This is a women-centered, radical feminism 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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- /o/ItsAFetish - examples of fetishism in the trans community
- /o/ThisNeverHappens - news articles about violent trans-identified males
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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
28 comments
That, and half a dozen other flawless quotes. It’s a little spooky to see our exact arguments in such a familiar yet distant context. Not to mention how aggravating to think TRAs were clocked so accurately 40 years ago... Did no one listen??
No one in a position to do anything about it.
Maybe not at the time, but if they had started organizing then (like some others we know) we would be living in a very different world. It strikes me how most of us felt blindsided by Trans Rights and antifeminism, but this was all already understood so long ago. I read a snippet of an article about how San Francisco lesbians faced this stuff back then, Dr Em has a whole series about it which I definitely haven't had time to read, sadly. What I really want to know is how the resistance was subverted back then. Why did their campaign endure and ours didn't? Seems to me there's bound to be some valuable lessons there.
Would I be right in guessing it’s because men will always unite against women’s freedom? There are many elements, of course, but I bet that’s part of it.
Maybe one factor is how the T tacked itself onto LGB.
Among other things that happened: queer theory arrived and gave transgenderism an organised political identity...