Who's Got (More) Power? Radical Lesbian Feminists or Liberal Trans Activists (I'd say "Neither")

image of transgender visibility symbol is from here

[Revised later in the day after the initial posting on 19 June 2011.]

20 June 2011 update: 

I wrote to Lisa Harney at Questioning Transphobia, asking her if she'd also be willing to talk about some of this post.

Here's that comment, which has yet to be received and responded to.

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Hi Lisa,
I’ve been trying to reach out and get some constructive discussion going around trans and radical feminist issues and tensions, to try and resolve some of the divides.
Are you open to doing that? Here’s my latest post on thee subject, and if you wish to, I welcome you to email me or post a comment to my site letting me know of your interest in discussing stuff further.
Cheers.
Julian

I found a post by a trans and radical feminist blogger named Joelle Ruby Ryan and posted a comment. Her post illustrates tensions between Radical Lesbian Feminists and Liberal Trans Activists. My understanding is that Joelle is a Radical Feminist Queer Trans Woman-identified writer and professor, and so I've welcomed her to discuss the issues that exist between the two groups--both of whom are relatively small and each of which is greatly marginalised from mainstream society.

*Here's a link* to her post, which identifies Sheila Jeffreys as a dangerous hate-monger.  This post is not about Sheila Jeffreys. This post's concerns extend beyond Sheila, to those tensions between the two non-unified groups. While you'd never know this from reading MRA sites, neither radical feminist nor trans ideology is readily identifiable as "one viewpoint". To call each "one ideology" is already getting oneself into trouble, drifting rather dramatically from social-political reality almost always misperceived as simpler than it is.

For those new to the views presented by this blogger, I identify Liberal politics as effectively (if not always intentionally) genocidal and gynocidal. While I find Sheila Jeffeys' views to be 'her own', I'll acknowledge they are not outside the current discourses found among some white radical feminists. So, to all of us I ask this preliminary ethical question: What's worse? Promoting bigotry or actually committing mass oppression, terrorism, and murder? I know there's an argument that Sheila's promotion of transphobic bigotry leads to all many other forms of violence, but that's a bit unsubstantiated--we cannot know the extent to which her own views, those that are bigoted and those that critical, lead others to commit systematic violence against trans people. We can, quite effectively, track how Liberalism-in-action directs societies to be systemically gynocidal and genocidal. I have attempted to do so here, across many posts from many activists and sources internationally.

This is a point of contention, for me, with Liberalism. There is a propensity for Liberal activists to view all forms of inhumane violence equally. But in reality it is rarely done. People across political locations tend to downplay the horror and terror of their own violence against others; trans activists participate in this process of minimisation when they discursively or verbally assault Radical Lesbian Feminists: they typically identify how they've been harmed but don't as readily identify how they've been harmful to others. Meanwhile, those same people across political locations, and others such as US Conservatives, will typically amplify the effects of violence "done to us".

The US government will proclaim what happened on Sept. 11, 2001 as the most violent action to occur in human history--or, at least, in US history. Focusing on what's gone on within the US alone, we may note that seeing the attacks on "9/11" quite effectively forgets and disappears extreme violence such as the US patriots' and government's genocide against Indigenous North Americans; white colonialists' slavery and the whole of the Maafa; the trafficking of raped girls and women; the rape of girls and women who are not trafficked; domestic terrorism of women in heterosexual marriages and other primary heterosexual relationships; and so many other forms of gross violence--all considered either non-existent (though denial and delusion), natural (by essentialising many expressions of the culturally, historically, regionally relative human "nature" of "Man"), or normal (read: acceptable, god-ordained, and inevitable).

On the subject of denial and its relationship to dominance, we can note that it takes a lot of privilege to pretend that Liberalism isn't misogyny, transphobia, racism, genocide, and other mass atrocity; you have to believe in Liberalism's stated benign-to-benevolent objectives and ignore that it has never met and cannot meet any of them because it has no means and methods by which to do so. Instead, it makes promises it cannot keep and allows and encourages all manner of horror to play out unimpeded, with lip service paid to the wrongs it protects.

Aside from dedgurl, Dean Spade, and Joelle Ryan, all the trans people I know personally of are Liberal to Progressive. At least one of the trans visitors to this blog, Sara, is a social-political Conservative. The Conservative-to-Liberal position on the unceasingly misogynist gender hierarchy is that it is a matter or condition of difference, unbridled from something Radicals call "male supremacy".

