#Rebecca Reilly-Cooper

[taylor14firefly]

"The solution to an oppressive system that puts people into pink and blue boxes is not to create more and more boxes that are any colour but blue or pink. The solution is to tear down the boxes altogether."

—Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, "Gender is not a spectrum"

[ask-a-radfem]

ok i dont have time to answer every sentence in this long as post but i hope this bunch of material amounts to a couple of hours of research.

on being a "pushover" to conservatives: (read this and tell me these women are pushovers i dare you) : (link) Gender Critical Disputes

An introduction to the objection to the gender identity concept:

"how is categorising people by genitals/chromosomes/whatever not flattening/reducing them?" :

and to finish off, more short responses to various common online arguments. I'm sure this will cover quite a few of the things in your post.

alr fucker ill bite

im trying 2 understand the absolute fuckin brainrot that is terf ideology solely so i can explain to people who actually want to make an effort to not be bigoted not fall into your pipelines. i do this already. but i wanna be more thorough and get screenshots and examples for specific questions. ill do a lil back and forth, but you wont be convincing me that all trans women are pedos n rapists and that we need to detransition people en mass and that trans people are delusional. i have a series of questions, if you consider yourself a terf please try and actually answer them, in a way that actually explains your thought process and isnt just calling me slurs because thats most of the discourse on this site. -------

how do you mentally justify the contridiction in "male and female brains have no difference and women are just as capable as men" (true and real) and "men are fundimentally more violent/ women less violent" besides just blatently liking sexism so long as it hurts men and not women (blatently harmful and bigoted just with a #girlpower coat of paint)

if its a socialization issue, how does female seperatism nessisarily help that? shouldnt the goal then to not treat women as an other, and to not define people based on biological characteristics? while biological differences exist they dont affect your mental or phisical capabilities in anything (in regards to biological sex atleast). wouldnt it be more helpful to treat it as simply a medical thing? like a blood type or something? and treat genital preference as just the same as any other random aesthetic preference in partners like, idk, liking fat people or likeing brown hair what is it about gender based oppression that makes you think that its the men that are the problem and not the whole gender thing, because its men thinking that women are fundimentally different alien creatures because we literally define people by their genitals and constantly talk about how your genitals make you fundimentally different then the "opposite". an ACTUALLY HELPFUL soution should be talking about how like, yeah! some of us look different, but thats like? fine? we are people. who cares whats in that person pants. and if your answer is that thats unrealistic and will require hundreds of years of societal change (true) why is your approach to double down on men and women being fundimentally different and not to like? work? twards something objectively better and less discriminatory? most of what terfs are known for is bigotry and thats not some crazy coincidence, its because your sexism (though you love to label it otherwise) naturally leads to transphobia. its because the core of your ideology is bigotry. women shouldnt be discriminated against cuz you are? fucking people? with the exact same capabilities, you do not deserve more/less praise more/less accountablitity more/less agency. infact id argue that this bending over backwords to try and exclude people you deem as men is why radfems are so much more of a pushover to conservatives. your willingness to go on and on about how biological differences make you a fundimentally different person just so you can rant about how men are all ugly evil penis havers just lets you be suseptible to violent reactionary shit by conservatives. regardless of where you come from politically, this applies to BOTH of us, if you refuse to really think deeply and critically about why you hate the things you do and why you like the things you do, and instead operate on gut reactions and absorbing politics from people on tumblr SOMEONE from SOME IDEOLOGY is always trying to take advantage of that. and transphobia IS violent reactionary shit, most the time i see transphobia especially against trans women its based entirely on appearance, people jumping all over themselves to body shame her for not being enough of a woman, talking about how gross and disgusting she is for wearing a dress or for having a deeper voice. why is this body shaming ok so long as you deem someone a man? attatching morality to appearance is just a blatently bad idea and its frankly gross how little so many of you are willing to critique that.

