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Gender Critical Feminism
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
"Men often react to women’s words—speaking and writing—as if they were acts of violence; sometimes men react to women’s words with violence. So we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back. Most women have experienced enough dominance from men—control, violence, insult, contempt—that no threat seems empty." –Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse
28 comments
This book really opened my eyes to how much women's history we've forgotten:
https://archive.org/details/womenofideaswhat00spenrich
Somewhere in the book Spender writes about how men's history is directional while women's history is cyclical--every couple of generations we have to 'rediscover' important women and their work; for some reason women's history and women's accomplishments just never 'stick'. This is a really sobering example of that. So the wider question for me is how do we stop this cycle, and stop forgetting everything women say and do every few generations?
It seems like it is such a small number of people who write history - who really care, who have the money, who invest time and effort to make sure people are remembered for what they do. And that's often why someone becomes part of the storyline. Sometimes it happens spontaneously but so often after someone dies, their work is remembered by their fans or students, but then those people move on to new things, or just die themselves, and if they haven't spread knowledge and excitement about the person's accomplishments then it will just wither away - even someone fairly popular can be forgotten soon enough.
In some circles there are prizes and memorials for people, grants, conferences, buildings and special days to celebrate, that make it more likely that they are kept in memory. Quoting, dedicating, referring to those who came before, revering what was produced and pointing it out regularly, is important to making someone part of history... men may be more involved in the public sphere, talking more consistently about their mentors and influencers, more likely to spend the end of their life dedicating new trusts and fellowships rather than playing with the grandchildren, starting charities and funds to "secure a legacy". It can work, and it can affect who else is remembered since the people they talk about are automatically part of that group.
"History" isn't one absolute line, it's just the endless memories people repeat and record about what happened, so what gets told the most and the most loudly is most likely to be heard.