A Trans Response to Julian Vigo:  These Are Not the Radicals You're Looking For

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/11/these-are-not-the-radicals-youre-looking-for/
6/11/13

"In her recent CounterPunch column "The Left Hand of Darkness," Julian Vigo is very concerned about the silencing of radical feminists by transgender people. Choosing to focus on a very small subset of radical feminists who pride themselves on being "trans-critical," she goes through a laundry list of people all claiming the same thing: that transgender identities and specifically the existence of trans women is bad for women and a tool of the patriarchy. Despite the truncated timeline she provides, this is not a new topic. This sect of feminism has been making this claim since the 70's. The arguments that Vigo reiterates here are not new, or radical, but regressive and patriarchal.

What these "radical" feminists want is not a dialogue, but the ability to critique a marginalized community from the outside, without having to engage at all with how that community defines or speaks about itself. An external critique of a marginalized community is not a value neutral action, and it certainly is not a dialogue. You can't have a dialogue with people that you exclude from the conversation. All you can do is talk about them without having to be accountable to their experiences of their lives and the impact your words have on how they are treated. Could you have a conversation with someone who insists that you give up your identity before even speaking with them?"