#where oppressed and oppressor can overlap

[ms-hells-bells]

it feels kinda sickly that a ton of the feminists rightfully defending megan spent weeks, months, attacking and mocking amber, even mocking her testimony of physical and sexual abuse. i think it really shows the damage of 1. the liberal notion that race or class cancels out female oppression, and 2. the idea that victimhood is based on how likable or unlikable a woman is.

amber and megan were impacted in different ways due to their demographics and life experiences, megan has extra difficulties in many areas, including misogyny, because she is a black woman, but in this case, they both suffered under the core common ground of abuse against women by men, and both deserve the same support and care. i am not comparing them to each other, they are not competitors in trauma, it's just that at least with those claiming to champion women, all women means all women, not calculating if there are enough oppression points to care. because if women are unable to collectivise around womanhood in regards to female oppression, like other marginalised groups are despite the differences within them, nothing will ever change.

[sodomit]

TRANSUNITY

Transunity is a political theory that was actively talked about on Tumblr a couple of years ago, but has since fallen out of the public spotlight. And this is unfortunate, because it could have really improved a lot of the discourse around gender.

There exists a blog under that name ( @transunity ), but it has been inactive for a year. I am not affiliated with that blog anyhow, I never had any personal contacts with its mods, but I want to get their general ideas to circulate again, so I'm trying to bring this back up in a semi organized fashion. My take on transunity is just my take, if you're one of the original coiners, and you disagree, I encourage you to talk about it, because we still have much more in common with each other than different.

GENERAL VIEWS

I believe that one of the fundamental ideas more trans people need to understand is that we're all more or less in the same place in the eyes of the society (when other factors, such as ethnicity or disability, are considered). To be trans is to fail the gender role system, from the point of view of cis people we can no longer be proper men or women. All kinds of trans people regardless of identity are affected by misogyny and misandry (not a type of marginalization by itself, but turns into a vector of oppression when overlapping with a different marginalization), which forms the foundation of transmisogyny, transandrophobia, and exorsexism*. These types of bigotry are not exclusive and unique to specific gender identities either and may be applied to any trans person for as long as it's convenient to the oppressor.

Trans people do not have gendered power over each other, and intra community bigotry is better conceptualized as a form of lateral aggression.

Gender assignment and sex are never strictly binary (especially with inclusion of intersex people, who belong in gender conversations even if they don't identify as trans) and need to be understood as much more fluid and not strictly correlating with one's actual position in life.

WHAT WE NEED TO REDUCE

The following things should be discussed more critically:

- "Powerjacketing" - implying someone has gendered privilege as a means of delegitimizing their words, while in reality they do not have this privilege;

- Malgendering - forcing trans people to choose between being gendered correctly and speaking up about their mistreatment (e.g. questioning trans women's womanhood on the basis of them aggressively defending themselves or trans men's manhood on the basis of them asking for help) or implying there's something wrong with them in a way that reinforces gender stereotypes;

- Assuming that some trans people are exempt from some forms of oppression on the basis of gender assignment/sex (e.g. by calling all trans people who were assigned female "tme"** or claiming trans people who were assigned male are inherently incapable of understanding fear of sexual assault);

- Assuming that oppression of trans people is rooted in gender assignment/sex (such as, calling reproductive oppression "sex based oppression"***);

- Gatekeeping certain identities, such as "transmasc", "transbian", "femboy" as exclusive to any gender assignment/sex;

- Creating a duality out of "transsexual" and "cissexual", where not medically transitioning trans people are assumed to have some kind of a gendered privilege, or to not be trans in any meaningful material way. Various transmed ideas about dysphoria and transition go there too;

- Accusing trans people who take inspiration from each other of appropriation (trans headcanons, kinks, drag culture, etc).

SYMBOL

The following image is the official transunity symbol developed by the original transunity bloggers. Sorry about the glitch effect, I wasn't able to find one without it.

* Transmisogyny, transandrophobia, and exorsexism are not exclusive to specific identities, although they do primarily target traits associated with these identities. They can be conceptualized as bigotry and oppression towards people who are recognized as incorrectly entering respectively womanhood, manhood, and a status beyond gender binary (for the latter no normative form exists****). However, it's not wrong to use them to mean "oppression of trans women" and so forth, for as long as you're not claiming it's exclusive.

** Labels like "tma" and "tme" still may be used, but solely in a self assigned manner. I believe that an individual trans person is capable of evaluating whether they're affected by transmisogyny and in what way, and they should be trusted on this. However, no gender assignment and no current gender identity makes anyone inherently tme.

*** "Sex based oppression" instead of "reproductive oppression" reinforces the idea that people who share a specific body part (e.g. an uterus in context of conversations about abortion) are inherently of the same sex. This type of essentialism is desperately needed by terfs in this discussion, as they're trying to sell the ideas of "sex based oppression" and "sex based privilege" to people they want to recruit in their ideology. Invoking the idea of "sex" as something trans men and some nonbinary people are oppressed through is not the correct way to respond to people who say we don't experience any gendered violence besides "just transphobia", it has shitty implications and helps shitty people.

**** Lack of existence of normative nonbinary gender does not mean that these genders are not recognized by the society as a deviant, marginalized identity, and that binary people cannot be pushed into this zone.

[pearlcaddy]

[Twitter thread by Angry Black Changeling that reads: Low-key think any queer adult with DNI boundaries around ‘pro-shippers’ ought to do a detox consisting of education on queer history especially with respect to the fight against censorship + purity culture, and reckon with the way that - and fandom [especially terrible hot takes within spaces centred around fiction] - has furthered a surveillance culture where treating real world people like they are characters with a visible level of morality you can instantly assess + react to is the norm.

It’s not the norm. It’s purity culture at work.

You’re constantly surveilling yourself and others, and creating a level of psychological unsafety that will not keep you safe.

And let’s be serious for a sec, we know that abusers don’t come wearing “proshipper” badges.

Stats inform that they exist everywhere, and most commonly in heteronormative cultural blindspots such as family, schools, churches, institutions.

There could be overlap, but it’s a serious logical conflation to think it’s the 20 something with heart eyes over a fictional age gap you need to look out for.

That’s not to increase paranoia, but point out logical fallacies in that ‘shipping’ rhetoric.

Tbh on a personal level it’s so concerning because it’s so indicative of so many methods of coercive control: from cishetropatriarchy, to racism, to class based oppression - but it’s insidious in the way it’s creating pockets of surveillance within already marginalised + vulnerable communities who seem unable to realise that it functions on an insidious level that amounts to *thought control* + tokenistic morality.

It’s the opposite of safe.

It can be actually dangerous.

It’s doing the work of oppressors freely + willingly. /End thread]

Fandom has furthered a surveillance culture where treating real world people like they are characters with a visible level of morality you can instantly assess + react to is the norm.

It’s not the norm. It’s purity culture at work.

[transcriptroopers]

I have a tangent, troopers. I am shot-gunnin’ it, hitting like ten different topics. I think I have a point, bear with me.

Something I have found increasingly important to emphasize when engaging with theory is the ability to delineate overlapping types of violence and to clearly define which is a more immediate threat to life.

I have two personal facts to illustrate my point.

First, I recently began using a cane. This has changed my life significantly. I now need more accommodations to perform the same tasks. Even in a hospital, I have to tell doctors to slow down so I can keep up. My cane upsets able-bodied people and makes them nervous around me. There’s no denying that in being a case user, I face oppression.