-----

whats your explaination for the tonal dissonance between "i dont want trans people dead and im not violent" and painting trans women as "always being men with terrible intentions who cosplay as women to have an excuse to rape and assault people"

because while you may not directly say "i think all trans people should be murdered" and you do it in a roundabout way with "all trans people are rapists and all rapists should be murdered" that does still say "i think all trans people should be murdered", just with extra steps. and are you aware that this is the exact retoric used by colonizers to justify genocide and slavery? painting black people as "savages and rapists"? whats your justification for painting a large group of people as fundimentally evil and violent, and how nessasarily is it somehow different then the retoric used to oppress any other marginalized group? + if its a "but im right!" consider this is also what a rapist or an antisemite or a mysogenist would say, and why you are parroting the exact same thing. like do you genuinely actually think that having a boy brain, or more testosterone, or a penis, makes you a rapist and a pedofile? really? and again if you agree with me that its a socialization issue why! dont you! treat it that way!! if you mean one thing, SAY THAT! and FIGURE OUT WITCH ONE OF THOSE YOU BELIEVE. because you cant fuckin have it both ways! if you wanna say that we shouldnt be treating women as stupid vile little vagina having worms (real and true) then like, you cant ALSO be like oh i also think we should be treating men as stupid vile little penis having worms >:) hehe i am so progressive and counter culture ignore all the horrific damage that catagorizing people like that has had i think it will be funny when we do it with men you see.

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what is with this insistance that people define themselves based on whats in their pants, like if having a pussy is just having a pussy thats fuckin fine alr but if you start insisting that people make that their ENTIRE PERSONALITY and that if you have one you HAVVVEEEE to have only a specific subsection of names and you HAVEEEE to be called a woman and use she/her and shit

like girl it is just words, who gives a fuck, if a guy says hey i wanna change my name to this girl name cuz it sounds cool as fuck its like! yea! hell yeah brother! and if hes like actually i prefer more feminine words to refer to me :) its like! hell yeah sister! how does that hurt fuckin anyone. is using words so hard 4 u. and before you be like ooOOuuyhghhg IM NOT DEFINING PEOPLE BASED ON THEY ARE PUSSY how is catagorizing people based on their chromosomes / genitals / appearance (and lets be honest here. its mostly appearance but you use chromosomes and genitals so you can pretend theres some kind of science proving that youre right, there is no chromosome detector 3000 for real life) not flattening them? like genuinely how the fuck do you justify that. you have to go to a different bathroom you have to go to a different doctors office you have to go to a different sports team all because i assume that your chromosomes and your genitals make you eaither unsafe or violent or constantly in need of protection and fundimentally less capable. terfs love to constantly insist that gender is whatever and then constantly try to force people to define themselves by their biological sex? why is whats in MY pants any of your fucking buisness? unless im at a gynocology appointment you dont need to know shit. all of this girlsgirlsgirlsgirls stuff what if you dont wanna be called a fuckin girl? what if i find it weird that you profile people and assume things about them because of their body? if gender is whatever why do you HAVE to be a male or a female. why do i have to fucking put my biology out on display for people to assume things about me based on? because i KNOW you assume things based on peoples biological sex and i KNOW you think more or less of people based on their biological sex thats half the ideology! why do you think every trans women is a sexist mysogenist who woke up one day at 24 and decided she was gonna be a girllll and wear dresses so she could opress woemennn moreeeee, why do you assume all trans men were groomed and exploited and brainwashed into thinking that theyre boys because of mysogeny and not cuz sometimes? being called a dude feels good? having a dick feels good? having a flat chest feels good? using he him or whatever the fuck feels good??? rad fem shit is just, sexism repackadged, do you never see the similarities? do you never see the fine print? that the core ideology is the same? this is just mysogeny again! like women are always the victim and men are always the perpetraitor. is just women have fundimentally less agency and men more agency women do bad things because theyre dumb and men do bad things because they had a good reason to. is just women have fundimentally less agency and men more agency please explain how that ISNT just the same mysogenist veiwpoints with a hashtag girlboss coat of paint. and this isnt me projecting mysogenistic right wing ideas onto you, i wrote all this stuff while looking through "radfem101" "terf reference guide" "things TRA's need to get thru their heads" posts. theres a reason people get them confused, ive been told these exact same things time and time again by alt rights and conservatives and mysogenists. so witch are you? why do you agree on so much?

