#yazminx

Radical feminism is a broad term that includes a variety of ideological groups. Stemming from “second wave” feminism in the 60s, radical feminism has evolved over time, but still has some generally identifiable traits.

First, it is a type of political movement known as “reactionary.” While all political movements are “in reaction” to particular social forces, reactionary movements tend to have single, isolated goals that are often self conflicted. This is because reactionary movements see the symptoms of oppression, and target those symptoms without necessarily targetting their causes.

In the case of radical feminism, you can simplify it down to its roots as, “patriarchy causes women to suffer. Therefore, if we do the exact opposite of patriarchy, women will stop suffering.”

This, however, ignores the fact that women’s suffering is not the result of “wearing makeup” or “having sex with men,” but being forced to wear makeup or have sex with men.

As a result, “not wearing makeup” and “having sex with women” are not solutions. If women are being forced to do something, then this will create suffering. What they are being forced to do matters less than the actual forcing.

Radical feminism is also a type of political movement known as “authoritarian.” This means that radical feminism discourages individual choice, and argues that the value of any given action is rooted in how well it adheres to the standards of behaviour upheld by an authority. This authority may be a single person or a class of people. Defying the authority is considered unacceptable behaviour.

Reactionary authoritarianism is the way radical feminism acts. As for the beliefs it acts upon, they are widely varied. Radical feminism as an ideology has existed for well over 50 years, and has had plenty of time to fracture, recongeal, mutate, and individualize.

Beliefs associated with radical feminism include but are not limited to:

All men benefit from the oppression of and oppress all women.

Patriarchy is the cause of all other oppression. By reversing patriarchy, all other oppression will also disappear.

Men are inherently oppressive. 

All sex with men, or with anyone they cast as being men, is exploitative and a form of rape.

While these beliefs sound extreme, they are usually presented in much more palatable manners. For example, rather than saying, “sex with men is always rape,” they will say, “women deserve better in life than to have unsatisfying sex with men.”

While the second statement is fairly harmless at a surface level reading, that is by design. By popularizing the harmless sentiment of, “women deserve better,” radical feminists have an easier time leading vulnerable people, especially teens and young adults, to accept subsequent claims such as, “women deserve better, because men are worse. They can’t help being worse, they just are. And people who are worse deserve ridicule. And men are, of course, anyone with a penis. So men who ‘pretend’ to be women are especially bad because they’re trying to take advantage of the greatness of women.”

And so on, and so forth.

This induction is why radical feminism depends so heavily on dogwhistles, and why allowing radical feminist dogwhistles to proliferate is so ultimately dangerous to anyone radical feminists dislike.

And radical feminists generally dislike trans women, sex workers, trans people in general, and men of color worst of all. 

XOXOX

Obviously there are pressures that exist, but those pressures are, quite literally, heteronormativity.

But okay, let’s come back to the part where you decided that radical feminist terminology designed to shame women for being too manly or too into men or whatever is still the terminology you want to use, regardless of its extensive history in being used to attack the very women you seem interested in protecting.

Let’s set that aside for now.

Let’s talk about the post that this ask was sent in response to. Let’s shift these goalposts right on back into position here.

The post says, and I quote, “a hell of a lot more women would realize they’re not actually attracted to men at all.”

In response to that quote, I said the post discussed, “the belief that many straight and bisexual women are actually lesbians.”

So, where’s the mismatch. Because it looks to me like the post said, “women who currently consider themselves attracted to men are not. In fact, they’re just confused by heteronormativity.”

Which is the sentiment I expressed.

I know that a great many people following and interacting with this blog don’t understand what a dogwhistle is. But the entire point of them is that they take statements that sound harmless, or even beneficial, and twist them to cause harm.

They take claims like, “we want to help women,” and twist them to say, “because women cannot be trusted to judge their own lives, so we must judge for them.”

Yes, those pressures exist, but the conversation surrounding those pressures is, consistently, “so we must create opposite pressures that force women to adhere to other labels instead,” rather than, “so we must eliminate any pressures and let people come into their identities in a supportive environment without coercion.”

