May 2013
12 posts
crunkfeministcollective:
POP FEMINIST PERBLOG: (tw rape)
rgr-pop:
As if I’m surprised that these bros are disregarding every history of the “movement” they have deigned to lead, as if I am surprised they choose to so consistently deliberately push out the voices and wishes and bodies and concerns and histories and works of every survivor.
How can you miss all the criticisms of the “‘yes...
5 tags
“Here’s the thing: People fucking despise trans women. Often the nicest...”
– Vivian Taylor, I’m A Trans Woman And I’m Not Interested In Being One of the “Good Ones”
I’d add that while we also internalise this, as Taylor describes in some encounters with other trans* women, our internalising of it is not the same as cis people’s use of it....
4 tags
“I rang the literary editors of a few ‘respected’ papers and asked...”
– Dale Spender, correspondence, in Dale and Lynne Spender, Scribbling Sisters (Camden Press, 1986), pp. 31-32
1 tag
Call for Submissions: Trans Feminine...
lumpenspaceprincess:
Being a trans lady is real hard, and part of that is especially in places like where I grew up and live there’s nobody to reflect back to you and say “no actually what you’re feeling is real and valid and ok.”
Reading Nevada by Imogen Binnie fucked with me for like a week straight because I don’t think I’ve ever read another story where a trans lady was a 3 dimensional...
5 tags
“Some apparently innocent characteristics conceal crucial ambiguities of power;...”
– Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Routledge, 2003), pp. 65-66
The bit of MacKinnon she’s referencing is this:
When difference means dominance as it does with gender, for women to affirm differences is to affirm the qualities and characteristics of powerlessness. Women may...
ananiujitha:
radtransfem:
koboldfacedlie:
sendificator:
yuriadventure:
sendificator:
i just think “The Abolition Of Gender” seems so abstract and nebulous and basically impossible and we should really be focused on FUCKING with gender and allowing gender to mean more than just male or female and allowing people to create their own gender and do gender in ways that make them happy and...
6 tags
“… a study comparing heterosexual and lesbian mothers concluded that the...”
– Nancy Polikoff, Lesbian mothers, lesbian families: Legal obstacles, legal challenges, in NYU Review of Law and Social Change 14 (1986), p908
quoted in Suzanne Slater, The Lesbian Family Life Cycle (The Free Press, 1995), pp. 92-3
Slater also notes that, “[Feminist] parents must often choose...
3 tags
koboldfacedlie:
sendificator:
yuriadventure:
sendificator:
i just think “The Abolition Of Gender” seems so abstract and nebulous and basically impossible and we should really be focused on FUCKING with gender and allowing gender to mean more than just male or female and allowing people to create their own gender and do gender in ways that make them happy and promote the respect of every...
timseriladashmimeni:
shoutout to all my trans* sisters who’re radical feminists and have to put up with the shitty trans*phobia that this movement breeds.
Bless you. I don’t think I’ve ever read those words, apropos nothing. Thank you for seeing me. :)
(Are there other trans* woman radical feminists on this thread? Call me! Well, ‘ask’ me…)
An open letter to Suzanne Moore (because she...
stavvers:
Update: She’s unblocked me, we’re talking.
Hi Suzanne,
I’m a little bit confused by your recent Guardian article about why women need feminism. The first half is OK, but the second half swiftly descends into a bizarre diatribe against intersectionality.
First you say this:
“One of the problems with the jargon of intersectionality is that it splinters.” Now, I’ve covered this...
abstractions & anti-discrimination law
mntcndtn:
Fundamentally, the law has often failed to call the problem of discrimination by a real name—say, white supremacy or male dominance. It has instead used more neutral terms like “racism” or “racial classifications” or “race,” or “sexism” or “sex classifications” or “sex,” terms that fail to specify who is doing what to whom. As a result, while many conditions of actual disadvantage are...