Yet, in every way, my circumstances are better than someone who uses a wheelchair. Because I’m not sitting down, everything is still at my height. I may be forced to walk in the grass if there’s no sidewalk, but a wheelchair user is screwed. I can still walk and get exercise and not worry about atrophy like if I used a wheelchair. I would be inconvenienced having to use the stairs during an emergency, whereas in a wheelchair your life may be in danger.

We are both types of disabled people who face oppression at the hands of an ableist society, but we still have different experiences, and have different - sometimes competing - accessibility needs. It is not “oppression olympics” to be able to identify when one type of disenfranchisement is a more severe and immediate threat to life; I am not betraying cane users to advocate for better accessibility for wheelchair users.

Next, I’m a veteran of the United States Army. I am also LGBT, and I am being vague about the specifics of that on purpose. There is an inordinate number of people who think this is a good thing – that I am both LGBT and a veteran. Everyone thinks it looks good for #Diversity for there to be #Representation. 

I understand where this is coming from, because I used to think this way. Being an oppressed group, LGBT people are hungry to see people like them being portrayed positively, and in the US, the military is almost universally revered. I have never been harassed for being a veteran IRL, always praised; in fact, being a veteran has often shielded me from harassment associated with being LGBT, using a cane, etc. But online, folks will very casually wish for your death in the most gruesome ways, accuse you of crimes you’ve never committed, and block you before you can explain that, actually, you purposely enlisted in your MOS in Air Defense (protection against incoming missiles) because you didn’t want to hurt anyone, and even before drone warfare the vast majority of soldiers will never see combat. And it hurts your feelings, because you’re Me, a sensitive LGBT who didn’t expect the people who I thought were my friends to want me violently killed, Just Like my oppressors did, right??

So, here’s how I got over all that and got to the root of the issue: It’s only online that people are free to unload, sometimes; they are frequently shadowbanned by social media. My material reality is that as a disabled veteran, even an LGBT one, I have innate privileges because I am a soldier first. I have free healthcare for the rest of my life, and if I need it, assistance with legal matters, education, and housing. I could get a 10 to 20% discount in almost any store or restaurant in the country. I could get a placard for my car and it would reduce my chances of being pulled over. I opted for the optional “Veteran” mark on my drivers license to endear any cop who pulls me over. There are like three different national holidays celebrating me where I can get free food. An angry person online who says “veterans kys” hurts my feelings, but doesn’t in any way make my life materially worse.

Meanwhile, I have very much been a victim of hate crimes for being LGBT, both online and IRL. Even in the PNW I was assaulted and encountered actual hate groups like Proud Boys. There are no hate groups against veterans. Even if veterans are high risk for homelessness and drug abuse, (just like for example, idk, LGBT people) it is very clear to me which group is more meaningfully affected by violence.

Like I said, when you’re a rather sensitive person, a stranger gruesomely wishing for your death is upsetting regardless of the reason. Obviously I would prefer that people don’t do this at all, just as I would prefer that there be no kind of oppression at all.

But there is, so they do. And because I have a Critical Thinking Brain, I was able to realize that there was a difference between an outburst from someone with the ability to act upon it and an outburst from someone with almost no ability to act upon it. A jailed prisoner heavily draped in chains yells “I’ll kill you!” A well-trained soldier pointing a gun at you says “I’ll kill you!” Which are you more afraid of? 

If you answer “both,” you are being willfully obtuse. You know the prisoner has next to no chance of carrying out their threat, but you know the soldier’s gun is loaded, and they have killed before. We are all capable of understanding that there are degrees of power and violence. I don’t begrudge any person who casually wishes for the deaths of soldiers, even though the soldier is themselves a victim of a kind of violence by the state. In fact, you can read all about the various abuses endured by soldiers on my blog, but the woes and miseries of soldiers are not (and should not be) of consequence to their victims.

Now that I’ve made you read two pages of blathering, guess what this post is really about? That’s right – Palestine. Fuck.

Western colonial nations are responsible for the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, and it is with our manufactured consent that the US and Great Britain continue to escalate the violence. Thus, it is more important than ever for us to be able to critically examine the way oppression affects us.

Israel is a settler-colonial state: a group of settlers who have violently expelled indigenous people from their land. This is documented fact; even early on in the occupation, 1948-esque, comparisons to American cowboys were being made, implicitly stationing their enemies as dirty savages on untamed land which was being claimed for use by a pure and righteous civilization. 

Unfortunately, even in modern times, US Americans still believe the above rationale for their own displacement of indigenous people. To do otherwise would be to admit that we ourselves do not belong on this land – land that we live and work on and sometimes have “owned” for generations. We choose to believe what matters is Now, and the other stuff is all in the past. 

Sadly, it’s true that many Indigenous American Peoples are no more. But numerous Indigenous American Tribes and Nations are still around, their customs have endured, their languages are alive, and they are still working their lands, as best as they can given the circumstances we’ve given them. However far back the atrocities were, Indigenous Americans deserve not only recompense, but leniency for behaviors that we on our high horses may find uncouth but otherwise don’t materially affect us or our privileges.

This is my opinion for other settler-colonial states as well, including those of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, etc. If settlers cannot feasibly “return home,” as will often be the case, then they must at least concede ownership of what was never theirs to take and cease reaping the benefits from their settler status. This would involve returning land and power to their original peoples, (likely not all or even most of it, especially as so much is now destroyed and heavily populated) and laws being rewritten so that they are not settler-centric. 

In that case, for me, the Palestinian Genocide has one starting and end point: this is a conflict between the colonized and the colonizer. It is essential to view all further analysis from this lens, lest we lose context and get confused when spin doctors tweak our media, or when our friends accuse us of supporting our own oppressors.

Why am I putting all of this on my soldier blog?

Because it is us, soldiers, who are complicit with this genocide. Even American soldiers right now are complicit with Palestinian Genocide because it’s with our weapons, aircraft, finances, and strategies the genocide is being perpetrated. I remember being enlisted ten years ago trying to argue for the rights of Palestinians to At Least not be war crimed on a regular basis, and was mocked, because I was arguing for rights for “inhumane terrorists,” and aren’t I a hypocrite because aren’t I LGBT, and don’t I know that Palestines hate LGBT people? It frightens me to see how much worse it has gotten in ten years, and how many otherwise peaceful people have bought into this pinkwashing: using LGBT rights as a cudgel to determine who “deserves” human rights and who deserves violence. Palestinians do not have to be perfect victims to deserve human rights, and I find the thought that a person in any context deserves to die to be abhorrent.

I feel obliged to state here that I am not Jewish, though I have been considering conversion for a few years. I first sought out a rabbi in 2020 and paused my journey due to the pandemic. I still do self-study but don’t consider myself capable of speaking on behalf of Judaism. 

I do feel capable of speaking on pinkwashing soldiers, and this is very simple: an LGBT soldier is still a soldier. Being a soldier overshadows all of our other identities, be they gender, sexuality, race, religion, wealth, or ability. This is drilled into us. People tell us to go away and die (if they feel safe to do so) because we are complicit in the overwhelming, overarching violence that is the state. We are no different than cops in this regard. Israeli soldiers, too, are soldiers before they are anything else. Women, LGBT, POC, Poor, Jewish. Often, the oppressor has themselves been oppressed. That's why it's so easy to convince people that their actions are just.