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how do you deal with the whole, not wanting womens genitals to be constantly policed and have that be all that defines them (true and real) and the very real fact that there is no chromosome detector 3000 and if you want to create "female only spaces" you realistically are eaither going to have to subject billions of women on a daily basis to sexual harrassment to see if they are "real women" or do it just based on appearance. witch is enevitibly going to cause a disproportionate ammount of hate and violence twards black, gnc, and intersex women for not being "women" enough. something that is already happening, because trying to give rigid requirements for what looks like a woman and what looks like a man is always going to impact these groups disproportionately, you know its gonna be based off of like a white skinny cis girl! and uh! not all women are that!

and assuming there is a chromosome dectector 3000 in the future, a) intersex people b) trans men exist, and while im sure you can argue day and night about how they arent real men and phallo dicks are just a mutilated skin tube or whatever half of what you guys talk about is how you feel unsafe being in the same bathroom as someone who "looks like a dude" and who has a penis. considering the strictness in needing 100% gender conformity in trans women im sure the exact same people wouldnt be comfortable with a trans guy eaither, if youd feel ok just so long as they had the right reading on the chromosome dectector 3000 then all this talk about trans women being violent cuz penis and body hair and testosterone is just bullshit. and sense terfs love to play hypotheticals with 100% cis dudes just telling people theyre girls so they can get through the female bathroom security (a thing that totally exists believe me guys) (and also yeah telling a police officer that youre "just a trans girl" would totally actually help you in a legal case dont google trans panic defence shhhhhh its ok its ok, statistics you dont read from "xxvaginawomxngirlfucker" arent real its ok,,) couldnt a cis dude just lieeee about being a trans man? whos saying nobody can lie about my chromosome detector 3000 score! are you gonna put a bouncer in the female bathroom security gates? and like, where do trans people even pee then. we just rename the mens bathroom to the trannies and mysogenists room? the biologically more violent room? yeah lets shove a bunch of little intersex girls into the violent mysogenists room, she had body hair and a harsher jawline and that scared me so im lumping her into the room with all the people i think are pedos and rapists, she will feel totally ok about this and this wont effect her perception of herself, this wont enforce gender roles and make women having a complex about being feminine enough worse. women can be anything! except anything i think looks like a guy. so women can be feminine and nothing else :) but women can be anything i put in this super limiting box! i genuinely cannot imagine a world where this doesnt dramatically worsten sexual phisical and emotional violence against literally everyone.

and to say again. im not looking for quirky rebloggable snapbacks to each of my points i want you 2 put an equal ammount of effort as i did scrolling terflandia and writing all this up. so dont just call me a delusional tr-nny i want you to give me like. atleast a little substance here. something to chew and bite and pick apart

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌈 Queer Books Coming Out in February 2024

🌈 Good afternoon, my bookish bats! Struggling to keep up with all the amazing queer books coming out this month? Here are a FEW of the stunning, diverse queer books you can add to your TBR before the year is over. Remember to #readqueerallyear! Happy reading!

❤️ We Ate the Dark by Mallory Pearson 🧡 The Paper Boys by D.P. Clarence 💛 Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada 💚 Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine 💙 A Vicious Game by Melissa Blair 💜 Clarion Call by Cayla Fay ❤️ Relit: 16 Latinx Remixes of Classic Stories edited by Sandra Proudman 🧡 The Absinthe Underground by Jamie Pacton 💛 Truthfully, Yours by Caden Armstrong 💙 Outsider by Jade du Preez 💜 Cross My Candy Heart by A.C. Thomas 🌈 The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

❤️ An Education in Malice by S. T. Gibson 🧡 The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Ann Older 💛 Never a Bridesmaid by Spencer Greene 💚 The Rewind by Nicole Stiling 💙 Good Christian Girls by Elizabeth Bradshaw 💜 The Fox Maidens by Robin Ha ❤️ The Terrible by Tessa Crowley 🧡 Blood Rage by Ileandra Young 💛 Call of the Sea by Emily B. Rose 💙 Sign Me Up by C.H. Williams 💜 Ways and Means by Daniel Lefferts 🌈 Peaceful in the Dark by A.A. Fairview

❤️ We Are Only Ghosts by Jeffrey L. Richards 🧡 Dead Ringer by Robyn Nyx 💛 Somacultural Liberation by Dr. Roger Kuhn 💚 Stormbringer by Erinn Harper 💙 A Saga of Shields & Shadows by A.J. Shirley 💜 Ghost Town by R.E. Ward ❤️ I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Sante 🧡 The Night Alphabet by Joelle Taylor 💛 Remedial Magic by Melissa Marr 💙 Bloom by N.R. Walker 💜 Entwined by Alex Alberto 🌈 Queer Newark edited by Whitney Strub

