#while gender abolition is worked on

[satedsaint]

Combahee River Collective on lesbian seperatism

[taliabhattwrites]

hi! I have been a fan of your writing for a while now especially your non fiction essays on transfeminism and gender. I really wanted to know your opinion, since patriarchy has existed since before capitalism and colonialism, do you think that a marxist (trans)feminist lens is enough or does not capture the complexity? Will abolishing class distinctions and establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat lead to hierarchy between men and women disappearing? I'm also from South Asia so I kinda feel more pessimistic about the abolition of patriarchy, even communist organising is sometimes not cognizant of how many more demands are placed on women and trans women where I live are less involved in communist organising understandably, since they are still fighting for their own basic rights. I guess, I don't know how to be more optimistic about abolition of patriarchy in the future and was wondering if you had any thoughts about that?

One of the things that's stuck with me the most was seeing a leaflet printed and distributed by a Kerelan communist party, asking their male members to stop preventing their wives from attending meetings.

Working-class women are every bit as economically marginalized as working-class men, but the gendered labor roles they are relegated to can remain invisible even to supposed avowed communists.

Just something to think about.

[heavenboundhotel]

✨THE RADIO DEMON✨

Name: Alistair Clémenceau

Species/Origin: Sinner, Deer Demon

Gender/Pronouns: Male, He/Him

Sexuality: Aromantic Asexual

Year of Birth: 1891

Year of Death: 1933

Appearance:

Personality:

Alistair is a charmer, he's extremely charismatic and extremely manipulative. He knows exactly how to get under people's skin - and how to get what he wants. He's grown quite cocky with all of the power he's obtained in Hell, but has no issues concealing it when necessary and adopting a more humble front. He often acts cheerfully while still never letting those around him forget what he's capable of, as one of the most powerful overlords in Hell. He doesn't make his intentions known, ever, he's a showman who uses theatricality to get his way. Literally unable to stop smiling, he hides his true emotions behind a mask of uncomfortable cheeriness and personability. He's very traditional, refusing to modernize throughout his 91 years in Hell and holding himself to standards of decency from the time and place in which he lived.

Backstory:

Alistair Clémenceau was born in 1891 into the world of New Orleans, Louisiana, with the oppressive structures of the Jim Crow South looming over it. His heritage was complicated: his mother was dark-skinned, descended from a free black family of pre-abolition times, and through happenstance found herself forced to raise her son alone. His white-passing Creole father washed his hands of the generations-internalized bias and did not want to risk his reputation in a relationship scorned by society. Alistair's mother was left to her own devices: fighting stigma as a single woman of color, she turned to sex work to support herself and her son. The quiet sacrifices of his mother hit Alistair deep, and he grew up with a lingering respect for her strength and kindness. Her struggles outlined his fierce independence, teaching him how to survive in a world that was almost consistently looking down on him and how to mask his anger and longing. 

Alistair's mother did everything in her power to make his life the best possible. His mama was a fierce protector, working very hard to shield her son from the harsh judgments of the world. She instilled an early appreciation for performance in Alistair; she snuck him into theater houses, music halls, and later, jazz clubs. 

Early on, he had discovered the magic of the radio—a medium that to him seemed to speak secrets into the air. He was transfixed by voices that traveled, invisible, across distance, binding people in one common experience. He loved the voice, dislocated from identity—some kind of anonymity, some sort of power he later would crave for himself. He had started playing with crude radios as a child, even putting on little "on-air" shows for the scant audience of his mother and neighborhood friends. His mother encouraged his talents, taking pride in his ambition, and while Alistair's dreams grew bigger than New Orleans, he treasured those early performances for the bond it created between them. 

But as Alistair grew older, darker aspects of his personality would emerge. Life in the harsh South had taught him early that mercy could be a fatal weakness, and he had learned that lesson well as means of survival. He felt invisible, oppressed, and alienated, and soon nurtured an intense sense of disdain for this society that had condemned him and his mother. Somewhere in this churning inner landscape, a deadly predilection began to stir. 


Alistair found his subcultural niche as a faceless radio voice under a pseudonym when he was a young adult. His voice then was his instrument to voice anything he would want to say, sans the constraint of his persona. Behind the melodious voice was a macabre secret: he began killing, channeling years of rage and pain into his twisted "hobby." Skilled in passing under the radar, those he killed were symbolic to him—representations of hypocrisy and cruelty, people he thought were more vile than himself—and never women. The longer this went on, the more he reveled in his crimes��both of flesh and of control. Thus, he became a cannibal, grotesque appetite not to be publicly displayed.


As Alistair descended into darkness, he found his companion in Madeline "Maisie" Auclair, a jazz singer and flapper. Maisie was one of the few individuals who actually saw both the charmer and the dangerous man beneath the mask; nights with her in smoky jazz clubs were an escape for Alistair. They bonded over their shared cynicism and humor, Maisie offering him an unusual kind of acceptance, even if she didn't fully understand the extent of his violent life. 

But finally, the bloody double life of Alistair unraveled. In 1933, he was caught hiding a body; his elusive anonymity shattered in that second. He fled, but the police tracked him down, shooting him in the leg before unleashing dogs on him.


In Hell, a speaker implanted in his chest carries his voice, and he can revel in the theatrics that he so enjoyed in life. Hellproved to be fertile ground for his ambitions, and he rose through the ranks until his charisma and manipulations brought him to the status of an overlord feared by many. Clinging to an outdated sense of honor, he refused to change and cloaked his words in an unsettlingly charismatic air. And yet, still buried beneath the cynicism and the cruelties was respect for his mother's ferocity.


Lately, Alistair has been fascinated by the Prince of Hell and her plans for some kind of redemption project. That fascination may well be pure entertainment value or may mask something rather darker, but his eyes are upon her, and Alistair does little without a purpose in mind.