But here we see the same situation as before. The Palestinian, after eighty years of violent apartheid and genocide, bombed, starved, half-dead, says, “I’ll kill you!” The Israeli Soldier, with billions in US aid, who controls the Palestinian’s water, food, fuel, medicine, roads, air, and borders, calls the hospital and tells them, “We will bomb you in sixty seconds.” And then they do, and they want my sympathy because I too am a Soldier, and so I must understand that they have Lost, and it is So hard to lose people in war; so hard.

Of course they have my damn sympathy! I can’t help it; I have plenty of it to go around! Of course I’m opposed to religious persecution, to the killing of innocents, the destruction of culture! That is why I stand with Palestine in the first place! I hate violence, that’s why I joined a strictly defensive branch of the army, and don’t believe in the death penalty even for “really bad crimes" because I know how easily people can manipulate the public opinion against people who’ve committed “really bad crimes” for real this time I promise guys this time. And you don’t have to believe me, you can still tell me to kill myself and that I’m a murderer and I won’t begrudge you for that either.

We are currently seeing an unprecedented rise in antisemitism globally. Indeed, Israel only exists because of antisemitism in countless other nations across millenia. Even the US, Israel’s greatest ally, has deeply embedded antisemitic roots. Unless every other major country in the world immediately and aggressively begins to tackle their own antisemitism within their own borders, something akin to Israel will continue to exist, which in turn makes us responsible for the Palestinian Genocide. 

Until that is addressed, we’re left with the original fact: Israel as it exists is a settler-colonial state, built on stolen land amidst an on-going genocide, and because Israel’s military is conscripted, that makes even ordinary civilians complicit in the war crimes of their armed forces.

American civilians cannot allow this violence to continue. We must reject genocidal rhetoric and demand that we return indigenous land not only to Palestine, but all Indigenous Peoples everywhere. 

Lacking a punchy ending to this tangent, I’ll leave a list of links to various organizations that you can support in this time.

UNRWA United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. Currently on the ground in Gaza attempting to deliver humanitarian aid despite bombings.

Jewish Voices for Peace - This was one of the groups who marched on Capitol Hill declaring “Not in our name.” A civil rights’ group.

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund - They specialize in emergency medical care, training surgeons, and even sending children to the US for otherwise inaccessible treatment.

Decolonize Palestine - A basic resource to start with if you want to learn more about why this violence is inextricable from colonialism.

[sophieinwonderland]

Some notes on lateral violence and bigotry

Lateral violence is a theory that is used to explain why members of a marginalized community might harm other members of that marginalized community.

The theory is basically that because of the systemic oppression that certain people face, they become angry and will often take out their aggression on their peers in that same community because of an inability to fight their actual oppressors.

Something that is really important to understand about this is that it doesn't assume that there is an intentionality behind these actions. You aren't necessarily hurting other members of your marginalized community because they are a member of your marginalized community. They just end up becoming a natural outlet.

A member of a marginalized community ends up hurting their friends or their family or their spouse, and this isn't because the people they are hurting are [insert marginalized identity.] They are just angry at the world around them and take that anger out on the people closest to them.

So when I see people saying that it's not bigotry, it's lateral aggression, I need to note that these are not mutually exclusive. Because while lateral aggression does not imply that bigotry is present, it definitely can be in one of two ways. (Which can overlap.)

Internalized bigotry

This is bigotry that is a result of a member of a marginalized community hating people or seeing people of their own community as inferior in some way.

If you want an example of what this looks like, you can look no further than Mark Robinson, a black politician recently outed for incredibly racist comments, including stating that he wanted to bring back slavery.

Mark Robinson is but the latest in a very long line of self-hating members of marginalized communities that conservatives love to prop up.

These are explicitly bigoted against their own race, gender, sexuality, etc.

Bigotry towards the out-group

This is bigotry that is based on divisions within a community, having a group that is bigoted against another related marginalized community. An example of this might be the LGB Alliance, a transphobic group that is opposed to inclusiveness of other queer advocacy groups.

And here we get to a section where it's... Questionable to me how much this would even be considered lateral violence. Because generally these are subdivisions of groups. Members of the LGB Alliance are probably not going to be sharing much of a community with transgender people. Nor do they view transgender people as part of their community.

Is it actually still lateral violence, when the people you are targeting are not part of the communities that you are in? When you have subdivided yourself into your own community that supports and enforces bigotry against another?

I don't really know the answer to this.

Back to sysmeds

When you are defining yourself by opposition to a marginalized community, even if that is a subgroup within a larger umbrella, that is bigotry.

I am shocked that this is being debated at all.

The only thing that I think really warrants debate here is whether this bigotry actually qualifies as lateral aggression or not.

Are we even part of the same community when anti-endos mostly reside in their own servers that ban anybody who is endogenic or even just pro-endo? When they insulate their blogs with DNIs to protect themselves from the horror of an endogenic system liking or reblogging their content?

To me, this feels outside the scope of what lateral violence was made to explain. Or at least, on its edge. It is not simply showing aggression towards peers around you. It is targeted hate towards a subgroup that you do not identify with and view as outsiders.

I would be interested in hearing what other people have to say about this. About whether this technically counts as lateral violence or not when anti-endos do not view themselves as part of our community.

I would not be interested in hearing somebody trying to argue that hate against endogenic systems isn't bigotry though.

[assigned-emo]

I've been avoiding engaging in the newest brand of discourse over whether or not being with men romantically or sexually makes someone less of a radical feminist because I think it's shitty but my overall view is

1. A woman's sex life is nobody's business but her own and you are not entitled to even know in the first place what she is or is not doing with men. So long as everyone is safe and consenting I really do not give a fuck because it doesn't affect her activism literally at all.

2. I don't feel like anyone should have to justify their actions to strangers on the internet, you can make assumptions all you want but you do not know why or how these women make their choices.

3. Women do enough self flagellation as is. Stop blaming women for patriarchy.

4. There's a difference between critiquing the power imbalances at play when a member of a marginalized group has relations with a member of an oppressor class vs telling marginalized people that they must not actually care about their oppression or are to blame for their oppression because of their choice of partner. That's victim blaming, it's manipulative, and it's very black and white thinking.

5. Radical feminism and female seperatism are not the same thing. They overlap, and many women are both, but they do not have everything in common. That's why we bother making that distinction.

6. I want radical feminism to be accessible to all women. Any woman, so long as she believes in the core tenants of radical feminism, should feel free to label herself as such. Your beliefs and your activism are not made void because you do not perfectly adhere to them, otherwise none of us would be radical feminists.

7. Under patriarchy, women's value is largely placed upon their sexuality, or lack thereof. The idea that a woman's sexuality must be the defining aspect of her activism and beliefs is an extension of this thinking. Catholic line of reasoning for sure.

8. Why do you get to decide who is or is not a radical? What authority do you have? Who decides this? Where does that ego come from?

[paopuofhearts]

Mmmm I see a lot of interesting tags as people start following me for posting about being Native and Jewish when I discuss the intersectionality of these things.

So I'm just gonna. Like. Say my stance, because some of y'all are (potentially) really pushing some hardcore with some shit that goes directly against what I said in those posts.

Palestine is suffering through genocide and ethnic cleansing, as defined by the UN. Genocide is defined as "the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part... killing members of a group, causing serious harm to a group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part" (alongside measures that impact children and limit the future of said group). That is a non-negotiable fact.

