Allecto has just posted a speech she gave at the SCUM Radical Feminist Conference 2011, on the need to keep women-only spaces for born women.
I especially love the distinction Allecto makes between intentional women-only spaces and other women only spaces. For example, the hens night, the girls night out, the Tupperware party. These are non-intentional women’s spaces which not only do not threaten patriarchy and male supremacy, but usually reinforce it, which is why men are not demanding to be included in it.
This speech also highlights the distinction between going to the effort of “identifying” as a woman and actually just being a woman, with a life time of experiences and socialisation of girlhood and then womanhood. As a girl child we were socialised first by a primary carer who was herself socialised in this way.
Allecto also explains why women-only space is so important to women’s liberation and freedom from male tyranny. This space, my own personal blog, has recently been under threat from people who refuse to respect my boundaries. People who think that because they want to post here, they should be able to. They think their right to impose their will on me trumps my right to not be imposed upon. This is the underpinning ideology of patriarchy and men’s domination of women. This is why radical feminists see male women’s invasion of born women’s spaces as ultimately reinforcing patriarchy and women’s subjugation, and as just another layer of male colonisation and erasure of women. So too, is the disregard for women’s wishes when they say NO WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE, and the dismissal of our reasons and our theories of why we find it oppressive.
Because it doesn’t matter why. That’s obvious, and I don’t understand how people can’t see how this is an example of rape culture, this issue of men forcing themselves on women and not caring if and why women resist. It’s rape culture.
Thanks for posting this. It is soooo true.
Women have always had to share spaces with their oppressors or in female spaces defined by the oppressor. How can women ever be liberated in such oppressive and sexist environments?
We need to be looking at ways to both get women’s spaces up and running and to support them.
Yup, I am still waiting to see a “Twanz against Tupperware cis-sexism twanzphobia” blog…
DaveSquirrel… of all my LOLs today, your comment goes to the head of the class as the LOLmostist
My understanding is that Tupperware parties are usually hatefully transexclusionary.
Yeah, we never allow trans into our Tupperware parties ever!!
They usually steal Tupperware, so we have to lock it up after hours
What I hate about this topic and flamewars is the intellectual dishonesty it brings out in anti-radicals — the anti-radicals here being queer theorist bloggers and blograts who appropriated the term “radical feminist” for themselves for whatever reason:
“Female-only space is vitally necessary.”
“YOU SUPPORT TRANSWOMEN BEING MURDERED!”
That is MRA-level intellectual dishonesty, hysteria, and silencing (and, quite honestly, a classic “WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ?!” move). If that type of intellectual dishonesty blew up at such an epic level at any other time, the purveyors of such bullshit would be banned or at least shut down within that thread.
If we minimize how male entitlement works, we can’t discuss the misogyny of gender, can’t discuss the social construction of gender, can’t analyze misogyny if and when the source happens to be the transactivist camp, can’t define meaningful boundaries for people who did not receive male privilege and who are not male, are called bigots for pointing out that transmales are SURPRISED by how they are treated by people after transitioning (even though they already have obtained a career in a traditionally male field, natch), then don’t call it feminist, because it is something else. Call yourselves warriors of reproductive justice who support other misogynist endeavors, like harassing Michfest women in ways indistinguishable from classic male terrorism. Call yourself a liberal progressive queer-brained commie pinko fanfic writer, but don’t call yourself a radical feminist.
I’ve been thinking about how blogging has altered the dynamics of the development of radical feminist theory. Pre-blogs, radical feminists primarily developed their theory in truly private discussions among themselves, usually in woman-only spaces such as grassroots organizations or networks of activists and radical feminist friends. Now blogs, which unless marked “private,” open up this processing and development to anyone. Even if comments are denied publication, the author has to deal with sorting through them. This has brought the raw process of theory development right out in the open. In a sense, it brings the predators in even closer. Which is an irony. The anonymity of blogging would, you would think, feel safer. But it’s actually brought the bad boys right into a core aspect of the movement–where we talk and think before we act.
And look at this, actual transphobia, this is what it really looks like:
http://www.samesame.com.au/news/local/7719/Kyle-Sandilands-caller-Kill-the-tranny.htm