[arcaneillusion]

illyrian women being given the opportunity to train while nothing is done to challenge the systems behind their oppression has similar implications to women being given greater opportunities in paid employment while capitalism, racism & patriarchy remain fully intact.

it seems ‘progressive’ on the surface but in reality it:

a) does very little to combat the systemic causes of oppression;

b) merely results in what some sociologists call the dual burden, or women’s triple shift.

essentially, in heterosexual relationships, gender roles have remained largely unchanged, with women continuing to do the vast majority of housework and child-rearing. thus, the move into employment means that women now typically have two jobs (unpaid domestic labour and paid work) to their male partner’s one (paid work). this is the dual burden that many women face under capitalism.

the triple shift is a similar concept; however, it also considers women’s role in carrying out the emotional labour necessary to maintain close bonds within the (nuclear) family unit. this notion instead suggests that women have three jobs (paid employment, unpaid domestic tasks and emotional labour) to their male partner’s one.

there’s a lot of evidence to support both theories, but that’s not the point of this post.

to relate this back to acotar: rhysand giving illyrian women the opportunity to train is about as effective in alleviating their subjugation as access to paid employment was for women.

to be clear, i’m not saying that women shouldn’t be in paid employment (obviously), nor am i suggesting that access to work has done nothing to help improve women’s lives.

perhaps a better way of framing it would be this: did patriarchy collapse when women were granted access to the workplace? did paid employment ‘solve’ gender inequality? it has been decades since women started to transition into paid work, and is misogyny (and a whole other host of issues that stem from patriarchy) any less prevalent?

rhysand granting illyrian women access to training while the roots of their subjugation remain intact simply creates a dual burden. now, instead of just doing the domestic labour, they get to learn to fight so they can go die in wars waged by a ruler that cares very little for their existence beyond their use as cannon-fodder. yay! feminism!

there is obviously room here for a much more in-depth conversation about capitalism, racism and patriarchy & whether such systems are truly any weaker than in previous decades as opposed to having just changed forms/adapted to the modern world. additionally, much more can be said about the subjugation of the illyrians in acotar and rhysand’s role in it, and parallels can be drawn between this and real world contexts. but, for the sake of brevity, i’ll leave that for another time.

my main point here is simply that illyrian women being allowed to train causes further harm and very little progress. they face oppression at the hands of illyrian males, but all illyrians are oppressed by the unequal hierarchy of power that dominates the night court - a hierarchy that rhysand sits at the very top of.

just as in our world patriarchy will continue to function so long as racism and capitalism do too, so will, in the night court, the subjugation of illyrian women continue so long as the unequal distribution of power persists.

rhysand cannot, and will not, fix a problem when said problem is merely a symptom of his power. if illyrian liberation is contingent on the abolition of unequal hierarchies of power, it is therefore contingent on the abolition of rhysand’s position as high lord. freedom for the illyrians is quite literally against his interests.

any solutions he attempts to provide (such as granting access to training) are about as helpful as sticking a plaster on a broken bone.

[pokegyns]

as a way of building solidarity and tolerance between genderists and gender critical women, what do you think of the strategy of treating “woman” as a word that can mean either “feminine-aligned” or “biologically female” depending on context? would people ever agree to this? like encouraging people to reach out and ask “hey is this for women (gender identity) or women (bio sex)?” when they aren’t sure, and be prepared to respectfully accept the answer either way?

I just saw a post going around encouraging male people who identify as women to ask this question in a very loaded and hostile way, essentially saying “by the way, you’re not some sort of horrible bigot who would try to organize an event for biologically female people, right?” and it made me think, what if we adopted a good-faith version of this strategy? where instead of trying to berate, bully and intimidate anyone who uses the word “wrong,” we actually attempted to understand and respect each other? do you think someday we could treat “women” as just one of the many words in the english language that has multiple definitions? or is that too idealistic

i believe that someone’s identity should not be policed in any way, and that those people in reality could find people with similar experiences to connect with; however i believe a better distinction would be woman (the biological sex) and woman (the gender class). gender class holds way more weight than a gender identity could, and while female people still deserve spaces for themselves, the socioeconomic class of “woman” includes way more people than just those who were observed female at birth. transitioned trans women should have a say in misogyny-related subjects, as they go through their day-to-day lives passing as women & being at risk of social misogyny, and thus a space that defines a woman as anyone who is seen as a woman through their daily life, should logically include those trans women as well. there is a space for trans women who do not pass as women or are not transitioned in any way, and they can at times also discuss misogyny due to their relation to women (or what you call “feminine-aligned”) & also because the oppression trans women face regardless of passing is in fact closely tied to misogyny (hence transmisogyny)– but the voices of those who genuinely risk misogyny, or have risked at one point (which is also why trans men regardless of passing should at times have access to woman-only [the social class] spaces, although they should also be mindful of their passing privilege & the conditional male privilege they might wield, and work to uplift the voices of those who are currently experiencing & risking social misogyny [i specify social because even the most binary neatly passing trans men will not ever be “exempt” from misogyny in that sense of the word– medical & religious misogyny still very much affects trans men regardless of passing status, and even if they manage to escape social misogyny, they will still remain female & risk female-specific misogyny]) should be uplifted first & foremost.

as i am a gender accelerationist, i do not think that your idea is “too idealistic”. the pathway to gender abolition that i follow actually posits the process of ruining gender by speeding it up, and making it look like it no longer makes sense at all– setting up the final stage for it to crumble by itself. a “woman” is a social construct, and it is a cage that marginalizes all female people & those who have migrated into the social class of woman by taking medical supplements. while we cannot allow for pure chaos & anarchy to occur while applying gender acceleration (by this i mean that we cannot get rid of female-only spaces before getting rid of the gender class of “woman”– so we must first get rid of the gender class, and then destroy female-only spaces; not the other way around), we should still recognize that treating female-only spaces as if they are sacred & not a literal tool of the patriarchy that is currently helping us in the project of female liberation (it is a constraint, but as feminists we ought to use this constraint in the way that it helps us, exploit it for our own good) will not further female liberation, and will actually end up keeping gender as rigid and as alive as it is. and we are supposed to be gender abolitionists, no?

thank you for this awesome ask! i feel you would vibe with the idea of gender acceleration– i recommend you look into it 👀

– mod zoroark

[eternal-echoes]

“Unfortunately, men who "transition" to women do not take on the lesser criminal tendencies of females. They are six times as likely to commit crime as women, and they retain the same rates of sexual violence as men.(27) In fact, research into prisoners in England and Wales who identify as trans revealed that 48 percent of them were incarcerated for a sexual offense.(28)

Hundreds of male prisoners have applied to transfer into women's prisons, and as their requests are being granted, the results of the experiment have been tragically predictable. Demitrius Minor is one of twenty-seven males in a female prison who identify as female. While serving a thirty-year sentence for killing his foster father, he impregnated two inmates.

Stephen Wood is a sex offender, burglar, rapist, and pedophile who took the name Karen White, but received no hormonal or surgical changes to appear female. He based his gender identity solely upon his internal sense of self and therefore applied to be transferred to a women's prison. The petition was granted, and he subsequently raped two female prisoners. He's now serving a life sentence in a men's prison.

