Is John Stoltenberg Wrong? On Andrea Dworkin, Sex Difference, and Gender Dominance

image of book cover is from here

What follows seeks a careful, thoughtful read of Andrea Dworkin's early writings. I hope to make two points:

1. Andrea's view of 'woman' was directly and politically tied to the female body—unambiguously.
2. John Stoltenberg decontextualises or overvalues key points in some of her early work, points she later abandoned or came to understand as politically problematic. In the process, the core of her work is ignored.

In John's article, "Andrea Dworkin was not Transphobic", he stated that her early views were profound and life-changing for him. From "Andrea Was Not Transphobic" at Feminist Times:

One passage in Woman Hating changed my life forever:

“The discovery is, of course, that “man” and “woman” are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for male and female both.”

That is the opening of the last chapter of the book, chapter 9: "Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking, and Community." Also from that chapter, page 175:

... The first question then is: What of biology? There are, after all, men and women. They are different, demonstrably so. We are each of one sex or the other. If there are two discrete biological sexes, then it is not hard to argue that there are two discrete modes of human behavior, sex-related, sex-determined. One might argue for a liberalization of sex-based roles, but one cannot justifiably argue for their total redefinition.  

Hormone and chromosome research, attempts to develop new means of human reproduction (life created in, or considerably supported by, the scientist’s laboratory), work with transsexuals, and studies of formation of gender identity in children provide basic information which challenges the notion that there are two discrete biological sexes. That information threatens to transform the traditional biology of sex difference into the radical biology of sex similarity. That is not to say that there is one sex, but that there are many. 

The issue, in part, is this matter of whether there are "two discrete biological sexes". Beginning on page 176, she offers the following evidence of the two not being "discrete", or polar opposites, biologically:

The words “male” and “female, ” “man” and “woman, ” are used only because as yet there are no others. 

1. Men and women have the same basic body structure. Both have both male and female genitals —the clitoris is a vestigial penis, the prostate gland is most probably a vestigial womb. ... 

2. Until the 7th week of fetal development both sexes have precisely the same external genitalia. Basically, the development of sex organs and ducts is the same for males and females and the same two sets of ducts develop in both.  

3. The gonads cannot be said to be entirely male or female. Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey writes: In their somatic organization, the gonads always retain a greater or lesser amount of the opposite-sex tissue which remains functional throughout life. 

4. Chromosomal sex is not necessarily the visible sex of the individual. It happens that a person of one chromosomal sex develops the gonads of the other sex. Gonadal sex and chromosomal sex can be in direct contradiction.  

5. Chromosomal sex is not only XX or XY. There are other chromosomal formations, and not much is known about them or what they signify.  

6. A person can have the gonads of one sex, and the secondary sexual characteristics of the other sex.  

7. Men and women both produce male and female hormones. The amounts and proportions vary greatly, and there is no way to determine biological maleness or femaleness from hormone count.  

8. One hormone can be transformed by the body into its “opposite, ” male into female, female into male.  

9. It is now thought that the male hormone determines the sex drive in both men and women. 

10. The female hormone (progesterone) can have a masculinizing effect. Dr. Sherfey writes:

We may have difficulty conceiving it, but natural selection has no difficulty using sexually heterotypic structures for homotypic purposes. For example, progesterone is the “pregnancy hormone” essential for menstruation and the prolonged pregnancy. It is as uniquely a “female” hormone as one can be. Yet progesterone possesses strong androgenic properties. It may be used to masculinize female embryos. In 1960, Jones (27, 63) demonstrated that progesterone given to human mothers early in pregnancy to prevent threatened miscarriages. . . severely masculinized a female fetus.

11. Visible sex differences are not discrete. There are men with tiny cocks, women with large clits. There are men with highly developed breasts, women with almost no breast development. There are men with wide hips, women with no noticeable hip development. There are men with virtually no body hair, women with much body hair. There are men with high voices, women with low voices. There are men with no facial hair, women who have beards and mustaches.  

12. Height and weight differences between men and women are not discrete. Muscle structures are not discrete. We know the despair of the tall, muscular woman who does not fit the female stereotype; we know also the despair of the small, delicate man who does not fit the male stereotype. 

13. There is compelling cross-cultural evidence that muscle strength and development are culturally determined. There are cultures in which there are no great differences in somatotype of men and women...

14. There are hermaphrodites in nature. Robert T. Francoeur, in Utopian Motherhood: New Trends in Human Reproduction, admits: The medical profession and experimental biologists have always been very skeptical about the existence of functional hermaphrodites among the higher animals and man, though the earthworm, the sea hare, and other lower animals do combine both sexes in the same individual.

We are not being told two sexes don't exist, in nature or otherwise; we are being told they don't exist 'discretely'. Any casual observations of humans around the world, and even within one culture or region, bears that out: females and males are not "opposites" or entirely physically different kinds of people. Due to that, she concludes, "[w]e are justified in making a radical new formulation of the nature of human sexuality. We are, clearly, a multisexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete."

This is a crucial point for John in his work. The insight also informs the work of others, many of whom are neither radical nor feminist.