Justice, for Liberals, is achieved only theoretically, when, at some future time, non-trans women and men along with all trans people are all equal to one another in rights and entitlements. We must ignore the fact that even if this were to occur among all the white and class-privileged folks who gain maginalised access to the media microphone most of the time, it still wouldn't be true due to continuing systems of inequality known as racism, heterosexism, and classism. The Conservative position is that gender is natural through and through--completely free of human encumbrances like "ideology". Conservatism holds that pesky anti-patriarchal laws which try and regulate what men do are not only unnatural, but against a white male sky-god's right, good, and wise plan for us. Needless to say, I disagree with both the Liberal and the Conservative positions.

In Dean Spade's views, I find Liberalism embedded in the practice, not Radicalism, with regard to gender. And that's assuming a definition of Radical that I uphold and promote. I'm not meaning to say that Dean or anyone else has to adopt my definitions. I use the definitions I have here to make my posts more comprehensible and consistent with one another. I've spent a few posts identifying what I mean by Radicalism and Radical Profeminism. I welcome visitors to read those posts. Two of them* are "What Does Radical Mean Here" and "On Radical Identities and the Consciousness of some White Bloggers".

I hear Dean promoting the need to end gender but not by doing what Radical Feminists argue must happen for gender to end: removing all manifestations of male supremacy from all social and psychic worlds. I am not familiar with Joelle's views and values enough to come to any conclusion about where she stands on "gender". I don't presume she is an adherent of Spade's views. Due to how she identifies, I suspect her view is a more complex and nuanced viewpoint than any standard Liberal or Radical politic.

One problem with the presentation of women's identity within some trans communities is that it effectively distances womanness--the social-political condition, not the essentialised bodies--with having been raised, in fact and in reality, as a girl while also being socially perceived as a girl, from birth onward, across culture and region. I note this general, lived reality without declaring that it is absolutely universal. For many women if not all women, oppression based on gender is a cumulative experience of domination, degradation, and disregard, not one of choosing one identity among other options. It is a very serious matter of what happens to one's socially targeted body from birth to death. "Women", in this view, are forcibly made far more than they are freely willed into existence. To the extent they are willed at all, it is men's, not women's wills at the helm.

Much of Queer and Trans political viewpoints posit gender as Difference (not Dominance) and as Chosen Identity (not Forced Condition). Women's identity as "women", from a Radical viewpoint, is a response to the oppression. There is something comparable at work, but not identical, with many racial identities.

Blackness is not a born or freely chosen condition or identity. I take this perspective from Black activists: It is a culturally varied condition that is taken up collectively as an identity for the purposes of survival. This is the case within Aboriginal society as well as African American society. Raced force culminates in identities, not the other way around. The identities may well live out that force in many ways but the force must be institutionally or systemically in place before the identities come into existence.

Seen this way, race and gender as differing identities are responses to a virulently and viciously enforced patriarchal white supremacy or an otherwise raced male supremacy (such as in Japan) that insists on maintaining a political force cloaked as the identity: "Whiteness" in the US, Germany, and South Africa; allegedly supreme or inferiorised race among other nation-states.

Blackness is not only that, however. For it is always the case that anyone with any identity, occupying any political/structural position, is fully human and therefore not describable by identity. The conceit of whites and men is that they often enough discursively and institutionally disappear their race and gender by claiming to represent humanity as a whole. (This can only be done if the force of white and male supremacy is already firmly embedded in the institutions and systems within any given society.) In doing so they highlight other raced conditions and gender identities as somehow other than what they are.We end up with identities fused to power, privilege, and entitlement, capable of making statements like, "Feminists keep viewing me as a man; I'm a Human!" Or, "Black people want me to take responsibility for the unjust ways of my whiteness, but all I am is human." This ability to dislocate oneself from time, place, history, culture, socially organised force reeks with entitlement. What woman of any color has the capability of doing so? Even if she attempts to declare herself "just human" separate from her foremothers and other women contemporarily terrorised and dominated by men, there will be men to remind her exactly what social position they want for her to occupy. This is how oppressive power works: If social dominants want you to be somewhere, you are there. If social subordinates want dominants to not be dominant, well, keep hoping for things to change.