In Scotland, an inmate from a male prison was transferred to a women-only facility because he identified as female. After some time in the women's prison, he reidentified as a man. Because the prison officials were slow to determine how to handle his request, the prisoner became frustrated and angry, threatening to rape other prisoners and staff. Finally, the request was granted, and the man soon identified as a woman again. Upon being released, he committed suicide. Rohna Hotch-kiss, a prison governor in Scotland who witnessed the debacle, remarked, "It was a tragedy, a deeply disturbed person. And instead of having their genuine psychological issues dealt with, they were left to say that it's because I can't be a woman ... a man... a woman."(30)

…

Lierre Keith, the founder of Women's Liberation Front, remarked, "It is a vicious violation of women's basic human rights to put convicted rapists in women's prisons and teenage boys in girls' locker rooms."(32)

-Jason Evert, Male, Female, or Other: A Catholic Guide to Understanding Gender

—

Work cited:

27) Cf. Dhejne et al., "Long-Term Follow-up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study from Sweden."

28) Cf. "How Many Transgender Inmates Are There?," BBC News, August 13, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42221629

29) Cf. "Karen White: How 'Manipulative' Transgender Inmate Attacked Again," Guardian, February 11, 2018.

30) Joyce, Trans, 166.

32) As quoted in Kara Dansky, The Abolition of Sex (New York: Post Hill Press, 2021).

—

For more recommended resources on gender dysphoria, click here.

[mask131]

The myth of Dionysos (6)

And we reach the last part of the second article about Dionysos! If you haven't caught up, the first part of the second article is here ; and if you want to go even further back check the first part of the first article here.

III) Modern approaches to Dionysos: Theater and drunkenness

Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy

We evoked before how during the Lenaia , Dionysos assisted to the preparation of the wine in the shape of a mask. When it comes to theater, it is by the magic of the god that the mask “comes to life”. The Greek theater was born of the invocations of Dionysos: it was to him that the chorists of the dithyrambic contests addressed their salutations ; it was him who was supposed to inspire the poets of the dramatic contests, during the rustic Dionysia (December-January), the Lenaia, ad especially during the Great Dionysia (March-April). On the benches of the theater, just like in the thiasis, the genders and the social classes were mixed together (at least, in theory) ; and on the stage, madness ruled as the imagination triumphed over the reality. But the genre that truly held the Dionysian spirit, more than the comedy or the satirical drama, was the tragedy.

In his The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Nietzsche highlights the analogies between the tragic genre of Ancient Greece and the cult of the god. At the core of each dramatical representation, there is a metamorphosis, a form of “enchantment” that reminds one of the Dionysian possession. The tragic chorus, spectators and actors of the play at the same time, symbolize “the crowd possessed by Dionysos” ; and the tragedy brings the same forgetfulness of the past, the same deliverance and the same catharsis as the Bacchic intoxication. Taking back the idea according to which “tragedy” comes from “tragos”, the goat, the sacred animal of Dionysos supposedly sacrificed to the god during the dramatic contests, Nietzsche proposes an hypothesis according to which the “passion/suffering” of Dionysos was the first subject of tragedies – or the first tragedy lot. Nietzsche was certain that the cruelty inherent to the tragic genre was the same that the god encouraged the Bacchants to practice: madness, murder, destruction, ripping apart, are all told or symbolized on the tragic stage as much as within Dionysos’ own myth.

Nietzsche concluded by announcing a renewal of the tragedy, that Aristotle’s influenced had suddenly made “gone astray” from its Dionysian role. It is this same renewal of the theater that Artaud demanded in his manifest The Theater and its Double (1938). While he does not name Dionysos, he insists that tragedy should be given back its original inspiration: cruelty. Free from its psychological deviations, once again metaphysical, the theater had to bring, just like a plague, a liberating catharsis. According to Artaud “theater is a plague because it is the supreme balance that is only acquired with destruction. It invites the spirit to a delirium that causes the exaltation of the energies.” This last sentence recalls the Bacchic “mania”, but if Artaud disdains Dionysos and prefers to reference the Balinese theater, it is because he sees in the Dionysian madness a force of anarchy rather than something planned. But still, for Artaud the theater stays a political force of subversion, that “reveals to the collectivities their dark power, their hidden side”. For him the action of the theater is a Dionysian one, a nocturnal, dark, dangerous power, just like a bacchanal.

Bacchic madness and contemporary poetry

The entire work of Nietzsche is placed under the invocation of Dionysos. In Thus spoke Zarathustra (1885), he glorifies a “Dionysian demon”. Beyond his numerous references to the attributes of the god in his poems (honey, wine, donkey, lion, snake), his writings glorify the two side of the Dionysism, the dance and the drunkenness, both tied by laughter. Nietzsche, however, prefers insisting on the abolition of the frontier between human and divine, allowing for the existence of “superior men”, rather than on the abolition of the frontiers between humans, despite the latter being essential to the Dionysian spirit.

Before Nietzsche, Rimbaud gave a very different description of the “saintly intoxication” in his Matinée d’ivresse (Morning of drunkenness, in his 1872-73 Illuminations). There, he recreates the ambivalence of the Bacchic madness by having pleasure meet pain. Suffering becomes the promise of a consecration, and while Dionysos is never named, it seems that the theme of a painful intoxication leading to salvation was inspired by him. “Oh, us, now worth of those tortures! Let us gather faithfully this superhuman promise […] this promise! This madness!”. The “superhuman promise” can be the one of the enthusiasm, literally the identification to the god. Just like within a bacchanal, children, slaves and maidens gather for a nocturnal ritual, for an “eve” ; as for the “madness” and the “violence” regularly announced, they can be linked to the bloodthirsty cruelty of the Bacchants by the last words  “Here comes the time of the Assassins”.

Claudel will renew the ancient image of the Maenad in the middle of a mystical delirium, by adapting her convulsive dance to the syncope-rhythm of his verse, in the first of his Five great odes (1908) “The Muses”: “A drunkenness like the one of the red wine and a pile of roses! Grapes under the feet that squirt, great flowers all sticky with honey! / The Maenad distraught by the drum! At the piercing scream of the fife, the Bacchant stiffens within the thundering god. / All burning, all dying, all languishing!” We can notice that the ecstasy of the Bacchant is described like the deadly one Semele knew before Zeus (the “thundering god”), and the last verse translates the mix of the loving desire and of death. The interpretation of Claudel reminds us that it was said that Semele, when pregnant, had been overtaken by a strong desire to dance: Claudel sees in her the first of the Maenads, a victim of Dionysos before he was even born. But for Claudel the Bacchic madness, in its musical aspect, is also a symbol of poetic inspiration: “Ah, I am drunk! I am offered to the god! I hear a voice in me, and the rhythm goes faster…” The poet and his text are both invaded by, possessed by the divine force.