Gender, sex, and sexuality as "a vast fluid continuum" is pursued by many white sexual Liberals and Queer Theorists in the following decades. I describe them as Liberals because, unless exceptionally, they are not engaged in efforts to eradicate colonialist patriarchy from the roots up. And too often they seek to distance themselves from those who do. A problem occurs when focus on sexual fluidity or continuums becomes the primary work, not in collaboration or coalition with radical and feminist activists.

Achieving greater dignity and visibility to those who are intersex or transsexual is a worthwhile endeavor—life saving for some. But seeking visibility in an unchallenged status quo was not the objective, even in this early work of Andrea's. We are being led to consider the following:

"...the concrete implications of multisexuality as we find it articulated in both androgynous mythology and biology necessitate the total redefinition of scenarios of proper human sexual behavior and pragmatic forms of human community. If human beings are multisexed, then all forms of sexual interaction which are directly rooted in the multisexual nature of people must be part of the fabric of human life, accepted into the lexicon of human possibility, integrated into the forms of human community. By redefining human sexuality, or by defining it correctly, we can transform human relationship and the institutions which seek to control that relationship. Sex as the power dynamic between men and women, its primary form sadomasochism, is what we know now. Sex as community between humans, our shared humanity, is the world we must build." 

Isolated from her core message, some of the above can come across as post-modern and Liberal Queer Theory-making. It is important to note, the problem with post-modernism isn't its discursive critique of colonialist patriarchal modernism; it is its belief that changes in language adequately lead to sufficient changes in culture, and therefore society. The problem with Liberalism isn't that it necessarily refuses Radicalism. The problem is that people are seduced by speaking and writing projects that don't disturb the major power-brokers of society. And, it is easier to target radical activists than be accountable to them. It is also pro-hegemonic to ignore those who are most harmed by systems of exploitation and violence, effectively protecting and preserving the status quo.

People, usually those atop various political hierarchies, are far too satisfied to avoid and ignore the most heinous realities: they can also better afford to do so. I know of no one who occupies various positions at the bottom of several political hierarchies who are Liberal or who believe that only reforming colonialist patriarchy is sufficient to save their lives.

Yet, Liberals can and have worked with Radicals; the problem is that because Liberals don't actively pursue radical transformation, they instead attack Radicals and their theories and agendas, often as being illiberal and even conservative. To the extent that people seeking to reform the status quo only endeavor to create more text, more identities, or more laws within patriarchy, they are liberal and a problematic form of post-modern. Academic discourse aside, it means they are invested, often without intent and usually without awareness, in the mass subordination, enslavement, and murder of women and girls.

According to Andrea, "redefining human sexuality", or "defining it correctly" does not, by itself, leave us with something other than "the power dynamic between men and women, its primary form sadomasochism", unless we build it. Dworkin, in this abandoned early theory, is calling for a more complex, non-hierarchical mythology of gender and sex as part of an overall program of dismantling patriarchy. It is not an end unto itself. The goal is not "more genders". The goal is the end of gender-as-hierarchy, and all expressions of male supremacist violence. So if we don't get there by changing terms and sexual categories, how do we?

"We must destroy the very structure of culture as we know it, its art, its churches, its laws." — Andrea Dworkin, "The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door", page 48, Our Blood.

The project isn't primarily discursive (one of creating new theory) or one of expanding identities (as liberal genderqueer proponents do). It is eradicating male supremacist violence, including as it expresses itself through culture, art, religion, and laws.

To appreciate the implications of anything she wrote, one must face this fact:

Andrea's writing was a radical and feminist political act; she wrote as an activist, building revolution into her prose and nonfiction. She wanted patriarchy dead as soon as possible, accomplished by ending all forms of sexual violence against women and girls—against their spirits and minds, and against their female bodies. This, more than anything else, was what I believe Andrea wanted to see achieved.

We must also keep this in mind. With Nikki Craft alone, over a period of years, Andrea carefully selected the contents of the Andrea Dworkin Online Library. The section from Woman Hating now being promoted by John as, according to him, dis-identifying womanhood with femaleness, was not chosen by Andrea as something she wanted to have preserved in cyberspace. What she did choose was a portion of part 2, "The Pornography" as an introduction to a full chapter called "Woman as Victim: Story of O", pp. 53-63, from Woman Hating, copyright © 1974 by Andrea Dworkin.

From "The Pornography":

Pornography, like fairy tale, tells us who we are. It is the structure of male and female mind, the content of our shared erotic identity, the map of each inch and mile of our oppression and despair. Here we move beyond childhood terror. Here the fear is clammy and real, and rightly so. Here we are compelled to ask the real questions: why are we defined in these ways, and how can we bear it?

Now, the opening paragraph from "Woman as Victim: Story of O": 

The Story of O, by Pauline Reage, incorporates, along with all literary pornography, principles and characters already isolated in my discussion of children's fairy tales. The female as a figure of innocence and evil enters the adult world—the brutal world of genitalia. The female manifests in her adult form—cunt. She emerges defined by the hole between her legs. In addition, Story of O is more than simple pornography. It claims to define epistemologically what a woman is, what she needs, her processes of thinking and feeling, her proper place. It links men and women in an erotic dance of some magnitude: the sado-masochistic complexion of O is not trivial—it is formulated as a cosmic principle which articulates, absolutely, the feminine.