The theoretical and experiential parallels and intersections between race and gender have been most acutely and analytically identified by women of color who are theorists, activists, and citizens of countries ruled by others who refuse to place them in the most privileged position. For example, the Black women I know, most of whom are not rich or middle class, describe lives narrowed and obstructed with encounters with several social-political-economic hierarchies. These happen in various environments and social forms, from economic exclusion to interpersonal insult to institutional discrimination. The limitations of freely lived life are structural not personal. Shifting identity doesn't bring meaningful liberation. Effective liberation is understood to be collective not individualistic. Opposing this liberation are the members of many political groups, including white men, white women, and men of color.

Indigenism, as I understand it in limited ways, rises as a spiritual, social, cultural philosophy, or Ways, that is in response to (murderously anti-Indigenist) CRAP. Identifying as "Indian" in North America, or here or elsewhere as "Native", or "Aboriginal" or Indigenous", is always contingent on there being a colonising, often imperialistic, always pro-industrialising oppressive invading and occupying force, known colloquially in my part of the world as "Western Civilisation".

To see gender or race only as difference and identity is to ignore the political forces keeping each a very vicious hierarchy intended to do harm to those who are not ever on top. Many Radical Feminists I know object to any politic which, along with traditional white male supremacist ideologies, seeks to obscure or invisibilise the male supremacist political force that constructs and gives social meaning and manifestation to "gender".

At issue is not only whether and to what degrees Sheila Jeffreys promotes bigotry about and hatred towards trans-identifiable people. I want to distinguish between people who are identified as trans (whether or not they are) and the rest of us who are trans-identified (whether or not we are ever targeted as such by non-trans people). We ought not forget that most trans people aren't socially perceived as being trans; most trans people have what a few academic trans people call "cis gender privilege". I maintain that this form of privilege isn't socially clarifying or politically useful to the collectivist struggle if most trans people have it, and many non-trans women do not. I've yet to hear any trans activists discuss this problem with the term. I accept that on a more individualistic level, the concept has deeply meaningful resonance.

Also at issue is the matter of anti-feminism and anti-Radicalism among Liberals--trans and non-trans people. Part of this shows up as an over-valuation of the power of  Radical Lesbian Feminists. As we can see with politically Conservative MRAs and other Conservative anti-feminists, a key argument put forth by enemies of Women's Liberation is that feminists simultaneously want and already have too much power. I've seen similarly racist and patriarchal self-serving attempts to discredit, disregard, and degrade Radical Feminism--Lesbian and not; Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian and white--by ascribing to it forms and manifestations of power, relative to racist heteropatriarchal power, that it has never had--and still doesn't have. In particular, I note how white Lesbians and Black women across sexuality are assumed to be far more dangerous-to-society than they have yet to demonstrate; they occupy no such places to substantively change the political configuration of the societies in which they currently live.

Within this dynamic emerges another: positioning non-trans women in a gender hierarchy as "the oppressor". Lost in such discourse and efforts at divisiveness, in such presentations of reality, is the role non-trans men play in determining the rest of our lives, not absolutely or in an essentialist way, but in a profoundly politically significant and substantive way. Again, there is a history that is alive and well, which targets women as The Problem population, ignoring or staying in denial about what non-trans men do to everyone--including to other non-trans men and to trans people across gender. MRAs are simplistically fond of calling feminists "fascists" and "man-haters", while ignoring the many actual ways men are fascistic trans-haters, woman-haters, and man-haters.

When I visit many Liberal to Conservative (racist and heteropatriarchal) trans blogs, I see few to no discussions of how men oppress anyone who is gendered to be "not a man who was raised as a boy". At these same blogs I see Radical Lesbian Feminism, and Radical Feminism generally, targeted as THE ideological and practiced form of anti-trans intellectual and political activity. Whose interests are served by rendering invisible the harm men do and by over-stating the power of R.L.F? I'd argue any politic that does this disappearing act of racist and patriarchal abuses, while also unfairly targeting R.L.F. is anti-woman and anti-trans, which is also to say effectively murderously misogynistic and racist, while also lethally (not just theoretically and discursively) transphobic. This means that whatever Sheila Jeffreys writes, it is structurally, positionally impotent relative to what Liberals and Conservatives do--including what Liberal and Conservative trans activists and writers do.

