Calling All Intersex, Intergender, Asexual, Anti-binary Gender Radicals and Anti-Heteropatriarchy Activists

image for trans/gender activism is from here

I am wanting to organise support and empowerment to those of us who are not part of the binaries of sex and gender to gather in cyberspaces to discuss how to better support radical feminist activism and other radical women's activism who may not ever identify as "feminist". (It is, after all, an English word, and for most humans, English is not a first language. And many women do perceive "feminist" to be a specifically "Western" or "white" term, and that doesn't mean those activists aren't doing radical anti-patriarchal work.

The sex and gender binaries are set up patriarchally and oppressively in the West, and elsewhere--but not universally, with violence, with coercion, with harassment, with subordinating practices including bullying, beating, and rape. These forms of violence, as well as institutional discrimination and industrial strength degradation, disproportionately targets females, girls, "feminised" or "feminine" children and adults, and women. The violence and discrimination is disproportionately perpetrated by males, boys, and men, against girls and women, and also against male children and adults.

Class and race are gendered such that being dominant in any hierarchy adds "masculine" status and privileges, while being "on the bottom" of any hierarchy "feminises" the oppressed groups.

 Across class, race, region, and ethnicity, there are people who "don't fit" the binaries, because the binaries are not natural or inclusive of all humans. One strategy has been for gay men to claim to be "real men", which often has misogynistic implications and courses of political action. Another strategy has been for transgender and transsexual people to insist on being identified using the terms of the master which reinforce the oppressive/misogynistic/patriarchal binary.

I'm hoping to hear from people, by email, by comment, here, who support the group "woman" being identified as radical feminists identify that group: the people who are not male and not men who are oppressed by male supremacy and by men interpersonally and institutionally for being "girls" and "women".

I'm wanting to support the realities and existence of asexual people, who, for many reasons, opt out of hetero/sexual social rules and codes of conduct, including how we "do" relationships, and how we express affection and intimacy. I'm wanting to explore, here, how being sexual can be a form of acting out child sexual abuse or heteropatriarchal upbringing. I see heteropatriarchal upbringing as a form of spiritual and psychic harm, privileging some, punishing others. Some of us, like me, experience both privileging and punishment. As someone who is asexual, politically and personally, I reject hetero/patriarchal ways of being in relationship as inhumane and oppressive, misogynistic and often racist and classist too. I see my white gay class-privileged brothers not usually questioning and resisting CRAP, instead of confronting and working to end capitalist, racist heteropatriarchy.

I'm wanting to support the realities of lesbian existence, of women's existence, who do experience assaults against their female bodies because of the political meaning of them in patriarchal societies. I believe this experience of oppression, dehumanisation, degradation, violation, and subordination due to being a girl or a woman with a female body warrants respect and regard as we strategise resistance movements and political courses of action to challenge the ideologies and imperatives of white het male supremacy and to effectively compost CRAP.

I'm also calling on all WHITE WESTERN non-trans and trans activists who proclaim "transgender people" or "transsexuals" to be THE MOST OPPRESSED GROUP ON EARTH to knock off the racist, Western privileged nonsense. It's an insult to all people of color, especially girls and women, who experience things you'll never even hear about, unless you go out of your way to do so. This isn't to minimise anyone's pain or suffering, but it is to note that you DO have white and Western privileges, and often non-ESL and non-Third and Fourth World privileges. And, in case you didn't notice, most non-trans women and girls do not.

Thoughts? Interest? I welcome hearing from people who basically are in agreement here, not from non-trans and trans activists who want to reinforce the gender binary by insisting that everyone is either "one [dominant, statused] gender" or "the opposite [subordinated, stigmatised] one". And from intersex people generally--those who were raised as girls or as boys, but who have had to find their own ways as intersex people, who had surgeries they didn't welcome or want, or who have had no surgeries and want to be fully statused as complete and whole human beings just as you are.