Finally, Saint-John Perse, in Winds (1946), gives to this possession a larger scope, at the size of “the entire world of things”, and thus he sees in her and in those hosting it one of “those great forces” of subversion that are erasing the wearing-out of the century: “Unpredictable Men, Men harassed by the god, Men fed with a new wine and who seem pierced with lightning / Our salvation is with us, in the wisdom and in the intemperance.” Just like with Claudel, the mania is associated with thunder, and finds back the ambiguity of the union of the opposites. “Wisdom” and “intemperance” are one and the same. It is the Dionysism, destruction and balance all in one: it is can lead to anarchy, it is not in itself anarchic (unlike what Artaud believed), rather it is a “method”, as Rimbaud said, that corresponds to the three steps of the “orgia”. But balance does not mean stability, nor serenity. Not at all: Dionysism is a balance, for it is the counterweight, the counterpower needed to oppose the Apollonian order, and to make the “normal” world more moderate.

IV) Conclusions

In The Bacchants, Pnetheus says “Wise Tiresias, do not believe the illusion of your sick mind to be wisdom.” But it is Pentheus who has an illusionary wisdom, for he refuses to accept madness. “He who lives without madness is not as wise as he believes,” La Rochefoucauld once wrote. The paradox of the wise-madness should not let us believe that the delirium is limited to a few holidays and a few moments of disruptions. True wisdom is knowing when madness and when cruelty cannot be escaped. As for the real madness, it would be if someone tried to make this out-of-boundaries god an institution, if someone tried to make a system out of the consecration of his possessed followers – those that Nietzsche called “super-humans”. It would be a dictatorship, it would be the negation of the very Bacchic freedom, it would be the death of Dionysos.

[dailyanarchistposts]

The beginning of a conversation

How can these processes of transformation be nurtured and defended, not just in their most dramatic and exceptional moments, but all the time? Are there common values or sensibilities that nurture transformative relationships, alive and responsive to changing situations, while warding off both Empire and rigid radicalism? What if joy (as the process of becoming more capable) was seen as fundamental to undoing Empire? What would it mean to be militant about joy? What is militancy when it is infused with creativity and love?

It was with these questions—much vaguer and more muddled at the time—that the two of us began having intentional conversations with several others. And who are we, the two of us? Both of us live in so-called British Columbia, Canada—Nick in Victoria and carla in Vancouver. We come from different generations, and we have pretty different life experiences across gender, class, ability, and education. carla has been involved in deschooling, youth liberation organizing, and other radical currents for a couple of decades now, and she became a mentor to Nick several years ago as Nick was realizing that he was a radical in his mid twenties without many mentors from older generations (a common phenomenon in anarchist and other radical worlds). What began as a relationship of mentorship and political collaboration evolved into a deep friendship. In terms of our organizing, we are both oriented towards prefigurative experiments: trying to contribute to projects and forms of life where we are able to live and relate differently with others, here and now, and supporting others doing the same. Both of us are white cis-gendered settlers, and for us this has meant trying to write in conversation with people with very different life experiences and insights, including Indigenous people, kids and youth, Black people and other folks of color, and genderqueer and trans folks, all of whom struggle against forms of violence and oppression that we can never know. We have also sought to talk to people from a wide variety of movements in many different places throughout Turtle Island (North America) and Latin America.

Over the course of a year and a half we spoke with friends, and friends of friends. This was a unique research process, in part, because we were inviting people into an ongoing conversation, asking them to reflect on and respond to our continually evolving ideas about joyful militancy and rigid radicalism. We formally interviewed fifteen people in all: Silvia Federici, adrienne maree brown, Marina Sitrin, Gustavo Esteva, Kelsey Cham C., Zainab Amadahy, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Melanie Matining, Tasnim Nathoo, Sebastian Touza, Walidah Imarisha, Mik Turje, Margaret Killjoy, Glen Coulthard, and Richard Day. We also had many more informal conversations with folks from a lot of different backgrounds, of all ages, who impacted our thinking immensely.

These people are not representatives of any particular group or movement. Nor are we holding them up as the ultimate embodiment of joy, militancy, or radicalism. They are people with whom we share values and who inspire and challenge us. All of them are committed, in various ways, to forcing Empire out of their lives and reviving and nurturing other worlds. They are involved in a diversity of movements, struggles, and forms of life: the uprisings in Oaxaca and Argentina; small-scale farming and urban food justice; Black liberation and prison abolition; Indigenous resurgence and land defense; transformative and healing justice movements; radical ecology and permaculture; scavenging and squatting; youth liberation and deschooling; feminist and anti-violence work; the creation of autonomous, queer, BIPOC{1} spaces; direct action and anticapitalist organizing, and much more, including the beautiful and fierce ways of being that are difficult to capture in words. Experiences among the people we interviewed ranged widely, from long-term commitments to places and communities to more itinerant and scattered spaces of belonging; from being steeped in radical theory to forms of knowledge arising through lived experience; from being well known in radical circles to being known primarily among friends, loved ones, and close collaborators.

Some we interviewed in person, some over conference calls, and others through written correspondence. We have tried to show this conversation—and to keep it going—by including extended excerpts from some of the interviews, putting them in dialogue with our own ideas and with each other. Some people we interviewed were unequivocally enthusiastic about this notion of joyful militancy, offering encouragement and affirmation. Others were more critical, alerting us to dangers, shortcomings, and confusions, and challenging some of our ideas. We have tried to show some of the ways our interlocutors challenged and disagreed with us—and diverged from each other—without pitting anyone against each other in a simplistic way.

We learned a lot from the apprehensiveness of some of the Indigenous people and people of color we interviewed, whose emotions are constantly policed and regulated, and whose struggles are constantly appropriated or erased. We heard from them that centering things like kindness, love, trust, and flourishing—especially when it comes from white people like us—can erase power relations. It can end up pathologizing so-called “negative” emotions like fear, mistrust, resentment, and anger. It can legitimize tone policing and a reactionary defense of comfort. It can fall into simplistic commandments to “be nice” or “get over” oppression and violence. Similarly, pointing to the importance of trust and openness can be dangerous and irresponsible in a world of so much betrayal and violence. These misgivings have taught us to be clear that trust and vulnerability are powerful and irreducibly risky; they require boundaries. They can never be obligations or duties.

