in context.
i got a kicking at a radfem conference.
i’m white. i’m reasonably well spoken because despite growing up on the roughest council street around and not having any more than anyone around us my mother was staunchly middle class, raised in post colonial india and god-damned-determined she wouldn’t have working class kids despite having married a working class man.
i put myself through university in my 20’s. post generous grants for the deserving, pre- fucking extortionate fees to make a business out of education.
i’m naturally kinda clever and sort of confident - despite hideously low self esteem in some areas and terror of the most obvious social skills others take for granted if it’s somethign i care about i can talk about it and appear knowledgable and confident.
throw that in a tableful of black feminists feeling excluded by the conference agenda and topic choices and they assume - UNDERSTANDABLY they assume a great deal.
and it didn’t occur to me to say hey, i’m a single mother living on benefits with mental health problems brought on by a whole sleuth of terrifying experiences that can befall a pretty young girl without parental supervision in patriarchy. it didn’t occur to me to say hey i live in a council house and HIDE as best i can to avoid the persecution i know is coming from having failed to cope with working in an institution and being a cog in the machine.
we could argue forever about who is the best off in a shit situation or we can focus on who is the enemy and stick together.
i honestly couldn’t give a flying fuck what sexuality or colour or anything you are. if you know who the enemy is and why you’re on my team.
so i have been away from tumblr. i got that: christ the world’s gone to hell in the handbasket overwhelm and stepped back.
there is madness afoot.
instead of worrying about the fact that a tiny, miniscule fraction of society is milking the rest of us dry to the point of global recession whilst raking in bigger profits than ever people are fannying around over their gender identities and whether or not they’re pan, a-, bi, homo or fucking technicoloured sexual.
while rome burns.
instead of moving forward with the bollocks to this divide and rule shite we’ll club together and overthrow these greedy fucking bastards who are bleeding the WHOLE world dry we’re arguing about who has the most privilege down here in the ‘everyone except those fucking bastards’ pile.
it made me give up, walk away, not feel that surprised that a few arseholes were taking the piss out of us to infinity and beyond over and over again.
but i LOVE us. seriously. whatever bullshit ID you feel inclined towards, whatever ‘he’s my enemy because he said she said blah blah blah CRAP you get intangled in you are NOT one of them.
we’ve seriously got to open up that US category and wake the fuck up to who the THEM are.
nohomo666 asked: 4 If you have any other questions about this feel free to ask. We may not entirely agree on gender variance, but I have no problem discussing it. As simply as I can put it, “Genderqueer” is really just an easy way for me to say that I’m not going to deal with society’s standards.
my question would be what made you want to lash out at radical feminists? i know you’ve retracted what you said, or at least said that you shouldn’t comment as a man, which is big of you. plenty of people know they’re wrong and just keep going anyway.
but what made you lash out? was it that radical feminists are critical of of the trans movement? can you see how given what we’ve discussed and what you’ve acknowledged about gender trans phenomena reinforces the notion that gender is a real thing? and can you see that as gender is all about keeping women down and in service to men anything that reinforces gender is antifeminist? radical feminists want to get rid of gender so that people are free to be full human beings and so that women no longer have to live under patriarchy with the hideous consequences it has for them. the trans movement wants to reinforce gender, elevate it to something innate in one’s head that one feels and if you don’t feel it then you are wrong and need changing rather than the concept of gender itself and it’s oppressive rule being wrong and needing to be changed.
can you see why therefore transactivists and radical feminists are naturally going to be opposed to one another? radical feminists have spent decades challenging the tyranny of gender now we find people who want to undo all of that and more with implications on the lives of children who now won’t only be called a tomboy and encouraged to wear and say and do and be what they are not they may even be pathologised and encouraged to have drastic medical treatment to ‘correct’ their non gender compliance by switching their gender and leaving them permanently sterile amongst other dire potential outcomes?
trans philosophy and ideas are massively retrograde, conservative and oppressive and the people who will suffer most will be females, because they are the ones the system (gender) is designed to oppress.
sorry if i have gone on a bit. feel free to ask me any questions about my position if you want to.
