This is a women-centered, radical feminist oriented circle to discuss gender from a critical, feminist perspective.
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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
Brilliant. This line stands out:
The “transsexual empire” is thus a Trojan horse in the battle between the sexes, helping men to seduce unsuspecting women, or women who ought to know better, to join forces with their oppressors.
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??
from what I understand, speaking against queer theory and transgenderism (in academia) has been frowned upon for decades. I imagine no one really expected it to crash into the mainstream like it has, as no one really predicted just how much social media would arrest so many peoples lives. I don't think TRAism would have caught on so much without it.
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.