But anyway, when you decided that you were going to pick the anti-trans term regardless of the fact that it serves no rhetorical purpose and signals that you do not care about trans lives or trans history, you really lost the high ground that you so clearly think you have.

Like.

You don’t get to pretend the whole, “I’m going to stick with the transphobe lingo,” statement is irrelevant or weightless. You don’t get to drop that little nugget and wander right on by.

I have played excruciatingly nicely with all of you, assuming genuine concern and confusion long past the point where it was reasonable.

But I draw the goddamn line at someone saying, “oh, but a woman instrumental in getting massive amounts of transgender people killed, passing extensive anti-trans laws, increasing the suicide and murder rates of trans people, who notoriously treated attraction to trans women as being the same thing as attraction to men, she certainly could not have had transphobic intentions behing creating this kind of terminology,” and then having the sheer, unmitigated fucking gall, the fucking temerity to pretend that claim is just a harmless little aside, unworthy of any additional consideration.

If you ever wander back into this inbox, it had best be to apologize for your fuckery.

Fuck off,

           but you need to stop ignoring that sex work bothers a lot of people who are otherwise progressive. i know ex sex workers, who have done both survival and bougie sex work, who found it to be particularly problematic. i myself am scared shitless that i’ll have to do sex work one day. and finally i find it strange that i always have to point out that by and large the consumers of sex work are men, which i think points to its patriarchal properties (2)

           there are concerns that sex markets share with other forms of markets, an obvious one being that it reduces the seller to a commodity in the eyes of the buyer and thus promotes moral solipsism. but i think that commodifying sex bothers many of us in particular because of how intimate it is by nature of being something that requires extensive use of our bodies and our bodies are particularly relevant to that line of work. it feels very much to some of us like that we lose control of ourselves (3)            

           there is a final point of concern i have. within sex markets, people who are more conventionally attractive or have less inhibitions about the use of their body will do better. i think that this problem is present within normal dating scenes, but it gets exacerbated when money is involved. i do not find dismissing the existence or harmfulness of sexual heirarchies to be constructive. i hope that you will take me seriously and i look forward to reading a response (4)            

           a response i often get to some of these concerns is that i am assuming personal intuitions to be universal. i do not doubt that some people don’t experience some of these concerns, but i don’t think that is a warrant to act like nobody does. also, i as i said i realize sex work is not feasibly abolish-able in present circumstances, and trying to do so even with the nordic model only hurts sex workers. i merely wish to defend the concerns many people have with it (4)            

  +   +   +  

Okay, first of all, where on earth did you get the notion that I, or any of us, think markets are eternal? You can’t just assign people random political and economic beliefs like this.

Next, define for me the exact reason why sex work is different and special as compared to any other service job that trades in intimcacy or physical labour. Because the answer people always come up with is that sex is special because it’s sex.

Next, neither I nor any of the other mods are “ignoring” that people are made uncomfortable by sex work. We simply refuse to accept the premise that sex is especially or uniquely dirty or disgusting among all forms of labour or interaction.

Next, if you eliminate capitalism, then yeah, fucking obviously you’re going to eliminate the conditions that lead people to trade sex for subsistance under duress. But you can’t just assume that no one, nowhere is going to choose to become a sex professional. Somepeople just love sex and want to get good at it.

Next, I know a shit load of middle easterns who think we should bomb the entire arabian peninsula out of existence. Them being from there doesn’t make them magically right for thinking that. Having a particular identity doesn’t make you infallible. The assumption that it does is how you get the oppression olympics that positions cam girls above strippers above softcore performers above hardcode performers above full service escorts above full service street level workers. As if all sex workers don’t work in sex, and as if laws targetting the “most oppressed” street workers don’t have knockon effects that destroy the lives of porn performers and shit.

Next, the assumption that women do not experience similar levels of sexual desire as men and don’t consume the products of sexual labour is just. Bizarre. It’s a side effect of the misogynistic belief that women are pure, which means they would never be involved in impure, filthy sex.