What is epistemically existent is the colossal and subordinating violence done to women's female bodies by men. This, not the separation of female bodies from women's lives, is what Andrea exposed.

Far less frequently quoted than some of what is above, is this: Andrea states, "I think there are a lot of things really wrong with the last chapter of Woman Hating." See, Without Apology: Andrea Dworkin's Art and Politics, by Cindy Jenefsky (1998). The quote is from page 139, in her notes to chapter 3. Her point is not thoroughly discussed so we do not know all of what she meant.

John's article continues:

That belief in the possibility of life beyond gender was a core of both her work and mine. A speech I gave within a few months after our meeting was published as Refusing to Be a Man (the title I gave my first book). In a speech of Andrea’s written about a year later she drew a distinction between reality and truth in order to say that: 

“while the system of gender polarity is real, it is not true…. [T]he system based on this polar model of existence is absolutely real; but the model itself is not true. We are living imprisoned inside a pernicious delusion, a delusion on which all reality as we know it is predicated.”

As already indicated, I do not believe "life beyond gender", per se, was "a core" of her work. The distinction may appear subtle, but here, John is conflating his own literary and political project with hers, implying a mutually reinforcing intellectual pursuit and activist agenda. We are deliberately told the chronology of their early writings. But the thing is, he has not strayed from his earliest points. She moved on.

The speech he links to above appears as chapter 9 in Our Blood, "The Root Cause". I shall excerpt a substantial portion of the speech, here:

One basic principle of reality, universally believed and adhered to with a vengeance, is that there are two sexes, man and woman, and that these sexes are not only distinct from each other, but are opposite. The model often used to describe the nature of these two sexes is that of magnetic poles. The male sex is likened to the positive pole, and the female sex is likened to the negative pole. Brought into proximity with each other, the magnetic fields of these two sexes are supposed to interact, locking the two poles together into a perfect whole. Needless to say, two like poles brought into proximity are supposed to repel each other. 

The male sex, in keeping with its positive designation, has positive qualities; and the female sex, in keeping with its negative designation, does not have any of the positive qualities attributed to the male sex. For instance, according to this model, men are active, strong, and courageous; and women are passive, weak, and fearful. In other words, whatever men are, women are not; whatever men can do, women cannot do; whatever capacities men have, women do not have. Man is the positive and woman is his negative.
... 

This diseased view of woman as the negative of man, "female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities," infects the whole of culture. It is the cancer in the gut of every political and economic system, of every social institution. It is the rot which spoils all human relationships, infests all human psychological reality, and destroys the very fiber of human identity.

This pathological view of female negativity has been enforced on our flesh for thousands of years. The savage mutilation of the female body, undertaken to distinguish us absolutely from men, has occurred on a massive scale.

Here we see the core theme of her work, well reiterated, consistent with the quote above from "The Rape Atrocity". "The diseased view" is not that woman has a female body. "The pathological view" is not that women are female. The sociopathology is the uses and abuses to which women's female bodies are put, in patriarchal cultural mythology and in hard-core practice.

Advocating the addition of other genders, while leaving unchallenged the tyrannical sexual hierarchy that is globalised, is not a revolutionary effort. It is liberal to the core. The big mistake is thinking Dworkin sought to separate women's resistance to patriarchy from being female, or men's efforts to transform themselves from being male. What Andrea sought was the end of any association, presented to us as both truth and reality, of being a woman with being feminine and submissive, or being a man with being masculine and predatory.

Addendum:

Many people I know, respect, and love are intersex, non-binary, or transsexual. There is no unspoken claim here by me that Andrea was anti-transsexual or that she denied the existence of intersex people. She was an astoundingly empathic and compassionate human being, very much against cruel stereotyping and hatred of any group systematically targeted for violence and socially marginalised by the powerful. She wrote in Woman Hating, page 182:

...whatever we choose to make out of the data of what is frequently called Intersex, it is clear that sex determination is not always clearcut and simple. Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University has basically isolated these six aspects of sex identity: 

1. Genetic or nuclear sexuality as revealed by indicators like the sex-chromatin or Barr-body, a full chromosomal count and the leucocytic drumstick;

2. Hormonal sexuality which results from a balance that is predominantly androgenic or estrogenic; 

3. Gonadal sexuality which may be clearly ovarian or testicular, but occasionally also mixed; 

4. Internal sexuality as disclosed in the structure of the internal reproductive system; 

5. External genital sexuality as revealed in the external anatomy, and finally; 

6. Psychosexual development which through the external forces of rearing and social conditioning along with the individual's response to these factors directs the development of a personality which is by nature sexual. 

At this point, Dr. Money is more commonly known to have been a child abuser and pro-predation.

And from page 186:

Transsexuality  

How can I really care if we win “the Revolution”? Either way, any way, there will be no place for me. A transsexual friend, in a conversation 

Transsexuality is currently considered a gender disorder, that is, a person learns a gender role which contradicts his/her visible sex. It is a “disease” with a cure: a sex-change operation will change the person’s visible sex and make it consonant with the person’s felt identity.  

