You Want To ‘Protect’ Women In Bathrooms. What About From Actual Rapists?

[feministingforchange]

by  Alise D. Chaffins (SOURCE)

I keep waiting, but it hasn’t happened yet.

A few weeks ago, there were lots of men looking out for the safety of American women everywhere by wanting to ban transgender women from using the ladies’ rooms at Target and other public places. We were told how women were precious, how they needed protected from “men in dresses.” When the current administration sent out messages to schools giving guidelines on how to treat transgender students, 11 states sued to make sure that our girls are safe in their locker rooms from transgender girls.

Oh, I heard them say that it wasn’t REALLY the trans people they were worried about. Sure, there would be plenty of opportunities to call them freaks and perverts. Lots of chances to remind us that there are just a few of them, so why should we bow to their desires. Lots of dismissive language that told trans men and women that their comfort and mental health don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

But no, it wasn’t primarily the trans people (especially trans women) that we needed to be protected from. It was the the pedophiles and the voyeurs who would take advantage of the laws. It was the men who would dress up like a woman so they could prey on women in bathrooms. Those were the real threat. Those were the men that needed to be dealt with. Violent men who would do actual harm against women — those were the men that we needed to be on the lookout for, those were who the men were concerned about. Keep women safe from men who were violent.

So when Stanford rapist Brock Turner got a mere six-month sentence, I started waiting.

Waiting for all of these men to start posting their outrage at the system that so dramatically failed a young woman.

Waiting for petitions to receive millions of signatures demanding stricter sentencing for rapists. Waiting for viral videos of pastors standing outside of the courthouse, speaking in animated tones about what grave injustice was taking place behind those walls.

Waiting for men to share the powerful words of the victim as a reminder that rape has lifetime consequences for those who experience it.

Waiting for men to remind other men that the responsibility not to rape lies with them, not with the women who are raped.

Waiting for these men to prove that their concern for their wives and daughters wasn’t really just a mask for the transphobia that they carried and didn’t want to be called on.

Instead, I’ve read a letter from a father saying that his son is being punished too harshly for only ““20 minutes of action,” where instead of a perpetrator of a violent crime, he is the victim of alcohol consumption and partying. I’ve read many times about how many drinks the victim had before she was raped. I’ve read about how we need to crack down on drinking on college campuses.

I’ve seen lots and lots of nothing at all from people who just weeks ago were ready to storm the bathroom stalls to make sure their wives and daughters were safe.

Where are you? Where is your outrage when a young woman is penetrated by fingers and leaves and pine needles behind a dumpster while she is unconscious? Where is your disgust for a system that slaps a rapist on the wrist and says, “Well, he probably won’t do THAT again.” Where is your anger at a culture that has more concern for the impact of jailing a rapist than the impact of a rape?

Weeks ago, we were told that women needed to be protected.

But apparently not from rapists.

A version of this post originally appeared on Knitting Soul.

[feministingforchange]

Just a gentle reminder on this first day of pride month that calling an aspec “cishet” without their permission is aphobic since this erases their aspec ID(s) and reinforces heteronormativity not to mention it’s cissexist if they’re actually trans/nb/agender/etc 💜

[forevrdreamingofbetterthings]

^still relevant^

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[feministingforchange]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

[feministingforchange]

*I’ve also realized that i’m not cis, i’m non-binary ;)

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[feministingforchange]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

[forevrdreamingofbetterthings]

*I’ve also realized that i’m not cis, i’m non-binary ;)

My Journey as an Asian Asexual Androgyne

[theasexualityblog]

millennium-fae submitted:

Being asian, asexual, and agender (a triple-AAA, as I like to call it) is almost like being a living contradiction. Being asian imposes a sexualized femininity onto me, and being trans is a muddle of confusion onto itself.

Being asexual on top of all that destroys so many boundaries and misconceptions of race, gender, and sexuality. I’m not your sexy asian fetish, and I don’t find liberation in embracing physical intimacy as a trans individual. No matter where I go, I face either racism, transphobia, or compulsory allosexuality. Sometimes, that makes me feel lonely. Sometimes, it makes me feel powerful.