❤️ Tristan by Jesse Roman 🧡 How to Live Free in a Dangerous World by Shayla Lawson 💛 Daniel, Deconstructed by James Ramos 💚 Of Socialites & Prizefights by Arden Powell 💙 Lost Harbor by Kimberly Cooper Griffin 💜 Hannah Tate, Beyond Repair by Laura Piper Lee ❤️ Bunt! Striking Out on Financial Aid by Ngozi Ukazu & Mad Rupert 🧡 How You Get the Girl by Anita Kelly 💛 Blackmailer’s Delight by David Lawrence 💙 Tile M for Murder by Felicia Carparelli 💜 Impulse Buy by Jae 🌈 Live for You, Die With You by Kalob Dàniel

❤️ Fairest of All by A.D. Ellis 🧡 Goddess of the Sea by Britney Jackson 💛 A Taste of Earth by Nico Silver 💚 The Moorings of Mackerel Sky by M.Z. Emily Zack 💙 How the Boogeyman Became a Poet by Tony Keith 💜 V is for Valentine by Thomas Grant Bruso ❤️ Crushed Ice by Ashlyn Kane & Morgan James 🧡 When Tomorrow Comes by D. Jackson Leigh 💛 Bugsy & Other Stories by Rafael Frumkin 💙 The White and Blue Between Us by Kiyuhiko 💜 Guide Us Home by CF Frizzell & Jesse J. Thoma 🌈 The Friendship Study by Ruby Barrett

❤️ Infinity Alchemist by Kacen Callender 🧡 Heart2Heart edited by Annabeth Albert 💛 No Time Like Now by Naz Kutub 💚 Bless the Blood by Walela Nehanda 💙 Vengeance Planning for Amateurs by Lee Winter 💜 Who We Are in Real Life by Victoria Koops ❤️ Prove It by Stephanie Hoyt 🧡 Mewing by Chloe Spencer 💛 Awakenings by Claudie Arseneault 💙 Born of Scourge by S. Jean 💜 Disciples of Chaos by M.K. Lobb 🌈 To Cage a God by Elizabeth May

❤️ Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly 🧡 What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher 💛 You Had Me at Merlot by Melissa Brayden 💚 Turning Point by Cathy Dunnell 💙 For the Stolen Fates by Gwendolyn Clare 💜 Season of Eclipse by Terry Wolverton ❤️ These Haunted Hills by Jana Denardo 🧡 Samson & Domingo by Gume Laurel III 💛 Lies that Bind by Rae Knowles & April Yates 💙 We Got the Beat by Jenna Miller 💜 The Diablo's Curse by Gabe Cole Novoa 🌈 Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh

❤️ Out There by Iris Eliot 🧡 At Her Service by Amy Spalding 💛 Green Dot by Madeleine Gray

[there-are-4-lights]

Brighton Skeptic Society dropped it lmao. shame on them.

Overall the skeptic movement has been super disappointing on this. This should fit perfectly in their area: questioning dogma and authority, calling out pseudoscience and religious-sounding bs.

Here's the rare exception, Rebecca Reilly-Cooper at Coventry Skeptics:

Keep transphobes out of Brighton, this is our city!

[c-etait-ailleurs]

Si vous ne reconnaissez pas la réalité matérielle du sexe biologique ou son importance comme axe d’oppression, votre théorie politique ne peut incorporer aucune analyse du patriarcat. La subordination historique et pérenne des femmes n’est pas apparue parce que certains membres de notre espèce choisissent de s’identifier à un rôle social inférieur (et le suggérer serait un acte flagrant de blâme des victimes). Elle a émergé comme moyen permettant aux hommes de dominer la moitié de l’espèce qui est capable de porter des enfants et d’exploiter leur travail sexuel et reproducteur. Nous ne pouvons pas comprendre le développement historique du patriarcat et la persistance de la discrimination sexiste et de la misogynie culturelle sans reconnaître la réalité de la biologie féminine et l’existence d’une classe de personnes biologiquement féminines.