Since we know very little about sex identity, and since psychiatrists are committed to the propagation of the cultural structure as it is, it would be premature and not very intelligent to accept the psychiatric judgment that transsexuality is caused by faulty socialization. More probably transsexuality is caused by a faulty society. Transsexuality can be defined as one particular formation of our general multisexuality which is unable to achieve its natural development because of extremely adverse social conditions.  

There is no doubt that in the culture of male-female discreteness, transsexuality is a disaster for the individual transsexual. Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency (see p. 185) as a transsexual. There are 3 crucial points here. One, every transsexual has the right to survival on his/her own terms. That means that every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions. This is an emergency measure for an emergency condition. Two, by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing, and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised. Three, community built on androgynous identity will mean the end of transsexuality as we know it. Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androgyny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear and that energy will be transformed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.

She goes on to discuss Transvestism, Bestiality, and Incest, although not in the pro-predation, pro-perpetration ways that MRAs claim. But it should be quite clear that what she proposes here was later rejected for several reasons, in part because it is victim-ignoring, politically naive, and speculative relative to her later work. For example, this, from page 180 of Woman Hating:

It is interesting here to speculate on the perceptions of men like Lionel Tiger (Men in Groups) who in effect project human cultural patterns of dominance and submission on the animal world. For instance, Dr. Sherfey tells us that “In many primate species, the females would be diagnosed hermaphrodites if they were human” (Italics hers.) Most probably, we often simply project our own culturally determined modes of acting and perceiving onto other animals—we effectively screen information that would challenge the notions of male and female which are holy to us. In that case, a bias toward androgyny (instead of the current bias toward polarity) would give us significantly different scenarios of animal behavior.

Nothing too dangerous happens to non-human animals if we don't bother to notice that female and male are not the only presentations of sexed being. A lot happens to them, and to us, if we fail to challenge the ways female human beings across their lifetimes, as girls and as women, are harassed, threatened, beaten, raped, and murdered, precisely for being female women. Colonialist patriarchy is a core problem in the West and beyond. Girls across the globe are imperiled right now, but more generations of girls will continue to be if we ignore the bulk of what Andrea so truthfully described in her work across the 1980s and until her death, about entirely unspeculative gendered atrocities.

RadFem. Check. LibTrans. Check. RadTrans? Checking.

The title of this post may be seen as mildly cheeky. But it is also deadly serious.

Life circumstances have kept me offline in the last while. A good friend died of metastatic uterine cancer. She was like a sister to me. And then there were other health issues in her family. The cancer and the treatment was brutal and she was increasingly brave with each passing month. The battle ended two and a half years after diagnosis. I know there are so many people fighting or coping with cancer in some regard. Most along with poverty and additional insults and insecurities of marginalisation and invisibility.

But I'm here today to speak to a few things that have been off my radar, more or less, during that period. For example, I have found that a lot more people across a much wider age bracket use the term 'radfem'.

Due partly to my age, I don't experience 'radfem' and 'radical feminist' as synonyms. I grew up before tweeting and texting when feminist terms being shortened was not usually a sign of respect. Such as when Women's Liberation was turned into Women's Lib.

So in my ancient mind, shortening means going from this: [Content Warning: the second image is stupidly sexist.]

women's liberation movement photo is from here

to this:

blatantly sexist visual is from here

So, no disrespect intended to anyone who identifies as radfem or who uses both terms. Lorde knows I'd have more time on my hands if I'd written radfem every time I wrote out the longer version.

Anyway, I realise that in the last couple of years, the shorter term has taken root more widely. And that's not all. What also seems to have amped up are distressing and awfully bitter battles over terrain and terms, land and language.

Whose land comprises the U.S. of Amerikkka? Will the Federal government or individual States or citizens ever hand back significant tracts and regions of Indigenous land, or does the government remain a land-hoarder and destroyer? Will whites ever concede, en masse, that the Confederate flag is a symbol of white supremacy? That people from Mexico aren't aliens. That Muslims aren't terrorists. Will the xenophobic CRAP that spills out of Dumpty Trumpty ever cease? Will Black Lives Matter?

Does it register that some of us don't have clean water to drink, or reliable access to water?

Will Bernie Sanders become the DNC candidate for president: how would he rule, and make reparations regarding government-stolen land and colonialist-dependent wealth? Will Hilary Clinton be the first white woman to be U.S. president?

Hey: If you want great political leadership in this country, I think Winona LaDuke and Alicia Garza are as good as you get. LaDuke/Garza 2020!!!

Winona, a revolutionary feminist, has pointed out how a curiosity, to me anyway, regarding Anglo uses of the term 'radical', relative to many Indigenist traditional values. That is, from an Indigenist point of view, one may see U.S. government policies as radical, extreme, militant, for decades, for centuries. Genocidal. Seen this way, we can concur that Indigenist feminism is deeply Conservative, but not using the term in at all the same way the U.S. Republicrats do. I read that perspective for the first time many years ago in Talking About a Revolution. We're still waiting for that and are literally dying for it to arrive. Too often, though, it is just liberal talk about terms. Here I go with that.

Digging down and scraping the bottom of the barrel of this blog's archives, from 2008, I found this:

What does 'Radical' mean here? It holds up for me.

