SECOND Guest Post and Radical Rant from Cerien: On Capitalism and CRAP-loaded Consent

image is from here

For part one of Cerien's Guest Post and Righteous Radical Rant, please click *here*. All that follows was written by Cerien, except my bracketed added info about who "Divinity" is.

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2. I hate capitalists. There is no sense and no value in calling yourself anti-oppression, as Divinity[33372, of Medusa's Arrow blog] and many other "feminists" do, and then turning around and supporting one of the most important perpetuating systems of racism, sexism, speciesism, actual transphobia, and... well, pretty much every oppression ever.

It gets even worse when you have "pro-sex work" peeps who seem to completely miss the point that if sex work is forcing people to sell their bodies for food and shelter, it's still fucking evil. Being (theoretically) able to feed and shelter yourself because you're a pro doesn't make prostitution morally good; it makes the cause of prostitution (economic pressure) morally unacceptable.

There are a number of things wrong - morally and practically - with the idea that anyone should have to work for food, water, a place to sleep where you won't get arrested and a place that you won't freeze. I won't get into them all, but I will say this: if you believe that making someone toil to be allowed to live (after all, their bodies don't stop being hungry just because they can't get a well-paid job), then a) you have some serious misconceptions about human nature embedded in that belief and b) we don't have any shared beliefs, there is no common ground between us, because you don't even believe in the most basic of human rights.

And that's even if they can feed themselves, which is a pretty big assumption. One of my best friend's best friends when zie was on the street*, who I'll call Vernon for the sheer contradictory value. Vernon was 12 when he started having to prostitute himself, having run away to the streets to escape his mom and her boyfriend. He was Hispanic, which matters here.

Because I can't make this into a big dramatic thing with a plot, I'll just lay this out for you.

- Vernon only turned tricks when he hadn't been able to shoplift any food that day.
- He made only about $50.
- White men who identified as "straight" made up approximately 100% of his johns.
- My best friend was usually the one who had to stitch him up afterwards.

That last one needs a little elaboration to drive home the point. Johns, generally speaking, do not use condoms or lube. They will refuse to because being able to inflict pain or make someone vulnerable to STDs or pregnancy is a status symbol; and even more than that, johns view it as their right to be able to penetrate and abuse you any way they desire because they're paying you. This financial exploitation is a form of abuse not uncommon in our society: employers, donors, even parents do it. But it usually doesn't involve masturbating with your body.

In the world of sex work, if you can turn down a client, or demand that he use a condom (because sex work is inherently gendered), you have boatloads of privilege. Privilege is also the ability to say "no" if someone won't respect your boundaries, because you have other options and opportunities.

This is also why approximately 100% of the "sex workers" arguing for prostitution are privileged fucks.

But I'll get back to that digression in a bit. Vernon was still just one kid, but he never made enough money from turning tricks to find a place to sleep, which basically meant that he still had to have either a squat lined up or be ready to face the cops if they found where he was sleeping. (Or go in early to a mission if it was cold, but shelters and missions are a whole 'nother level of fucked-up that I won't be discussing here.) There were the pros off of Pearl who had a place to stay but still didn't get enough to eat, even though the Jewish guys were really generous (or so I've heard). Provided they weren't eating disordered... we think anorexia nervosa is a rich disease because the poor kids don't have enough money to get diagnosed.

Vernon was average for pros, though, even if his sex made him a little unusual. Run away from abuse you had to submit to abuse to survive; on the streets, submit to abuse to survive.

And that's why I hate the pro-porn and pro-prostitution people so much. Every "sex worker" you "support the choice of" is making that choice off the backs of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pros who don't get that privilege. They don't get to say no. "Sex workers" are offensive to me because they make my friends and my friends' friends invisible so they can prance around and get the approval of men who want to be reassured that using the bodies of women, girls and boys is acceptable. They are the tokens at the expense of the people they claim to be speaking for and fighting for.