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, What I believe about sex and gender

[revenirr]

[radfemetc]

[sexytiime]

“If you do not recognise the material reality of biological sex or its significance as an axis of oppression, your political theory cannot incorporate any analysis of patriarchy. Women’s historic and continued subordination has not arisen because some members of our species choose to identify with an inferior social role (and it would be an act of egregious victim-blaming to suggest that it has). It has emerged as a means by which males can dominate that half of the species that is capable of gestating children, and exploit their sexual and reproductive labour. We cannot make sense of the historical development of patriarchy and the continued existence of sexist discrimination and cultural misogyny, without recognising the reality of female biology, and the existence of a class of biologically female persons.” – Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, What I believe about sex and gender

[comrade-meow]

The Marxist left finds itself confronted by three insidious big lies that threaten the revolutionary and emancipatory foundation of the Marxist project, all related to undermining women’s liberation; they are:

1. Transwomen are women.

2. Sex work is work.

3. Feminism is bourgeois.

Misogyny in its many forms has long been a challenge for the left; not just the misogyny of the reactionary right, but misogyny coming from within the left itself. But it has not been until recently that this leftist misogyny has sought to portray itself as being inherently progressive. By engaging in revisionism of the most blatant kind, reactionary elements within the left have managed to posit themselves as the agents of progress. Much has already been written about the harms caused by these three lies, but no attempt has yet to be made to debunk them from a solidly Marxist standpoint. That is what we are out to accomplish here; to demonstrate definitively that these big lies are not just regressive, but inherently revisionist and anti-Marxist to the core.

The first of these three big lies, “Transwomen are women”, might well be the most damaging, because it directly contradicts the heart of the Marxist method: dialectical materialism. There are two main definitions used by proponents of transgenderism to explain their narrative. The first is that gender is an identity; the state of being a man or a woman (or any one of the other numerous “gender identities”) stems not from biological sex (to the extent that transactivists acknowledge the existence of biological sex), but from an internal identity, i.e. personal feelings, personal consciousness. The second definition says that transpeople are not really the sex they physically are, but the sex they say they are, because they really have “male” or “female” brains. Both of these definitions are rooted in the personal, not the material. One of the patron saints of queer theory, Judith Butler, says:

“It’s one thing to say that gender is performed and that is a little different from saying gender is performative. When we say gender is performed we usually mean that we’ve taken on a role or we’re acting in some way and that our acting or our role-playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world. To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.”[1]

Though queer theory is a postmodernist philosophy, its roots go far deeper than just postmodernism; rather, this statement of Butler’s is an example of the dialectics of idealism. Marxism, as a philosophy, was formed in reaction to the idealist dialectics of the Young Hegelians. The dialects of idealism posit that reality flows from consciousness. Marx, on the other hand, argued “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”[2] That is, it is not our thoughts that shape material reality, but material reality that shapes our thoughts. In fact, Marx’s first major work, The German Ideology, is exclusively dedicated to explaining this.

So what is the materialist definition of gender? And how does the embrace of the idealist definition under the guise of Marxism harm the Marxist aim of women’s liberation? The foundational Marxist text dealing with the oppression of women is Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. According to Engels, while there has always existed a sexual division of labor in human society, it is not until the rise of private property that this division becomes hierarchical. Before the rise of private property, society was organized under what was called “mother right”, i.e. a person’s family is traced through their mother, given the difficulty of identifying with certainty the father in primitive communist society. But because private property grew out of male labor, and became concentrated in male hands, mother right gave way to “father right”. In order to bequeath his property to his son, the father needed to know with certainty who his sons were. This meant controlling the reproductive labor of the female sex, and its subordination to male supremacy; thus the advent of patriarchy. In Chapter II of Origin of Family Engels calls the overthrow of mother-right “…the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.”[3] Note that Engels here is dealing with sex, with biology. Women are not oppressed because of some abstract gender identity, but because of their sex. Class society and patriarchy, the two of which exist in a symbiosis, need to control women’s reproductive labor to sustain themselves. To put it more bluntly, they need to control the means of reproduction. Thus, women’s oppression has its origin in material reality.

