Many of us who grew up around right-wing men see little difference in the attitudes of 'progressive' men who lecture us on language and submissive behaviour, with threats of violence for non-compliance and warnings that 'the other men' are worse.
You do not have anything to teach us about 'the other men'. We know, but here you are, suggesting we're in with them because we've said no to you. You are the same.
What's really sad is a lot of us - I am one - thought you were better. That because feminism necessitates an anti-hierarchical, redistributive politics, men who said this was their politics would be less misogynistic. We didn't realise we were just another thing to redistribute.
(#notallleftwingmen. But all of those who tell us we must accept their misogyny or be abandoned to the right)
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I wrote about Jordan Gray being a dick, and why misogyny isn't "ironic" or "satirical" when women themselves remain the punchline thecritic.co.uk/A-dick-move/
There is a real misogyny loophole whereby people - usually women, terrified of looking "exclusionary" - tell themselves actual misogyny is just a performance of misogyny. But the latter would mock misogynists, not women themselves.
I also think women, myself included, just don't want to believe we're being told our social and embodied reality is now subordinate to an ageist, pornified definition of "woman". So we tell ourselves there's something deep and meaningful behind it, despite the absence of evidence
"For 99.9% of women, being a woman is a matter of biology and I'm very supportive of that" is such patronising crap. What does he even mean? That we have some silly little womb fetish he's generous enough to tolerate? Either you believe women exist as a sex class or you don't.
He speaks as though women are utter morons who can be placated with incoherence. Women are not asking to have some weird attachment to their biology validated so they can feel special. It's about the existence of females as a political class with shared interests.
It's buying into the sexist line that women feel their "womanhood / femininity" is "threatened" by including anyone else. Women already know we exist. We do not have any shared "femininity" to be threatened.
The more I think about the Princess Grace hospital story, the more I think we need to reiterate that being made "uncomfortable" by a rape survivor asking for reasonable accommodations is not a defensible position. People are always made "uncomfortable" by rape survivors.
It's how shame is projected onto rape survivors. She's shamed the family / the church / smeared a good man's name. Her "difficult" behaviour now - aka trauma symptoms - just show how someone like her got into trouble etc. Her account disrupts our chosen narrative.
Female trauma from male sexual violence really messes with your simplistic "everyone's whoever they say they are" hospital policies. Just as it messes with "priests are infallible" or "your uncle would never do a thing like that". All the shaming is pushed back onto the victim.
This is such a mad argument. If someone claims to be a woman despite not being female - or claims not to be a woman despite being female - they make a statement about what women are. It affects all women if this is made into the only permissible definition. It is personal.
It is making assumptions about all female people's inner lives. If someone of the same sex as me says "but I'm not a woman like you", they have an idea of what I am which locates my femaleness beyond my biological sex. And they have no right to force me to go along with this.
It is insane that women are being told "this is nothing to do with you". If I am being told men possess some quality other than reproductive difference that makes them men, I want to know what it is and why I'm deemed to lack it.
So many people seem to have missed the point that pretty much all of the heteropatriarchal cisnormative evil they claim to be dismantling is built around facilitating the exploitation of female bodies. Building a replacement belief system that does the same thing isn't radical.
Yes, it might be that your route to appropriating female reproductive labour is less personally restrictive and inconvenient to you than your dad's was. But don't pretend you're smashing the patriarchy while claiming the exact same entitlements.
There seems to be this idea that what was "unfair" about old-style patriarchy is that everyone didn't have access to a woman-as-vessel, as opposed to the fact that anyone did. And it's bizarre to rail against abortion restrictions and not see how these are related.
You don't address historical exclusion and marginalisation by treating female life stories as a resource to be repurposed for anyone but female people themselves. In doing that, you reinforce an age-old pattern of exploitation and erasure
When you position a female figure as non-binary, you position them as someone who belongs to a category that is not specific to female people. You take something away from female history and a female legacy. It's the opposite of addressing marginalisation.
And if you think "women have a history! They have history to spare!" here's How To Be A Woman, published 2011, claiming we've done nothing