I've heard "pro-sex work" feminists dis street walkers and reject the idea of helping them. Fuck you. They're my friends. They deserve better than this.

Let's put it this way: prostitution is the dairy industry. You don't get the relief of death, which pretty much amounts to escape; you get hooked up to machines every day of your life to be "milked", and then you're killed when you're not useful enough anymore. The machines tear you up and more often than not you're suffering an infection or wound from something "the farmers" did. You get forcibly impregnated to further your exploitation potential, and then your kids get taken away from you so they can face the same life you did. And nobody gives a shit about your choice because you're property. No one but the Happy Cows exist.

But oh, if you're a "sex worker!" Darling poster child of the pro-porn retromovement, you are depicted on green fields of freedom, smiling happily and enjoying your life. Unwanted children don't exist. Wanted children taken away from you don't exist. Mastitis doesn't exist. Horror and rape and never being able to own your own body don't exist. You're a Happy Cow, there specifically to make the dairy-consuming public feel better about the choices they took away from "just animals".

And, you know, we actually have a fucking phrase for "sex work": Happy Hooker. And it originally wasn't even fucking sarcastic, either.

(And if you think that comparing women to cows is sexist, you just missed the entire point and you are wrong. Deal with your bigotry and privilege first, think about issues later.)

When the delighted-and-totally-

choosing-it "sex worker" basks in the balmy approval of ten thousand honorary men, I get pissed. Because they're trying to drown out the voices of my friends.

And I can even tell you a fucking quote, from one of my friends, who is a pro:

"Fuck, we don't need protection from feminists. I never had a john tell me he was a feminist, so would I please bend over so he can stick it in me!"

The pro-"sex worker" retromovement listens only to the "sex workers" who agree with them and reaffirm their choices and lack of action, and treats the people who perpetrate abuse upon pros (pimps, johns) as unequivocally acceptable while vilifying people who see the abusers as an inherent and systemic problem rather than as a minimized and not-important-to-the-rich "oopsie". Ain't never seen any "pro-sex feminist" out asking street walkers what they need and want. Mysteriously, the only people they talk to seem to be upper-class and computer-literate. Hmm.

Yeah, no. I fucking feed my friends. My best friend fucking stitched zeirs up from the johns. Where are you, Divinity? Are you fucking feeding streetwalkers? Are you fucking stitching them up and bathing their wounds in lavender dilution so they don't get infected? Fuck you, I have been. Fuck you for lying about me and what I do because I don't agree that it's reasonable my friends be raped for money. Fuck you for refusing to see that their consent isn't there because they'll starve if they don't let some guy jack off in them. Fuck you. You are an asshole. You are not a feminist. Fuck.

*Yes. Vegan zeir entire life, visibly Hispanic, trans, and on the streets from the age of eight. Go on, try playing the More Oppressed Than Thou game with us.

Sub-rant #1: Consent.

I do not understand people who call themselves "feminists" and then argue that consent should be divorced from desire.

I'm a radical feminist, but apparently I'm "anti-sex" because I think that consent should be reunited with desire. Where, when you say yes, you actually want to have sex; it doesn't just "mean yes," separated from context and past experience and history and the world. Apparently I'm "anti-sex" because I feel it is every person's right to have their consent mean nothing less than active desire and enthusiasm, and every person's right to have sex as much, as long and in any way they and their partner want to. This has led me to believe that the "pro-sex" folks are actually more concerned with men's sexual access to others, but especially the underprivileged and unprotected, than they are with actually making "yes mean[s] yes!"

Yes does not exist in a vacuum. It can't exist without its opposite. Every abuse victim I know has problems with saying "no"; I've had a few of them with my lovers (and as a gynosexual, almost all of my lovers have been abused in some way), and every single time, we needed to work on a) helping her be able to ask for what she wanted, so that I wouldn't overwhelm her or sidetrack her desires for mine; b) helping her feel safe and comfortable saying "no"; c) helping her realize when she wants to say "no", and to act on it; and d) helping me to be able to recognize and act on her signals that she was uncomfortable or unenthusiastic so that I didn't essentially bulldoze her into doing something she wasn't really into.