Hamas is a terrorist group. Terrorism is defined based only upon whether or not civilians are targeted. In this, plenty of nations and revolutionary groups easily fall under the label of terrorism. Hamas is not special in this regard. They are not decolonizing, and to say so is a major slap in the face to decolonial efforts.

*I would also add that Israel, by definition, also employs terrorist tactics, and could therefore be considered a terrorist nation. They do target civilians, and that's literally all terrorism as a tactic is. Terrorism becomes a moot point when both sides do the same thing to each other.

*I would to do a whole aside into the binary belief that's been pushed recently that decolonization must be violent because colonization is violent: this is inherently harmful and reductionist, because it demands that an oppressed group must act in the same way as their oppressors for freedom. Fuck that.

Israel as a modern day nation is built on the methodology and structure of settler-colonialism. Settler-colonialism is not a Western, European, or White concept: it is only related to Western, European, and White identity because it has been perpetuated the most by these (overlapping) groups. It was also literally stated by people who pushed the Zionist Movement (Herzl) that Israel as a modern nation would be a settler-colonial state. This can be considered what China has done to Tibet, or what Japan did during WW2.

The reason I say it is a settler-colonial methodology and structure, as opposed to the other definition that it must be a foreign entity taking over an indigenous entity as noted in the examples above (and this is why people need to agree on how they use terminology, because these kinds of words may have different definitions that can completely change your meaning), is because Jewish people are not foreign, they are indigenous. Judaism is directly tied to the land in multiple layered ways; you cannot separate it, even in diaspora.

*As a side note, this also applies to Zionism itself: it is a concept and a movement in which definitions may have some similarities but are very different. Zionism as a concept can mean two things (potentially three, but let's stick with two) from my understanding: seeing Jewish people in diaspora as their own autonomous group, similar to how Natives have tribal sovereignty - or simply meaning Jewish people have the right to return to the land they were forced into diaspora from in some way, potentially much like the Native Land Back movement where this does not necessarily mean completely taking over the land itself, but having access to it. Zionism as a movement is what created Israel as a modern nation state through the methodology and structure of settler-colonialism. To me, Israel may have originated as a promise for this, but it is not how to go about this; Israel is Not Okay in how it's going about this, and is no longer representative of Zionism in that regard (if it ever was to begin with, because Settler Colonialism is wrong; there are other ways to achieve what Zionism as a concept aimed for, and a Settler Colonial Nation State is Not It). Learning to understand how the term is being used is incredibly important, because it is not a one definition term, same as settler-colonialism.

So here's a fun fact that involves all these points: oppressed minorities that experience colonization and genocide are not immune to committing colonization and genocide against others - this is literally something any group can do to another group if they have resources to do it. This happened during the Rwandan Genocide, this happened during the Cambodian Genocide, this happens even today with plenty of other nonWestern, nonEuropean, nonWhite groups towards other nonWestern, nonEuropean, nonWhite groups. This is not specially reserved for only people within power against people without power. In fact, it's one of the remaining vestiges of leveraging what's left of Western, European, White imperialism: pitting oppressed minorities against each other to extract resources and influence by perpetuating conflict.

Why else is the US so involved in this conflict? Why else are so many nations engaged with trying to benefit from a zero-sum game where one side can be a sole victor instead of trying to work out other options? (Especially when people living through this have done and are doing the work of building bridges to support each other?)

Anyway. Palestine deserves to be its own nation once more. Zionism as a concept is something I support because Jewish people were forced into diaspora and forced from the land they are connected to. Realistically, Israel isn't going anywhere, but allowing a nation to actively and openly commit genocide and ethnic cleansing is horrific and terrible, and should never be supported.

These are all things that can coexist, and if you cannot comprehend that or disagree, potentially due to lack of understanding (which I find disappointing, as that implies a refusal to use terms correctly simply because they do not jive with the argument you want to center) or emotional reactionism (which I find completely fair, as this is a traumatic issue and affinity grouping is sometimes necessary for mental health), I would suggest unfollowing me.

At any rate, as I've said before: support Palestine without shoveling antisemitic propaganda by decentering the actual issues or erasing actual support. That's all.

[eleemosynecdoche]

Anyways, I think settler colonialism is a deeply bad framework to analyze Israel through, because as a framework, it cannot really accommodate the position Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews occupy in Israeli society historically and to today. You end up having to argue that all Jews in Israel are settlers whose presence in Palestine is violent by nature (historically incorrect and antisemitic) or you have to reframe matters so that only Ashkenazi Jews have agency in Israeli society and other Jews are just their victims or puppets (obviously and loudly incorrect). Or you end up, most often, with a superposition of both, with appeals to Palestinian Jews as a category when, bluntly, they overwhelmingly assimilated themselves into Israeli society and no longer understand themselves as Palestinian as a group.

In general, too, it seems to be built on a frankly childish oversimplification of the world as binary- you are either an oppressed victim or an oppressor, and the two categories can never overlap even when they intersect.

But it should be obvious, to take one example, that a Hutu person in Rwanda in the period shortly before the genocide would be both a black African in the eyes of the world, a subject of various forms of oppression globally, and simultaneously structurally entangled in the oppression of Tutsi and Twa people.

In other words, Jewish people having a meaningful connection to the former territory of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judaea, and the existence of a Jewish diaspora created and recreated through external violence, actually does not obviate the brutal injustice of the Occupation if you accept it. It might obviate any solutions that require a mass expulsion or extermination of Israelis, but the chances of those solutions ever coming to fruition is already essentially nil. Nothing would be lost in real terms.

To be a snarky bitch, the problem is that people are addicted to absolutist words and silent nuance behind them, so if you accept Israel and Zionism as emerging from a desire for collective autonomy and self-determination, then the absolutist statements all apply and you couldn't possibly argue that Zionist violence against Christians and Muslims in Palestine (in the period before the formation of Israel, so "Palestinians" also includes a number of Jews) was wrong because it's "liberatory".

But if you're willing to accept grody bourgeois liberal morality, then of course that violence, directed against other people who had their own connections to the land there, was and remains morally grotesque and unacceptable without arguing by implication that Jews are agents of European colonialism, or that Jews ought to assimilate into the countries where they find themselves and abandon any shared Jewish identity. Imagine that.

[wirewitchviolet]

Remember folks, "political correctness" is just bigotry with extra steps.

Stuff that horrible bigots love to gripe about overlaps with stuff that doesn't exist anywhere in the world beyond the imaginations of those bigots almost completely, and I could give countless depressing examples of this, but right now the one I'd like to focus on is the concept of "political correctness."

See, a bigot would have you believe that their very real, not at all made up oppressors, passed this draconian law back around, I dunno, the early '90s sometime, that says there is a Correct term for everything, and that you can only refer to a given thing with that Correct term, or you will be sent to prison. Also the list of Correct terms is constantly being changed and updated and you really have to stay on your toes to make sure you're up to date, and isn't that a huge pain?

Everything about this is, of course, complete horseshit. Nobody is oppressing them, no such law was ever passed, and there is not, I can't stress this enough, even a loose socially enforced list of "the words you're supposed to use for things." I also don't believe there's anyone out there who actually believes any of this exists, but feel free to get into it with your racist uncle or whatever and start pulling on those threads about where the list is, who maintains it, and what law it is that you break if you don't stick to it.

