This is a women-centered, radical feminist oriented circle to discuss gender from a critical, feminist perspective.
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This circle is especially for discussions about gender and transgender ideology/politics. Please use /o/WomensLiberation is for discussions about other feminist topics. /o/Activism is for calls to action, including petitions and fundraisers, and /o/FeministEvents is for posting events.
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Feminism is the movement to liberate women from patriarchy. We stand up for the rights of women to control our own bodies as individuals and to control women-only spaces as a class.
Women are adult human females. We do not believe that men can become women by 'feeling' like women or 'identifying' as women. We condemn the erasure of females and female-only spaces, the silencing of critical thinking, the cancelling of feminists and critics, the denial of biological reality and of sex-based oppression. We oppose the 'cotton ceiling' and the pressure on lesbians to have sex with men. Women are oppressed to exploit their biological sex characteristics, and women have a right to a movement that is about their own liberation from that oppression. We resist the redefinition of both "women" and "feminism" to make them serve men.
"Women do not decide at some point in adulthood that they would like other people to understand them to be women, because being a woman is not an ‘identity.’ Women’s experience does not resemble that of men who adopt the ‘gender identity’ of being female or being women in any respect. The idea of ‘gender identity’ disappears biology and all the experiences that those with female biology have of being reared in a caste system based on sex." –Sheila Jeffreys, Gender Hurts
"The key thing to understand about trans rights activism is that, unlike gay rights activism, it is not just a movement seeking to ensure that trans people are not discriminated against. It is, rather, a movement committed to a fundamental reconceptualization of the very idea of what makes someone a man or a woman. In theory, this equally affects both men and women, but in practice, almost all the social pressure is coming from trans women towards the idea of ‘woman’ and the rights of women." –Jane Clare Jones
I think it’s because this isn’t a universal experience. Women who succeed in passing as men do benefit by it socially. There are some male peer groups who welcome a woman who joins their team. Women and girls have been disguising themselves as men for ages because predators avoid other predators. Sometimes the only way for a woman to get what she wanted was to be disguised as a man. The danger is there yes, but some women want more than what safety can provide, they’re willing to risk being hurt by men for the chance to have much more than an ordinary woman’s life.
The other thing is that many of these women despise women culturally. They believe they aren’t like us. They’re different in a way that makes them not deserving of women’s low status. They’re free thinkers and contrarians, they aren’t afraid to walk alone at night, they want to fight, they’re willing to take risks, they are chill, they listen to loud music and watch porn / violent movies or whatever. They identify with an archetypical male personality and culture. They’re “one of the guys.” Changing their bodies to ressemble men’s or at least be ambiguous is part of their cultural identification. It’s a full body “do it to Julia.” And in my experience this attitude doesn’t necessarily go away if they stop identifying as trans.