Yesterday I got a question...

July 1, 2010

…from someone who declines to identify as a feminist b/c she/he thinks of feminists as people who are pro-women and anti-pretty-much-everything-else. I found that question pretty ridiculous, because really, what kind of asshole equates supporting women’s rights with shitting all over other marginalized groups?

The answer, as it turns out, is this kind of asshole.

To be fair, I suppose that if the only “feminists” you’d been exposed to espoused binary ideas about gender that Kinsey dismantled in 1950s; mischaracterized sex-positive feminists as inarticulate pole-working panderers; willfully ignored that patriarchy operates withing a larger framework of power and privilege; and refused to acknowledge their own privilege and resultant complicity in the type of oppression they otherwise so passionately oppose, you’d probably not want to use the term. Of course, I’d have to assume that you’ve been living exclusively under a rock somewhere, because I don’t know where else you would find this kind of rot.

Even straight, white ciswomen feminists are not a homogeneous group with homogeneous backgrounds, lived experiences, appetites, hormone levels, biology, feminine identities, etc. And to say that a transwoman doesn’t get to play in our sandbox because she—let me repeat that: SHE—wasn’t born with the right kind of shovel and therefore doesn’t really understand our very special female pain is to make a remarkably ignorant set of assumptions about what that “our” means.

When you set yourself up to tell other people, particularly other women, what a woman is or isn’t or what a woman should or shouldn’t be, when you set up rules and limits on behavior, sexuality, and biology and define “womanhood” as that which exists only within those confines, you know who you sound like? My girl True Femininity.

Women don’t deserve equality based on the degree or kind of oppression we’ve personally endured; we deserve equality because oppression is wrong. It’s a fucking social justice movement, not a game of “trump my trauma.”

So transwomen everywhere, on behalf of straight, white, 30-something feminists—with the disappointing exception of radically misguided fundamentalists like Miska—let me make it official: You are welcome. You are welcome to access our spaces, our services, our resources, our political movement, and our energy. BECAUSE THEY’RE YOURS, TOO.

And speaking as a sex-positive feminist, you’re even welcome to our stripper poles.

3:04pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZXftPyjFf2d

(Notes: 463)