Because it's not just about the partner who's been abused, which is what this idea of "if you say yes, then you mean yes" comes out to. It's... male privileged as hell. Think of the guys who, presented with the idea that a woman might want to stop having sex in the middle of sex or when penetration is about to occur, whine about how unfair and manipulative it is. There's never any issue of, "Oh crap, I made you uncomfortable! I triggered you! How do I fix it??" That would put the emphasis on consent; he's not whining about feeling good and being made to stop, he's whining about being made to control himself so he doesn't hurt an object; about how an object doesn't have the right to withdraw consent.

And the whole "yes means yes!" phenomenon is similar to that because of the attempt to abstract superficial consent from actual consent. Effectively, it makes the issue of consent, "Will you have sex with me?" rather than "Do you want to have sex with me?"

And it puts the onus for rape, for consent, and for consideration on the people least able to answer honestly, for their physical safety, for their mental and emotional safety, and for their survival.

That was one hard part of relearning sexuality with my girlfriend. I had to realize that, regardless of how healthy she was "supposed" to be as a feminist, she wasn't this magical creature that knew everything about herself and other people and would miraculously know when she should say no because going through with it would leave her feeling dirty and used. I had to realize that it was fair for her to say no, regardless of what we were doing or how much I wanted it, because she had the right to set boundaries and limits no matter what happened; her body did not become my property if I wanted to get off. I had to realize that it wasn't just about her crazy-fucked-up-mentally-ill-hysterical (etc., etc.) issues; it was about how I was acting. And that if she didn't feel safe, then it didn't matter how I thought I was acting, or what I was trying to mean (looking back - it's not like she was telepathic! How could she know?); I needed to change what I was doing to make her more comfortable. Because she was a person. Because she deserved that respect from me. Because her feelings deserved consideration, and if something deserves consideration it damn well deserves change.

I had to realize that, while it was fair for her to get angry at me for acting like she should have been magical, it wasn't fair for me to get indignant or hurt if she later revealed that she hadn't wanted to do something from the beginning, no matter how far into it we were.

Emotional consequences teach women what rights they do and do not have with men.

The "yes means yes!" idea of consent narrows all of this down onto, say, my girlfriend, or someone else who has been culturally taught that "no" is not an answer. The implication is if she was a good enough feminist, she'd say no. It doesn't matter that no one ever respected her "no" or gave it any serious weight; it doesn't matter that people would emotionally or verbally abuse her until she gave in. It doesn't matter that this went on for so long until the word "no" didn't even come to her lips, no matter what she felt. She told me once, that to learn how to say yes, she had to learn how to say no first.

"Yes" is meaningless in a place where you don't have the option - all the time, without emotional, social, physical or financial consequence - of saying no, and having it respected. All the time. Consent is an absolutist ethic because there is no such thing as consent in a place where "yes" can mean varying degrees of "no".

That is what Sheila Jeffreys and Andrea Dworkin mean when they talk about how women cannot consent to sex with men. Not: "all sex is rape, full stop." It's: "unless a woman has the ability to refuse consent, no matter what, at any time for any reason, without consequence, and unless men see that true, real consent as vital to their own pleasure, she can't consent. Consent doesn't exist in a place like that." This is not an advanced concept, people.

Consent can exist in a microcosm, between two or three people, after those people work together to figure each other and themselves out. Duh; we're not making the claim that all sex is rape, but we are pointing out that right now, what we see as "sex" bears an uncanny resemblance to rape. But you know, aside from the issues of being so traumatized that you don't even know whether you want to consent, there's a very simple reason that it's a bad idea to say "consent can exist, but it must meet this, this and this criteria, and also, consent is not this."

And that is: we're not dumb. We've seen the privileged and powerful go on for decades about how they're special little snowflakes who are not oppressive at all. Here, my best-friend-of-an-oppressed-group says it! Must be true, hurr!