Out of every dangerously oppressive scenario I’ve ever faced in my life, being an asexual in a romantic relationship is probably the slowest burn, and that makes it all the more dangerous when the possibilities cumulate at the end. I’m left meticulously hunting and just wildly guessing whether someone can respect my boundaries or not, and I’m always left wondering, on some level or another, just how badly things can go for me.

Before I started identifying as trans and ace, I used to fit perfectly into the mold of ‘cute asian chick’. I wanted to have friends, be normal, and ‘grow up’, so I wasted six years of my life forcing myself into sexual relationships. Looking back now, I can sadly say that I was essentially putting myself through self-imposed corrective rape.

But at the time, I though that if I had enough sex, I would stop feeling so nervous about it. It’s what people do, right? I finally started identifying as asexual long after I started identifying as trans and embraced my asian heritage. Accepting my asexuality was a hard-won battle.

Even after this realization, my sexuality was still a hurdle. Finding other non-allosexual trans people or non-allosexual POC is a struggle. And there’s always a chance of being excluded from one group or another on account of my identities. 

Being a triple-AAA that I can’t fit into the bread-and-butter image of either of the three communities. I’m too brown to be noticed in asexual or trans spaces, I’m not the cis woman of POC and asexual communities, and I’m not sexual enough for trans and POC. Being both brown and non-American created a very different spin on how I view gender roles and identities. Being both trans and asexual changed my view on how racism works. And being trans and brown changed my view on sexuality.

My race, gender, and sexuality are not completely separate components of my life. All three together make a really confusing but interesting mixmatch of experiences and emotions. But it makes me me, and that’s awesome, because I’m awesome. 

[feministingforchange]

#BoostAceVoices 

cadaverish-deactivated20181216 asked:

I'm legitimately afraid to tell people I'm ace these days. Like I'd never compare acephobia to homophobia or transphobia but it IS real; last three guys I told got actually mad at me. Like hostile and one said he could "fix" it like????

forevrdreamingofbetterthings answered:

Yeah it scares me too tbh :’(

#BoostAceVoices

• radfems: The whole of feminism can be broken down into two basic camps - 1) wicked awesome radfems, and 2) weak minded libfems. We clearly know SO MUCH MORE about womyn and feminism than other womyn and feminists.
• radfems: We need to overthrow the notion of Gender, but you have have HAVE to have a V at birth to be a womyn. Obvs!
• radfems: No Muslim womyn ever could EVER choose for herself to wear Hijab because Islam is a nasty Patriarchal religion that takes all of womyn's rights and agency away. Nevermind that we come from Patriarchies too - We should still get to choose FOR them!
• radfems: Our ideas are so gosh darn RADICAL, why can't you libfems keep up already?!?!!?

• radfems: DOWN WITH GENDER!! GENDER IS THE DEVIL!!!
• radfems: OMFG don't you know anything?!?! You can't be a woman unless you have a vagina, JFC!

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[feministingforchange]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

[feministingforchange]

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

[witwitch]

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

[comrade-hannah]

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

[feministingforchange]

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

[witwitch]

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

[feministingforchange]

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

[witwitch]

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

[feministingforchange]

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

[witwitch]

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

[feministingforchange]

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

[feministingforchange]

^^^^^^!!!!

[reminiscingphosphorescence]

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

[feministingforchange]

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

[pineappleisdelicious]

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

[feministingforchange]

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

[feministingforchange]

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

[feministingforchange]

Ughhhhh…. so obv this whole thing is terrible (e.g., aspecs of colour exist so pls don’t erase them and asexuality =/= libido) but I’m super stuck on the last one by “Dave Cook”. 

How does anyone on the one hand recognize the existence of asexuality in nature, whilst on the other hand determine its absolute impossibility in human beings? As if you didn’t just show that we are clearly a part of nature? And as if human beings are anywhere near being scientifically capable of determining what is 100% possible and impossible in terms of sexual orientation? 

How could anyone be this certain about these existential uncertainties? 

Go ahead - I’m listening.