That said, there absolutely IS a habit held by bigots trying to look respectable where every few years they change their whole vocabulary up, generally keeping all the code-switching in lockstep with each other, and huh, if they AREN'T actually being pressured to do that by outside forces, why DO they keep doing that? And the answer is simply that it confuses people who aren't paying enough attention. When you hear people using new, more scientific/specific/cumbersome sounding language to say something, you might think "oh hey, this is someone who's way better educated on this subject than I am, because I've never heard these terms, so I should pay attention." And no, you shouldn't, because it's the same exact baseless crap they were saying before, they're just substituting whatever word it was enough people realized they were explicitly using as a slur.

Usually, to sell the "enlightened" image, the new terms they pull out tend to be initially pulled out of some actual academic/progressive sort of context. Never with any sort of actual acknowledgement of how the term was being used in that specific instance of course, just, "hey, I saw someone say this, it's the new 'politically correct' term for what I'm talking about, that means you can't get mad. See, I touched home base!" And I could give so very many examples here, but since I'd rather not step on anyone's toes, let me just stick to one I'm pretty sure people have moved away from more or less completely, then a couple recent trans things.

So, there was this period where people were constantly talking about "African-Americans." The original idea someone presumably had was that it was weird how we talk about people being "black" when for anyone else we tend to talk about in terms of the country they're from, maybe also the country most of their ancestors are from. Like you'd maybe call someone French, or French-Canadian, and wouldn't ever try to zero-in on some visible trait by which to identify people with roots in France. And like, sure, that's not a bad basis to start off a conversation about self-reflection and so on. And of course I'd like to hope the first time someone busted this out someone immediately chimed in with how Africa isn't a country and that really should have been something more specific.

But the context where the term first came up really doesn't matter. What does matter is some bigot caught it, and went "aha! There's something I can say to make it less obvious I'm a racist!" and just kinda did a quick find/replace on all their propaganda. Suddenly talking about how "65,000% of all violent crime is committed by African-Americans!" or how they took a vacation in, I dunno, Australia and "wow that whole country has just been completely taken over by African-Americans!" or whatever other racist gibberish they want to shout.

And of course this strategy DOES tend to work well enough to consistently get big swaths of the broader population on board and all pleased with themselves for keeping on top of things and being sure to use "more accurate" terms even when that leads to, you know, referring to the original inhabitants of Australia with a hyphenated term composed of the name of two countries they've never lived in nor can they trace their ancestry back to. And that in particular (along with being just too long, and completely failing to address the whole problem that caused the term to come about in the first place) is why these days you only ever see people saying "African-American" if they're particularly old and out of touch, or if they're just kinda openly being a racist scumbag and saying it with a sneer.

Here's another example. Earlier today, I saw someone who I know meant well talking about gender reveal parties and saying we should really call them "sex reveal parties," and I had to sit down and explain how no, that wouldn't help anything, and also it totally plays into TERF propaganda.

See, if you're talking about a person/animal/plant/whatever being, for example, male, you can either say "the sex of this here goat is male" or "the gender of this goat is male." These are synonymous terms, in this context. Use them totally interchangeably. The only time there's a distinction between the two is that we also use "sex" as a term for the act of banging/boning/gettin' down/getting laid/etc. etc. and you simply wouldn't ever say "see that woman in the red dress there? That's Sandra, we had gender last Saturday" and "gender" gets used to explain why like if you're speaking French and you're pointing out a particular chair you end up going "that's her." The whole language just kinda arbitrarily uses masc and femme terms for literally all nouns because neutral ones don't exist, but like you're not gonna cover a kid's eyes when someone stacks a bunch of chairs up, so it'd be weird to say the sex of those chairs is female.

But anyway somewhere over the years bigots got it through their heads that they kinda lost the fight on shouting about the pure sacred inflexible nature of gender and how impossible it is that someone might make inaccurate assumptions about it and so a lot of them just noticed this alternate term and started going "ah OK! It's sex then! Sex is the thing that's all holy and ordained by god and must never be questioned! Gender is this totally fake thing people made up to pretend otherwise!" Again, this is just complete horseshit. Sometimes they'll try and get clever and pretend they aren't just synonymous terms by shouting about genitals but like, no, I can say the sex of this tree outside that blasts me with pollen every spring is male, and I am fairly certain the tree in question does not in fact have a penis, thanks.

Others of course try to stay more current with things. They read someone talking about trans people being "assigned male/female at birth" in like, some academic context where someone was trying to explain how nonbinary people don't have one size fits all medical transtion needs or whatever and went "mwahaha! People know I'm a bigot when I point at women who happen to be trans and shout 'men' but I bet I can say this event I'm holding is for 'AFABs only' and people will think I'm enlightened!" Tumblr is full of them!

Anyway, point is there are not in fact any sort of magical words that make it OK to say bigoted garbage. Also there's no word police. Also I kinda got sidetracked but gender reveal parties suck because basically this one woman ended up getting an article written about the party she threw a few years ago when after a whole bunch of miscarriages she got a pregnancy far enough along to have visible gonads on an ultrasound, and a bunch of terrible people didn't really read past the headline and got this immediate weird competitive "keeping up with the Jonses" bug up their butts and prompted started having this weird competition to outdue this random woman's party through ever-escalating pyrotechnics displays, and those keep starting wildfires and seriously injuring people.

There's kind of a secondary concern too where they're on the ever-growing list of weird things parents do to really try and push their children into whatever boxes they want them in before they can get a word in edgewise, like how people don't let their daughters touch any toy that isn't explicitly a fashion doll, or would rather gouge their sons' eyes out than let them even behold the color pink. And, I dunno, I feel like part of the reason people are so gung-ho about the whole gender reveal thing is that they are in fact, very aware they are taking up arms in culture war there and they're pretty convinced they're somehow sticking it to trans people in doing so. But, eh, it's really more just generally being a weird creepy control freak treating children like property? There's a whole list of reasons you maybe don't want to do that before we get to the slim chance that it turns out your kid is trans, frankly.

[straightyuri]

I think people think of being queer n being straight as opposites instead of things about a person that can overlap and that being straight means ur the oppressors n being queer means ur the oppressed n it's not a nuanced thing where u can have privileges in some areas n none in others. I also think this is where like uhh certain kinds of biphobia comes from. I have more thoughts but my head hurts

[watermelinoe]

While we are having bisexual class consciousness, here’s a rant:

What the fuck is this shit of pretending bisexuals are completely accepted by society and fully oppress gay people along with straight people and biphobia doesn’t exist etc etc because you can be “straight passing”. Meanwhile every single gay person is a poor little meow meow whose life is the polar opposite of a bi person and is personally victimised by our slutty antics.

Cause obviously a bi woman in a lesbian relationship is insanely privileged compared to her lesbian girlfriend, of course. It’s not like the material way they are viewed and treated by society is EXACTLY THE SAME. It’s not like a single gender conforming bi person and a single gender conforming gay person have exactly the same amount of “straight-passing privilege”. It’s not like bi women are victimised by their male AND female partners BECAUSE they are bisexual, and have the highest rate of intimate partner violence as a result.