But there's another reason that radical feminists don't put up lists of what consent is, and then use a yardstick to measure everything by that list: it's not fucking mathematical.

Consent is not capitalism, where consent and non-consent can be tallied up and calculated and the total decides whether or not you consent. Consent is about more than "welp, I need food, so I better consent to letting this guy fuck me." It is about infinitely more than that. It is about not feeling afraid and feeling safe and supported and like you won't be disappointing someone if you say no. It's about being able to negotiate boundaries so that you can say, "Uh... Well, I'm a little bit hot, but I don't know if I'm into it enough to go for more than ten minutes. Can we try fingering/grinding/dry humping/masturbating each other and then check back in?" instead of resigning yourself to having to have sex because you felt hot for an orgasm, but not necessarily for hours of them. It's about being able to say, "I am really preoccupied and don't want to give my full attention to sex... Want to figure something out?" It's about being allowed to say, "Yeah, that would be awesome!" and then being allowed to say ten minutes later, "You know, I've had a really crappy day and I think I really just need some intimacy right now."

It's also about being able to have sex while watching Finding Nemo and completely ruining the mood by singsonging, "We've got to get to Sydney!" into your partner's vulva. And then being able to get the mood back up after collapsing into giggles for twenty minutes and devolving into a kissfest. Or even not.

Consent is more than superficial; it's more than a verbal contract. Encouraging the "sex work" ethos of consent fucks us all up, because when consent is divorced from actually wanting to have sex with that person, it doesn't actually mean anything. Or it does, but in the negative: women still get no agency over their bodies, and sex is still reduced to a transaction.

I just can't imagine why the "pro-sex feminists" would be so appalled that I think they're anti-woman for their willful ignorance of the status quo, and their blatant support of it.

You know, just, fuck you. This kind of bullshit you-don't-have-to-but-I'll-fuck-you-up-if-you-don't definition of "consent" isn't even worthy of a response. The only reason I'm giving it one is because there are a lot of sparklepups out there who want to be as oppressive as they desire and still get the social approval for calling themselves anti-oppression.

First Guest Post from Cerien! When Some Transgender Activists Demand Inclusivity But EXCLUDE almost all Genderqueer/Transgender/Intersex People, We Gotta Speak OUT!

image for a conference on combating the Christian Right's attempt to Convert Queer people is from here

An excerpt from what follows, by Cerien:

If you don't feel male, or don't present as male, then presto-chango! All that nasty privilege has gone away, and now you can claim to be the #1 oppressed group in the world!

Whether progressive or radical, most of the genderqueer folks I know are engaged in anti-CRAP work of one form or another. Many are anarchists, animal rights activists, anti-racism activists, pro-feminist activists, and anti-corporate/anti-capitalism activists. I used to identify as genderqueer, before creating a term for myself, "intergender" and then looking it up online and finding out it has existed for at least a dozen years!!! Why didn't I get the memo from the trans/queer activists??
Why doesn't media discuss being intergender?
Why doesn't media discuss being genderqueer, gender-varient, non-gender conforming?
Why will dominant CRAP-loaded media only talk about a very, very, very tiny percentage of transgender people: primarily those who identify as M2F--people with MALE PRIVILEGES?
What's going on here? 

Well, folks, we're beginning the conversation. RIGHT NOW. I want to give a shout out to ALL the genderqueer/intersex/transgender/intergender/GNC/gender-variant people who are living on the streets, who are selling themselves for money to survive, who are being pimped and trafficked, and to ask us to speak out against the forces that seek our complete destruction--the forces of CRAP: corporate racist atrocious patriarchy. And I am calling on us to gather our voices in solidarity against all the men, all the media, and all the M2F trans people who claim to represent US ALL, and who DO NOT.