[forevrdreamingofbetterthings]

#BoostAceVoices

[feministingforchange]

Just a gentle reminder on this first day of pride month that calling an aspec “cishet” without their permission is aphobic since this erases their aspec ID(s) and reinforces heteronormativity not to mention it’s cissexist if they’re actually trans/nb/agender/etc 💜

Defining womanhood by female biological experiences liberates womanhood from gender roles. It means no matter who you are or what your personality is or how you dress or behave or what your interests are, your womanhood is valid.

feministingforchange:

feministingforchange:

pineappleisdelicious:

feministingforchange:

reminiscingphosphorescence:

feministingforchange:

feministingforchange:

witwitch:

feministingforchange:

witwitch:

feministingforchange:

witwitch:

feministingforchange:

comrade-hannah:

witwitch:

feministingforchange:

Did I say it or what?!? Apparently womanhood is defined by your reproductive parts ppl! You can all go home now, it’s been settled! 

But then… I wonder if I qualify as a woman now bc my parts are a little messed up with my urethral opening in my vagina (it’s called a urogenital sinus abnormality and it’s not even that uncommon). My physiology doesn’t fit the “normal” biology of a supposed “woman” so… do I count? I wonder… 

Basically this whole thing is fucking brutal and can go right to hell. I refuse to have my womanhood defined by my parts. If I have some removed bc of illness, do I still get to be a woman or am I “less” of a woman because of it? If I find out I’m incapable of reproduction, am I also no longer a woman? 

Like where tf do we draw the line on this shit?!?! 

It’s all so wrong and horrible omfg….. >_______>

The point of this message is that womanhood is the experiences  that come from having female biology. You don’t need to have “ideal” female biology in order to still be female. Of course you count, no radfem is excluding you.

What else do you think womanhood should be defined by? Make up and hair styles and stereotypes?

Sex = biological reality.

Gender = social construct, gender is what oppresses us, gender forces us to be feminine, gender is the set of stereotypes we are forced in to since birth.

There’s a difference between sex and gender. Even if we abolish gender, biological sex will still exist. Womanhood is the experiences that come from having female biology.

I think this definition of womanhood is very liberating. It means you can have any interests, any hobbies, any style, any appearance, and still be a woman. It means that your womanhood is not based on how much you conform to stereotypes. Womanhood should not be about conforming to stereotypes.

also can I point out that having your urethra in your vagina has literally nothing to do with your biological sex? I’m assuming that person probably still produces eggs and even if she doesn’t, she sure as fuck doesn’t produce sperm

In science, we call people that produce eggs women and people that produce sperm men. so convenient.

even if you can’t say a woman has a vagina with a urethra above it and above that is the clitoris and above the vagina is a cervix followed by a uterus and fallopian tubes etc you sure as SHIT can say “a woman never produces sperm”.

Like you are not excluded from womanhood because of a fucking birth defect, just like we don’t exclude people without legs from personhood jesus fucking christ

Wow… both of these ppl continue to pretend that my point isn’t meaningful when it is. I’m saying that if you’re going to define sex by our biology then where exactly is the line between male/female? And what if I wasn’t producing either eggs or sperm; what am I then? What happens when women get hysterectomies, what then? Are they no longer women? Biology changes, malfunctions, etc etc. Not to mention that it’s incredibly reductive…. My womanhood is NOT about my body. There is so much more to me. And even if it WAS just by body, that would just be me, one person. That’s hardly science.

These are just SOME of the reasons that biology is a shitty shitty shitty way of defining sex & gender, which both of you claim are somehow different from each other but then are constantly conflating them w/o an ounce of irony or shame. And that’s the point of my screencap above. You insist that we get rid of gender and that you’re super “gender critical” and what not, but then you do everything in your power to maintain a prescribed notion of what it means to be a woman that is as exclusionary as it is fucked up and illogical.  #RadFemLogic

Female biological experiences are valid and important and it’s not “reductive” to acknowledge them as such.

Womanhood is about female biological experiences. Defining womanhood by biological experiences is much better than defining womanhood by how much you conform to patriarchal gender roles.

