When, some years ago, I first started seeing the blunt statement "trans women are women", I baulked at it a bit. I felt it was being thrown at me across the room, no returns, closing down issues and concerns. Pick your side and fight the other, or shut up. As Josie Long said yesterday, I deeply hate this entire discourse. I also felt I had a horse in the race, as it were (and horse racing can kill horses), as second wave feminism shaped my world, my thinking, my identity. It's part of me. A lot of the older women I grew up reading and was influenced by, the radical feminists who now identify as 'gender critical' (aka TERFs, but that is often used as a slur), don't believe this. I took this seriously. Same with a lot of women my age and a bit younger, mostly (but not all, it's never all), who are now powerful presences in the media, politics, elsewhere. Some of them are my friends, and I always take my friends seriously.
But I could also see that many people younger than me have absolutely no problem accepting this statement, like, of course? Nbd? Why are we even talking about this? And I thought about the slow, gradual unpicking of centuries of misogyny by generations of feminists that gave me the ability to take up space in the world, and the work that still needs to be done there, and the slow, gradual work (with occasional explosions) done by generations of activists fighting other kinds of prejudice, oppression and discrimination. And the relative ease with which younger generations can take some of that for granted, the battles that are (for now, in some places) over, look around and say 'what do we need to do next?' (You can be legit asexual these days, guys! I wish someone had told me that when I was 15. I could have skipped a whole load of UTIs, for starters.) Some of these younger people are now also my friends, and I always take my friends seriously.
So I have done a lot of reading and a lot of thinking, and a lot of talking to people who I feel safe talking to about this kind of thing (which is quite a few, I have some excellent friends, these are the ones I take extra seriously), and I have essentially come to the conclusion that you can absolutely be a feminist (even, maybe especially, with radfem tendencies) and a trans ally at the same time. Put at its simplest, I don't want or need anyone to tell me what being a woman means, so I have no interest in or need to tell anyone else. And we can take the rest from there. You can quote me on that.
That only really fully crystallised with me this week, when I read That Blog Post. Lots of shit things have happened since, not least to the author, and believing she is a) wrong and b) should not have used her platform in this way does not make them any less shit. I deeply hate this entire discourse.
But as Eddie Redmayne responded nice and clearly (and for the record I'm just fine with posh white men saying what needs to be said): trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary identities are valid. I was just going to post that, but I thought some of you might appreciate some of the context in which I am saying it.
I have no interest in, and no energy for, going over the same ground again and again with people who are not for examining their own views, privilege and prejudices, or those who do not even acknowledge that they have those things. You know, at some level, who you are. Don't @ me. But if you're on this journey too, stay with it. It's worth it.
This song has been my friend since I first heard it over 30 years ago. It still does the job. SOUND UP, as the kids say.
joella