If they're pro-prostitution, pro-procurment, pro-drugabuse, pro-poverty, pro-rape, they don't speak for us, IMO. Cerien agrees. So that's two of us. And, as I've said ALL the INTERSEX and F2M transgender people I know are FEMINISTS, PRO-RADICALISM, PRO-FEMINISM,  and don't trash feminist women in order to promote a pro-patriarchal activist agenda that requires MISOGYNY, RACISM, CLASSISM, ANTI-RADICALISM, and ANTI-FEMINISM to gain a voice and an audience online and off.

Cerien may be posting here occasionally. This is the first one. It is in response to *this post* I did recently on transgender and radical feminist issues. So please read that one, if you haven't yet, for the context for what follows. Thank you. All that follows was written by Cerien.

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OMFG! You must be transphobic! How dare you insinuate that transfolk aren't the most oppressed group, ever, in the history of the universe!

... [recalibrates sarcasm-o-meter]

I have a couple thoughts on this. I hope you don't mind me splitting this up into a couple comments, because it's going to take a while.

1. Divinity[33372, of Medusa's Arrow blog] is actually fairly representative of "trans activists". When she talks about "the transgendered", she isn't talking about gender-variants, body-dysmorphics, genderqueers or even transsexuals at all. She's talking about MTFs.

Mikhaela Reid does this, too. Her comic, http://m1khaela.blogspot.com/">the Boiling Point, in the four comics that mention transsexuals explicitly (with a total of 10 transfolk), only one is not an MTF. When people talk about "transfolk", when people talk about "transgendered", they aren't talking about 80% of all transpeople: they're talking about MTFs.

I'm gender fluid/variant. They aren't talking about me.

My best friend is a male-identified gender-variant (i.e., genderqueer FTM). They aren't talking about zem.

I have more friends: gender-fluid, agendered, genderfucking, and so on. They aren't talking about them, either.

So, all this yammering from the "trans activists" about "inclusiveness" is bullshit.

Sub-rant #1: "MTFs don't have male privilege; they give that up when they transition."

This fucking pisses me off, because it is possibly the most covertly anti-feminist statement you could make today.

First because it ignores everything we know about privilege; it isn't something that leaves you untouched because you don't really identify with the privileged side of the binary. When you grow up being treated with privilege, you develop entitlement in tandem with it. Entitlement expresses itself without you consciously knowing it; it can be something as simple as defining/naming reality when contradicting a woman if she is hurt or offended by something you said/did - "No, it's like this. (And so you have no reason to feel that way.)" - or as blatant as MRAs whining about how all women are whores and bitches because their ex-wife got fed up with being treated like an intellectual and social invalid.

And privilege is mostly designed to work against people who don't have it. Most women were never raised with (gendered) privilege and the ensuing entitlement, so they don't have any defense or resistance to others' entitlement. What a man does and says comes off differently to another man because he was raised in the same privilege, and can resist someone else's socially-approved selfhood to keep it from overpowering his own sense of self. Women are not able to do this because they were never taught to or intended to.

So no. People may respond to you differently in some ways, but privilege doesn't just "go away" once you decide to transition.

Second, because it assumes that privilege is either a) the fault and responsibility of everyone else in the world, or b) inherent to... "maleness".

The latter doesn't need any explanation. But the former explains privilege as something you just lose if you start passing as something else; it's all the fault of other people. Brilliant thought! If we all just stopped treating privileged people with privilege, then it wouldn't exist anymore!

Ridiculous victim-blaming.

And third, because it assumes a certain amount of biological determinism. If you don't feel male, or don't present as male, then presto-chango! All that nasty privilege has gone away, and now you can claim to be the #1 oppressed group in the world!

Sub-rant #2: No one gives a shit about genderqueers.

Let me lay this out. "Transgender" is a misnomer when applied to transsexuals. (And again, they're not talking about anyone but MTFs.)

"Trans" has a few possible connotations. One of them is "across; to traverse." When it's made into "transcend", however, it means to break the boundaries of; to have a realm in which the transcended concept has no influence.

When the word is "transsexual," we're talking the former meaning. Because transsexuals aren't making the binary irrelevant, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst.