Defining womanhood by our biology means there is no right or wrong way to be a woman. It means women don’t have to conform to gender, an oppressive social construct invented by men, in order to be women.

Being a chef is about cooking food. You can’t be a chef if you don’t cook.

Being a writer is about writing books. You’re not a writer if you don’t write.

Being a smoker means you smoke cigarettes. you’re not a smoker if you’ve never done it.

If you call yourself one of those things, do people assume they’re reducing you to only that one thing? No. Talking about womanhood in reference to female biological experiences doesn’t mean that you can’t/don’t do other things, it means that other things are not related to womanhood. It means hobbies, clothes, interests, job, etc.. none of that has anything to do with womanhood.

Words have meanings. Defining womanhood as the label that female people have for our collective shared female biological experiences is important.

What word should female people use for our collective biological experiences, if we can’t use womanhood?

What does womanhood mean to you? Is womanhood absolutely meaningless to you? Or do you think womanhood is about conforming to gender stereotypes made up by males?

For you womanhood is either a collection of parts or a series of stereotypes. But that is a false dichotomy that is hugely exclusionary and you need to move beyond that. 

Instead, womanhood is what we each make of it and it’s different for each and every of us. But no matter how womanhood presents, it’s always valid no matter your job, interests, sexual orientation, taste in music, biology, performance of femininity and masculinity, and so on and so forth. 

In this way, we can all congregate around our experiences as a woman w/o having a particular definition of what that is. I wonder if maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the “uncertainty” of leaving biology behind bc that means womanhood doesn’t have a particular definition and maybe that’s a bit unnerving for some. And by “leaving biology behind” I don’t mean that we forget it by any means bc it’s important. It’s just that it would be nice if we didn’t insist that all women have weewees and all men have peepees. That’s so not cool IMHO.

So you think womanhood is meaningless?

I don’t think womanhood is a collection of parts, I think it’s a set of experiences unique to women.

What makes someone a woman? Who are women? How can feminism fight for women if we don’t even know what a woman is?

What word can female people use to describe our biological experiences?

Womanhood isn’t fucking meaningless. It means something and it means something important.

See what I mean? You’re definitely uncomfortable with the notion that womanhood cannot be clearly defined and nailed down. Nothing in life is actually so rigid as we humans are trying to make sex and gender, and by doing so, we are being incredibly exclusionary. 

And please know that womanhood doesn’t have to have a prescribed definition to “have meaning”. We can all tell each other, as unique individual women, what that means to us. Our stories, our experiences, our unique biologies, how those biologies impact and are impacted by our patriarchal environment, etc etc. THESE collective experiences are what make us women, including but not limited to our bodies. And women have a VARIETY of bodies and they are all valid and should be recognized as such.

This essentially gives us the room to be who we are as women, including trans women who are excluded here (and trans men who are inaccurately included) by the popular notion that womanhood is “female biology”. Did you know that the notion of female & male is man-made? The biology itself is “real” but how we have symbolized & named it is entirely a social construct. Gender AND sex are both man-made social constructs and it’s really important that we all move past it as a definer of what it means to “be woman” and start welcoming women of ALL shapes and sizes into our ranks like we always should have. 

Uhhh, yeah, I am, because a feminism that can’t define woman is completely useless. Who is feminism fighting for? What are the issues these people face in common together?

Yes, it does need to have a meaning in order to have a meaning. Having a meaning means having a meaning. Having a meaning does not mean obscure vague feelings about nothing in particular.

Language is a social construct, but biological sex isn’t a construct just because we use language to describe it. Sexual reproduction is real, you’re being willfully obtuse.

Social constructs are things that only exist within a specific society. Sorry but biological sex keeps existing in any and every context, because it’s real. Gender is oppressive to women and needs to be abolished.

You haven’t answered any of my questions. How do you expect feminism to fight for women when you don’t even know what a woman is to begin with? 

