A thing which really upsets me. What finally tipped me over to joining in on here.
There is nowhere I can talk about my lived experiences of having a female body and the shit society throws at people like me. I'm even scared about saying I have a female body. I've been called a TERF by other natal women when I've tried.
It is completely impossible for me to organise something marked as a women-only event. I've watched other people try desperately hard, being as 'inclusive' as possible, oh of course TW are welcome, and NB people, and queer people, and trans men, and eventually just anyone who isn't a cis man, and they still consistently get flamed, vilified, shut down for it.
I'm not even talking about 'Women's place' type meetings, or anything explicitly political - the whole point is just to talk about ourselves, our lives, the experiences we share from being born female in a misogynistic society, without being distracted by the wants and needs of people who don't understand.
I want to talk about the long-term effects of growing up in a society where my body determined what I was expected to do as an adult. Of trying to come to terms with adolescence whilst being surrounded by teenage boys and older men who see you as a target. Of the 'biological clock' and 'fertility cliff' when I've been brought up in a world which has told me from the day I was born that my role in life is to settle down with a man and raise children. I want to talk about the menopause, and going from 'sex object' to 'invisible'. I want to hear from older women who can pass on what they have learned. I want to hear from women who have made different choices to me, especially women who effectively disappear from a lot of public life when they take time out of paid work, or because they are trying to work and raise children, or care for older relatives, because their whole lives then family and society has just taken for granted that they will do so. I just want to talk to people like me to discuss the things we have in common, and the choices we have made shaped by the things we share.
I can't even organise a meeting to talk about local maternity and reproductive services, where only people who could be directly affected are allowed, so we can share our experiences freely and support each other. However I phrased it - 'potential gestational parents'? it would still be wrong for someone, which would put me in the TERF basket, which would make me scum and a valid target for anything.
I can't. I can't even talk about having a female body unless I add in all sorts of qualifications and sub-clauses.
I don't want to do any of these things because I hate trans people, or because I don't understand that life is also very difficult for many trans people. This has literally nothing to do with trans people. I don't mind if it helps them feel better about their bodies to use words which aren't the technical medical terms, as long as they understand that I need words to talk about my body and to discuss the things I have in common with other female bodies.
I just want to talk about the experience of living in a female body under patriarchy with other people who share that experience.
I dunno. My Mum said that in the 70s there were women's consciousness-raising parties where everyone tried looking at their cunt with a speculum and a mirror. I've talked to women who were at Greenham Common Peace Camp, and how free they felt just living without the pressure of men, and how they took that back into their lives afterwards and changed things. Sometimes I wish I could run away to a lesbian separatist commune and ditch men entirely, just to see what it would be like.
There isn't any space where I get to talk freely about my experiences of living in a female body, with people who understand. That's what the extreme TRAs (not even most trans people) have taken away from me, and they've been pushing the bubble wider and wider until they are advising Parliament on making new laws, so it is like this for everyone, forever.