Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Trans Hate In Rad Fem Thought
Posted by Monica Roberts at 12:00 AM
http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2011/05/trans-hate-in-rad-fem-thought.html (http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2011/05/trans-hate-in-rad-fem-thought.html)
If you're wondering why I and a lot of transwomen have a problem with feminism, much of the roots of our dislike of it stem from the disco era hateraid of rad fems
[...]
but lets focus on the rad fems for a moment and give you some background.
The radfems that are used in example and their followers are barking mad hate filled harpies but to use it as a reason to dislike feminism is akin to saying that Hitler and the KKK are the reason that you don't like white people!
Feminism comes in many guises , but I can't understand any woman would say that they are against the basic principles of feminism and equality for women.
The thing that really irritates me is all of that Womyn, Womon, Wigwam stuff. Learn to spell radfems!!! :laugh:
I feel sure that most women are in support of the basic principals of feminism. Principals of equality and equality of opportunity. freedom from harassment, (which is actually, an emotional imposition of social dominance, usually backed by a threat). These are principals that should apply to all.
The nature of humans, is that we are all so unique. We each have our own aspirations, our own emotional and social needs, our own expectations and our own demands from others.
But for many women, their choice might, for example be to be a wife, mother and play a female role to their husbands. Not as down trodden, but as people making choices.
Many women will seek to appear as femininely attractive, claiming a female alpha image, beside a David Beckham, or a George Cloony. They see no contradiction in voicing support for universal sisterhood, opposition to evidence of repression of women, equality of opportunities for all women. Indeed there isn't. These women have made a choice about their own lives, they seek to express their own sexuality in a manner that is comfortable for them as an expression of their individuality. This is the essence of equality of opportunity, freedom and democracy.
But for the many feminists, the Jefferies, the Raymonds, these women represent repression and delusion. For these feminists the true character of women is a singularity of character, typified by the rhetoric of aggressive antipathy toward men.
This might be irrelevant but for the nature of the authority that these types of women exercise over public policy and the failure of most women, not just to openly oppose them, but to realise the threat these extreme present to them, to their own values and to men and children. The evidence of this authority is the imposition of dispensations, considerations, advantages and areas of exclusivity. These are not practices of equality, they are practices of repression, repression of women. Patronising to the intelect. Demeaning to self esteam
The final demise of aristocratism, marked by WW1, created individualism, democracy, a rejection of the principals of aristocritism. It also created two movements, seeking to reimpose an authority, known by the titles of two of the earliest to emerge, nazism and fascism.
It is in the character of all the nazi movements that they seek to impose rigid values and principals, to reject individualism. Nazis, in every case are dominated by an aggressive, extremist minority which establishs and maintains authority over the majority by claims of imminent threat. Communists talk of return to oppressive capitalism, Zionist talk of return to genocide, Burma, Ceylon, Zimbabwe, talk of return to colonial enslavement. That these claims are made is evidence of patronising attitudes. That these claims are accepted is evidence of continuing repression.
They maintain authority by creating insecurity as a matter of policy. They care little for the social, economic or personal consequences since their objectives are to create a society based upon their own ideals. As apparently appalled by the more extreme and oppressive activities, the majority are, when they are aware of these, they fail to voice opposition for fear of the threat which they have been convinced will emerge.
Many Jewish people do indeed believe that another Holocaust could happen. Many in Africa do believe that the colonials might return. Many in Asia, do indeed believe that the spectre of the greedy capitalists, could reemerge, fuedal, starving, oppressing, raping.
Women, most women, who express support for feminism, claim to oppose the more extreme notions. Yet few will openly condemn. Most women will demand, rightly, equality of opportunity, yet few will condemn or reject the remaining advantages for women, women only clubs and areas. Few will condemn the innovation of so called positive discrimination.
That these are as insulting to those who apparently benefit from them as supposed claims of repression seems to have been lost. The motives of those who sponsor, demand and impose these advantages are equally lost in the haze of rhertoric, fear and claimed threat.
The failure of many women to achieve justice for sex workers, the increasing demands for more repressive attitudes toward sexual behaviour, especially individual expressions. The common cause of these hasn't seemed to have occurred to most women.
Nazism, whatever its guise, isn't liberating people, it's leading them into a new and more insidious repression. A repression where the freedoms become little more than meaningless words. The pointless voting apparently so prized by Zimbabweans, the supposed prosperity prized by N Koreans, the illusionary civil protection and safety of Israelis. The apparent sexual liberation of women, when sex must equally apply to men, whatever the orientation of an individual woman.
For women, their freedom has become little more than a joke. A promotion, a nomination, exclusive areas are little more than modern equivalents of gentle sex, unable to stand the rigours of intellect, being managed, being ingratiated.
All that has changed really are those in charge. Freedom and individuality can never exist until they exist for all. Because that the very nature of what freedom and individuality are.