Next, it’s quite brazen to accuse people of ethical solipsism while you, yourself, refuse to consider that there are women in this world who might enjoy participating, whether as the buyer or seller, in sex work.

Next, sports. Acting. Physical performance of all kinds. Hands on medicine such as surgery. Physical labour such as home building and maintenance. Childcare. All of these are intensely physical jobs that require the use of ones body for the benefit of others, often in exchange for cash. Does the work of a nurse stop being physical simply because they are wearing scrubs? All the same risks people trot out about sex work certainly apply to nurses: the risk of infection, the risk of physical violence from their clients, the risk of severe physical injury, the severe underpayment leading to survival work under capitalism. And yet, the nurse’s job is noble and pure and womanly, and the sex workers job is dehumanizing and commodified. Is it because the nurse is probably wearing a shirt? Is that the difference? Because if so, then what of the artistic model who performs nude anatomy references. Is holding the same post, mid action, fighting against gravity and the human body’s need to move, not a physical job anymore? Is contorting yourself into difficult poses, naked, at the demand of others not an act of physicality? Or is the sex worker simply special, for some ill defined, ill examined reason?

Next, people who are prettier do better in every market. Women who are prettier do especially better than unattractive women. This is a well known issue among disability advocates, advocates of color, and anyone whose body is seen as imperfect based on hegemonic standards of beauty.

Next, ah, look at that, you did recognize the irony in accusing us of solipsistic morality when engaging in it yourself. How unfortunate that you elect to simply ignore that other people have other experiences and desires, and continue to pedestal your own judgement as the true, singular judgement. (For those unfamiliar with the term, ethical solipsism is the belief that there is no possible ethic outside your own; this is associated with the belief that all of existence is ultimately one’s own consciousness, because one’s perception is inextricably tied to one’s own consciousness).

Next, you assume that because anyone experiences a concern, everyone is obligated to consider their needs. But, only when those concerns match your own. When my concern is reducing the level of stigma, and thus of violence, that people who are professionals in the sex industry face, that concern is irrelevant. Because the acceptance of sex work- the workers and the job itself- is anathema to you, you cannot conceive of how it might be harmful to others to deny this acceptance. To be quite frank, I’m increasingly unsure that you actually know what ethical solipsism is.

Next, if you know full well that sex work cannot be “abolished,” and you know full well that sex workers need decrim and support to be safe, the why, in the name of everything holy on or off this forsaken earth, do you feel the need to come make a bunch of sex workers explain to you the way that your flawed and faulty rationales are harming us, without even the decency to give us a fucking tip?

Take your gish gallop and your salad of terms you barely understanding the meaning of, let alone the applications, and fuck right back off into this camp full of woke progressives who so genuinely believe that they’re sex wrokers’ allies while engaging in the very rhetoric that gets. Us. Killed.

XOXOX

💮 Yazminx 💮

PS: Do you genuinely believe that if you throw around technical terminology such as moral solipsism, we’ll just roll over and say that your faulty claims are right?

You have no idea how socialization or biology work, do you?

Here, let me give you this one for free.

The differences between “male” and “female” neural anatomy are almost nil, but the few that do exist can be correlated to trans people’s chosen gender rather than their assigned one.

Now, if you want me to explain socialization, you’ll need to pay me, because I’m actually a professional in the field, and I don’t work for free.

XOXOX

Classes of feminism are not very sharply defined. Any feminist can espouse ideas influenced by radical feminism, and vice versa. Indeed, intersectional feminism is a reaction to and evolution of radical feminism.

Feminism in the Western world is roughly sorted into four “waves.” Non-western feminism addresses different cultural needs than western feminism and does not necessarily follow these patterns. It emphatically does not follow this timeline.

What we consider first wave feminism arose from upper class white women in the late 19th century. The suffragette movement, reduction of hysteria diagnoses, etc were “first wave” actions. By far, the first wave was the wave of respectability. In a world where women were property, being seen as human was already a large task.