But we have not yet dealt with the concept of gender. In the current queer theory dominated discourse, sex and gender are increasingly become conflated to the point that they are being used as synonyms for one another. Engels analysis of patriarchy is in many ways incomplete, but it forms the basis of future materialist explorations of sex and gender. The second-wave feminists who developed much of the thought around gender did not revise these fundamentals, but expanded on them, the opposite of what today’s revisionists are doing. Gender, according to the radical feminist Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, is “the value system that prescribes and proscribes forms of behaviour and appearance for members of the different sex classes, and that assigns superior value to one sex class at the expense of the other.”[4] Gender is therefore not the same thing as biological sex, but a kind of parasite grafted on top of biological sex to maintain the current sexual hierarchy, and ensure continued male control over reproductive labor. Gender non-conforming, as well as homosexual, men and women are therefore “exiled” from their gender community not because of some abstract identity, but because they do not fulfill their proscribed functions as members of their sex class; they are essentially class traitors. Intersex people, which form a distinct material category, are also lumped into this community of “exiles” because they too are unable to fulfill the goals of the patriarchal sexual hierarchy. Such communities of exiles have existed throughout history, and continue to exist to this day in all parts of the world, from the hijra in India to the two-spirited people of the Native Americans to the contemporary shunning and violence directed at gender non-conforming individuals. But to reiterate, none of this has to do with identity, but with the material structuring of class society.

While transactivists have started to turn against the biomedical explanation for transgenderism, it is very much alive and well in the medical and psychological community. Victorian-era theories about “brain sex” that would have earned the ire of Marx and Engels are now making a comeback. At best, these theories are chimerical pseudoscience which have not even come close to being conclusively proven in any legitimate scientific study. The standards by which gender dysphoria is diagnosed falls back on the constructed tropes of masculinity and femininity already discussed. Such theories risk misconstruing gender roles as being rooted in nature as opposed to constructions that reinforce ruling class control. Rather than being seen as the disease, dysphoria should be seen as the symptom of the sexual hierarchy. The pressures of gendered socialization are ubiquitous, and begin at birth. Very often we are not aware of the subtle forms socialization exerts upon us. For those who reject this socialization, it follows that they would experience levels of extreme discomfort and anguish. Gendered socialization is not just some abstract phenomena, but is, again, literally grafted onto us. Under this system of socialization, the penis becomes more than just the male sex organ, but the symbol of male aggression and supremacy, in the same way the vagina becomes the symbol of female inferiority and subjugation. Sensitive individuals who struggle against this socialization often hate their bodies, but not because their bodies are somehow “wrong”, but because of what they are drilled into believing their bodies are. What they suffer from is the inability to tear away the curtain that has been placed in front of material reality and to see reality in an objective manner. The fields of medical and psychological science are not immune from the influence of the ruling class. This is especially the case in the world of psychology, where a method of analysis is employed that isolates the individual from the wider society around them, preferring to view internal struggle as the result of some defect as opposed to the result of material and social forces exerted on the individual.

While capitalism has broken down certain elements of patriarchy, and allowed for women to make some gains, it has not dismantled patriarchy completely. Capitalism, being a class system, still needs to retain control of the means of reproduction. For example, laws that restrict access to abortion and contraceptives, while having negative repercussions for all women, have the most negative impact on poor, working-class women. These laws may be cloaked in the terminology of moralism, but have a far more base logic; they ensure the continued production of future proletarians for the benefit of the capitalist machine.

By shifting the definition of “woman” away from a materialist one to an idealistic one, we lose the ability to define and fight the causes of women’s oppression. In its most extreme form it erases women as a class, and makes it impossible to talk about patriarchy as an existing force. Why, then, are Marxists, who are supposed to be dialectical materialists embracing a set of ideas the very opposite of dialectical materialism? To answer this, we need to look at the nature of patriarchy; it is a system that predates capitalism. As already stated above, patriarchy and class exist in a symbiosis with one another. The one cannot be eliminated without the elimination of the other. Overthrowing capitalism is not the same as overthrowing class. As Mao pointed out, class dynamics still exist in the socialist society, and require continuous vigilance and combat on the part of revolutionaries. This is why many socialist states still restricted women’s rights to certain degrees, such as the draconian anti-abortion laws of Ceausescu’s Romania. All males benefit in some way from patriarchy, even males in a socialist society. It therefore follows that socialist males fighting capitalism also benefit from patriarchy. While men and women may be in solidarity with one another as workers, working class men also belong to the male sex class, a class that predates the existence of the modern working class. Class allegiances run deep. This is why so many socialist and “feminist” men are quick to defend and even endorse the violent language and actions perpetrated by some gender non-conforming men against the female sex class, regardless of how these gender non-conforming men identify themselves. This is not to deny that gender non-conforming men are discriminated against, and face harassment and violence themselves, but even as exiles from the male sex-class, they still benefit from some of the privileges awarded to this sex class. Note that I do not use privilege in the manner it’s currently used by the regressive left, i.e. as some abstract notion that needs to be “checked”. Rather, it is an actually existing force that must be combated, just as white revolutionaries must actively combat white supremacy, and first world revolutionaries must actively combat “their” state’s imperialism.

