I notice the poster who has chosen the username MiladyRenata has, to the surprise of no one, not been back to engage with the excellent, articulate and heartfelt replies about women’s actual experience, about how damaging those stereotypes are for us all, about how stereotypes do not and should not define who is a man and a woman.
Imagine a world where that poster actually read and truly took on board those replies.
Imagine if that poster had empathy for women, actually listened to us, and learned from us.
Imagine that.
It’s pretty difficult, isn’t it?
That particular biologically male trans person (and this is something I have come across before) seems to have no interest in our lives, no empathy for us, no respect for us as people. I don’t think that poster sees us as real human beings at all. Just a collection of stereotypes, and there is nothing - nothing - we can say or do that will prompt that poster to think differently, to see things differently. To see us differently.
This is what real powerlessness looks like. This is what is really means to be silenced and denied human rights. For your voice not to matter. What we are seeing all around us with the erosion of women’s rights, women’s boundaries, the meaning of the word “woman” itself, and right here with that poster’s inevitable refusal to acknowledge the needs, feelings and wishes of biologically female people if they conflict with the feelings and wishes of biologically male people.
Male privilege and misogyny. The “trans rights” movement is riddled with them; entirely based on them, even.
All I have to say to you, poster who calls yourself MiladyRenata, is that no matter what you and your fellow “trans rights” activists do, we will never buy into your toxic, stereotype-reinforcing, misogynist ideology. We will never capitulate.
You have considerably more power than we do at this stage, given the state of regulatory capture and the massive, massive legacy of countless generations of male privilege and male domination that underpins you and eases your way, and correspondingly blocks ours.
But you can’t force us to say what we know to be untrue - and not just untrue, but also deeply prejudicial to our own interests. You can’t force us to think the way you would like us to think. Because, like you, we are actually human beings with minds and hearts and life experiences of our own, even if you don’t realise that.
And, unlike you, we are women. Not men who don’t fit into the man box; women. It’s an actual reality, not an abstract concept. And it’s really very insulting of you to try to reduce us down to a collection of stereotypes - the very stereotypes that have been used to oppress us and keep us powerless for so long! - and say you like the look of those stereotypes for yourself so we have to move up and make room for you in women’s spaces, whether they be virtual or conceptual or RL.
This is a feminist board, remember. A cornerstone of feminism is breaking down the stereotypes that have held us back: you could at least try and be more respectful of us, FFS! Why the hell is it that male people who fetishise being passive and subordinate still do their best to be active and dominant when it comes to telling women where we’re going wrong?
Oh yeah. Because fetishising that thing from a position of power and privilege HAS NOTHING IN COMMON WITH ACTUALLY BEING THAT THING.
SMDH. Just fuck it all.