When the word is "transgender," we're talking about the latter. Transgender is gender abolition, where the sex/gender binary has no power and where you can identify as anything you feel like and have that respected, because you are a person first.

I have had MTFs openly disrespect my wishes for gender-neutral pronouns, not to mention the aforementioned "trans activist" people. I have had both whine at me that we shouldn't be referring to people with gender-neutral pronouns until they tell us what they'd prefer - because (I shit you not), they work hard to be seen as female, dammit!

Because it's not privileged at all to demand someone else's identity be disrespected and invalidated just so you can be validated immediately.

I have had "trans-friendly" people repeatedly refer to my best friend with female pronouns even after being told, over and over and over, that zie prefers gender-neutral pronouns.

Too often, the "trans activists" are the actual transphobes. I have felt more respected, accepted, and loved in radical feminist communities than I ever have in "trans-friendly spaces".

Sub-rant #3: If you're not rich enough to transition, or if you don't want to transition for whatever reason, you're not really trans.

Right. I'm going to hearken back to your point that "transgendered" does not mean "visibly transgendered", just as a point throughout.

When MTFs prostitute themselves to make money for hormones and SRS, they're those poor transfolk who are just trying so hard to be who they really are.

When FTMs prostitute themselves to make money for harder-to-get T, mastectomies or the woefully-underdeveloped phalloplasties, or hell, even just for food, they're just more pros.

The part about transpeople in prostitution needs to be more specific. There is no, or virtually no, demand or sympathy for FTMs. The allure of the "tranny" is based primarily on the penis; so, back to phallocentric sexuality we go.

You'd think Divinity would be more offended that MTFs were being sexualized and fetishized for something that they feel no love for, something they want to get rid of, and which probably caused them a lot of mental anguish. But remember, this isn't about actual empathy: it's about the right of the entire world to exploit women, children, and occasionally men for a quick wank.

(As an aside, it's interesting that her automatic response is to decry radical feminists for being against prostitution instead of to decry capitalism for enforcing prostitution as a necessity of survival for far too many people. Why am I "transphobic" when I see it as wrong that anyone would have to prostitute themselves for SRS and hormone therapy? If anything, Divinity is the transphobic one for thinking that making transsexuals sell the use of their bodies for SRS and hormones is acceptable, let alone good.)

And then we have the issue of transition itself. Phalloplasty is a half-assed procedure by the standards of the 1800s, mastectomies are hell to get unless you make up something about how breast cancer is in your family (and even then, you won't be able to get chest reconstruction - but you can get implants!!!), and some people just don't want to have to deal with people who sit in a well-furnished room the entire day, thinking about how awesomely intelligent they are for paying $150,000 for a piece of paper recognizing their booksmarts instead of observing humans.

FTMs who don't want to transition are routinely told that they might just be genderqueer; I haven't heard this happening to an MTF yet. Then again, I see many more MTFs who choose to transition - probably because their procedures and drugs will be less expensive, less painful, and have less hoops to jump through to get.

Oh, and then we have yours truly, the genderqueers. We're not really "trans," you see, because we may not feel horrible enough about our bodies to want to change them... or we may just not care. If it's society that causes us mental anguish instead of our bodies, we're labeled as "cisgendered". You have to loathe your body to qualify for the oppression olympics, apparently.

Let's not even get into the idea that the cisgendered have privilege over the trans... wait. Changed my mind. Let's get into that.

Sub-rant #4: Being transsexual means you are extra oppressed, so there!

Admittedly, I think a whole lot of the oppression transfolk experience is tied in with sexism and misogyny, too. I just don't think that an issue that is mostly or in part caused by something external means that it's not worth pursuing, or that it's not "real," or whatever.