What I bring with me as a way to understand any form of oppression are lessons taught to me by radical feminists across race, region, and ethnicity. There are many who deeply inform my thinking and feeling. Among the earliest and most significant are Audre Lorde and Andrea Dworkin. But there more contemporary voices of wisdom and radical knowledge on the scene.

I will bring radical feminist theory and agendas, of color and white, with me as I go, never settling into any perspective or practice with colonial patriarchal Certainty. Andrea Dworkin, for one, never advocated for theory being mistaken for truth. She knew theory could be made into reality--to look, feel, taste, sound, and smell like CRAP. And like everything. And like the core of who I am, which may be why so many people feel like CRAP. And the danger to us, in part, is not knowing whose theories we are living inside, which ones we benefit from and protect, and which we are under and must continue to rise up against.

The more liberal academic side of the sometimes-termed RadFem vs. LibTrans turf war is a contest over theory--issues of gender, essentialism, and privilege. But the social and legal side of it is about spaces of safety and struggle. As noted above, it is clear who is fighting for land and language. In some sense we all are. But not equally.

________________

When I approach any conversation about gender, I first center this question: Whose bodies are marked for terrorism and destruction? What I see is that the bodies, the souls, of those who are identified as female, Indigenous, Black, and Brown, especially, are being terrorised. As they have been for centuries, at least. More recently, it is also Black trans bodies that are marked and murdered.

Corporate media would rather tell us of these horrors as individual tragedies perpetrated by one, two, six, or a hundred 'bad men' or 'rogue cops'. Mainstream media will not report the violence as systematic: patriarchal, colonial. Most white people I know are willing to settle for dimensions of mass media's truth. As are most men. I wonder how many other excuses white folk can conjure to excuse a cop's murder of someone not threatening them. I wonder how many rapes have to occur before it is seen as something men do normally, whether or not most men normally do it. In some sense it should not be surprising that rape happens, even while it should always be understood as part of a complex, involving entitlement and the requirement patriarchies have for some people to be femaled, 24/7/365. It is, tragically, an arrogant and desperate need of too many people for access and accommodation; for violence as violation. For land and language.

I am speaking of a need imposed on others, by human beings who are maled, who are always complex and nuanced in their hirstories and their lives, located in positions of privilege and marginalisation, as most of us are. But the color and sex of normal brutality must be noticed and named. I am mindful, heartful, of the violent disappearance of trans and nontrans Black women, murder after murder. And of the reality of rape culture, and how it is tethered both to patriarchy and to colonialism.

Within white spaces, also always complex and multifaceted, the only L  G  B  T movement I've ever seen as being radical was the L. I have looked to white Lesbian Feminist theorists for keen analysis of heteropatriarchy for over thirty years. Among my fav of those philosophers is Marilyn Frye. But there are many. My most fav, however, is not white. She is, as noted above, Audre Lorde.

The _GBT+ organisations and campaigns which are white-led or coloniser-centered, that claim to be radical, do not appear to me to be revolutionary in theory or practice. This has been brought to my attention in detail quite recently.

In some of the next posts, I will endeavor to carefully and respectfully identify what I find to be politically problematic with a facebook group I have been in as a commenter. It is called "The Conversations Project: Radically Inclusive Radical Feminism". It is welcoming and not supportive of flame wars--that alone is rare online. It has tolerated my very privileged presence for almost two weeks: we'll see who exhausts the other first. Hopefully amicable relationships will be nourished. But unowned intellectual liberalism is toxic to me. And denial of any form of privilege by anyone, as a way of life, is atrocity-supporting. When I see it, I endeavor to call it out, hopefully respectfully and with increasing sensitivity to how my own places of privilege effect the reception of the critique.

The two founders are well known in some progressive circles that contend with gender and privilege. Cristan Williams with Trans/Gender politics. John Stoltenberg with what used to be called Sexual Politics. With the doubly radical title as my guide, I presumed they are doing something radically feminist. In at least two senses, I believe they are using the term, well, liberally.

I have already written to them about my concerns, within the closed facebook group. Projects termed radical that are, in theory and reality, liberal, are nothing new. But the name of the project did direct me to a set of expectations and I was intrigued. I am attempting, in many ways wrongly, to hold them to my expectations. It's an unfair thing to do and I can be a pest about it. They have been kind, and I do well with kindness, so I'm working diligently at keeping my critiques clear of passive-aggression and void of shaming under- and over-tones. That in and of itself is good work for me to be doing in an online or offline community setting.

___________________

I will update you, here, on my own issues by noting that I've been continuing to search for terms to locate my sense of myself relative to gender. Given that I believe (I think in a radical feminist tradition) that the subjectivity of the oppressed matters more than the subjectivity of the oppressor, how women experience me is, first and foremost, what my gender is. That means I don't get to control it: the naming. The best I can do, subjectively, personally, non-essentially, while using the English language is "a maled adult". (And, being a good Amerikkkan, I only speak one language.) I'm a white maled adult, nonbinary, with more economic security than most people, which increasingly doesn't have to be a whole hell of a lot; but I have a kind of stability few people have: I can pay my bills on time and have no debt. And, while gay (in this case: maled, attracted to men--very few, but men), I do not engage in romantic or sexual relationships. That means the ways I can harm people interpersonally are dramatically reduced. And, yes, the ways I can be hurt and misunderstood: but that's what the internet is for. Or not.

