it any wonder that the same person organized protests of lesbian sex groups because they didn’t include pre-op trans women (lsm, powersurge) and said that it was absurd for “cisgender lesbian sex perverts” to draw the line at actual dicks?
is it any wonder that she was one of the key figures protesting michfest? and in fact, alienated davina anne gabriel, another trans woman who was the originator of the protests to the extent that gabriel put out a public statement saying she was disassociating with trans activism because it had become “hostile” to women, and that she could no longer ignore wilchins being “deeply misogynistic.”
what does it mean when lesbian activism is mentioned, it is seen as violent and exclusionary? and when lesbians point out the climate of lesbophobia that has been specifically advanced by trans activism and is still being advanced by trans activism, this is dismissed, when this is a tendency within trans activism that has been going on for decades not from a few random members but from leaders within the movement? it is commonplace now to see thoughtpieces casually mentioning how our innate orientation is bigoted in the name of trans activism, at times completely indistinguishable from conservative homophobia (for example, stating that lesbians aren’t interested in penis because they are “misguidedly dealing with trauma from the patriarchy.”)
when we talk about accountability and toxicity within activism, what does it mean that we continually gloss this tendency which continues into the present? why is there such resistance to acknowledging this as homophobia and misogyny as it undeniably is, and moving forward? bullying lesbians about our innate sexuality in the name of trans inclusivity is not something that originated on tumblr among well-meaning but misguided tumblr teens. it is intentional, calculated sexual harassment against a sexual minority that been going on for decades within trans activism and is rooted in virulent misogyny and homophobia. there is no excuse for it and no excuse for turning a blind eye to it.
people are really out there telling lesbians unlearn our “socialisation” that makes us pussy fetishists (the absurdity of the idea that anyone anywhere is telling women that we should be same-sex attracted). why don’t you unlearn your male entitlement and lesbophobia, hmm?
It doesn’t fucking surprise me at all that the TERF writing about this and the TERFs in the notes completely ignore the episode of extreme sexual abuse - you really could call it ritualized humiliation - at the beginning of this excerpt: a trans woman has to beg a group of cis women not to mutilate her and permanently destroy her ability to feel sexual pleasure. She has to patiently explain that she is a lesbian, even though they find the idea too disgusting to contemplate, and even though lesbianism in and of itself could exclude you from access to transition-related care when this was written. She has to patiently explain she that she still wants very much to enjoy sex, and that she would be so grateful if they would allow that even though they find the idea of her having sex too disgusting to contemplate. She has to listen patiently while they warn her that they really might not preserve her ability to experience sexual pleasure, and trust them to adhere to her wishes - after they have made it clear to her in a thousand ways that they do not consider that a priority or even a real thing. She has to listen patiently while they explain to her that she will never really be as good as them, that she will always be a physically inferior copy of them. She has to agree ahead of time to accept any bad outcome as entirely her responsibility, and she has to promise that she will be grateful for whatever happens. She has to do all of this knowing that they might simply reject her out of hand, that they have all the power and she has no rights. She also has to accept their definition of this standard of care as appropriate, even excellent. And then she has to put herself entirely in the hands of these disgusted cis people, who cannot be trusted to care for her or acknowledge her humanity, let alone her right to agency, let alone her right to sexual autonomy and sexual pleasure, and be drugged into unconsciousness so that they can operate on her helpless body. Yeah, how disgusting that a woman would feel enraged after experiencing something like that. What a monster.
This is so funny because you’ve ignored the text completely.
RAW describes being surrounded by female nurses (implied in sexual terms (”young, perky”) to be female) and doctors (one of which is explicitly indicated as male, but the rest are all implied to be male as they are not described as “young, perky”).
The nurses do not do anything whatsoever to RAW.
The doctor expressing disgust? Explicitly male. The other doctor pointing at his female nurse as an example of a perfect female specimen? Male. That is not the nurse goading RAW- the nurse has done not but exist in the same room as RAW- that is the nurse being sexually harassed by her male boss. It is absolutely inappropriate in a workplace environment for a male boss to talk about how his female employee has a sexy body? Are you stupid? Are you ill?
RAW fixates on the nurses around her and at a female character in a film, and at some random female children she once knew as targets for her sexual jealousy and sexualized revenge fantasies though the people who are taunting her are all male doctors. She does so in explicitly violent and sexual terminology. She dehumanizes all these women and girl children who have done nothing to her. She attributes to them characteristics based on this sexual jealousy (”feminine, self-satisfied dismissive”) in a way that is indistinguishable from incel rhetoric.
The only things cis women are mentioned as doing is telling her that she will not be a real woman in the same sense that they are. This is not something any cis woman is saying to her during the voluntary surgical procedure RAW is undertaking. Instead RAW is reflecting on what has been said or implied in the past and connecting those words to her violent, incel-like sexual jealousy of these random female nurses, who did nothing but exist in the same room as her, and of random female children she once interacted with, who again, did nothing to her other than exist. This is male resentment of female people. This is incel rhetoric.
Sorry you can’t read the plain language because you’re also too caught up on misogyny like RAW.
You read a screed like this and try to find ways to justify the extreme level of visceral misogyny? Pathetic. Hope you get well.

