I welcome Radical trans writers and activists like Dean Spade and Joelle Ryan to call this out and hold Conservative and Liberal trans allies to account. Without Radical trans activists and bloggers doing so, we are left with trans bloggers calling Radical Lesbian Feminists "transphobic" while R.L.F.s remain the only activists seeking to end the systems that make transphobia socially/structurally possible. This is beyond ironic. It's misogynist.

I'll add this question: does being transphobic have more sting and stigma than being misogynistic and racist? From my views on Liberal feminist blogs, it appears to be the case. I've seen many white, class-privileged Feminist bloggers who are not trans or queer, be far more careful to not be transphobic and wedded to cis gender privileges (as a few white trans spokespeople very narrowly, define it in ways perilously steeped in classism), while those same bloggers remain unresponsive, unaccountable, and otherwise dehumanising to Radical Lesbian Feminists of all colors. This leads me to highlight that inside many Queer communities, anti-Radical Lesbian politics and practices, both Feminist and Separatist, have intensified precisely while Conservative to Liberal Trans politics have begun to take root. The connections between the two phenomena ought to be carefully examined by anyone who is pro-trans, pro-woman, and pro-Lesbian. Lesbophobia ought not disappear as a potent charge as long as transphobia and "misandry" carry stigma and sting.

In my experience, Liberalism isn't seriously called out (or even understood) by anyone other than Radicals. Conservatives don't like it, but they need it desperately as their conjoined nemesis; both Liberalism and Conservatism share more in common than the issues that make it appear they are oppositional political philosophies-in-action.

What I hear Radical Lesbian Feminists calling out about trans politics is its Liberalism and Conservatism. This is as valid a critique as the R.L.F. critiques of Gay politics, Liberal Lesbian politics, and heterosexual politics. Many trans people have brought me this argument: why do Radical Lesbian Feminists target trans people for a form of personal-political interrogation that is not leveled at anyone else. My response is that R.L.F. critiques have been and are brought to bear on everyone, of every sexual and gender expression and politic, including on its own. To not know this is to demonstrate significant ignorance about the history of Radical Lesbian Feminism.

In queer community, particularly but not only over the last twenty years, I've seen a whiddling down of R.L.F. philosophies, with very sharp intellectual knives held steady in the hands of het men, het women, gay men, bi men and women, and more recently by Conservative and Liberal trans activists. These critiques are not intended to make R.L.F. more effective; they are intended to render R.L.F. non-existent. These Conservative and Liberal challenges are predictably pro-status quo.

Academic Liberal post-modern philosophies are used to keep the institutional powers of the status quo in place, even while socially activist Radical post-modern philosophies were designed to expose and challenge the hypocrisies and horrors of that same status quo. In queer community now, Liberalism and Conservatism reigns supreme. Radical trans viewpoints are refused and refuted as being transphobic.

This doesn't mean LGBTIA communities ought to be regarded as more dangerous--or, even, just as dangerous--as het male-dominated communities. Queer communities of all colors are never atop a social hierarchy of gendered and raced sexuality. Neither are Radical Feminist philosophies rising out of communities of all colors and sexualities. It is this last point that I hope was made clear in my response to Joelle Ruby Ryan.

Here's that response:

1. Hi Joelle,
   I am a transgender, gay, pro-feminist male. White too. I believe I have written to you inviting you to engage in mutually respectful discussion on many of these issues. But maybe I thought of it and didn’t follow through! Entirely possible. Anyway, I hope you will engage in mutually respectful discussion with me at my blog and here at your own, on trans and radical feminist issues, especially where they intersect. For now, do you really believe that Sheila Jeffreys ought not speak at any college? (Most have stated policies similar to that at Wheelock, don’t they? Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe it’s regional, with more progressive values showing up in the statements of intent in colleges in the US Northeast.) In my experience, colleges are not places of radical activism, by and large; they are places of liberal discourse, rarely practicing any radical activism on any issues at all. (As you may know better than I do, they are not in the business of promoting social change which threatens their own foundational values and practices.)
   
