#inersectionality

in honor of these persistent racists insisting transfeminists shouldnt be centering black cis people and insisting they arent racist for saying so imma take a moment today to let a veteran teacher and public speaker and educator on social issues describe racism for the class

not because it will convince them, after all

BUT

because i need to set off some rent firing gun shots i need it to be real clear where i stand on this and i need anyone following me to understand this as well

you are not exempt from being racist because you are indifferent to racism and how it affects others

the indifference IS racism and until you can recognize and see how so many trans issues are deeply related to race not just that they are but WHY and in what ways and how that works on the most basic level to cis people before we even start discussing how it affects trans people of color then you cannot and WILL not be an effective ally for those trans people of color because you are still acting from an active place of indifference from an active place of racism

Thank you! I’ve gotten only two hateful anonymous messages so far and yes, they seem to misunderstand the comparison I made. They seem to think I said that eating meat is rape. No, I said that forcing a woman to have sex is rape. And rape is wrong. Just like murder is wrong. They also keep saying, in reblogs, that I’m comparing women to “livestock." I don’t think they understand that I do not believe in “livestock," and that is an offensive term and they’re being speciesist by using it. 

I didn’t compare women to animals. Not that comparing human animals to non-human animals offends me, though. Humans are animals. Women are animals. Men are animals. We are animals. Non-human animals are also animals. To me, it is offensive for them to act offended if a person is compared to an animal because by being offended they are implying that animals are slaves, lower than humans, and should be treated in a way that has no regard for their well-being. That’s speciesism. If I *did* believe that non-human animals were less worthy of life and liberty than human animals, then yes, it would be offensive to compare women to animals. But to me, all life is equal. I could and would just as easily equate men with other animals, or babies with other animals. We’re all animals.

That said, I DIDN’T even compare women with animals! If you look at it and think about it, what I said was that it is not OK to excuse doing something that you admit is murder because it’s “delicious." Similarly, it’s not OK to do what you admit is rape because it’s “hot." I compared the wrongness of murder with the wrongness of rape. If anything, this is a feminist statement in and of itself because it says that the wrongness of rape is at the same level as the wrongness of murder. And, frankly, many people disagree — they think murder is much worse than rape. So me saying it’s not OK to excuse murder because it’s delicious and not OK to excuse rape because it’s hot implies that both rape and murder are similarly horrific. Which they are.

I think the reason why many young feminists of Tumblr are so upset about my statement is because their speciesism is so ingrained in them that hearing a vegan who is also a feminist talk about the intersectionality of oppression raises their speciesist hackles. They do not want to acknowledge that animals are being oppressed because they hold speciesist beliefs and do not want to think about that.

It’s not unlike how the gay rights movement fought among themselves about whether or not to frame their struggle as a civil rights one, even though it’s CLEARLY a civil rights struggle, because doing upset many in the African American civil rights community who suffered from homophobia and did not want their struggle compared to that of others they thought were less-worthy than they are. But just as homophobia is on the way out among people in social justice movements, I have faith that everyone concerned with social justice will wake up to also wanting to end speciesism. It just takes people like me and you standing up and talk about this even when it’s unpopular and inspires hateful backlash.