We have also found that Spinoza’s concept of sadness can be very misleading. In contrast to joy, it means the reduction of one’s capacities to affect and be affected. Initially, we had been calling rigid radicalism “sad militancy,” drawing on others in the Spinozan current.[7] But while the concept of sad militancy was immediately intuitive for some, for others it was frustrating because of its resonance with grief and sorrow, which are an irreducible part of life and struggle. Interpreted in this light, it could be seen as belittling grief and pain. For that reason, we have decentered the concept of sadness in this book, while trying to hang onto what Spinoza was getting at. In its place, we often use words like stagnation, rigidity, and depletion, connoting a loss of collective power and the way Empire and rigid radicalism keep us stuck there. With joyful militancy we are trying to get at a multiplicity of transformations and worlds in motion, but there is a danger of implying that we are all in the same situation, and erasing difference and antagonisms. BIPOC women, trans, queer, and Two-Spirit people, in particular, have worked hard to show the specificities of the oppression they face and the specificity of their resistance and the worlds they are making.

In the face of this, we have mostly questions and tentative ideas: can joyful militancy affirm and explore a multiplicity of struggles and forms of life without homogenizing them? By attuning us to open-endedness of situations, can joy help us undo some of the universalizing and colonizing tendencies of radical Western theory and practice? Can movements be explored in ways that enable mutual learning and transformation, rather than erasing difference?

Here, we want to return to the dynamic space beyond fixed norms on the one hand, and “anything goes” relativism on the other. Outside this false dichotomy is the domain of relationships that are alive, responsive, and make people capable of new things together, without imposing this on everyone else. It is in this space where values like openness, curiosity, trust, and responsibility can really flourish, not as fixed ways of being to be applied everywhere, but as ways of relating that can only be kept alive by cultivating careful, selective, and fierce boundaries. For joy to flourish, it needs sharp edges.

How do we know when to be open and vulnerable, and when to draw lines in the sand and fight? Who to trust, and how? When are relationships worth fighting for, and when do they need to be abandoned? These are not questions with pre-given answers; they can only be answered over and over again in a multiplicity of ways. A crucial outgrowth of joy and fidelity to it, we suggest, is that people will take different paths and have different priorities. Movements and forms of life will diverge and sometimes come into conflict. There is no trump card that can be used to dictate a path to others: not the state, not morality, and not strategic imperatives of unity or movement-building. Encountering difference might lead to new capacities, strong bonds, and new forms of struggle. Or it might be more ambivalent and difficult, mixing distance and closeness. Or it might mean being told to fuck off. For all these reasons, we try to share some of our own values, and some of the struggles and movements that deeply inspire us, without saying that they are right for everyone or that others should share our priorities.

[molsno]

feminism will always fail as long as feminists continue to work within existing power structures. advocacy with the purpose of elevating women to the same position as men within current legal frameworks, even if successful, will only benefit the most privileged (white, cisgender, heterosexual, thin, able-bodied, neurotypical, upper-class) women, while failing all the rest. the solution to the gender wage gap, for instance, is not additional legislation, it's the abolition of capitalism and imperialism. as long as two people with the same job can be paid different wages, as long as they're not entitled to the fruits of their labor, as long as it's profitable to take advantage of low labor costs in the global south, women will continue to be oppressed. the goal of feminism MUST be to abolish the structures that allow women to be oppressed in the first place, otherwise it will fail to meaningfully liberate women.

[forwomenbiwomen]

Hi!! Do you know anything about how the ideas of sex and gender became sperated?

To me, they've always been synonyms. It's just that "sex" was a scientific term (bio and med) and that "gender" was the everyday term. Just like how "menstruation" is a scientific term but people would generally say "period" instead, unless you're in a health class or at the doctor's.I know obviously trans people say they see sex and gender as different (although they really don't always act like they do.....I'm thinking specifically of trans people who want to change their sex marker on driver's liscenses and birth certificates but I'm sure there are other examples.) And I still have no clue what they actually mean by gender.

Anyway! I started looking into gender critical because the phrase made me think GCs were critical of gender roles and stereotypes. But it sounds like GCs also consider gender to be different than sex and I don't quite understand it. I've seen GCs say they're for gender abolition. So when you say "gender" are you using it as a stand-in for stereotypes? Or does it mean something else?

(P.S. I'm sending this ask to a few other GC tumblr accounts to hear different opinions/explanations)

Hello! 👋👋👋 💞💞

Yes, gender and sex are different. One is socially constructed and oppressive, and the other is biology. It did used to mean pretty much the same thing (bcs gender roles were absolutely rigid in the past) but with second wave feminism it began to take on a separate meaning, emphasising the way that socially constructed behaviours are expected from and leveraged to harm women.

Gender then basically means feminine or masculine behaviours and presentation, with no inherently corresponding sex.

Where radfems are critical of it is in the way women are expected to conform to these behaviours and presentations otherwise they are derided and ostracised by society.

Conservatives think

Female = Woman = Feminine

Male = Man = Masculine

Which leaves no room for GNC people and is biased against women (if you don't know, femininity is inherently passive and decorative)

Libfems/TRAs think (or at least their actions indicate)

Woman = Feminine

Man = Masculine

And ignores sex. This again leaves no room for GNC people. This can be seen in the countless times they claim a masculine woman to be an 'egg', or a feminine man to be an 'egg'.

Radfems think

Female = Woman

Male = Man

This doesn't presuppose anything about the person's behaviour or presentation. It is the only one to ignore gender completely, therefore only describing adult females as women and adult males as men. GNC people are thereby entirely free to present however they wish, while still acknowledging their sex, which is unchangeable and neutral.

Without culturally pressured gender roles (gender abolition) radfems believe that women's oppression under gender will fade away. It means doing away with feminine clothes making you "girly" and masculine clothes making you "manly". It means being confident as a woman isn't bitchy and being confident as a man is heroic; both are simply confident.

When TRA's claim to subvert gender roles, it is only true in that they are overwhelmingly GNC. However, they are working within the patriarchal framework; they believe that your behaviour and presentation (gender) is indicative of your inner, spiritual sex, and that GNC means you were born in the wrong body, because men don't act like that, or women dont act like that. Just look at all the stories of "I played with dolls and was effeminate, that means I'm actually a woman inside!!" etc.

By changing their presentation, they believe this identifies them with something other than their own sex. There is nothing else to tether them to this nebulous idea of sex escapism. In non-binary cases, this androgynous presentation is believed to separate you from being a woman and a man, despite those words only describing adult humans. It is the species-specific word for adult of that sex. (side note: this is the same linguistic pattern used for other animals, such as a adult female elephant being a cow and an adult male elephant being a bull. They are species-specific and indicate nothing about personality.)

It is sometimes backed up with pseudo-science such as brain sex, which has been debunked in several notable studies. Along with dysphoria, they are touted as 'proof' that they're a "man trapped in a woman's body" or vice versa. This claim is impossible if you don't believe there is consistent, verifiable dimorphism between the brains of men and women (brain sex) or that trans people somehow possess the soul of another sex. When they say that sex and gender are different, what they really mean is that they are only different on the outside.