   Part of my experience is that when very marginalised groups of activists are routinely targeted from many angles, from disparate political groups, they can become kind of rigid and defensive, but not the kind of rigid that is fascistic or structurally domineering. I get that you’re not applying the term to radical feminists. But I just want to state here that I think applying it to radical lesbian feminists who are not trans is a misuse of the term. Perhaps we agree on this point: non-trans radical lesbian feminists have no state power from which to exercise methods of social control. They have no police force, no military, no law-makers, no courts in which people are sentenced to years in hellish prisons. They have no educators either in K through 12 or in university, in leadership within the state proper. Do you support people ascribing such power–fascistic power–to some truly marginalised people who get some books published and rarely gather at conferences? I realise you are not calling that power of being published “fascistic”. I hear you stating that you won’t tolerate hate speech from Christo-fascists or from radical lesbian feminists. But are you aware of how often the writings of radical lesbian feminists are called “censorial” and “fascist” by many people across many political locations?
   
   I’m wanting to bridge some divides with you. Are you open to discussion with me? I’m happy to mutually set some ground-rules that would make the environment safer or more constructive for us in discussion.
   
   Julian Real said this on June 18, 2011 at 6:15 am | Reply

*For more, please see this recent post titled, "Who Will Transgender and Transsexual Activists Support in Men's War Against Women?"

On "radical" identities and the consciousness of some white bloggers

image is from here

NOTE: This is not directed at every white woman I know. It is directed at many white women I do not know.

I've been encountering some white privilege, power, and entitlements in my regular encounters with folks. This is nothing new. Recently the whitness is showing up in a variety of ways but it there is one form that I will address right now.

Just so you know--if you're new to this blog, I stand strongly in political and spiritual solidarity with women of color who are, as far as I can see, always fighting at least two institutionalised ideologies: male supremacy and white supremacy, if not also other forms of oppression and domination such as capitalism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamic violence, anti-Indigenous genocide. I will call out any expression of white supremacy I encounter.

There are some white women online who are calling themselves "radical" who deny that women can oppress women. This is as messed up a viewpoint as men claiming they cannot oppress other men due to race, class, and other conditions. Some men do argue this, of course. Some white het men believe it because they deny there are any systems of oppression, any social-political hierarchies, working at all. Some WHM (white het men) claim they wish to be spoken about as if they are only individuals, not as part of an institutionally protected, privileged group. With that as their request, they then proceed to understand women only as a group--and are numbingly stupid about the diversity of perspective and analysis among feminists.

Especially, patriarchy- and white supremacy-protecting WHM argue that feminists are all man-haters, never bothering to offer up a substantive argument other than throwing around quotes. (They also stay astoundingly silent about all the published men who state quite clearly that men are rapists by nature--a position not belonging to radical feminism.) Their two-dozen favorite quotes (see *here* for more about this) by all-white feminists are allegedly all the proof they need that "those damned feminists hate men so much!" Why they seem so determined to ignore the work of radical feminists of color is beyond me--unless it is because they assume women of color aren't worth paying attention to. Anyone with a computer and a mouse can easily gather up about a thousand times as many quotes online from white het men who demonstrate disgusting levels of misogyny, and racism, homophobia, and general callousness to cruelty committed or controlled predominantly by WHM.

These WHM activists go on and on about Black people as one group, lesbians as one group, Mexican people as one group, and Asian people as one group, Indigenous people as one group--if they care to notice there are Indigenous people at all. This often means that these political WHM cannot comprehend the existence and diversity among lesbian women of color and how their experiences might vary from white lesbian women's. Other men believe, for example, that if men are poor or not white they are not capable of oppressing women. I've heard and seen plenty of arguments by het men of color that they are only oppressed, and are not oppressors to women in their own communities and regions. Bullshit.

The willful ignorance isn't limited to het men, however.

Here's a quick anecdote about a white, class-privileged gay man I once knew through a mutual friend. My friend and this white gay man worked together in retail and I ran into him when going to this store.

The man I didn't know especially well, but who welcoming of getting to know me better, thought he's impress me with his humor. He told me a joke that was racist. I won't repeat it. I was deeply upset by it and he was quite surprised I would be so alarmed. This is often my experience with whites--we assume we're all good with the racism. I'm not. So I didn't laugh and indicated that I didn't find his "joke" funny. When he realised this he went on to explain to me why it was okay for him to tell it. He said Whoopi Goldberg told the joke, and he was gay so he can't be racist. (Because, you know, he's oppressed by sexual orientation so apparently that means he can't oppress anyone else.)