nohomo666 asked: 3 While my attraction to men does have a lot to do with my gender identity, it doesn't completely inform it. Somewhere inside I just don't feel like I'm a man, I feel like I'm on the outskirts of gender. Sometimes, when I feel like being kind of obnoxious, I tell people that I'm sans-gender. I truly believe that gender is an entirely social construct and I shouldn't have to abide by something that doesn't fit who I am. As I see it, in a perfect world a label like mine would be unnecessary.
the ‘man’ you are not feeling like is a socially constructed myth. one that some conform to better than others either because they’re happy to or because they fear the consequences of not doing so or reap the benefits of doing so (or a combo of both those latter consequences most realistically). you are not on the ‘outskirts’ of gender - gender doesn’t exist. it is two made up categories attributed to the sexes with a list of made up characteristics, behaviours, roles, ways of dressing etc etc. you’re just yet more proof that these are made up social tools. no one would fit them if raised freely and outside of patriarchy. i am strong, independent, rational and like wearing men’s pants to bed - it doesn’t make me any less female. it makes the social construct of what a woman is wrong. and that’s no accident - society needs me not to be strong and independent and rational it wants me to be weak, abusable, needing of a man (and therefore willing to service one) and tractable and easily swayed in my thinking/feeling by what i’m told (socialised into believing and being).
but it seems you sort of understand all this so the need for labels confuses me slightly. you’re a human being who quelle surprise does not fit in a made up template of what you should be based on what genitals you were born with. a man can be anything, as can a woman. we are ALL sans gender - it is just something that is performed.
nohomo666 asked: 2 Though I am genderqueer, I do still prefer masculine pronouns. I have considered asking people to use gender-neutral pronouns, but I feel as though it's kind of too much of a hassle. No matter what I do there is no real way for me to not look like a man, so I'm not going to confuse people that much. Unlike many gender-variant individuals, I do not wish to change my body in any way, I only wish to be free from the tyranny of gender.
here’s where the separate categories of sex and gender come in for me. your pronouns refer to your sex, male, regardless of what behaviours you have. so acting femininely does not make you female because in reality so called ‘feminine’ behaviours are no more female than masculine ones. re: it’s not inherently ‘female’ to wear skirts and make up and like pretty things - to call yourself ‘she’ would actually be reinforcing gender stereotypes rather than trying to ignore them and be yourself and perhaps challenge ideas of gender.
nohomo666 asked: 1 For me genderqueer means that I do not agree with or abide by the gender norms expected of me by our culture. I want to wear makeup, I want to dress femininely when I feel like it, and I don't want to be told how I am supposed to behave because of my genitals. It's more of a "don't tell me how to act" kind of thing than an actual identity.
so far so feminist. there is nothing innate about gender and the behaviours that are prescribed with it. it’s a social construction (and restriction) designed to keep women down and in service to men. the reality is that by this defnition we should all be “gender queer” because gender is not real - ergo it’s only power that makes so many prescribe to it’s restrictions.
nohomo666 asked: There are still some things that I disagree on, but it's not my place to stick my nose in it. I'm not an unreasonable person and I usually encourage open debate, but this isn't an area that I'm qualified to give an opinion in, regardless of whether or not I have them. I'm a man (a genderqueer, fairly flamboyant man, but a man nonetheless). By my very nature it's not my place. I will never, ever know what it's like to be a woman in this society, and it's certainly not my place to police feminism.
i’m glad you see that now.
as a radfem i have difficulties with the notion of ‘gender queer’. could you explain to me what you mean by it in terms of yourself and your experience and identity and what it means to you?
These are accurate quotes from my blog, re-posted by peakradfem. I stand by every single one of them, and therefore have no problem publicizing this post. If anyone would like to discuss these, get at me! I’m here!