The methodology used to achieve this “humanization” was very much focused on improving the state of the uppermost class of women, with vague notions of “coming back for the rest” later. Or not at all.

Nevertheless, first wave feminism- what we might today call “white feminism”- was the foundation upon which later western feminist ideologies were built. It is also where the first strides towards legal equality for women (voting rights, inheritance law, etc) came from.

The second wave of feminism arose in the 1960s, alongside other major protest cultures. Modern radical feminism generally considers itself to be “second wave.” Where the first wave focused on basic legal rights of personhood, the second wave focused on social limitations and domestic rights, as well as examining the specific struggles and consequences of being a woman in a man-centered society. 

This included things such as attempting to abolish dress codes that required excessive levels of modesty or infringed on the freedom of expression of women. It also included successes such as no-fault divorce, domestic abuse studies and shelters, title IX sports and education protections, etc.

It also included and fostered an enormous amount of hatred towards men. The second-wave was the wave of militancy and separatism. There was a persistent belief that if men could be eliminated from the lives of women, women would magically become utopian creatures.

This fostering of separatist attitudes also exacerbated a lot of what we would now call intersectional issues: any woman who disagreed with the party line was clearly just hypnotized by the patriarchy, and needed to be forced to agree with the party.

This led to ignoring a lot of very valid concerns from a great many women. Such as:

+ Ssecond wave feminism’s separatist attitude seeking in many cases to separate women from their sons and other beloved male family members,

+ The hatred of women who were assigned male at birth,

+ The hatred of women who worked with or for men, especially those who worked in sex,

+ Hatred for sexuality involving men,

+ Hatred for sexuality  between women,

+ Hatred for women of color,

+ Hatred for religions and religious women involved in anything other than Christian derived mother-goddess paganism,

And so on.

These are problems that still exist in today’s “radical feminists” who seek to recreate, or never left, the second wave. Indeed, while transgender status prior to the rise of second wave feminism’s influence in the US was hardly a cakewalk, it was second wave feminists, with their hatred of all things “male” who exacerbated tensions, or entirely created new ones, and created many of the most horrifying aspects of transphobia that we see today.

The third wave of feminism rose in the late 80s and early 90s.

Taking inspiration from the many, many, many women who were attacked and hated by second wave policies, the third wave of feminism, today called, “intersectional feminism,” sought to examine just what it was that caused women who weren’t in the ruling class of feminist momvements throughout history to experience a combination of patriarchal misogyny and hegemonic racism/queerphobia/classism that was greater than the sum of its parts.

Many Black and queer feminist scholars were especially active and especially well regarded during this time period. The expansion of queer theory and racial equality efforts in academia and certain public sectors including child education in the third wave time period was also a prominent influence on third wave feminism.

One especially important aspect of third wave feminism was individualism. The belief that there is no “one right way” to be a woman, and that womanhood is necessarily influenced by the individual’s other identities, as well as their internal truths. This is what led to many feminine subcultures: feminine academics, feminine punks, feminine queers.

Unfortunately, one draw back of the third wave’s strong focus on individualism was that it lacked the cohesive force of early waves. Organization of large scale protest and revolution is very difficult when no one can entirely agree on what is being fought for.

Another critical factor of the third wave, and the defining point between third and fourth wave feminism, is that the third wave existed before the spread of internet access and internet culture. This contributed to the communication problems and scale problems third wave feminists experienced.

The fourth wave of feminism is where we currently exist today.

In effect, it is the third wave, but with broadly accessible systems of communication and organization. Intersectionality 2.0, as it were.

Information overload is common in fourth wave spaces. While everyonenow knows what conflicting access needs are, at least, there is little experience in satisfactorily dealing with them.

Because so much of fourth wave feminism is “talking the talk” rather than “walking the walk,” it gives the impression of being a toothless cacophony of young modern feminists screaming at each other incoherently. Because everyone has a platform, it is difficult for leaders to emerge who are not falling back on earlier, more “cohesive” waves: the first and second.

