Notices by timberwraith (timberwraith@mastodon.social)

Whether it's blatantly racist images of the Obamas on Trump's social media account this week or decades of not so subtle "dog whistles" from GOP politicians and candidates in the past, the Republican Party has quite firmly based much of its "brand" on racism since the 1960s.

Appealing to racist white bigots (the majority of the white electorate) has been their primary political strategy for ages.

@gwynnion It seems like bizarre and wildly, horribly outlandish behavior at first glace, but if I imagine the kinds of assholes I grew up surrounded by coming into lots of money and power, yeah, they'd be doing something not unlike this... and not giving it much thought.

I think the last sentence in the quoted matter elucidates one of the key factors in why I think radical feminism *is* outmoded.

Patriarchy is a broad reaching system that entails a social hierarchy which includes *more* than just a man/masc vs. women/fem binary class system.

There are many forms of oppression that take place in a larger medium of sex/gender based oppression and ALL of those help form the larger system of patriarchy.

A more holistic approach is needed than a simple binary.

I'm looking for a holistic approach to undermining and destroying patriarchy.

And that means going FAR outside of a simple paradigm of a man/masc vs. women/fem binary.

Since patriarchy is an all pervading system that has rooted itself everywhere, I don't think you can effectively eliminate or even *diminish* that system without attacking and undermining it from multiple vantage points.

Like a virus, if you leave one reservoir of that social pathogen untouched, it will continue to incubate and spread and it will mutate to work around previous attacks.

That's not a complete list by any means

And each of those axes I've listed include A LOT of subgroups with their own particular ways that oppression interfaces with patriarchy.

Transfem and transmasc people (subgroups of "trans") each have their own particular ways that they face oppression from patriarchy, as an example. There's A LOT of intricacy to those differing modes of experience.

Here are several different axis in which sex/gender based oppression play out:

cis vs. trans
straight vs. gay
bi/pan vs. monosexual
gender conforming vs. non-conforming
allosexual vs. asexual
endosex vs. intersex
binary gender vs. non-binary gender
butch vs. femme

THAT is the feminism that I'm looking for. THAT is the feminism that I espouse.

I know, in some venues, what I'm saying is a bit heretical because plenty of folks want keep the scope of feminism narrowed down to just a woman vs. man (or some variation thereof) dichotomy.

I know that. I *was* a radical feminist for decades. I know the angry sense of betrayal that propositions such as mine bring forth.

I know I'm pissing people off.

And if we don't do that?

The virus of patriarchy will be there, using whatever reservoir of existing oppression it has to reproduce itself.

A holistic approach is our best shot.

That also means many different groups learning to put aside their fighting and bullshit with each other.

I know that's a big ask, given how humans tend to split off and form oppositional cliques under a much larger hierarchy... But this system is kicking all of our collective asses and our own individual experiences with sex/gender based oppression stand a far larger chance of being alleviated IF we recognize that we need to work together to defeat this system.

If you have a feminism that's stuck in a simple binary, that framework can't even begin to address their experiences.

Postscript:

And on a more basic level, the full range of sex and gender do not fit into a simple binary categorization. I mean, hello, we have people who don't understand or experience themselves and their relationships with others in a "pink vs. blue" modality. There are many, many shades of lavender and purple in there which represent human experience which do not fit into a simple "either/or."

But, framing things in that simple opposition isn't going to fix this mess.

Oh, it feels righteous and good to hold onto that narrower in-group/out-group framing. It's kind of in-built into our human minds to reach for simple categorizations and accompanying oppositional relationships.

But that absolutely will NOT fix the mess we're in.

Even if it does feel better and more righteous than what I'm proposing.

So, I dove deep into anti-trans culture, politics, and rhetoric among radical feminists over a rather long period of time. This was before TERFism decayed into full-on fascism. These women truly were radical feminists in the original framework.

Post-postscript:

I was a radical feminist for 20ish years and I was deeply invested in fighting patriarchy as a part of "team women vs. team men." That lasted until I started to notice certain negative attitudes and politics of cis radfems.

It became clear that a significant subset of them didn't see me as a member of "team woman" and they saw anti-trans oppression as a legitimate response to women like me.

They saw women like me as their enemy.

That women vs. men paradigm wasn't working.

And I think that alone should give people a pause to rethink things.

And so, I was forced to reassess radical feminism and its relationship to my life, and I found it deeply lacking.

And at the very least? Shocker of shockers: I was force to conclude that trans men and trans women are facing down cis people, men and women both, as sources of sex/gender based oppression.

That breaks the radical feminist paradigm as applicable to the sex/gender based oppression that *I* and other trans people experience.

And so, the framework of radical feminism shattered for me personally.

It no longer made sense to me. It was impractical and not useful for me. It did NOT accurately frame the power dynamics playing out for me as a transgender woman.

After immersing myself in that mess, I began to pay more attention to the cis world, as it was, and I started to reassess things more accurately.

This process made it more clear that a "women as the oppressed vs. men as the oppressors" was NOT a paradigm that fully and accurately described MY experience with sex/gender based oppression because clearly, a good number of cis women actively supported and participated in shaping and instituting the oppression that I experienced as a woman.

@dalias @gwynnion Yes, that happens too. Some cars have a switch to turn off traction control temporarily for those instances.