Opportunism and the “fear” of being on the “wrong side of history” are also driving forces behind this embrace of revisionism. The Anglophone left, especially in the United States, given its weakness in the overall political arena, has long sought to be seen as “acceptable” and “polite”, and is often eager to jump on any bandwagon it believes can advance it. This desire to be accepted also drives the fear. It is true that communists have made serious errors in judgment in the past, but that is not an excuse to rebel against core philosophies and hastily embrace ideas and movements without fully analyzing their beliefs and goals. This is not to say that communists should not be on the forefront in defending gender non-conforming individuals. A thoroughgoing socialist revolution requires that these existing oppressive structures be cast aside. But it is possible to defend gender non-conforming people without embracing misogynistic pseudoscience and revisionism.

Women are not just oppressed, but thoroughly exploited. Working class women make up what is possibly the most thoroughly exploited section of human society. By embracing philosophies that not only erase their ability to define and explain their exploitation, but also deny them the agency to organize as a revolutionary class, these “Marxists” have proven that they are in direct contradiction to Marxist philosophy and ideas. They are engaging in revisionism.

In the next part, we will examine the second big lie plaguing the left today, the notion that “sex work is work”.

[tervacious]

Once we recognise that the number of gender identities is potentially infinite, we are forced to concede that nobody is deep down cisgender, because nobody is assigned the correct gender identity at birth. In fact, none of us was assigned a gender identity at birth at all. We were placed into one of two sex classes on the basis of our potential reproductive function, determined by our external genitals. We were then raised in accordance with the socially prescribed gender norms for people of that sex. We are all educated and inculcated into one of two roles, long before we are able to express our beliefs about our innate gender identity, or to determine for ourselves the precise point at which we fall on the gender continuum. So defining transgender people as those who at birth were not assigned the correct place on the gender spectrum has the implication that every single one of us is transgender; there are no cisgender people. The logical conclusion of all this is: if gender is a spectrum, not a binary, then everyone is trans. Or alternatively, there are no trans people. Either way, this a profoundly unsatisfactory conclusion, and one that serves both to obscure the reality of female oppression, as well as to erase and invalidate the experiences of transsexual people. The way to avoid this conclusion is to realise that gender is not a spectrum. It’s not a spectrum, because it’s not an innate, internal essence or property. Gender is not a fact about persons that we must take as fixed and essential, and then build our social institutions around that fact. Gender is socially constructed all the way through, an externally imposed hierarchy, with two classes, occupying two value positions: male over female, man over woman, masculinity over femininity... Fortunately, what is a spectrum is human personality, in all its variety and complexity. (Actually that’s not a single spectrum either, because it is not simply one continuum between two extremes. It’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, humany-wumany stuff.) Gender is the value system that says there are two types of personality, determined by the reproductive organs you were born with. One of the first steps to liberating people from the cage that is gender is to challenge established gender norms, and to play with and explore your gender expression and presentation. Nobody, and certainly no radical feminist, wants to stop anyone from defining themselves in ways that make sense to them, or from expressing their personality in ways they find enjoyable and liberating. So if you want to call yourself a genderqueer femme presenting demigirl, you go for it. Express that identity however you like. Have fun with it. A problem emerges only when you start making political claims on the basis of that label – when you start demanding that others call themselves cisgender, because you require there to be a bunch of conventional binary cis people for you to define yourself against; and when you insist that these cis people have structural advantage and political privilege over you, because they are socially read as the conformist binary people, while nobody really understands just how complex and luminous and multifaceted and unique your gender identity is. To call yourself non-binary or genderfluid while demanding that others call themselves cisgender is to insist that the vast majority of humans must stay in their boxes, because you identify as boxless. The solution is not to reify gender by insisting on ever more gender categories that define the complexity of human personality in rigid and essentialist ways. The solution is to abolish gender altogether. We do not need gender. We would be better off without it. Gender as a hierarchy with two positions operates to naturalise and perpetuate the subordination of female people to male people, and constrains the development of individuals of both sexes. Reconceiving of gender as an identity spectrum represents no improvement. You do not need to have a deep, internal, essential experience of gender to be free to dress how you like, behave how you like, work how you like, love who you like. You do not need to show that your personality is feminine for it to be acceptable for you to enjoy cosmetics, cookery and crafting. You do not need to be genderqueer to queer gender. The solution to an oppressive system that puts people into pink and blue boxes is not to create more and more boxes that are any colour but blue or pink. The solution is to tear down the boxes altogether.