Most "trans activists" will talk a whoooole lot about the gender binary and shit, but they rarely actually seem to get that when an MTF gets beaten to death for being a "fucking shemale," it's because of the gender binary. She was beaten to death because she defied the immutable gender roles of our society. And yet you're transphobic if you point out that it's the same issue - lesbians get beaten to death because they defy gender roles, "adulterous" women get beaten to death because they defy gender roles, gay men get beaten to death because they defy gender roles (how dare you like balls more than vulva! I am no longer secure in my sexuality! RARGHH), FTMs get raped and/or beaten to death because they defy gender roles (that'll teach that bitch), etc. ad nauseum.

At the same time, why would society not be a harmful force on transpeople? And if that gender binary is harmful, why would gender abolition not be a good thing? What if there are people who are trans because society has fucked them up so much? It doesn't mean they're not "really" trans.

(I hate this idea that, to be valid, it has to come from "inside," without external influence whatsoever. It's all part of this capitalist individualism bullshit. Even if you're not genetically gay, so the fuck what? That doesn't mean you're not gay; that doesn't even mean that your gayness could have been changed or prevented. It doesn't mean it's not a good thing. "It's innate" is beside the point... but it does seem to provide a wellspring of justification whenever someone wants to be a privileged asshole.)

I am strongly biased against "trans activists" and the "trans community" because every time I try actually thinking about some issue, I get called transphobic and bigoted. Fuck that noise! These questions need to be asked, and these issues need to be raised.

If I'm not allowed to think critically, I don't want your revolution.

Sub-rant #5: How dare women want to define their own space and community after millenia of having privileged men usurp that right from them!

This apparently needs to be laid out simply.

Men have, for a long-ass time, defined what women have been allowed to do.

Men have defined who women were allowed to be with.

Men have defined what is "valid" for a woman to feel unsafe about.

Men have even defined whether or not a woman is "allowed" to feel safe or not - physically (through letting people in regardless of her comfort) and mentally (through deciding what fears are baseless or not - and if they're baseless, they're nonexistent, for all intents and purposes).

So yes.

When you have been raised as male, paid a lot of money to alter your physical appearance, and then waltz into what's defined as "born-women-only space"?

You're acting with privilege.

You are defining what are and what are not valid boundaries for them to have.

And when you act entitled to inclusion? Yes, there are many women who are going to feel unsafe around you.

My question is: why do you want to force someone into accepting you into their community? And, given men's long history of feeling entitled to inclusion regardless of the feelings of others in that community, how are you NOT acting with privilege? Your entitlement didn't come out of nowhere; and it is entitlement if the members of that community have stated that they don't feel comfortable with you being there.

When you try to force a community to accept you, regardless of its' members feelings, you are an invader. Even if you do identify with that sex. This is not about how you're really a woman: you're acting with privilege. You're acting like a fucking rapist. You're not allowing them to define their own boundaries and limits. That's what men do. That's an inherent part of male privilege.

"Identity" is a good excuse, but it doesn't solve the problem that you are violating a community's boundaries. A community made up from a group that has a long history of having their boundaries violated, invalidated, disrespected, dismissed, mocked and sneered at.

Look. We need transsexual-only spaces. We need genderqueer-only spaces. We need women's spaces that include MTFs, and women's spaces without, because you get to define the boundaries for what you feel okay with and that doesn't mean you're transphobic, or hysterical, or delusional, or wrong. We've needed lesbian-only spaces for a loooong time, but we still have only three or four lesbian-exclusive bars in the U.S., but many many more gay-exclusive clubs and bars.

When someone else feels unsafe with you there, you're proving that you ARE unsafe by trying to prove to them just how ignorant and bigoted they are for feeling unsafe. Especially when, again, that person belongs to a group with a long, and still-standing, history of being communal property.

Go make a women's safe space that includes MTFs.

As much as you seem to think that a women's safe space that is not inclusive of MTFs is treating MTFs like "second-class citizens," it's the other way around.

You won't accept their boundaries or feelings of being unsafe. And it is a profoundly male-privileged thing to be offended when someone won't magically stop feeling unsafe, or shut up, about you and your behavior.