If we're talking about dominant gender--CRAP-loaded gender--then using a term like 'anti-gender' works well for me. I have been identifying as 'intergender' but as a fierce white Feminist Lesbian called out, doing so locates me, affirmatively, between the poles of a gender binary that's also a hierarchy. That is, such a term, applied to me, reinforces the hierarchy linguistically (her point). I agree. It also pretends that by being 'in between', I may have less male privilege or sense of entitlement than others who ID as men. So, as either trans and cis, or neither trans and cis, and while I don't have heterosexual privilege, and while I'm not of Northern European gentile stock, I am afforded most male supremacist advantages and benefits. No doubt about it. No denial about it. Please.

I yearn for social spaces which share and practice community-enriching, humane values that I learned from radical feminism. Values like listening, self-awareness, accountability, mutuality, humor, and assertiveness. One especially important ethic is radical honesty: digging for the truth of one's feelings and experience, not settling for the views and interpretations of others just because they appear to be mandatory or popular. And not forgetting: we live inside the theories of others--most of whom are long gone, who may not ever have had any living creature's best interests at heart. I leave you for now, with this:

The purpose of theory is to clarify the world in which we live, how it works, why things happen as they do. The purpose of theory is understanding. Understanding is energizing. It energizes to action. When theory becomes an impediment to action, it is time to discard the theory and return naked, that is, without theory, to the world of reality. People become slaves to theory because people are used to meeting expectations they have not originated—to doing what they are told, to having everything mapped out, to having reality prepackaged. People can have an antiauthoritarian intention and yet function in a way totally consonant with the demands of authority. The deepest struggle is to root out of us and the institutions in which we participate the requirement that we slavishly conform. But an adherence to ideology, to any ideology, can give us the grand illusion of freedom when in fact we are being manipulated and used by those whom the theory serves. The struggle for freedom has to be a struggle toward integrity defined in every possible sphere of reality—sexual integrity, economic integrity, psychological integrity, integrity of expression, integrity of faith and loyalty and heart. Anything that shortcuts us away from viewing integrity as an essential goal or anything that diverts our attention from integrity as a revolutionary value serves only to reinforce the authoritarian values of the world in which we live.  —  Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, U.S. edition, pages 127-128

Winnie Small and Julian Real chat about Radical Feminist Lesbian Space and Liberal Het/Trans/Queer Politics

image of book cover is from here

For many reasons, the preservation and supportive maintenance of Radical Lesbian Feminist spaces and political practices is very important to me, as they are foundational to my political work. I am a firm believer in and supporter of Woman/Womyn-only space, of Lesbian-only gatherings, and of Radical Lesbian Feminist work not catering to the needs and wishes of anyone who is not Radical, Lesbian, or Feminist, as life-long Radicals, life-long Lesbians, and life-long Feminists define those terms.

We may note that anyone female, among humans, is targeted by patriarchy as a girl or a woman; part of what the targeting does is mark female human beings as the people who will serve males, from birth to death. This marking isn't primarily textual or abstract. It is done aggressively, with manipulation, coercion, and force. With violence: social, physical, sexual, spiritual, cultural, intellectual, medical, and mental.

These and related oppressive aggressions generate post-traumatic stress, and are sources of despair and fierce resistance both. But as June Jordan has noted, resistance isn't sufficient for those of us working to bring humanity to a more humane place. We must also win. We must also defeat the powers that are so cruel and callous as to insist that it is there way or no way at all. It's a compromised, accommodating life under patriarchy or it's death.

I have seen how male supremacy operates in queer-only and queer-majority spaces. I have also seen how it operates in het-only and het-majority spaces. In every community I've been part of, what I see is that appeasing men and male supremacists is taken as a given--we are all expected to bow down or bend over to the force men unleash against everyone.

Whether the men are het, gay, bi, or queer in other ways, male supremacy is never rooted out by the males themselves, but is challenged by a few brace women. Sometimes a man also "gets it" but this is, in my experience, the exception that proves the rule.

In the last fifteen years, especially, I have seen a male supremacy-denying and terribly liberal-to-conservative Trans and Queer politic come on the queer/lesbian/gay scene, demanding things that most women I know have no institutionally protected right to demand. Especially Lesbians. In queer spaces where there are contests of privilege and power, including of "Who gets to name reality and have their experience matter most", I only see very privileged gay and trans people having that power. Liberal and Conservative Queer/Trans Politics, bound up in unexamined ways with het male supremacist politics and practices, have taken over like an invasive plant. attempting to strangle the life out of Radical Lesbian Feminism, and largely succeeding.

In a patriarchal society where all female human beings are forcefully and coercively required to accept the terms of pro-patriarchal agendas and practices, I will use my own male privileges to demand that spaces be protected for Radical Lesbian Feminism and its practitioner-activists.

Below is a recent discussion I had with a tribade white Canadian young woman activist named Winnie Small. (If you, like me, didn't or don't know what "tribade" means, read on...)

2:31 PM me: hey winnie!

  u there?

2:34 PM Winnie: Hey!

 me: HEY!

