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feizhouxiongdi2 posted:I just had a lengthy internet discussion(fight?) with a self proclaimed feminist, who claims that the very concept of gender spectrum is not real, transgender rights are hurting feminism and specifically MTF transgender people are feminism's enemy. If your feminism does not address other forms of systemic oppression then it's complicit in perpetuating that oppression. Other forms of inequality also wind up hurting women (black women, gay women, etc.) and if you are not supporting their causes as well then you're not really advocating for women as a group, you're just advocating for a privileged subset of women. Even then, however, you are unlikely to make much progress even for that privileged subset. Oppressive systems maintain themselves by turning minorities against one another; if they are unable to make common cause with each other then they wind up having to jockey with each other for attention and support. The fact that this argument even exists is literally a tool of patriarchy to keep women divided both amongst themselves and from other groups that are hurt by systemic sexism. Even if you accept their argument that "transgender" is not a thing and MtF individuals are really men in dresses, the idea that they are somehow beneficiaries of patriarchy defies all rational belief. Anyone who does not practice their assigned birth gender is just as much a victim of patriarchy as any woman. Arguing that gender-nonconformity in any form is anti-feminist very quickly circles around to dictating gender performance to women; oppressing trans people is oppressing women no matter how you slice it. (There is perhaps some room for arguing about definitions around the edges, but transphobes rarely manage to keep themselves to edge issues.) Fighting Trousers posted:Basically TERFs are the Phyllis Schlaflys of second wave feminism - femininity is special and precious and if you let just anyone have access to it, it won't be special anymore. The old school second wave argument was that femininity was inherently harmful and no one should have access to it because it exists solely to harm women. That tradition is the fig leaf that TERFs use to claim legitimacy for their brand of "feminism", even though nowadays most TERFs have largely abandoned the aggressive gender neutrality of second wavers and are now either (bad) choice feminists or crypto-Phyllis Schlaflys.
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Apr 1, 2021 19:04
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Torquemada posted:Should we just all become egalitarians and remove all the subdivisions dedicated to fighting oppression whatever its stripe, or does this sound like ‘all lives matter’ bullshit my brain is expressing wrong (because that isn’t my intent). The key difference is that no one saying "all lives matter" is actually saying "white supremacy hurts white people too and we need to tackle it together regardless of race." Women, trans people, LGBTQ people, etc. all experience different forms of oppression (with some overlap) but ultimately it is all the same interconnected system of oppression. For example, even though they are not women gay men still suffer from misogyny: they are seen as less than men for wanting sex with men (like a woman.) Because blurring gender roles undermines the hierarchical dominance of men over women they are singled out for abuse in order to reinforce the rigid line separating Us and Them. Feminist women and gay men definitely can and sometimes do resent each other because they experience very different patterns of oppression and on a superficial level they don't seem to have much use for each other. But neither one is ever going to reach full equality without the other, so it's to everyone's benefit for them to mutually support each other's causes.
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Apr 4, 2021 13:30
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