Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Rachel Thorn (rachel_thorn@queer.party)'s status on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2022 09:59:52 JST Rachel Thorn

   I think it's hard for folks who weren't there to imagine how taken-for-granted anti-transsexual rhetoric was in 1980s feminism. There was no WWW and all I knew was from the books I read and the feminists I personally knew, but from what I could see, the disagreement was not over whether or not trans women were women, but rather whether trans women were dangerous enemies or poor victims of gender tyranny. Most of what I witnessed was the latter.

   • Embed this notice
     Rachel Thorn (rachel_thorn@queer.party)'s status on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2022 10:06:32 JST Rachel Thorn

     in reply to

     I was fairly deep in the alternative/left/punk/feminist/anti-Apartheid community at Penn State, and I knew of only one out transwoman. IIRC, she generally steered of the campus feminist scene (which was my main scene). It may have been because she felt would not be embraced there. I myself was confused and deeply closeted, and tried rationalize my feelings by saying to myself and others, "Well, I don't feel like a man because I'm conscious of patriarchy and hate it."

   • Embed this notice
     Rachel Thorn (rachel_thorn@queer.party)'s status on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2022 10:13:22 JST Rachel Thorn

     in reply to

     In retrospect, I see I had (rather intensely) internalized the transphobia of the 80s feminist scene because I desperately wanted to be a Good Feminist.

     I still try to be a Good Feminist, but the definition of "Good Feminist" has changed. What we now call "White Feminism" was absolutely the norm, then. White feminists paid lip service to the concenrs of women of color, but there was always a passive-aggressive "not all white feminists" vibe.
     The term "intersectionality" wasn't coined till 1989.

   • Embed this notice
     Rachel Thorn (rachel_thorn@queer.party)'s status on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2022 10:35:07 JST Rachel Thorn

     in reply to

     • Randi Mason

     @randimason Yeah, lots of wonderful people in that community, a couple of whom I still consider good friends, but we didn't know shit, and we were a bit too enamored of the generation of feminists that immediately preceded us. I really wish I had had the courage and wisdom to question all that.

   • Embed this notice
     Randi Mason (randimason@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2022 10:35:08 JST Randi Mason

     in reply to

     @Rachel_Thorn I wasn’t as involved as you were with feminism at PSU but you are describing the culture as I remember it as well.

   • Embed this notice
     Rachel Thorn (rachel_thorn@queer.party)'s status on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2022 10:40:50 JST Rachel Thorn

     in reply to

     • Randi Mason

     @randimason Precisely! Which is why the olds say "Youth is wasted on the young." ?

   • Embed this notice
     Randi Mason (randimason@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2022 10:40:51 JST Randi Mason

     in reply to

     @Rachel_Thorn Same. You can’t have the courage and wisdom that comes from 30 years of getting through shit at 20 though.

   • Embed this notice
     Rachel Thorn (rachel_thorn@queer.party)'s status on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2022 12:44:38 JST Rachel Thorn

     in reply to

     • ?

     @vaguelyweird That is of course the great contradiction of gender critical feminism: All gender is a social construct...yet somehow, at the same time, a woman's essence is defined by her biology.

   • Embed this notice
     ? (vaguelyweird@cathode.church)'s status on Wednesday, 16-Nov-2022 12:44:39 JST ?

     in reply to

     @Rachel_Thorn ugh I feel this. I'm younger than you but I remember the disrespect and hostility towards trans women especially, growing up. Even in the early 00s, when I was in university, there was still a lot of ambivalence and lack of solidarity towards trans people in supposedly progressive feminist circles. I think they steered clear too, since these circles were into "sacred feminine" stuff.