Gender is not a Spectrum

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper’s amazing article was published some years ago and remains an excellent analysis of the genderist position, and why it just doesn’t work or make any sense.  13/10 would recommend a read

[floatingbook]

Exploration list #40

Some things to read, watch or listen to, and then ponder.

On droplets, aerosols and airborne transmission (x).

This short piece on Mielle Riggie, a cast-glass sculptor.

On a phenomenon that just can’t die soon enough.

Simone Giertz being her usual creative self.

Rebecca Reilly-Cooper on gender and logical conclusions (x).

A little bit of yellow to brighten your day.

[there-are-4-lights]

"I am yet to meet a woman who, in an ideal world, would wish to be in this battle. Having to defend so fiercely something they feel is as obvious as gravity against something they feel is demonstrably false is discombobulating at best - but it is above all extremely time-consuming and repetitive. The position of women who find this ideology harmful has been set out repeatedly.

An early example of this is a talk given in March 2016 by political philosopher Rebecca Reilly-Cooper of Warwick University for the Coventry Skeptics entitled 'Critically Examining the Doctrine of Gender Identity'. At the time of writing, it had more than 118,000 views on YouTube and remains one of the most helpful introductory talks when explaining to newcomers what the issues are. A listener in 2024 will be struck by how few of Reilly-Cooper's points have been addressed by gender identity advocates, never mind policymakers, and how much deeper gender identity ideology has been embedded since she set out her case. There is a frustration that accompanies speaking or writing on this issue knowing that so many women's rational arguments have not been listened to, let alone responded to with calm rationality and a willingness to debate."

-Hounded, Jenny Lindsay

[itellmyselfsecrets]

“...’white feminism’ was never meant to be an analysis of race or class. It was always intended to smear and divide women into the categories of Woke Feminist/Un-Woke Feminist. Like the term “cis,” as Rebecca Reilly-Cooper argues, it is a linguistic tool meant “to ensure female people have no way to describe ourselves that doesn’t cast us as oppressors.” - Raquel Rosario Sanchez

[wildwomanradfem]

Si quieres llamarte a ti mismo queer género, femme, demigirl, expresa esa identidad como quieras. Diviértete con eso. El problema surge cuando se comienzan a hacer demandas políticas sobre la base de esas etiquetas – cuando empiezas a exigir que los demás se llamen a si mismos cisgénero, porque necesitas que haya un montón de personas cis binarias convencionales para que tu te definas a ti mismo; y cuando insistes en que estas personas cis tienen ventaja estructural y privilegios políticos​ sobre ti, porque son socialmente leídas como las personas binarias conformistas, mientras que nadie realmente entiende cuán compleja y luminosa y multifacética y única es tu identidad de género. Llamarte a ti mismo no binario o de género fluido, mientras exiges que otros se llamen cisgénero, es insistir en que la gran mayoría de los seres humanos deben permanecer en sus cajas solo porque tu te identificas como fuera o sin caja. La solución a un sistema opresivo que pone a la gente en cajas rosas y azules no es crear más y más cajas que sean de cualquier otro color, menos azul o rosa. La solución es destruir las cajas por completo. REBECCA REILLY-COOPER.

[radfemandreadaly]