And I’m not ignoring the fact that bi women can be in a straight relationship and live a life being treated as functionally heterosexual! I’m aware of that! And I have to mention this cause if I don’t put millions of disclaimers on a rant like this the horde will come for me. But the thing is, some bi women can’t have that! It’s not always a choice. I’m bi, technically. I could never be with a man though. I heavily prefer women. Not to mention the fact you can’t actually usually control who you fall in love with, life isn’t a dating app with structured swiping and messaging.

Like literally nobody is saying that bi women have it worse from society than lesbians or whatever, but any time you bring up legitimate problems that bi people have somebody has to shoehorn in that gay people have it worse and you’re a privileged oppressor and you should shut the fuck up. There’s literally no outlet for us to talk about our problems even amongst ourselves cause somebody who thinks they are the only true victim of society has to come along and tell us they have it so much worse.

hmm i partially agree, like i don't understand this "straight passing" argument when it's *only* applied to bisexuals. like you said there are also gay people who "pass" as straight just like any closeted bi person, but ultimately they still navigate the world as homosexuals and bi people navigate the world as bisexuals. and that's a disadvantage either way. but by that logic, i can't agree that we're viewed the exact same... you're describing a situation where a bi woman would be facing homophobia bc she's assumed to be a lesbian, and that's definitely where we have the most overlap in our experiences, but the internal effect isn't necessarily the same imo so we internalize things differently based on our sexualities

i'm the same way though, i'm a febfem bc i could never happily be with a man, i'm more or less penis-repulsed. being bi doesn't mean you're available to men. i know the majority of bi people end up with the other sex, but that isn't the case for everyone lol and even if you're with the other sex that doesn't make you immune to biphobia. the statistics are there.

i do think there are some bisexuals who wanna go on abt this "monosexual privilege" shit but in radfem spaces? there's no reason why bi women talking abt legitimate concerns should be met with "other women have it worse so shut up," like that's literally a men's rights activist talking point to shut down feminists and i yet see radfems saying it unironically to bi/straight women which is wild to me

[weiszklee]

This whole debate on whether or not "transmisogyny exempt" (TME) versus "transmisogyny affected" (TMA) is a useful concept always seemed to me like the sort of inconsequential intra-trans-community quibbling which is best left ignored, especially by outsiders like myself. But I'm afraid I have formed an opinion on the matter and must now subject y'all to it, so here goes.

Julia Serano, who coined the term "transmisogyny", has mostly been vague on the issue, for example here:

they seem like potentially useful non-binary- and non-identity-based ways of discussing the phenomenon. But I’m admittedly not familiar with everything that others are saying or claiming under this newer rubric, so there may potentially be some points of disagreement. 

Or in a twitter threat where as an indirect response to the debate she linked an older piece of hers about who faces cissexism (Spoiler: yes cis people can be targeted by cissexism, but please read the whole essay because the contextualisation and nuances she adds are important, even if you have to increase the zoom of your browser a bit to cope with the small font size). But I especially recommend reading a more recent one of hers on sexual stigma, mostly for being a refreshingly clear example of discussing transmisogyny without falling into dichotomizing patterns.

I basically see "trans misogyny exempt" as an unfortunate reversal of the conceptual development that the word transmisogyny represents. Transmisogyny is a very careful and exact concept (something you come to appreciate when you've been disillusioned one too many times by overly grand theories), it is literally only a way to talk about specific stigma which a specific group of people experiences. Sure, the edges are fuzzy, but that's about as good as it gets with social theories, and the fuzzy edges don't matter much, because the concept is not really about delineation. You can point to phenomena which are definitely transmisogyny, and you can point to phenomena which definitely aren't, and that's good enough. The word enables you to do theoretical work by quickly pointing to a defined grouping of experiences so that you can analyze the content and history and effect of those experiences.

This is a big step up from theories of privilege or theories of an oppressor-oppressed-dynamic, which are often oversimplified to the point of being distorting. Theories of stigma are just better suited for talking about the experiences of sexual and gender minorities (and many others), because thinking in terms of stigma makes it easier to conceptualise social costructedness, overlap, conditional acceptance, intra-community hierarchies, weaponization of shame, and so on.

Meanwhile "TME", when it isn't being used to silence certain opinions (for which purpose it is perfectly suited, but I hope we can all agree that this isn't very aspirational), has much narrower explanatory power. Probably there are some phenomena out there which can most easily be explained by referring to the circumstance of some people being TME, granted. But overall, if you know that I am exempt from transmisogyny, you actually know very little about me, so it can't explain very much. So why then is talk about it so widespread? Why do (for example) nonbinary people feel the need to clarify whether they're TME in the same breath as mentioning they're nonbinary? Sure, this fits into the general standpoint epistemology that is so unfortunately popular nowadays, but I'm not convinced that that's all there is to it.

An annoying hunch of mine of course tells me that this is all downstream of the misguided ~mid-20th-century fad to try and apply Marxist class analysis to things which aren't classes in the Marxist sense: Every instance of suffering needs an "oppressor class" to benefit from it, so if transmisogyny is a thing, then it must be those evil TMEs behind it. Like a pathological version of that Haruki Murakami quote: "I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning."

But I'd probably have to read a lot more before I could possibly assert this with any amount of certainty, so it remains a hunch for now.

[bitingfaggotry]

nobody is saying trans men aren't oppressed at all, just that we aren't oppressed for being men. we're oppressed for being transgender. it's true that trans men and trans women both have unique experiences but "transandrophobia" or "transmisandry" imply that men are oppressed for being men and exist to detract from transmisogyny. go into the tags of phraes like this and you'll be bombarded with trans men complaining that trans women have more privilege than them, that the wider trans community only cares about trans women, and refusing to acknowledge transmisogyny. we can talk about the issues trans men face without detracting from and contributing to transmisogyny. that's not being a pick me

it's true that trans men and trans women both have unique experiences but "transandrophobia" or "transmisandry" imply that men are oppressed for being men and exist to detract from transmisogyny

to start: trans men and trans women also have similar experiences, this is what i was referencing with the oppositional sexism mention in a previous response. it is a cissexist assumption that trans men and trans women have to be exact opposites in experiences like cis men and cis women. That is where this kind of detraction for the simple concept of defining the differences in experiences of the oppression transgender men face for being trans men, because people take *men* to mean *trans and cis men* or *only cis men* in this. we are talking about *trans men*

rest of my answer under cut

I just unprivated a post that talks about this oppositional sexism within cis black activist groups i've seen, in that unlike trans politics, there was no desperate attempt to separate other marginalizations (being black) from gender. I will never see someone be so desperate to say to a black man "you aren't oppressed for being a man, you are only oppressed for being black" or "you made it like that guys, you choose it, all of that is on you"

no one makes jokes about the ~those other black men~ who care about "antiblack misandry" (are you seeing how ridiculous this is?)

because for one its deeply insensitive, and two it doesn't need to be done to acknowledge that misogynoir exists, and vis versa! the subgroup theory (not even a popular or universally adopted concept) of antiblack misandry doesn't suddenly mean misogynoir doesn't exist

a blanket transfer of cis men/woman, oppressor/oppressed conceptualization of gender in trans spaces means that any acknowledgment of how being a trans man or trans masc impacts the kinds of transphobia one faces, supposedly deteriorates transmisogyny theory which should not happen because they are not binaries, they are *similar and/or different* experiences that do not cancel each other out

