#i am not immune to doomed yuri | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gravelilyaufgehoben · 2 years ago

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I wrote ‘I don’t care about radical feminism — this is a blog about using German Idealism to theorize yuri manga.’ — but this is false. If yuri manga is an artistic creation, then it must be an attempt to formulate a new world: something like: a world in which love between women, maybe love as such, is possible, emancipated from false oppositions and conflicts, free from ideology. As such, terf ideology, or radical feminism, is entirely in opposition to this goal. As such, a definite response is required of me (if only for myself).

The reason I wrote out that ‘I don’t care’ is because I have demons inside me, and they absolutely do not stop dialoguing; it means ‘I should not care’: the statement was a note-to-self, an attempt to persuade the demons that the matter was not important and did not require a tortuous exercise in going through the arguments nonstop for the next few days — but this attempt was doomed to fail. It was also the plea of a sickly coward — but now it is a short reprieve and brief strategic retreat. I should have known better: the only way out is through.

So I have to write an essay. The following is blood-letting: terf ideology is a miserable wasting-sickness and I am not immune to poison. It can, however, work its way through my system, and now after much pain from having to think through the animating force of what is effectively a roaming hate mob, I am getting the impure blood out onto the page along with my newly formed antibodies:

My initial suspicion was that terfs rely on the same idea of women's reducibility to a child bearing mechanism that misogynists do. I wanted to know where they would go after having this idea refuted, so I posted something to provoke a reaction. The responses were almost a perfect exposé of repression responses: from flat denial, to substitutions and all too hasty acceptance (you can go read them yourself if you have the stomach for it). There was however one interaction I had which got me what I wanted.

It is well known, I know, but one of them stated it for me: the only thing true of woman generally (universally) is her oppression. This allows the terf to maintain the claim that transwomen are not woman: because she has not experienced this oppression — the sophistry of this is dealt with later — which the lack of a womb was used for in the reductionist position. But to affirm that the mark of a woman is her position as oppressed, also affirms the the position of the oppressor, that is, it affirms that men are superior to women. The symptoms of this belief have been observed in various places (the complaint about that transwoman pressing the button too fast on Jeopardy comes to my mind): though the empirical proofs are nice for convincing, the point is made merely by recognising that it is the necessary result of identifying directly with one’s own enslavement. I am sure the ‘marxists’ among them believe this to be a marxist point — and maybe I would too if I understood nothing about marxism: what defines the revolutionary subject is its potential for revolution (and self abolition), not its exclusion and immiseration (this is Nietzsche's criticism of Emile Zola: that he is in love with the ‘filth’, the misery of the working class’ conditions; it is something Zizek warns about contra the ecstasy of mass unrest events — that is, it is something also leftists fall into).

Now, is it true that a transwoman is not a woman if she has not experienced the oppression that every woman has burned into her being?: if a transwoman is a woman, then in exactly the same sense is transmisogyny misogyny. To then claim that what a transwoman experiences is not misogyny (and that therefore she is not a woman) is just the same thing as saying she is not a woman in the first place, and no ‘proof’ has been provided of this claim. Furthermore, one is trying to claim that a cause is the result of its effect: if one recognises the logical error here, one is forced to reverse the relation and we are back to the first claim (that she is oppressed because she is a woman, not a woman because she is oppressed, and our reductionist must once again claim that a woman is reducible to her reproductive organs if they want to exclude transwoman). Here is the logical refutation of the postmodern historicist terf — for those of us who need it — but again, it is probably more convincing to refer to the practical refutation. The identification of woman as the subject of oppression simply means ressentiment: What an absolutely miserable ‘emancipatory’ politics (to avoid a misunderstanding: yes, you have to recognise your enslavement, to create class consciousness, et cetera— this is not the problem, again, it is necessary to create a positive affirmation of freedom — or else you are simply being negatively determined by the old master and you will re-enact exactly that).

Compared to this slave-morality historicism, I even prefer the idea that woman is essentially a child birther — atleast this involves the notion of ‘creation’ and positivity — but, because I am not a biological reductionist, I do not need draw the conclusion that the destiny of (actually existing) women is to bear a man’s child, nor that a woman need be capable of physically bearing children at all. This is what ‘dialectical materialism’ means: I have access to the spiritual without mystifying it, and I can understand the past as merely fuel for the future: that it is to be turned into fuel.

After the revolution, in the new world and when all signification is changed, perhaps it will be possible for a woman to love another woman without (even beyond violence) the haunting malignancy of accusations ‘fake’ or ‘just the foolishness of youth’, and also without carrying the suspicion of being ‘staged for the male gaze and fetishistic’ — all of this is our aim to abolish.

What does it mean to be a ‘woman’ in this world? We cannot know (if the new world really is new, this means it is not understandable in the terms of the old world, i.e., with ‘old’ terms), but we can pick up traces of this future in our present through the various struggles for emancipation. That is, fundamentally, the struggle for woman’s liberation and the struggle for trans liberation, and all struggles which have whatever particular emancipation as their ultimate goal, must be in the end united by this shared future. There must be cooperation and reciprocal developments and solidarity. (There may be some ambiguity ‘Don’t fascists have their own struggle for liberation?’, but this assumes that any struggle is indistinguishable from any other. The word ‘stuggle’ means something very specific here, and there is such a thing as a false struggle, that is, if it is based on a lie, e.g., anti-semitism: so no, terfs are not involved in this same struggle — and so much should be obvious from the above exposition of the problematic nature of that ideology in any case).

The major work is done now: probably I go too quickly through some of the arguments, but this is really just to get it out of me and I am growing anemic and tired of it (I hope the reader can use it and put whatever pieces they need together themselves. This much is sufficient for my purposes. I am not interested in discussing this — think whatever you want, my mind is already made up: I wish to be free of this poison.

Some final notes just because they are still swimming around my mind:

i) The reference to chromosomes as the definition of woman and man does not work: aside from the ambiguities involved, it is too abstract: there is no lived experience of the chromosome and thus it is impotent as a political call to action. It functions purely as an identifier for other biological reductionists because this is its ultimate reference.

ii) The omnipresent claim that a woman is an ‘adult human female’ is entirely vapid and an obvious dog whistle. No one was confused about this in the first place, it appears stupidly obvious — that means it involves ideology to mean anything at all. The only possible site of new content in this ‘definition’ is the word ‘female’ which includes an implicit reference to biology. Again, it is simply reductionism and a signal to other reductionists — and you should be tired of it too. The stench of analytical philosophy makes me nauseous: I am sure they consider these 'necessary and sufficient conditions'.

iii) One may ask me: ‘You argue what a woman is not: very well, but then what is a woman? (Surely you will reveal your true colours as a misogynist in doing so).’ A woman is defined by a set of logical formulas which are constitutive of a certain composition of the structure which is the psyche (unconscious). A man is the same thing. The next question is: ‘What is the relation between these two structures (how are they different)? The answer is: there is no relation between the sexes, there is no sexual relationship, ‘il ne pas du rapport sexuelle’ — Lacan. It is psychoanalytic theory — outside the scope of my need to refute and state purpose. Finally, ‘Isn’t this just as abstract as a reference to chromosomes?’ — the logical formulas can be used, put into practice, that is, they can be — practiced.

This will be the last thing I write about terfs or radical feminism barring some extraordinary circumstances.

Friends and allies: remember that you are not immune to poison either. For the lost souls, such as myself, we need pretty things to look at and flowers to smell, and fresh air in our lungs. We need healthy bodies if we are to struggle at all. Now — think about something else.

#anti terf #anti radfem #anti radical feminism #yuri #yuri manga #philosophy #marxism #german idealism

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