On the other hand, when everyone has at least the potential to have a voice, then people who have existed in silence for generations finally get to speak: people with multiple stacking intersections of marginalization. People who lack the access to historic methods of learning feminist theory can now get a firm foundation in gender equality without needing to pay for 4 years at a liberal arts college. People who are too weird, too queer, to black or brown or disabled or fat or traumatized to participate in the historical forums of feminism can participate in the fourth wave, due to its strong online presence.

With easy, omnipresent recording and data collection methodologies, it becomes increasingly difficult for people to deny the existence of misogyny. With easy, omnipresent communication platforms, this data can be spread to people it could reach before. People who are trapped in controlled environments of abuse, people who are too poor or disabled or anything else to escape the small town hyper-conservative bubble they were born into.

The fourth wave has been “in progress” for between 6 and 10 years, depending on who you talk to. Currently, it doesn’t have a catchy name, but if I were going to give it one, I might call it “accessible feminism.” The barriers to entry have never been lower.

And yet, it has its many problems, too.

No social movement is perfect, because the people involved in it are not perfect. And each wave of feminism overlaps with and influences those that came before and after it.

But, given the choice, I would say each subsequent wave of feminism has been “better” than those before it, and I would also say that no wave of feminism was as openly and violently hostile as second wave feminism and the radical feminists who still espouse it. That it was more effective than the first wave is a point in its favour, but little else is.

That many modern radical feminists seek to undo the leaps and bounds we have made in the decades since radical feminism fell out of favour as the dominant feminist ideology is somewhere between regressive and openly horrifying.

So, I suppose that wasn’t necessarily as helpful as it could have been, in terms of specifically identifying radical feminist ideology today.

But with any luck, it has given you enough of a foundation upon which to build your own research in the future.

XOXOX

💮 Yazminx 💮 

Cupcake. Darling. Sugarplum. Sweetheart.

I know it’s going to hurt. I know that. You’ll have to be very brave.

But please, for the good of everyone involved. Take your inferiority complex and your loathing of disabled people, and shove it directly up your own ass.

I believe in you.

XOXOX

🌸Yazminx 🌸

“True transsexual scum,” or “truscum” for short, are a loose group of trans people who seek to delegitimize the standing of other trans people in a bid to improve their own standing in the eyes of a cis-centric society.

The group overlaps a lot with transmedicalists and Harry Benjamin Syndrome advocates.

Generally speaking, most truscum believe that transgender identity is defined by suffering, and that if you do not suffer for the sake of trans identity, you are not “actually” transgender, but are a “transtrender” who is imitating trans people for social gains.

What these social gains are is never adequately expressed.

One way that the demand for suffering is phrased is that, “dysphoria is what makes you trans.” For trans people who do not experience dysphoria, whether because it was treated via transition or because they experience the inverse- gender eurphoria- this is highly alienating.

It also present transgender identity in the context of cisgender identity, rather than as its own experience. By presenting trans people as having incurable suffering, they are presenting trans people as worthy if pity for failing to be cis, and presenting that pity as equivalent to respect.

Another common claim made by many truscum, especially those who are also transmedicalists, is that without presenting transgender identity as a disease, trans people will lose access to healthcare.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. First of all, transgender identity is already not considered a disease by most medical and insurance bodies, and transgender healthcare has not disappeared into the ether. Secondly, the belief that only diseases are medically treated is absurd given the entire pregnancy industry.

@realtransfacts will have more information for you than I do at the moment. Here is a search on that blog for “truscum.”

XOXOX

There are two possibilities.

The first is that you are a troll, in which case fuck off.

The second is that you are a genuine, well-intended transphobe. If you honestly believe you are capable of instantly and correctly identifying any and all people’s birth-assignments, then you hold a lot of dangerous, incorrect assumptions about trans people.

In whichever case, we aren’t “that kind” of blog. We examine radical feminist rhetoric and influences. We do not provide advice on how to identify your own gender or sexuality. There are other blogs specializing in that sort of advice.

XOXOX