Trans activists should not be allowed to dictate the language women can use to describe their bodies and lives. (This is a cross-post of my piece from the Morning Star newspaper of 30 June 2015). On Saturday 6 June in Sheffield, myself and RadFem Collective, a radical feminist women’s group, hosted an open talk and Read More …
Month: June 2015
Gender Apostates weekly round-up 26 June 2015
Welcome to the first Gender Apostates weekly round-up. The Gender Apostates collaborative blog opened for business on Friday 19 June, with Sass’s piece addressing the fear and disgust that motivates social justice warriors to lie to themselves and the world about feminine men, and later on Diana offered a deeply personal confessional of the internal conflict felt over the Read More …
First in a series: feminist writings that have influenced us
From Sass: The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action Audre Lorde 1977 “I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.” This was the sentence, written by a black lesbian poet, that set the heart of this straight white girl on fire as a college student first reading this essay some 20 years ago. The perfect encapsulation Read More …
Transgender Ideology Does Not Support Women
Transgender ideology is in a state. Its central ideas are inconsistent with each other, have little support in science or the ethics of power analysis and are so divorced from reality they require a complete suspension of disbelief in order to sit in one’s head without suffering cognitive dissonance. Although I am drawing a distinction between Read More …
Radical Feminism and Intersectionality
Cross-posted from secretlyradical with minor edits and updates. [Please see my post on white privilege if you would like more personal background/ context for your pseudonymous blogger.] I only came across the term “intersectionality,” a term first coined by Kimberle Crenshaw to describe the multiple, interrelated axes of oppression experienced by black women, when I joined Twitter a couple of Read More …
A gender abolitionist in a non-ideal world
It’s not an easy path to tread, being a gender apostate. As a feminist who thinks that female biology is real, that female socialization matters, but also that it is possible for male people to transition into the role of woman and therefore to live as women, I’m used to being unpopular. I’ve made my peace Read More …
Who my audience is, and who my audience is not
My primary audience, and the only reason I continue with online feminism, is young women. Young women today are growing up in a culture in which it is considered bigoted, murderous hatred to question any male person’s gender feels. They are trapped in a faux feminism that doesn’t allow them the language they need to Read More …
An Uncomfortable Question
I need to confess something. I am profoundly uncomfortable talking about race. I am uncomfortable talking about it in broad terms or historical terms. I am especially uncomfortable speaking about it in a transracial context. Given recent events, I find many transwomen, myself included, are grappling with the ramifications of progressive double speak as people Read More …
Colonizers vs. Defectors, or: Before you call us phobic, check your own fear and disgust.
AFTAs (anti-feminist trans activists) very obviously practice the colonization of women. They demand access to our spaces, language and labor while enforcing male supremacist ideas of womanhood. I am using colonization as a national/geographic metaphor here – but there is another national/geographic metaphor that in my opinion applies to gender critical transwomen – transwomen who accept they are male but want nothing to Read More …