Why are you so certain we “need” to define women to have an effective feminism? I think you’re the one being willfully ignorant here bc a) there’s no evidence that we need to define womanhood in fact all the evidence is to the contrary, and b) womanhood is too diverse an experience for you to be able to neatly label. Social reproduction is absolutely real but lots of men have babies too, lots of women can’t or choose not to have babies, lots of men can’t or won’t either, lots of women have penises, and there are lots of ppl with male/female bodies that do not ascribe to any gender at all. But you think you know best what their genders are, regardless of their personal feelings and beliefs, bc they have parts you deem to be “woman” or “man”???? NO! You are not the arbiter of this and you need to step off.

And what I’d really like to know is how do you EVER expect to do away with gender if you keep insisting upon it at every turn???? On the one hand you say that gender is oppressive but then in the next breath you insist on defining and controlling womanhood. If womanhood is something to be maintained and cordoned off from manhood, then how do we ever get rid of it?!?! I think that’s pretty misogynistic of you tbh. 

^^^^^^!!!!

So basically, according to feministingforchange, anyone can identify as a woman if they say they’re a woman, and if I would want to talk about my biology with other women who’ve experienced the same things, or talk about sexual harassment with women who’ve grown up with it vs only experienced it when they transitioned from male to female, that would make me exclusionary?

This is ridiculous. JUST BE SPECIFIC. Speak about cis women when you’re talking about cis women, females when speaking about females, women when you mean all of us, etc. That’s being SPECIFIC, not exclusionary. Easy peasy. *dusts off hands*

Also, you have to stop with the whole “perverted dudes are gonna pretend to be a woman and exploit transness to access women victims if we accept trans women as women” argument I’m detecting here bc it’s bullshit. 

I mean, if a guy wanted to go into a women’s bathroom to rape or peep (or whatever), he would find a way and we all know that many many have. Not to mention that trans women (& trans men) are in much more danger while using their proper facilities than cis women are:

More helpful info (p. 73-4):

And don’t ignore the increased washroom danger to PoC and ppl of low socioeconomic status in the study described above. It’s time to get real here TWEFs & TWERFs…. >_____>

It looks like you’ve already edited this but just for extra clarification: woman and female ARE SYNONYMOUS. Telling radfems to use “women” to refer to all of us and “females” to refer to those with “female biology” (which makes no sense, trans men and women have male and female biology respectively, all the time, regardless of how many surgeries they’ve had done, by virtue of being men and women) will only result in upholding the status quo when it comes to these people. They more often than not already do use “female” to refer to what they see as “all women” and they define them by their “female biology”. So yeah, they include cis women and trans men in their definition. This is violent misgendering. Their is no such thing as “female biology”, and trans men are never “female”. If you’re discussing periods (for example), and you want to describe people who get them, you can say “people who get periods”. It’s really not that hard. I don’t expect TWERFS to listen to this, but @feministingforchange this is something you should be aware of.

I did actually already know this which is why I tried to edit my poorly written post above, but thank you x100000 for putting this into much clearer words!  

For anyone interested, this is the edited version of my post 💗

Y’wanna know what’s really funny here? Years later, I’ve just discovered that my urogenital sinus abnormality is in fact an intersex condition so…. these TWERFS trying to deny that I’d be ousted as a woman by their twerfy, biologically essentializing standards is clearly bullshit. It’s painful to say this but by their rules, I am NOT a woman.

But my biology does not determine my gender.

I. DO.

• radfems: DOWN WITH GENDER!! GENDER IS THE DEVIL!!!
• radfems: OMFG don't you know anything?!?! You can't be a woman unless you have a vagina, JFC!

• radfems: The whole of feminism can be broken down into two basic camps - 1) wicked awesome radfems, and 2) weak minded libfems. We clearly know SO MUCH MORE about womyn and feminism than other womyn and feminists.
• radfems: We need to overthrow the notion of Gender, but you have have HAVE to have a V at birth to be a womyn. Obvs!
• radfems: No Muslim womyn ever could EVER choose for herself to wear Hijab because Islam is a nasty Patriarchal religion that takes all of womyn's rights and agency away. Nevermind that we come from Patriarchies too - We should still get to choose FOR them!
• radfems: Our ideas are so gosh darn RADICAL, why can't you libfems keep up already?!?!!?