April 2013
31 posts
4 tags
Trans women in feminism: nothing about us without... →
Why are we not having debates within feminism that at least accord trans people, particularly trans women, the respect of our identities and experiences? Why must each debate be restarted from scratch each time? Rahila’s piece relies on one googled statistic, a trans woman who supports her own position, and her own beliefs and prejudices about trans people.
…
This keeps happening because...
Simone de Beauvoir was against... →
My position—following Naomi Scheman’s statement that “transsexual lives are lived, hence livable”—has always been that trans women are women because they just are; trans existence does not require any theoretical justification any more than cis existence does. But when trans activists and allies resort to a mis-interpretation of classical feminist text to argue against the anti-trans bigotry...
5 tags
some thoughts on ecofeminism, radical feminism,...
I find it interesting and sad that radical feminism and ecofeminism are so commonly described as essentialist, given that to my knowledge they are the two feminist tendencies with the most explicit critiques of “essences”. Radical feminists challenge the existence of a female “gender essence”, which encodes women’s oppressed condition, and argue instead that women’s situation is created through...
6 tags
“[D]evelopment… like the colonisation Plato describes in terms of the...”
– Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Routledge, 2003), p86
“If we want to talk about [sexual] rights and responsibilities, we must consider...”
– http://radtransfem.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/under-duress-agency-power-and-consent-part-two-yes/ (via sexandsocialism)
“Can a man read Intercourse? Can a man read a book written
by a woman in which...”
– Andrea Dworkin,Preface to Intercourse (via dworkinclasshero)
2 tags
“Be aware that our words are very often part of conversations we’re having...”
– rule #5, Suggested Rules for Non-Transsexuals Writing about Transsexuals, Transsexuality, Transsexualism, or Trans ____
(Written by Jacob Hale, with thanks to Talia Bettcher, Dexter D. Fogt, Judith Halberstam, and Naomi Scheman.)
Letter to the Editor: Coverage of Shirley Q.... →
emigrl:
And while I can understand and sympathize with portions of QRJ’s letter, the fact remains that PQ’s coverage of this issue has been “radically” one sided.
PQ Monthly is biased against racism!
“To declare oneself as a feminist is a statement that acts to disrupt the status...”
– http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2013/04/happiness_is_a_feminist_issue (via sexandsocialism)
More about this in Sara Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness, though I found it a pretty slow read…
5 tags
"white femininity as signs of submission"... →
There are several lively discussions on Twitter about the piece I published earlier today on white femininity, signs of submission, and a particular meaning of “femme”.
Most have leaped straight to the final part (on “femme”), without even really touching on the rest. Perhaps that’s because it’s more usual to engage on points of disagreement? I think...
this is how you do "refusing to be tokenised"... →
7 tags
white femininity as "signs of submission" &...
This is a brief post about white femininity, in which I suggest it’s a language of “signs of submission”, and talk about what this means for women who don’t display those signs. I end by discussing “femme”, its benefits and limitations.
First, when I speak about femininity I speak as a white, English woman and the “femininity” I refer to is white...
17-Apr-2013 (reflections on the end of history)
I cover my face with my hands And he laughs, Saying, “You know that doesn’t help?” There doesn’t seem any point in trying to explain That I have to do it anyway So I shrug But he’s already tuned me out His eyes are locked on the horizon And when he speaks again His mock-solemnity fails (was never meant) To hide his satisfaction As, “Now,” he proclaims,...
“What if inequality is built into the social conceptions of male and female...”
– Catharine A. MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (via isepalase)
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“Space filled with the presence of mothers, and the place where everyone is a...”
– Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (The Women’s Press, 1984), p169
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“We said disappointment was part of life. Even in our imaginations, all our...”
– Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (The Women’s Press, 1984), p176
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“We dreamed we travelled at the speed of light. And our flesh vanished to...”
– Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (The Women’s Press, 1984), p147
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“Since the existence of matter is unverifiable (Each of us can say we have heard...”
– Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (The Women’s Press, 1984), p117
TW: Rape, victim-blaming
A note on style: In this quote Griffin mixes two voices, the “rational” voice of the patriarchs and women’s voices. Griffin uses plain text for the patriarchs...
