Thinking Again, Part 2

I've found some important writings regarding the subjects written about in my posts about trans women.

First, regarding the debate at all:


When I listen to people ‘debating’ ‘letting’ trans women, trans men, and/or trans people as a whole into women-only [sic] spaces such as the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (Michfest) and domestic violence shelters, the experience is profoundly frustrating, even when it’s my allies I’m listening to. It’s the wrong structure, the wrong conversation, and the wrong participants. When a cissexual1 woman or a trans male spectrum person says “all woman-identified women/all trans people should be allowed into women’s space [sic],” I feel almost as disempowered and silenced as when they say that we shouldn’t. Though well intentioned, they represent independent moral/political judgments and statements of principle—not the voices of trans women.2 Do their statements correspond to the wishes, needs, and priorities of trans women? Do they empower trans women’s voices, or contribute to their erasure? More to the point, do cis women (let alone trans male spectrum people) legitimately have that power, to decide whether or not trans women should be allowed into “their” spaces?

Read the rest of this post here: http://takesupspace.wordpress.com/beyond-inclusion/


Also, regarding socialization: http://www.questioningtransphobia.com/?p=2884

Of course, I should have looked for these sources to begin with. I am now trying to decide if I should delete those posts, saturated as they are with privilege and misunderstanding, or if they should stand as a testament to a learning process.

Update: Deleted the first post that spawned Thinking Again and Thinking Again Part 2, as it was the worst of the offending posts. As a result Thinking Again (1) may not make as much sense, as it refers to things said in the other post.

June 7, 2011: Deleting the first post was a mistake. It was a rash action borne of guilt and ultimately designed to save face, and not in any way geared toward holding myself accountable for my mistake.

Racism in feminism.

"In a later community meeting, one Black woman criticized us very angrily for ever thinking we could achieve our goals by working only with white women. We said we never meant this few weeks of this particular kind of work to be all we ever did and told her we had decided at the beginning to organize a group open to all women shortly after our series of white women's meetings came to a close. Well, as some of you will know without my telling, we could hardly have said anything less satisfying to our critic. She exploded with rage: "You decided!" Yes. We consulted the opinions of some women of color, but still, we decided. "Isn't that what we are supposed to do?" we said to ourselves, "Take responsibil- ity, decide what to do, and do something?" She seemed to be enraged by our making decisions, by our acting, by our doing anything. It seemed like doing nothing would be racist and whatever we did would be racist just because we did it. We began to lose hope; we felt bewildered and trapped. It seemed that what our critic was saying must be right; but what she was saying didn't seem to make any sense.

She seemed crazy to me.

That stopped me."

Wow. Read the rest of this here: On Being White

Also, this: An Open Letter to White Feminists

Thinking again.

EDTA: The "last" post  no longer exists. It was a fairly oblivious attempt to see "both sides of the story" after reading a comment thread on IBTP where cisgendered rad fems, not for the first or last time, try to force trans women to legitimize their claims to womanhood. Unsurprisingly I was very ignorant and favored the cis point of view more. As soon as I realized that, I had a massive guilt attack and deleted the post in order to "save face", even though I had no commenters and barely any readers at the time.


I'm starting to feel ill at ease with my last post. It seems like what I said could sound like, "cis women and trans women are just different, so they need to be separated".

I think, in the scope of feminism, there can and absolutely should be room for issues other than those of cis women. When I rethink what I said, it sounds awfully privileged to think there should be places for cis women and cis women alone to discuss only their problems, when women should be attending to the problems of all women.

The first comparison that came to mind over this issue is white feminists and feminists of color. I could easily understand why black women would want black women-only spaces if they're used to white women coming in and dominating the conversation and dismissing racism.

But in this case, it's cis women who are privileged over trans women, so it's more like men making men-only clubs.

As I stated in my last post, it's the problem of viewing trans women as coming from "the enemy camp".

If white women became black women, would they be allowed in black woman only circles? Would they have started experiencing racism immediately after the transition and thus be aware? How much experience is enough experience to make them eligible for inclusion?

And what if they fit in with neither race- they didn't feel like white women, but black women were wary of them because of their former privilege?

(Is it even appropriate for me to be asking this?)

As before, I'm not sure where I stand on this issue. But I'm leaning away from the idea of cis-only spaces the more I think about it.

Because, really, what power do trans women have in cis only spaces? If they silence other women, if they dismiss their experiences, if they behave the way cis women fear they will behave, isn't it simple enough to simply exclude them once they've proven themselves incapable of carrying on discussion, rather than pre-emptively excluding them under the assumption that they will behave that way?

And though trans women are not considered "real" women by the patriarchy, they are given "feminized" status, the way gay men are. Is not transphobia directed at trans women a form of misogyny? And isn't that what trans women and cis women have in common in this world?

Yes, I think I'm decided on this issue. I believe there should be no cis-only spaces.

Additional note: What I meant in my last post was that gender itself was genderless, though that doesn't make much more sense. Because of course sex is genderless.

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Here's a brief note by renowned Satanist Diane Vera addressing homosexual and transgender people. I appreciate the welcoming stance taken here, but think a better point would be that Satanists need to align themselves with other people who are marginalized by the Judeo-Christian patriarchy, and promote such right-thinking acceptance among pre-existing Satanists who may not precisely be neo-Nazis.