As we noted to them, given that they did, in fact, engage in…
so rational thought = a place on tony’s list. despite intentions it’s actually a bloody compliment. well done on retaining rational thought whilst the world goes gender mad around you.
thestareater said: For these situations I usually give a fake number (Like changing the last two digits) and then I hope they’ll never meet me again. :/ That sucks. I hope you’re okay.
yeah i’m fine. this is a guy i see on a weekly basis and can’t be avoided as he’s a member of a group i’m part of so fake number wouldn’t have worked. i’m fine. glad i cleared it up and was honest rather than making excuses.
my dad was unfaithful on several occasions tearing our lives apart when i was a kid, my sister’s husband cheated on her whilst she was pregnant tearing her life apart and obviously the list goes on. it’s not that i’d never be friends with a married man it was that i had a gut feeling anyway plus he’d made a point of making this comment about him and his wife not really talking and it was alarm bell central yet i still failed to overcome my good manners training and say no when he asked for my number casually.
am glad i sorted it. married men with the glad eye are a definite steer well clear phenomena.
a man cornered me into giving him my number recently and had started texting me.
it had been bugging me and playing on my mind. my instincts were very, very clear but i was getting hemmed into that must be nice and not allowed to tell someone go away unless they do something really bad conditioning.
overcame it today and decided my peace of mind is worth more than any of that rubbish.
texted him saying that i was not comfortable with a married man texting me and i really should have said no to giving him my number and i hope he would understand but i wouldn’t be texting with him.
done. easy really.
funny how we’re conditioned to be nice over all our instincts and how it feels terribly stressful to have a ‘confrontation’ when really all we have to do a lot of the time is recognise our right to say what we want/don’t want and to object when we are not comfortable with something and it does not have to be a big drama at all. we’re allowed to say no even to someone who is nice and has not done anything dramatically, obviously, irrefutably wrong.
reminder to self: trust instincts and do what will bring you peace of mind.
“rapists are fucked in the head.”
Not people you know, people who don’t understand consent, people who have been taught that no means yes.
Not at all.
how many rape myths can you get into one paragraph? impressive stuff.
there are places you’re more likely to get raped - HOME being one of them, at a friend’s house another and not by obviously ‘fucked in the head’ people but by dates, boyfriends, relatives, husbands, the nice guy from work who seemed so lovely. not some demented stranger in an alleyway.
so common sense to minimise the risk would be not dating, going to work or coming home - maybe actually living in that dark alleyway where you’re probably least likely to get raped.
ignorance is remarkable.
nohomo666 asked: You reblogged a post of mine that I regret posting. I misunderstood the issue at hand and posted something incredibly stupid and uninformed. I apologize for that.
the one about ‘you’re not a feminist if’?
does that mean you’ve changed your position about this now then?
If you oppose a woman’s right to do whatever she wants with her body you are not a feminist.
If you oppose a woman’s right to wear a corset if she desires, or any other article of clothing she is so inclined to wear,…
it’s strawman propaganda really isn’t it? i think they know full well that we don’t say or think those things but they know that that is what antifeminism has promoted us as saying and what turns some people off of feminism. so they repeat it and argue with the strawman hoping the strawman mythology keeps more women away from feminism. it wouldn’t matter how succinctly we explained that this is not what radfeminism says they would still repeat it because it is not a question of misunderstanding but of antifeminist propaganda.
(Source: nohomo666)
Radical and Skeptical: socalledfeminist answered your question: An Odd Questionpersonally i…
personally i find it horrible enough being letched at fully dressed without having…
i thought of more (sorry!). aging. there’s a certain dignity in not having to expose the signs of aging if you don’t want to and also clothes bring us closer together - by being able to dress and wear what we wish the difference in age is far less exaggerated than if we were naked. can’t quite articulate why but i think that dampening of age difference signals is a good thing. i suspect the worship of youth and invisibility/revulsion of age would be exaggerated further without clothing maybe increasing the disadvantaging and discrimination against older women. and in a society that worships youth there is some kind of dignity in not having to expose your aging or post childbirth body to scrutiny.
god knows what the implications would have been if we’d never dressed - a lot more positive than if we went from being dressed to undressed though i think. god knows it would be nice to make a joke of the ridiculous airbrushed fantasy bodies that the media literally creates and presents to us as real though.
you’ve given me stuff to chew on - thanks :0)