You're right, we can talk about anti-transmasculinity without detracting from trans women, yet as we see here, any mention of trans men's oppression gets a "and trans women?" and that can be fair! forgetting to talk about trans women leads to the cissexist assumption that men and women have to be exact opposites, which is why i mention that the experiences can overlap and be similar, here we are talking about defining and describing the differences of experiences

this reminds me so much of the reaction to the term "nonblack" by other poc acting as though acknowledging antiblack racism detracts from other kinds of racism. its defining differences, not what is worse/better or actually exists/doesn't exist. and I bet you can think of examples of how people do detract from other forms of racism, yet that doesn't mean these terms should stop being used

you can call anyone who wants to act like trans women are privileged and ignores transmisogyny a transmisogynist! they are being cissexist too, looking like t3rfs for a woman/man binary, oppressed/oppressor within trans spaces to blame trans women for everything, you should not take what they say seriously

overall this is misunderstanding of how transness impacts gendered oppression from the infiltration within trans spaces of second wave radfems (both the inclusive and exclusive philosophy) that ignore how marginalizations impact men: who are always privileged (not the case for trans men), always never oppressed (ask any cis white woman if they think they oppress trans men or men of color, see what their reaction is)

tldr: cis men do not experience anti-transmasculinity, gendered oppression for trans people is informed by being transgender unlike cis people. also transmisogyny will always exist regardless of whether or not "anti-transmasculinity" is used by a subsection trans men

[tvthetv]

My definition of transandrophobia, as someone who actually fucking experiences it: the unique variety of transphobia and misogyny that trans men/transmascs experience. Additionally, the way transphobia and misogyny interact and combine for us.

The fact that you compared other trans people to fucking gamergate for having the audacity to name our experiences is fucking appalling. It’s especially appalling to me, someone who was a gamer girl who entered Highschool literally THE MONTH IT STARTED and was repeatedly told that women were inferior in every way. Repeatedly. By peers I trusted, and thus believed in. I was afraid to speak up. I was told I was too nerdy for a girl by an upperclassman and I should dress more girly… so I did. I did it partially because I couldn’t gain positive attention from my male peers any other way. I was afraid of acting and dressing more masculine to the point where I asked my at-the-time boyfriend for PERMISSION. He wasn’t a piece of shit so he encouraged me, thankfully. Every time I argued the I was actually just as worthy to my peers, they’d either tell me to just take a joke or site studies that didn’t exist. I’m physically small and I didn’t want to risk upsetting many other bigger guys who did not see me as human as they were.

I thought I was genuinely fucking crazy. In 2020, when I found out about gamergate, I cried. I cried and showed people important to me so they could understand what I had been through. To show people that I was right! I wasn’t crazy! That shit did happen! To have people compare me talking about the ways I was- still am- oppressed to my literal oppressors… this hurts.

I didn’t realize I was a boy until I watched a trans woman talk about how she loved being a woman. I thought all women hated being women because I was convinced women were inferior. I mean, who wouldn’t hate being a failed man? But seeing that woman talk… it made me realize that womanhood CAN be an inherently good thing… and if I wanted a beard and deeper voice… that maybe wasn’t what all the other girls wanted, too. Maybe I wasn’t a girl. Maybe being a girl was good, just not good for me.

While a lot of that experience I’d just call misogyny, some of this… IS transandrophobia. Also, are you fucking serious? You think people born as girls aren’t encouraged to be less masculine? Do you think we don’t face misogyny? Ladies, I don’t pass. I’m just a butch bitch to strangers. Do you think I forgot all the times I got told to get back in the kitchen the minute I started identifying as male? Some transmasc experiences are unique to us, some of the ways we experience misogyny are unique to us (and butches tbh. Transandrophobia and butchphobia have a large overlap), some of the way we experience transphobia is unique to us. It’s unfortunate that you don’t like that we gave it a word, but sincerely? That’s a you problem. Deal with it.

wild to me how many trans women can say "I do not believe transmascs do not face oppression. in fact, I agree that transmascs and transfems are both oppressed, but they are not oppressed equally. additionally, transmascs are not oppressed because they identify as masculine, because there is really not a social organization that encourages the oppression of men (trans or not) on the basis of their gender. transmascs are oppressed for being trans, but not for being masculine. additionally, saying that trans women have some kind of privilege over trans men because of their gender implies to an extent that trans women are men. in fact, some transmascs will try to argue this so hard that they misgender themselves in their own argument. this is what trans women say when they mean that transandrophobia does not exist: not that they believe that trans men are not oppressed, but that their oppression does not come primarily from their gender identity" and do the tumblr post equivalent of highlighting each sentence neon yellow and there will STILL be people from transandrophobia circles going like "oh so you don't think trans men get oppressed???? you don't think we've SUFFERED enough???? stupid baeddel bitch i hope you get hit by a car" in the notes and in their anons. the poor are drowning in piss at this point

[gravitascivics]

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, XIII

[Note: This posting is subject to further editing.]

In the attempt to share with readers how critical theory is expressed in the educational community, this blog has described Paulo Freire’s educational approach.  To begin, this application is called critical pedagogy and the purpose of relating Freire’s contribution is to provide a working sense of what it takes to be a critical pedagogue.  He provides, if not a pure version of critical theory, an insightful view of what critical pedagogues mean by people being liberated.

         To be honest, this blog’s effort has not been an extensive presentation of Freire’s argument but a basic one.  Enough of one so that an interested teacher can begin experimenting with Freire’s more practical prescriptions and if readers are interested, his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, can offer a more complete exposition of his views.  It addresses the challenges teachers will face if they initiate his ideas in the classroom.

         Mixed in with Freire’s critical thoughts are natural rights beliefs – the approaches, to a noticeable degree – blend one with the other.  What one can clearly discern, though, is that Freire does not have a natural rights sense of liberty, one based on individualism.  The critical bent leans toward a communal sense of liberty and, in this mode, Freire writes of cycles where teachers and students perform each other’s roles in the classroom.  The same, in a different fashion, pertains to the oppressed and liberated oppressors where both strive toward attaining their humanity.

         And here is a general principle of this construct: Those involved must, in communion, exert their effort to accomplish the transformation from a reality of oppression to one of liberation.  They must accomplish it; it cannot be done for them, and it cannot be done alone. In this, Freire strays from other critical theorists.

         The usual writers of that construct and in the fashion of Marxists, speak and write of collectives not communal arrangements, unless the two are equated.  This blogger feels the two are distinct.  A collective subsumes or mostly subsumes the individualism of those involved for the sake of the collective.  Communal retains individualism in terms of a person’s self-dignity. Why?  Because the common good is or will be compromised if that dignity is sacrificed.

         Writing in this vein, Christopher Ferry writes of the need for teachers to trust students, for them to accept them for who they are, including their limitations, while working with them to transform them and their reality toward liberation.[1]  In terms of this distinction, one can appreciate an overlap between Freire’s ideas and the ideas of federation theory.

         If and when others step in and attempt to instill or create a liberation for those who are oppressed – the “savior” role – that in effect objectifies those who are to benefit from such attempts and, therefore, end in failure.  The process, in its very nature, demands dialogue and trust among those involved. Yes, there is a role for empirically derived knowledge, but from the life experiences of those involved.  

These are the themes the previous postings pointed out which are essential to true school reform even if one finds fault with Freire’s overall message. One does not need to be a critical theorist or critical pedagogue to appreciate, for example, the function of discourses. And the dialogues or discourses are to be on-going that strive to expose the slew of myths the oppressors promote, e.g., that entrepreneurial opportunities exist in abundance.  