It is far, far more likely that dysphoric individuals simply do not identify with the socially constructed gender pushed onto their sex. This does not make them another sex, this makes them GNC individuals.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

also like this isn’t a not all men in the sense of defending men but also like. yeah you do need to recognise men are not inherently more inclined to harm than anyone else. not to defend them but because doing otherwise just loops around into treating men like wild animals that women need to be careful to not tempt and it avoids placing responsibility onto men and the patriarchy paradoxically enough. oppression is a bunch of nonsensical and arbitrary ways of hurting people for other's gain. people are not oppressed because of any natural thing, those are just excuses made up by the powerful to keep their power. for example, i'm disabled, but the systematic obstacles in my place aren’t because abled people are inherently wired to want to hurt me, it’s because powerful people can gain more money and more influence by keeping me downtrodden and not providing me support. you have to acknowledge that bigotry is not inherent, it is taught and it is used as a weapon by people who benefit from it. but it isn’t like, an actual physical law like gravity it’s just shit people made up about groups that ultimately are not that different- because humanity is ultimately not that different, not in the way bigotry positions groups as disparate. it’s why stuff like gender essentialism ends up just being like “misogyny but we hate men instead of women bc they’re so superior and inherently better than us and it’s not fair” like if you play by those arbitrary definitions you are ultimately meeting bigotry on its own terms and it’s own terms are stupid and wrong.

and to clarify this isn’t about people genuinely talking about oppression, it’s fucking radfems mostly. there’s a reason so many of them hate trans people and it’s bc engaging with misogyny like it's a Thing That Is Physical And Concrete and not just. a thing that’s made up out of nonsense to oppress women just doesn’t work. women aren’t oppressed because of anything innate in humanity, they’re oppressed because people in power benefit from it. there are of course differences- on average men tend to have more upper body strength than women, for example- but women are not oppressed Because of that, that is simply taken advantage of to Perpetuate the oppression. we aren’t born with the mindset anyone weaker than us is worse. that’s just something people come up with to have more influence. abolition of bigoted structures is never complete while playing into their own game.

[leftistfeminista]

What are the driving forces behind this development, and what does it tell us about the transformations that are taking place in the global economy and in the social position of women? Answers to these questions have varied, but it is my objective to demonstrate that, while this new surge of violence takes different forms, a common denominator is the devaluation of women’s lives and labor that globalization promotes. In other words, the new violence against women is rooted in structural trends that are constitutive of capitalist development and state power as such, in all time periods.

Capitalist development begins with a war on women. The witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe and the New World led to the deaths of thousands. As I wrote in my 2004 book Caliban and the Witch, this historically unprecedented phenomenon was a central element of the process that Marx defined as primitive accumulation, for it destroyed a universe of female subjects and practices that stood in the way of the nascent system’s main requirements: the accumulation of a massive workforce and the imposition of a more constraining discipline of labor. The naming of women as witches and the persecution of them for their witchcraft paved the way for the confinement of women in Europe to unpaid domestic labor. It legitimated their subordination to men in and beyond the family. It gave the state control over their reproductive capacity, guaranteeing the creation of generations of new workers. In this way, the witch hunts constructed a specifically capitalist, patriarchal order that has continued into the present, though it has been constantly adjusted in response to women’s resistance and the changing needs of the labor market.

From the tortures and executions to which women accused of witchcraft were subjected, other women soon learned that they would have to be obedient and silent, and would have to accept hard labor and men’s abuses, in order to be socially accepted. Until the eighteenth century, those who fought back might be condemned to the “scold’s bridle,” a metal and leather contraption, also used to muzzle slaves, that enclosed the wearer’s head and, if she attempted to speak, lacerated her tongue. Gender-specific forms of violence were also perpetrated on American plantations where by the eighteenth century (per Ned Sublette and Constance Sublette’s 2015 study The American Slave Coast) masters’ sexual assaults on female slaves had turned into a systematic politics of rape, as planters attempted to replace the importation of slaves from Africa with a local breeding industry centered in Virginia.

Violence against women did not, of course, disappear with the end of the witch hunts or with the abolition of slavery. On the contrary: It was normalized. The sterilization of women of color, poor women, and women who practiced their sexuality outside marriage continued into the 1960s. Similarly, until feminists forced its recognition, rape in the family did not exist, as far as the state was concerned. As Giovanna Franca Dalla Costa pointed out in Un lavoro d’amore (The Work of Love, 1978), violence has always been present as a subtext, a possibility, in the nuclear family, because men, through their wages, have been given the power to supervise women’s unpaid domestic labor, to use women as their servants, and to punish their refusal of this work. This is why domestic violence perpetrated by men was, until recently, not considered a crime. In parallel with the state’s legitimation of parents’ right to punish their children, who must be trained in obedience so that they’ll be tractable workers, domestic violence against women was tolerated by the courts and the police as a legitimate response to women’s noncompliance in their domestic duties.

It’s essential to emphasize that violence against women is a key element in this new global war not only because of the horror it evokes or the messages it sends, but also because of what women represent in their capacity to keep their communities together and, equally importantly, to defend noncommercial conceptions of security and wealth. In Africa and India, for instance, until recently, women had access to communal land and devoted a good part of their workday to subsistence farming. But both communal land tenure and subsistence agriculture have come under heavy institutional attack, criticized by the World Bank as one of the causes of global poverty, the argument being that land is a “dead asset” unless it is legally registered and used as collateral to obtain bank loans with which to start some entrepreneurial activity.

[wreckitremy]

The Political Platform of the Democratic Socialists of America:

Abolition of the Carceral State

Abolition of White Supremacy

A Powerful Labor Movement

Economic Justice

Gender and Sexuality Justice

Green New Deal

Health Justice

Housing for All

International Solidarity,

Anti-Imperialism, and Anti-Militarism

DSA' Political Platform on

Gender and Sexuality Justice

DSA is a socialist feminist organization. We organize people of all genders to fight against systems of oppression and exploitation, including patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.

Liberal representation feminism is content with increasing the number of female faces in oppressive structures. A few women in positions of power, however, is not liberation. Liberation means all genders having freedom and control over their own lives and bodies through ending exploitation.

DSA fights to build a feminism for and by the working class and all oppressed people. Capitalism specifically impacts women workers through devaluing of feminized labor, sexual violence in the workplace, unpaid housework, and the expectation of emotional labor.

DSA fights for the democratization of domestic and care work, political and social liberation for all genders, full bodily autonomy for all, and the end of state recognition of the gender binary.

