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DiscussionWhat can GC feminism do to support girls who aren't girly?
Obligatory: I considered "butch", "GNC" and "masculine" as adjectives. Each has some problems, especially when talking about children. I'm not happy with "un-girly" since it has the same problem as "gender non-conforming." The moment that anyone can come up with another word for being female and uninterested in, neutral, or theatrical towards femininity, please, please let me know.
I haven't read Irreversible Damage yet, but I have it on library hold. (My library provided a helpful content warning lest I injure my eyeballs. I am #2 in line for 5 copies, which I thought was interesting.) I'm hopeful that it goes into some reasons that girls were so successfully exploited by the gender movement into thinking they needed to change themselves. I was one of those girls well into my 30s. I never decided to go on T but off the top of my head I have a dozen acquaintances and dear friends who did. I have two cousins in their early 20s whom I think are very likely to detransition.
The mom and daughter in the Barbie movie held this up so perfectly that I teared up in the theater. Here's a girl whom conventional femininity doesn't speak to. Society in the last 10 years has decided on her behalf that this girl's available futures are TiF, enby, very small chance of butch, or if not gay then alienated outsider woman. The right doesn't love this girl, but they aren't telling her she isn't a girl. Until recently it seems the right only wanted Christian matriarchs and tradwives, but now they're happy to have career women like Usha Vance as long as they are thin, waxed, wrinkle-free, made up, and willing to stand behind their husbands wearing an evening gown on TV.
Who are the living, famous masc and unfemme women who aren't trans? I can come up with Angela Merkel, Temple Grandin, Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, Jane Goodall, Stacey Abrams, Tracy Chapman, Hannah Gadsby, and for some under 30, Greta Thunberg and Billie Eilish. I thought of Ellen DeGeneres but am not endorsing her as a role model. Likewise Hillary Clinton is a tough choice for a role model but I'd stand by her before Ellen.
I think the horses have left the barn with they/them and they/she as used by girls and women due to a desire to be seen. I think that pronouns are going to remain a sticking point for women on the left against overcoming the gender ideology that otherwise solely benefits men. It has a huge component of internalized misogyny but I don't think it's entirely that. There is something to wanting to take up space as a girl who doesn't feel like "Ladies," ... is speaking to her. That space was what Bitch tried to make bigger but now Bitch is gone too. I'm afraid girls and women who don't feel girly will just be offered nothing and actually feel like they're losing something, because femininity per the male gaze is still more acceptable than any other kind of womanhood.