Along with these exposures is discovering and informing those involved of various strategies such as existing policies or practices that divide the oppressed.  So, leftists or liberals often attempt to uncover quick paths to success or power which by-pass hard earned partnerships among the oppressed – short cuts to some. Results of such efforts are unaccomplished goals or new forms of oppression or other parties inflicting other forms of exploitation who, through their discourses, promise “liberation.”

And then, according to Freire, there are governmental programs – e.g., welfare – that artificially anesthetize the oppressed and tend to further divide them.  What critical pedagogy strives for is not cradle to grave assistance.  Along with its condemnation of undue concentration of wealth, this form of enlightenment sees wealth as power and that power is exercised, in part, to deny opportunities for the oppressed.

So, what determines liberation.  Liberation exists in societies where no small percentage of the population – the elites – can dictate or unreasonably influence the laws of the land and/or how the laws are enforced.  According to Freire, true equality includes all segments of the population having equal say in what those laws are, how they are administered, and how they are interpreted.

[1] See Christopher Ferry, “When the Distressed Teach the Oppressed:  Toward an Understanding of Communion and Commitment” (n.d.) accessed June 11, 2021, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268749403.pdf,

[girlboss-enthusiast]

So. I do not consider myself a radfem, TERF, or even gender critical. However, I have found myself reading more and more posts from radfem accounts and I'm kinda scared to say that they're starting to make more and more sense. I still support trans people, and most of the ones i've met are genuinely nice people that I wish all the best. However. I just dont buy into everything thats being said about including trans women who have not fully transitioned (aka no top/bottom surgery, hormones, etc) into women's bathrooms. I also feel ( no matter how hard I try to deny it) uncomfortable at the thought of letting trans women into lesbian bars, because its unfair of women to show forced attraction to literally the thing they came out as not being attracted to? Does that even make sense? Im confused, and worried, because most of my friends are very liberal an dsome are even trans/non binary/genderfluid, etc. and as much as I love all of them, Im starting to see things that they say or do that just dint make sense and seem suprisingly like something the media has brainwashed them into believeing and parroting. Idk what Im looking for- clarification? Reassurance? A horrible response so I can go back to hating/being against "TERFS"? Sorry for the long ask.

Hi anon! You totally make sense. I think a lot of us now-radfems had very similar experiences. I know I did. I'm no feminist scholar, but I do like to babble talk, so I'm going to give you my perspective on your points, then some resources that might help you sort things out. Though I am not going to touch on philosophical topics like postmodernism because frankly, I'm still trying to understand the details myself. First off, I know trans people whom I like very much. I used to ID as nonbinary and I still have friends from that time period who are pro-gender ideology. I don't think that individual trans people are evil, want to cause harm, or are intrinsically bad people. Personally, I approach the groups of trans people and Trans Rights Activists differently; the former are regular people who are doing their best to survive, like most of us. The latter are the ones pushing gender ideology into the public view and causing harm. There is considerable overlap, but this Venn diagram is not a perfect circle, so I'm being super-specific for clarity's sake. That said, some radfems genuinely do hate all trans people. I disagree with this, as you can see*. I take what I semi-jokingly call the JKR stance on trans people: many of them are good people. All of them deserve absolutely every human right that anyone else does, including respect, protection from violence, and medical care.

But there's a phrase that goes something like "Your rights end where they encroach on mine." That is my problem with gender ideology and the trans rights movement. Because proponents of gender ideology and trans rights are genuinely encroaching on women's rights. They are passing legislation to change the definitions of gender to be based on feelings and not on any material facts, suppressing not just the needs but the very existence of biological women.

Your mentions of lesbian bars and women's bathrooms are perfect examples—the eradication of female-only spaces in favor of ones inclusive of trans women (males). Women are being de-centered from womanhood—not just in feminism, or even in pop culture, but in the experience of being female and having female-specific needs.

So, why is this problematic? (PS: I don't know how much radical feminist theory you've read, so apologies if you're already familiar with these concepts.)

Female socialization begins at birth (or even before) and consists mainly of the stereotypes of femininity being enforced on us. This socialization is part of what creates the divide between the oppressed and the oppressor. This is true regardless of when a person transitions; they could be ten years old and still will have lived 10 years being treated as their biological sex. This is just true, regardless of what anyone says. There are countless studies on the topic, which I can link you if you want, and of course, our own lived experiences—females are treated differently (worse) than males, and it starts before girls can even consciously realize it.

So, females want our own spaces because we have different needs, for physical and social reasons, and those are being taken away. This isn't ~TERF hysteria~ but objectively true; males want into our space and society is being convinced to let them have it. In fact, I would argue that trans-identified males (trans women) are appropriating oppression for claiming discrimination when females assert boundaries for their female-only spaces. It is fundamentally unfair to expect women to drop their boundaries to be inclusive of males.

(oh god I wrote literal paragraphs on other material consequences of gender ideology...not posting them now but can share if you're interested)

You also mention that you've noticed your friends parroting ideas that don't make sense to you. You aren't imagining that or making things up. The words "groupthink" and "thoughtcrimes" get thrown around a lot, but I really do believe there is a massive suppression of critical thinking or even asking good-faith questions about gender ideology going on—you are socially punished for questioning it, and sometimes legally punished. So, many of your friends may be supporting TRAs out of fear. Some might feel powerful because of it and be happy where they are. Some might buy into gender ideology because it's easier than thinking critically about these concepts—I was like that for a long time. Gender ideology gave me nice, pat rationalizations about my own feelings, cushioned me from acknowledging the reality of misogyny, and provided a friend group based on the queer community. But it is fundamentally not true, and I decided I care more about truth than my own emotional comfort.

(That said, it did take me years to come to this conclusion, so I empathize very much with women who also take time.)

So what I'm trying to say here is that your concerns are valid. I encourage you very much to do your own research and form your own opinions on the topic of gender. Contrary to what some TRAs say, reading or watching radfem content is not going to brainwash you. For all I know, you'll think, "wow, this is bullshit." (I suspect not, but you never know.)

Regardless, learning about radical feminism will inform you, and you can take what you've learned and decide what to do with it. Please remember that you are a smart woman who doesn't need to adhere to the gospel of any community because they say so.

(And for what it's worth, I've found radical feminist communities to be much more open to differing opinions and debate than queer communities ever were.)

Here are some resources:

Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism - Kathleen Stock (I adore this book. She has a very measured take on the topic and concentrates on the impacts of gender ideology as a whole rather than on individual cases.)

JKR's infamous essay, if you haven't read it

Detransition: Beyond Before and After - Max Robinson (A tentative rec because I only just started reading it, but it's an account of a woman who underwent transition due to dysphoria, then detransitioned as she discovered radical feminism. Short summary of a complex book, but it might be worth reading.)

Good luck, anon! Please feel free to DM me or send me another ask if you'd like. I 1000% will never out anyone who contacts me.

NB: Can any of my followers contribue video resources anon might find helpful?

*I want to acknowledge that as a 30-something bi woman in a long-term het relationship who doesn't do much social media (or even interact with many people IRL), I haven't been exposed to the bigotry, hate, and occasional physical violence that, for example, an early-20s lesbian might have. I'm sympathetic to women who've experienced this and understand their anger.