We stand in solidarity with grassroots feminist movements around the world in their fight against capitalist oppression and exploitation.

We organize for the liberation of queer people, understanding that liberation – having the power to define our life choices, and fulfill our greatest potential — depends on achieving economic justice for the multiracial working class, and all oppressed people.

We fight against violence against black transgender women, federal and state discrimination, and all political and social barriers to full control over ourbodies and sexualities. We seek equity so that queer people, subject to discrimination and violence, have the means to livea liberated, fulfilling life.

We strongly oppose “rainbow capitalism,” in which banks, police, andcorporations wrap themselves in Pride flags during June in order to make profit, all while exploiting queer workers.

We likewise reject “homonationalism,” the process of using superficial support of LGBTQ+ people, such as US military propaganda featuring gay couples, to provide cover for the brutalities of the American empire. Companies in the military-industrial complex may march in corporate Pride parades, but we recognize them for what they are: enemies of the global working class, and of the international queer liberation movement.

We seek nothing less than liberation.

OUR DEMANDS:

Reproductive Justice for All

Free contraception and birth control for all who want it, provided by the state

Free fertility treatment for all

Free abortion on demand

Repeal of the Hyde Amendment and all legal restrictions on abortion access

Reparations for all those impacted by reproductive and sexual violence committed by the state, such as those forced to undergo hysterectomies in ICE detension

An immediate end to forced sterilization of disabled people

Affordable representation of disabled people within family courts

Protection and expansion of the legal rights of disabled parents regarding guardianship

Paid parental leave for all people

Universal child care, elder care, and pre-kindergarten

Quality, age appropriate, and comprehensive sex-ed taught in schools

End Employment and Housing Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression

Enact federal and state anti-discrimination laws, including passage of ENDA and the Equality Act, as well as the addition of “sexual orientation, gender identity and expression” as a protected category in all human rights laws

Require “just cause” for evicting someone from housing or terminating employment

Enhance and strengthen equal pay guarantees, including by requiring the EEOC to resume collecting pay data from large employers, forbidding prior salary from being considered in setting pay rates, and increasing transparency and protections for workers discussing their own pay

Housing for all and a universal ban on housing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity

End Anti-Queer Violence

The establishment of community-based response systems to transphobic and homophobic violence, especially violence targeting black trans women, that is entirely separated from the police and criminal law system

Put in place greater protections for survivors of sexual assault and abolition of the requirement that survivors file a police report to access funds

Allow transgender prisoners to be housed in facilities reflecting their gender identities

Guarantee Queer-Friendly and Gender Affirming Healthcare

Enact a single-payer Medicare for All system that provides free queer sexual health and gender affirming healthcare, including HIV care, PrEP, fertilty treatments, birth control, abortion care, mental health care, hormone replacement therapy, and gender-affirming surgeries

Allow trans minors to access gender affirming care without parental consent

Prioritize funding for health centers that provide transgender healthcare, especially in rural and conservative areas, on reservations, and in underserved urban areas

Guarantee that transition-related healthcare, including HRT and surgery, to all incarcerated people who request it

End gender restrictions in insurance coverage, such as the practice of only covering contraceptive costs for women, and demand healthcare tailored to our actual bodies rather than our ID cards

End gendered restrictions on medical care, including but not limited to services available to sexual assault survivors

End the Repression of Sex Workers and Fully Decriminalize Sex Work Nationwide

Repeal FOSTA/SESTA

Increase consideration of the intersection of disability and sex work and provision of specific resources for disabled sex workers

Dignity for domestic and care workers

Increased wages for domestic labor and care work, including through a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation

Require domestic laborers and home health aides to be paid for all hours worked

The end of mandated 24-hour workdays

End the State Recognition of the Gender Binary and Enforcement of Heteronormativity

Remove all barriers and requirements to changing one’s ID gender marker and legal name

End all laws prohibiting cohabitation of unrelated people, which exist only to privilege the heterosexual nuclear family over nontraditional and chosen family

End conversion therapy and provide stronger supportive care for minors whose families abandon them

Grant all privileges afforded to married couples to all consenting partnerships

Eliminate the financial and healthcare barriers for disabled people to marry freely

This pamphlet contains an excerpt from the Political Platform of the Democratic Socialists of America, ratified at the organization’s 2021 National Convention. The platform is a living document, up for amendment by our highest deliberative body, the national convention, every other year. You can read the current version of the full platform at ntdsa.org/nationaldsaplatform

Read the latest version of DSA’s full platform at

ntdsa.org/nationaldsaplatform

[lettucedloophole]

i didn't understand trans ppl who didnt want to fully transition Until I Became One. the narrative is just not so simple... no one should be forced to change their body to fit arbitrary gendered standards

i kinda like having boobs so i won't get rid of them. (props 2 transmascs n nbs who do tho.) and ya the reason i like them is gendered but so is everything. Cant escape the Gender. so it's best to exist with it the best you can while we work towards gender/sex abolition

[rollercoasterwords]

heyo! on your tags for the sports post i was curious if you could expand a little on getting rid of gender divided sports leagues?

i’ve never really considered the issue and my only frame of reference would be from my women friends who were undergrad athletes (mostly swimmers/ xc runners) that funded their education through sports and would not be performing at a collegiate level if there was no league for women.

i always love to learn more and while i’ve always been 100% in support of trans women competing in women’s sports, i have never thought about doing away with gendered sports completely so i was curious if there was any reading that shaped ur opinion on the topic!

i mean i think that post itself kinda sums up my own feelings on dividing sports leagues by gender--if the goal in such divisions is to 'even the playing field' by grouping competitors by equal skill or physical ability, then it makes more sense to just....do that. divide sports by weight class where weight would make a significant difference, or height class where height would make a significant difference, etc. or just....let everyone play together, because sports are never going to be perfectly 'fair' in the first place, bc everyone will have physical differences that lend themselves to different sports. again, based on my own personal experience playing in coed soccer leagues as a teen, it really just felt arbitrary to then go play in teams divided by gender; sure, sometimes the boys were better than the girls, but sometimes the girls were better than the boys. the park league i played in just randomized the teams so that there was a mix of skill level on every one, and you worked with what you had. granted, it was just something all of us were doing for fun or extra practice to complement more 'serious' teams we were also on, but still.