I asked my friend how it could be that this white guy thought I'd welcome hearing that joke. He told me the following: [racist white guy in denial] told me a joke--kind of like the one he told you but not with the racist parts; I told him you would probably like it. So that's how come [racist white guy] thought it would be okay. I told my friend the actual joke shared and he too was shocked. Neither of us are friends with [racist white guy in denial].

Every feminist friend I know would call him out on a bogus argument that gay men can't oppress women because the men are gay.

Enduring one form of marginalisation or subjugation doesn't mean one is positioned socially and structurally to not oppress anyone or any group to which one doesn't belong. Every woman I know personally understands that men who are gay can be oppressive to women--particularly lesbian, in some communities, if we share social spaces. Although the Sheila Jeffreys' book, Unpacking Queer Politics, is being trashed without thoughtful engagement or analysis by many people occupying many different social spheres, it does engage the reader in an important conversation about how gay men's behavior and values oppresses lesbian women. At the time of this writing, I can count on zero hands the number of white gay men who have responded responsibly to her arguments.

Every woman I know also understands that men of color can be oppressive to women across race and sexuality. How does it happen then, that white and het women cannot be oppressive to any other women (or, for that matter, to men of color, and to gay men if the women are het)? With what understanding of social harm and hierarchy, and through what privileged and protected lens does one get to believe that? How convenient for not taking full political responsibility for one's whiteness or heterosexuality, eh? And, what's more, these women have all had plenty of opportunity to learn about their white supremacy and heterosexism as they've been called out on each of these rearing its oppressive head in many social spaces.

To believe that because one is a [white het] woman--with just about every form of privilege and entitlement on Earth--one cannot be an oppressor either individually or institutionally, totally invisibilises how a very central force in many societies works: that force is white supremacy. It also renders white women invisible as whites and women of color invisible as people who are both women and of color, all due to white women's political slight of hand which they summarise as "women can't oppress women". Apparently, for race- and region-privileged women do not have any other structural locations on Earth other than as women: unraced.

When I learned recently that a few radical-identified white het women believed this, I realised I'd heard it before, many times, and that it might help explain why it is that so many white "radical" women do not deal with their racism, their white privilege, and the meaning and forms of their white power and entitlements. I'll press pause on the unacknowledged or blatantly denied heterosexism issue for now. The racism I've witnessed isn't only demonstrated and denied by het white women.

I reflected back on the drag shows co-organised by white lesbians and white gay men. The lesbians called themselves "radical" because they sincerely thought they were. When I challenged them on co-creating spaces that were overtly hostile and insulting to lesbian (and other) women of color, to poor women of color, to men of color also, they pretended my concern was not as important as their need to be entertained by each other. They treated the matter as if it were abstract. To them, it was abstract because they've never taken the time to immerse themselves intimately in the communities and lives of people without race privilege. They don't ever have to live the lives of lesbian women of color and they can believe that white lesbian experience is all they need to consider or show concern about when organising to defend lesbian experience.

I will continue to call out white supremacist queer people who also misuse the term "radical"--according to the radical women of color I know, not primarily according to me. Too often patriarchy protected practices like gender bending are promoted as radical or revolutionary. There are several problems with that viewpoint. One is that their political practice is based on understanding the social problem as "gender" or "the gender binary" and not male supremacy--and white supremacy and heterosexism and capitalism, among other forms of organised harm and horror.

It isn't that difficult to translate dynamics that are male supremacist to those that are white supremacist. One central reason it isn't difficult is because both systems of harm and dehumanisation inform each other, shape each other, and feed off of one another, in white male supremacist societies.

Here are a few clues one, if a blogger, might be acting out of white privilege, power, and entitlements.

--your blog doesn't identify your race as white if you're white
--your blog or identity doesn't include your stated understanding of how and where you step on the backs of others to be where you are. I mean collectively: how your people got to be where they are
--you believe you are radical because you comprehend how white women are oppressed by white men, but don't understand any other form of oppression and apparently don't make it your business to do so
--you feel very entitled to "own" and "define" the term "radical" because you are white; it doesn't occur to you that you're not radical if you promote your own white supremacy by ignoring your white privileges and power
--you put down white trans people because the white trans people you know have liberal political agendas, meaning pro-status quo; you don't consider how being white supremacist is deeply pro-status quo and dangerously conservative

I have similarly called out sexist and misogynist men of color who believe themselves to be radical; often enough, men of color who see themselves as radicals will limit their political consciousness to understanding how white supremacy degradingly effects men of color.