14 tags
“His voice. She hears his voice speaking. He tells her she is always defending...”
– Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (The Women’s Press, 1984), pp. 116-7
TW: abuse, violence against women, domestic violence
see also gaslighting and Nancy Henley on gestures of dominance
6 tags
“The medical student is overcome with feeling. She vomits when she ought to be...”
– Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (The Women’s Press, 1984), p114
5 tags
“We are the cows. With our large brown eyes and our soft fur there was once...”
– Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (The Women’s Press, 1984), p72
5 tags
“Clearly, the Stamina spun by women as Fates form complex patterns. The very word...”
– Mary Daly*, Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (Beacon Press 1984), p313
6 tags
“Elemental Movement is not man-measured/tidy. It is Tidal. This distinction Names...”
– Mary Daly*, Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (Beacon Press 1984), p289
8 tags
“The race-car driver is fearless. He speeds past death. In his speed is endless...”
– Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her
This section is titled “Speed” and is found in within BOOK TWO: SEPARATION - The Separations in His Vision and Under His Rule: HIS CONTROL (HOW HE BECOMES INVULNERABLE).
6 tags
“I am suggesting here that banality itself can be evil, in the sense that...”
– Mary Daly*, Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (Beacon Press 1984), p254
confused about the term "transmisogyny"
bestmiaoudoesanarchism:
emigrl:
i’m kinda confused about the usage of the term transmisogyny. it’s explained in several sources that it centers around forms of misogyny that specifically target trans women, but in practice it seems to be used mainly to address forms of transphobia (rather than misogyny) that specifically target trans women.
it also seems that the word is used, at least from...
5 tags
“Touching women See/Touch through the fallacious/phallic dichotomy implied in the...”
– Mary Daly*, Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (Beacon Press 1984), p245
4 tags
“From a thoughtful woman’s point of view, no ethical ideal has deserved our...”
– Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Tenth Anniversary Edition (Virago Press, 1992, first published 1976), p269
3 tags
“… The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be...”
– The Combahee River Collective Statement (April 1977)
please please please stop calling intersectionality “elitist” or whatever other term you’re using to dismiss it. seeing systems of oppression as interlocking and working to understand their effects is an idea developed by women...
4 tags
“Bearing in mind, then, that we are not talking about “inner space”...”
– Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Tenth Anniversary Edition (Virago Press, 1992, first published 1976), pp. 98-9
March 2013
57 posts
7 tags
2 tags
Vegan Sexual: Some thoughts about the biphobia... →
bidyke:
So - someone opened a blog dedicated to biphobia (SRSLY). And it’s been really bothering me. Maybe because I see myself as partially responsible for the chain of events that caused this blog to open (by writing the monosexual privilege checklist). So I thought I should try to…
Reblogging to say, though lesbian and a radical feminist, I’m with my bi sisters on this one....
4 tags
“Many women see any appeal to the physical as a denial of mind. We have been...”
– Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Tenth Anniversary Edition (Virago Press, 1992, first published 1976), p285
6 tags
“Childless” women have been burned as witches, persecuted as lesbians, have...”
– Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Tenth Anniversary Edition (Virago Press, 1992, first published 1976), pp. 251-2
4 tags
“The androgyne [as a concept] still fundamentally thinks in terms of...”
– Catherine R. Stimpson, The Androgyne and the Homosexual, in Women’s Studies, Vol. 2 (1974), pp. 237-48
11 tags
It's About Power: White Gender is a Dualism not a...
I live in the UK, and this post is about the dominant gender system in the UK. I suspect it also applies to much of North America and Europe. It may or may not apply beyond those areas, and is unlikely to apply to everyone within them. This is the case with all my writing. I do, however, speak with a language which takes part in historical and contemporary colonialist activity. As a result, words...
4 tags
“‘I have always gotten more support from men than from women’: a...”
– Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Tenth Anniversary Edition (Virago Press, 1992, first published 1976), pp. 245-6 