 Winnie: :)

 me: I was just typing out a message to you but I'll copy and paste it here! :)

 Winnie: K

 me: I'm hearing from various Lesbians that Queer spaces are increasingly hostile or, well, at least unfriendly and unaccepting of any Lesbians who don't accept the terms Trans people set for discussion and community. Is this your experience as well? My sense is that Lesbians, if radical feminist, are being shoved out of our community, such as it is.

I'm wondering though, what you're own experience with that is.

2:35 PM And, I hope all is well with you, in this very strange and mean world.

 

2:39 PM Winnie: Thanks. "Women's space" is increasingly becoming women and trans space, and most homosexual women I know (eg in teens to thirties, many in or graduated from university) do NOT call themselves lesbian, but gay or queer. Julia Serrano's Whipping Girl is becoming a bible of feminism for them. (which has useful and correct points at times, but left me going wtf? At other times and contradicted itself all over)

2:40 PM me: How does this effect you, dearie, socially and personally and so on?

  (For me, it just means being ever more alienated from my community.)

2:43 PM Winnie: Identity over reality is taking precedence. For example "female-identified" rather than female or female assigned at birth. Specifically self identifying, eg even in regards to people of colour. So lesbians, females, indigenous people, black folks, etc aren't those things and that's reality, but they self identify as those labels, hence they are.

5 minutes

2:48 PM Winnie: I think it actually reduces the chance for a concrete analysis of power and who has it, how much, and why. Most of the trans folk I know are nice people and I get along with them, but I feel trans theory is taking away our ability to say this group is different from another group, particularly based upon how they are materially treated regardless of how they personally identify. I identify as a tribade and prude and such, but I am still female, and those reclaimed labels are shaped by being a poor, white female. I'm those things because I AM (poor, fab, white) not because I tell myself I am and get validated for my special snowflakeness by others.

2:50 PM (In fact I am a tribade based upon having a vulva, but I digress ;) )

 me: Tribade is a new term for me! What does it mean?!??

  (And I've always suspected you had a vulva.) ;)

2:53 PM I'm increasingly upset by efforts to distance the realities of girls' and women's bodies from gendered experience/identity. For example, growing up knowing breast cancer, cervical cancer, uterine/endometrial cancer, ovarian cancer are risks for one's own life and the lives of other women in one's life is rendered "transphobic" in some spaces, it seems. I don't think growing up knowing one's chest will be a visual and tactile battleground in ways male chests never are, isn't "essentialist": it's social reality. The medical/health and other social/sexual experiences and concerns ought not be turned into sources of shame, if any girl or woman wants to identify those struggles and issues as important.

 Winnie: Care and compassion are really important, but they shouldnt supplant political analysis and ethical discernment. I also think as I mentioned earlier, lesbian in particular is getting a bad rap as "exclusionary" and whatnot. It's not cool to be a lesbian, especially if one doesn't also identify with male-centric labels like top/bottom or engage in roleplaying. Lesbians are supposed to call themselves queer, gay, genderqueer, bi, etc not lesbian.

2:54 PM me: I find there's little else other than misogyny going on among male-bodied people claiming "breasts" are things one has implanted.

  (Don't get me started.)

  What do you think/feel about any of that, Winnie?

9 minutes

3:03 PM Winnie: Haha, I'm always having to explain tribade ;) it is historically used by psychiatrists, sexologists to mean "female homosexual" althlough it comes from to rub (like frottage), and specifically denotes a female rubbing her vulva on her partner's body. Those men, instituting and trying to ensure male supremacist sex (eg penetrocentric sex), applied tribadism and tribade only to the big bad lesbians ;) and tried to erase it out of heterosex. So I'm using it as an actual reclaiming. I even asked my lesbian friends online if I could use it ;) people, mainly females and young gay/queer men, are pushed into dichotomous, hierarchical sexual labels based around penetrative sex and/or sex based on inequality (eg dom/sub, top/bottom), so I'm hell nawwing to that :) it is also a way of identifying within bisexuality as a female who doesn't have PIV. Sorry that was so long

3:05 PM me: No apologies! I'm glad you took the time to take me through the intricacies of the definition--historically and presently!

  May I copy and paste this chat and send it to a Queer woman friend who I've had some discussions with about Trans issues?

3:06 PM I got an email from a Lesbian woman expressing gratitude that I'm speaking out about the misogyny and anti-Lesbianism in Queer/Trans-accepting spaces.

  I'm realising how marginalised Lesbians and Radical Feminists are in Queer spaces/places.

3:07 PM And how male supremacy is taking hold--or is continuing to, in spaces that are supposed to care about women/wimmin.

3:11 PM Winnie: Bodies matter, yes! And menstruation, and avoiding pregnancy, and white men fucking with women of colour and indigenous women's reproductive abilities (eg forced sterilization, contraception without informed consent), medicalization of female bodies (eg healthy uteruses and vulvas as diseased and in need of removal/cosmetic surgery, childbirth becoming a hospital with male doctors who disempower females and deny midwifery and would rather cut into vulvas than massage them (massaging the vagina really helps it to stretch without tearing), etc

6 minutes

3:17 PM Winnie: Yes, you can copy paste this convo. It really sticks in my craw how gender has replaced sex as a basis for feminist analysis and categorization. Gender and sex operate differently, and fab folks experience oppression regardless of how we are gendered or gender ourselves. My view re: trans women is that they are women, but not female. It's not their fault, obviously, but it is different and just as trans theory goes on about lived experience of trans folk, we/feminist theory needs to go on about female lived experience, sexed reality.