Now, most of the white power I encounter belongs to and is exercised by men; I don't wish to pretend that white women hold more white power than do white men. Intersectional analyses of power means that one benefits in complex ways when one holds more than one position atop a hierarchy. Being white and male, for example--as I am--means something different than being white plus male. It's not only an additive thing to me--this life that is lived in positions of power relative to other groups of people. It's also exponential. This is why I view white men's white power as greater than white women's. Also because if white women exercise any form of power in ways that white men disapprove of, it will be the white men who get their way--institutionally if not always interpersonally. But often enough, white men will kill white women if the men don't approve of how the white women are behaving.

One key way I see white women ignore and deny their own white power is to pretend that violence only happens interpersonally. Typically, white blogs that are pro-feminist deal with issues of rape, harassment, the practices of heterosexuality, and other interpersonal and intimate harm, but not, for example with issues of poverty, racism, HIV, and starvation that isn't only isn't individually experienced but is also politically imposed as a form of genocide.

This is because poverty, racism, and most other forms of atrocity and terrorism are profoundly interlocking institutionalised realities (as is rape; as is sexism). Poverty, in particular, isn't always so easily identified as only something individuals do to other individuals. We can note that rich people don't have to walk down the street harassing poor people individually; they do, often enough, however, work behind the scenes to pass city legislation to ban poor people from congregating or home-making in various parts of a city. The deals are made out of view of the poor people who will be most negatively effected.

I'm not comfortable defining myself as "radical" unless I am open to looking at and working to challenge all areas of my privilege, in collaboration with women who are negatively effected by that privilege; this necessarily means engaging with women of color across sexuality and with lesbian women across race and ethnicity. "Radical" is not primarily a mindset or a viewpoint, to me. What it is, is a commitment to action demonstrated actively. Action to call oneself out, to hold oneself accountable, and--importantly--to be personally and socially available to be accountable--to not hide out in only-white or only-male or only-het spaces for example.

These same white het women promoting ideas that they cannot oppress the women they do, in fact, oppress were also working to silence Lesbian women. It appears they don't see their heterosexuality as a position of power over and against women marginalised by sexual-political orientation--which really means by the het supremacy that women also participate in.

The anti-trans perspectives among some white non-trans women "radical" bloggers is fierce and self-righteous. If only their critiques of whiteness were as rigorous.

Suffice it to say if we work with this as a definition of what radical feminists oppose--"if it hurts women, feminists are against it"--we are left to know, beyond any glare of doubt, that racism is anti-woman if the women are women of color. This means that racism is also a form of misogyny. To any white woman who is against misogyny: are you against the misogyny you promote and protect, that negatively impacts the lives of women of color, by you ignoring your own white privilege and power?

White women, usually, like pro-status quo white men, do not care enough to consider how their lives are not at all like women without race privilege. I've witnessed how women of color are expected to pass white women's litmus tests of whether or not they are radical--such as on pornography or prostitution. They don't consider that their own use of "radical" ought to be up for question if they can't identify what it is women of color face the world over that white women do not.

I call this out as a white male, knowing that if a white woman called out the same stuff she'd be verbally harassed and otherwise threatened for doing so by other white women seeking to maintain the very real power of the White Sisterhood. Both because of my male privileges and power, and because I do not seek solidarity with racist white women, I don't feel as vulnerable to such ostracism as some of my anti-racist white sisters do. So I'm speaking out here because if and when I don't, the task falls, as usual, to women of color. If the white women promoting this racist nonsense don't wish to hear it from a white male because being responsive to me is engaging in sexist practice to them, perhaps they'll listen to white radical lesbian feminist, Marilyn Frye, *here*.

I hope they'll consider the very radical act of believing what radical women of color say about white women's privileges and power to be oppressors. They could start with Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Andrea Smith.

(For more on radicalism and blogging, see *this post*.)

Support, don't Silence, the Work of Sheila Jeffreys

image is from here

Men, of all ages and varieties, have always worked quite hard to silence anything and everything radical feminists--and radical lesbian feminists in particular--have wanted to say.

