tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post2674750981139323680..comments2024-03-13T11:14:26.768-04:00Comments on A Radical Profeminist: "A Political Hierarchy in Gender Binary Drag", or When is a binary not a binary? When we're talking about a gendered, raced, sexed, classed HIERARCHYUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-83733452511652995052011-01-27T20:57:31.605-05:002011-01-27T20:57:31.605-05:00This is a dimension of transgender experience, to ...This is a dimension of transgender experience, to me, that too many het, queer, transgender, and transsexual activists don't speak of, when discussing gender in terms of it being a binary.<br /><br />With the very well-published promotion of the idea that gender is an enforced transphobic/heterosexist binary, not an enforced racist-sexist hierarchy that intricately involves age, race, region, gender, sexuality, among other realities, we are left with popular ideas that people can cross gender in age, in time. And that notion doesn't appreciate or account for how gender transforms a person in their own lifetime, from girlhood to womanhood, or through boyhood to manhood.<br /><br />The issue of what happens when girls become men or boys become women typically invisibilises or minimises the roles of misogyny/gynocide, racism/white supremacy, anti-Indigenism/genocide, and capitalism/ecocide as forces oppressing girls who become women in very specific and destructive ways.<br /><br />In popular queer/trans discourse, we are left with an idea that "the problem" is limiting boys and men's access to femininity or girls and women's access to masculinity--as if femininity and masculinity don't exist to destroy girls and women, and also boys or men who refuse to hide features of their being that are deemed "feminine" by het men. <br /><br />We can note that both femininity and masculinity, when they show up in girls and women, are sources of females-in-patriarchy being punished. Girls and women have no relief, including in the process of being forcibly feminised. <br /><br />However, masculine boys and men can (as people atop a hierarchy) find status, power, privilege, entitlement, advantage, and positions of ownership, exploitation, and rule over everyone else.<br /><br />When do Queer/Trans/Gay (and Het male) Theorists' and Academics' discussions of "the gender binary" discuss any of these realities?<br /><br />The only group of theorists I know who address these issues are race-oppressed and race-responsible radical feminists, including, especially and notably, radical lesbian feminists.<br /><br />Let's consider several of the het male/gay (male)/queer (male-dominated)/trans (M2F-dominated) criticisms of radical lesbian feminism. First, there is an absurd assumption that there is only one RLF viewpoint. Beyond that and the ceaseless charges of RLF being man-hating, homophobic, and transphobic, is that it ignores too much about the complexity of gender. <br /><br />I'm leveling <b>that</b> charge directly at the spokespeople for het, gay, queer, and trans academics and activists, all of whom, to me, systematically and willfully betray girls' and women's battle to endure and end gynocidal atrocities.Julian Realhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02933612851144914687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6744114065733119575.post-27619942579346752802011-01-27T16:14:21.000-05:002011-01-27T16:14:21.000-05:00The function of a binary is just to provide an enf...The function of a binary is just to provide an enforceable set of castes for the hierarchy to work on.<br /><br />... And I still fail at understanding what is so <i>perfect</i> and <i>glorious</i> at getting rid of <i>the binary</i>. No one ever means it for real: it's just shorthand for "admire me, I'm <i>so progressive</i>." It seems to me that if men are taught to fetishize female-bodied people being violently fucked while being called names, it doesn't much matter whether or not I appear inside or outside of the binary... because then I just have one more <i>fucked</i> choice in addition to my <i>fucker</i> option.<br /><br />But I guess that's the point: hierarchy <i>is</i> a binary, in the most literal way possible. Superior/inferior, master/slave, sadist/masochist. If you prat enough about how people should be able to choose to be the torturer, the slavemaster, and the rapist... then you'll be able to keep people from looking too closely at the real issue.<br /><br />Society of the Spectacle, Exhibition #2,003 (to the nth). Titillation is an excellent distraction from real issues; you don't want to think that you might be consuming <i>a person</i>... that would undermine your ability to consume them.<br /><br />Yeah, you know, I wanna opt out of the entire thing - I don't like this game. That's The Catch of capitalism, too: you get to choose any door except the one marked "EXIT".Cerienhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04373007983561451615noreply@blogger.com