3:19 PM me: I don't see why trans people cannot hold to a theory of being trans, cannot own being trans as a particular experience of being human and struggling with gender, without taking from women the term: women.

3:20 PM And, gender is largely economic, not theoretical or social, in many parts of the world. Contemporary Western theories of gender simply don't apply in places where being female and a girl-woman are one and the same political phenomenon.

3:21 PM Winnie: Feminism needs to deal with both gender and sex, and prioritize sex, and work to dismantle gender. Gender was created to help oppress females and consolidate male rule (both males as class, and groups of elite men like men who didn't not just want to have power over women, but most men too), not make people comfortable and fuzzy inside.

3:22 PM me: I won't advocate women changing (for example) "the Boston Women's Health Collective" to the Boston Female Health Collective" as what is done to female people is done to women because they are female and women, both. I see a reticence in some queer spaces to call out the male privilege--and power--that some trans people, and many non-trans Lesbians, wield against non-trans Lesbians who call out the male supremacy of contemporary pro-trans theories and practices.

3:24 PM Yes. I agree with you. The masculinism and male supremacy punishes many people, including girls, women, intersex people, trans people, and any boy or man who doesn't isn't willing to do what many men do to be men, politically.

3:25 PM a Lesbian sent me this link: butch-femmeplanet.com

 Winnie: Gender is so about material resources in most of the world. Andrea Smith and Silvia Federici goes into that when they say that in order to successfully have capitalism and colonialism, you need to naturalize patriarchy and colonize/capitalize locally (eg Europe had to have witch hunts, organized prostitution/rape/mandated PIV, destroy communalism in order to spread its rule to the Americas)

 me: As one place these discussions are fierce, I guess.

  Exactly!

3:26 PM Is that work online, Winnie? Can I link to it?

 Winnie: Yep, how we are perceived, and the meanings attached to it matter ;) sex and gender interrelate

 me: (I mean, is there a link I can publish on my blog, to that work?)

  When it is said that women's bodies are "text" what I think of most is that most women's issues with men is not that men "read" them. You know?

3:27 PM "Text" is a woefully inadequate and misleading term for what men do with women's bodies.

3:28 PM Winnie: Yes! And "rewrite". Wha??

 me: Yeah. Totally.

3:29 PM Has this critique we are sharing with one another been written up somewhere that you've seen, Win?

3:30 PM Winnie: Federici and Smith wrote separately, not together. I just synthesized them lately myself :) caliban and the witch: women, the body and primitive accumulation, and conquest (which I know you know about :) )

3:31 PM me: Yes, the latter I know well. But not the other. Have you written about this anywhere, win?

3:35 PM Winnie: I've written it on fb, including on a closed radfem group. I can copy paste a coherent theory on mah blog. And of course, the domesticization of animals really enabled to then argue that rule over other humans (slavery, genocide, rape) was ok because they weren't really human but animals. And controlling female animal reproduction really set the stage for controlling human women's reproduction. And carries into even now, eg reproductive technologies developed on farmed animals then applied to human females.

3:37 PM me: I wonder which came first, honestly: men controlling the reproduction of what is termed "domesticated" non-human animals, or of women.

  Yes, please do copy and paste and send to me any/all writing on this topic, and please also let me know if you welcome me to publish it, along with your name and any other info you'd like to have with your name.

6 minutes

3:44 PM Winnie: I can put something up next time I'm on a real computer (I'm on a phone). Either tomorrow or Friday. Yes, it is a scurvy knot, figuring it out. I figure in some geographical areas/groups of people sex was the first oppression, in others species. Oppression based on race is relatively new, but xenophobia is old too. But I think their needs to be another othering first before fear and oppression of those in another nation/tribe can take hold. Meaning probably oppression of a group one is familiar with somewhat needs to happen first before of the idea of oppressing (as opposed to avoiding, being apathetic, disliking) an unknown group can happen.

3:46 PM me: Perhaps. I think speaking with people in many different cultures can help us all identify how oppression morphs and transmutes into other forms. And, thank you for sending me writings! I'm looking forward to reading them, and publishing them to the blog with your permission.

3:47 PM Winnie: Did you want the trans stuff or just the origins of oppressions wonderings?

3:51 PM Yes, and looking at lots of old stuff from millenia ago from around the globe, and tracing changes. Oral histories are important too. And reexamining things already interpreted and giving them an in context analysis. Eg things from several thousand years ago are interpreted by universitied European white men and either ignore other possibility or apply racism, male supremacy, etc to them.

 me: Yeah, exactly!

3:52 PM Winnie: For example, art by women is assumed to be by men, one specific case I read, art that was done by women and focuses on happy naked women bonding is interpreted as "revenge porn" carved by a jealous man. Wtf?

11 minutes

4:04 PM me: WTF indeed.

4:05 PM Toodles for now, Winnie. Thanks for being you. <3

4:13 PM Winnie: :)