And, as we all know, there are always far too many people who aren't men who are willing to do their dirty work for them. The silencing of radical feminists and promotion of the social-economic-political practices of CRAP is big business and men pay each other and women a lot to try and shut up radical feminist women.

At issue in this post: what Sheila Jeffreys says and writes. Some people call her work anti-man, anti-gay, transphobic, and wh*rephobic--each term of which is absurd, or terribly misused, or virulently misogynistic when examined in reality at all. Isn't the work of radical lesbian feminists to promote political viewpoints, analysis, and actions that put women (and not anyone else) at the center of concern, particularly the least privileged and most marginalised women? When men put the interests of men (and not anyone else) at the center of their work, I don't see people throwing around the term "transphobic" calling out THE MEN for doing so. I don't see people who use the term "transphobic" systematically taking on men and male supremacy at all, actually. Why is that? Is it because the people regularly hurling that term at women to silence and discredit women are anti-radical, antifeminist misogynists? I'd say, for the most part and usually, YES.

What the fuck does "wh*rephobic" mean, anyway? Has the person I found online--who I won't link to--who uses this term, actually decided this is pro-woman? How does it actually become revolutionary and feminist to use the terms men use against women and add the word "phobic"? Are there "b*tchphobic" and "sl*tphobic" people too?

This use of language reveals a politics of status quo-protection, and it's a pro-CRAP activity that will do nothing good for women as a class of people oppressed by men, globally. In the opinion of this activist, such liberal reclamation of woman-hating terms, that men actively continue to use to pretend there are such distinct kinds of lesser people ("wh*res", "b*tches, "sl*ts", and so on), is not only anti-woman but supports women being degraded and subordinated by men, in reality.

1. Anti-man, or misandrist: what the hell does that actually mean? What do people who are "anti-man" actually do in the real world of action and systematised oppression? The assumption is that such people are women-not-men. Not a wise conclusion to come to, given that the most man-hating people I've ever met are men-not-women. But given that the ridiculous assumption is that women are "anti-man", do such people rape men? Do they beat men so as to land the doods in the hospital? Do they terrorise men in the home, and travel the world to sexually assault boys and men who are trapped in systems of prostitution which are are, usually, slave trafficking-rings?

2. Anti-gay. There are lots and lots of people who are anti-gay who we need to worry about because of their structural power and privilege. They're called het men--you'll notice them by paying attention to who is economically, socially, religiously, and politically in charge of everything.

When lesbian feminists are called "anti-gay", what that generally means is that the lesbians don't prioritise the needs and lives of gay men over the needs and lives of lesbian women. And so they're called anti-gay. This means that most if not all gay men are anti-lesbian, because I've known few to none who put pro-woman and pro-lesbian political objectives and campaigns before pro-gay ones.

3. Transphobic. The more I examine the social online use of this term, the clearer it becomes it's just a term for "anti-feminist" and "pro-patriarchal" in queer sheep's clothing. This comes as no surprise given that dominant academic "Queer Theory" and dominant queer culture generally has been working hard to shut up and shut down radical lesbian feminists and the activist efforts to free women from heteropatriarchal atrocities and institutionalised insults.

4. "Wh*rephobic". Um. Please. Just stop. It's about as misogynist a term as I've ever seen. You know a term is politically ridiculous when you can replace the "phobia" suffix with "philia" and have the word mean the same thing. "Wh*re-philic". Yeah. I'd say any man who declared himself a lover of wh*res isn't pro-feminist or pro-woman.

People: cut the conservative and liberal (read: capitalism-conserving, racism-reinforcing, atrocity-accepting, patriarchy-preserving) CRAP. Really. It's actually oppressing, terrorising, and killing people: girls and women inside and outside systems of prostitution, for example. And girls and women inside nuclear families. And girls and women everywhere else.

Radical lesbian feminists have terrorised and killed no one at all. Get a fucking grip. If you don't like what a radical lesbian feminist of any color and region says, here's a thought: don't read their written work and don't listen to their speeches. Because those really are about the only places you'll ever hear from them, given how much media silences them. And every single radical lesbian feminist I know has gotten death threats and is punished socially for her views and activist efforts. 

Sheila Jeffreys is my sister. 

Here's some her VERY important work:

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for more on this book, please see here

to look inside this book, please click here