It is offensive to assert that you're a woman when you remain effectively ignorant about how women live, and what women need to deal with.

And a last note: being able to loudly proclaim your identity and have it largely respected - or at least ignored - is a sign that people accord you privilege. FTMs do not proclaim that they are transsexual because they need to pass, or men will rape and beat them. There are no FTM Kate Bornsteins. Why is that?

Unless you can come up with a better answer (and one that doesn't involve individualism), the obvious thought is privilege.

Sub-rant #6: If You Call Me "Honey" One More Time, I Am Going To Punch You In Your Stupid, Stereotypically Sexist Mouth (or: the artificial MTF)

This is a really big issue for me, because there is never a safe space for it. Gender representations are all valid, no matter how caricatured or two-dimensional, because to question an MTF's presentation is apparently to question whether they are transsexual at all. (See note about external factors not being an invalidation above.)

So, basically what it amounts to is: some asshole (who doesn't have male privilege!) gets to be offended at my questioning their presentation behavior (because that isn't a part of male privilege at all!), but I should just shut up and not be offended (because that's not an entitled expectation!) at that asshole acting in ways that no woman I've ever known has acted, and actually that asshole has integrated stereotypical behaviors that, despite no woman I've ever known having them, are widely used to discriminate against them.

Oh yeah, I'm totally not going to be offended that this asshole has essentially put on a very expensive version of gendered blackface (because it is almost exactly similar) and then expects me to just sit there and smile, like a good little slut.

I gotta newsflash: we learn gendered behaviors from societal depiction and expectation.

Even a little kid who desperately wants to be a little girl won't miss that. There aren't enough stone slabs in the world that you can hide under.

But here's the thing - someone being raised male, even if they don't agree with it, isn't going to be able to tell the difference between stereotype and reality. Not a single woman I have known acts like that depiction, or thinks other women act like it. The oppressed are forced to observe those in power to ensure their survival in ways that the powerful never are; when you're white, straight, male, hell - human (because non-human animals still know observe about us than we do about them!), part of your privilege is to be ignorant of the way your societal inferiors really are.

So you can see why, when an MTF is acting like the ultra-femme caricature, I believe that it isn't inherent to their self-expression; I think they learned it from the idea and picture of women that's presented to men from a very young age.

That doesn't mean they're not an MTF, duh, but it does mean that their gender expression isn't innate.

The idea that all forms of gender expression are valid - from the ultra-violent macho male to the syrupy-sweet femmy femme - is offensive to me in a number of ways, not least of which is that it's a pretty limited selection even if you include everything we have available. But even with the really dumb and reprehensible expressions, there's something else there... something that every radical feminist will be accused of at least once: essentialism.

Saying that an MTF's gender expression just happens to match up with the unreasonable and male-centric representations of women available because that's just the way they (or about 80% of the MTFs I've met) are is fucking essentialism, straight-up.

The idea that MTFs just have this innate femininity is dumb and reprehensible. MTFs learn their gender expression. Everyone does. Women, men, gender-variant, we all learn our gender expression; it doesn't come pre-programmed. You can argue that we have inherent personality characteristics that are them molded and modified by our environment, but if you want to argue that gender is just that way then you can go sit in the corner with the rest of the MRAs. Fuck you. MTFs learn their gender expression the same way we do, just on the other side of the aisle, so they have a limited perspective of the personhood of women.

Women don't act like that because it is soul-crushing to try to fit yourself into a two-dimensional cutout. And it is fucking offensive to "enjoy" that two-dimensional cutout, because people have suffered and died trying to fight it. If you're into BDSM and you call yourself a slave, you're being fucking offensive: you're co-opting something that generations of people have been oppressed by and trying to make it titillating. You're not reclaiming it. You're erasing what it actually means. Call yourself something else, but fuck you, acting like it's all just hunky-dory is fucking oppressive because you are a privileged little fuck.

/end... more later.

Sorry for taking up so much space with the comment; I'm not able to blog and there's no way I can express this otherwise.