i think there's this conception that gendered sports leagues are like...the only thing that allows women to have careers in sports, but i honestly just think that's bullshit. if anything, gendered leagues relegate women to what is almost unilaterally considered a secondary or less important class of athletics--generally speaking women's teams receive less funding, less attention, less institutional support. maybe some sports would have a greater proportion of men playing at a professional level than women if we eradicated gendered divisions between teams, but others would likely have a higher proportion of women (there are already sports where women tend to make up a higher proportion of competitors, like gymnastics or cheer, but those sports are just undervalued because of our existing gendered dynamics in sports where boy sport = serious and girl sport = frivolous), and i also genuinely think there would be plenty of women who could compete on the same playing field as men in popular sports like soccer or baseball or basketball, etc. like. there a lot of professional women athletes who are really fucking good.

and the thing is, when i (and others) say "hey we should get rid of gendered sports leagues," none of us are envisioning this happening in a vaccuum; we're envisioning it happening as part of a wider project of fomenting gender equality (or, eventually, gender abolition)--working to change material conditions so that girls have equal resources to train and play sports if they want to, to make sure everyone has access to the sort of healthcare necessary to play sports, to food and clean water, etc. working to change sexist attitudes about what girls can or can't do or should or shouldn't do that lead people to devalue girls' athletics in the first place. i think part of the reason so many people balk at the idea of eradicating gendered sports leagues is that they imagine snapping their fingers and erasing women's leagues within the already-existing sexist system of current sports leagues, without contextualizing it as a wider project aimed at eradicating sexism throughout athletic culture, etc.

and like, with regard to your example of your friends who wouldn't be competing at the collegiate level without women's leagues. i guess my question there is like...why not? is it because they can't compete with the boys in those leagues? or is it simply because that's the existing structure, so their only option for competing is to compete in a women's league? obviously for people who depend on things like athletic scholarships this is a touchy subject, but again, for me it comes down to the fact that this whole issue doesn't exist in a vaccuum; in the first place, i think a college education should be free to anyone who wants it, and so the project of eradicating gendered sports leagues would ideally be happening in the context of a wider project of making education accessible, removing barriers to educational access, etc. like...these are all things we should be fighting for together.

at the end of the day, i see gendered sports leagues as a 'solution' to the issue of sexism in athletics that treat the symptom rather than the cause, and in doing so only reifies gender essentialism and this idea that women are 'biologically' inferior athletes (and also reifies 'women' and 'men' as two discrete prediscursive categories of being). eradicating gendered sports leagues while simultaneously working in other ways to eradicate sexism actually begins to address the underlying cause: gender essentialism. yes, any change would be slow, and there would certainly still be struggles w sexism in ungendered sports leagues. but just because change would be difficult doesn't mean it's a good reason to accept things the way they are, imo.

[mommy-issues-haver]

i try to interact with as much reasonable anti-terf content as possible (as in, there's no reason for me to engage in "kill all terfs!!1!" content) and i think the main issue i see in most of it is a misunderstanding of what actual radical feminists believe versus the far-right spokesmen who just hate gender nonconformity. i just watched a video where the creator used ben shapiro as an example for terf beliefs, as if he is actually at all relevant to any feminist.

all the "terfs" i know are radically gender non-conforming. none of them are trying to reinstate gender roles but based exclusively on sex. we are not following patriarchal beauty standards and we actively fight against them. no makeup, no leg shaving for most of us. in many ways we are not presenting in the gender role of "woman" but simply believe in the importance of keeping that label as something to define us as an oppressed sex class.

the denial of how your sex "assignment" at birth affects most people throughout their lives feels very bizarre to me. no, i don't think that mtfs can escape male privilege and i don't think ftms can escape misogyny. if nothing else, these things will always be present internally and in their actions because of their socialization. looking at the poorer treatment of mtfs and generally better treatment of ftms, we can see that these are both based in misogyny, which is, as anyone will admit, a form of oppression originally established to control women and their reproductive capabilities. if there were no misogyny there would be no "transmisogyny." we can't attempt to reduce oppression by starting from the surface. or, even if that were to work and we were to eliminate transmisogyny, we would be doing nothing for boring old sex-based misogyny. and if that's where your values lie then i genuinely don't know what to say -- you are an old school misogynist.

there also seems to be a confusion on how radical feminists actually see the concept of gender. we do see it as something that obviously and clearly exists -- gender is the expression of sexism and the entire structure by which women are oppressed. but it is not the same as gender identity, which is an ephemeral, immaterial, and metaphysical concept. separating these terms is necessary for understanding radical feminism.

the radical feminist approach is a multi-step one. much like marx recognized the necessity of capitalism as an interim step before first socialism and later a moneyless and classless communist society could exist, radical feminists see protection of women's sex-based rights and spaces as a crucial interim step before gender abolition can occur. and even among radical feminists there are disagreements about what the root of misogyny truly is -- that is, do men oppress women because of the societal structures that have been upheld over millennia, or is it because of something innate to the male existence? (personally i prefer to think that it is a socialized response, though you can make an argument for either.)

further, women have to survive. i find it odd that it's acceptable to have a job in the professional managerial class for leftists because of the acknowledgement that everyone has to make money to live in our society, but it is a clear sign that radical feminists have no real principles if they are not the stereotypical frumpy, fat, hairy, man-hating lesbian feminist (which plenty of us are anyway. i'm not not that, but i don't feel more principled for being it). i can't speak for radical feminists in the global south, where i imagine this issue is amplified tenfold, but it is incredibly difficult to completely eschew gender roles while trying to exist in our society. it can get you fired from some jobs. it'll definitely keep you from getting hired at others. people won't care about harm coming to you if you aren't traditionally attractive. there is a significant degree of privilege, social and financial, awarded for conforming to gender norms. this is relevant.

most radical feminists don't care if a man actually fulfils a traditionally female role or "emasculates" himself by doing something like baking. but they also believe that that doesn't make them a woman, because they don't believe that erasing the boundaries of oppression by allowing anyone to identify in and out of an oppressed class is productive or relevant. and when it comes to medical transition, i think that the main points of contention are, first and foremost, that radical feminists only see gender as an invalid structure of oppression within which internal identity is irrelevant and second, gender dysphoria is something that cannot be separated from misogyny. (for ftms the relationship to misogyny is more obvious, but more mtfs the misogyny lies either in the pleasure of becoming the submissive woman or in no longer being seen as a homosexual -- something that is inherently gender non-conforming.)

finally, there is a distinct ahistorical thread present in the trans conversation. we need to respect the women of the second wave movement, who did more than they are given credit for not only in advancing women's rights but social acceptance of gender non-conformity and gay rights as well. we should heed their warnings when they tell us to talk proudly about women and women's bodies and to not allow femaleness to be erased. fundamentally, i believe this comes back to a point i have never heard someone criticizing radical feminists bring up -- the idea of a sex class and how it is relevant to the conversation of oppression. the sex class is the root, and class consciousness is the key.