Radical feminism is a platform for gender
equality which includes, among other things,
the belief that most gender is performed.
As a radical feminist, I believe that gender
roles are artificially created, that most
dimorphism is affected rather than mandated
by nature, and that the divide has been pushed
beyond all reason to the express benefit of
men.
This is what we call the patriarchy.
One unfortunate aspect of this socialization
is that society, through various messages
including but not limited to role-modeling
from peers and media, teaches young men that
they are entitled to the hearts and minds
of women, including but again not limited
to domestic and sexual servitude.
Women, no more fond of subjugation and servitude
than men, become unfortunately prone to self-loathing
and more fortunately prone to rebellion.
In the process of shaking ourselves loose
the shackles of gendered expectations, different
schools of feminism have emerged.
Varying degrees of oppression are recognized,
and socialized roles and appearances are sorted
differently into categories of oppressive
and benign.
Radical feminism, as the name suggests, subscribes
to the most severe criteria.
Radical feminism is also unfortunately best
known by queer communities as transphobic.
The rift between radical feminism and trans
activism begins with the application of known
oppressive phenomena to the analysis of trans
presentation and activism.
On the surface, it's easy to see what their
problem is.
To the casual observer, trans women assert
and express their womanhood physically and
visually.
They often wear feminine clothes, shave feminine
areas, and insist on feminine names and pronouns.
Trans men resist feminine obligations, much
the way radical feminists do, but then also
resist the designation of "woman."
In the eyes of transphobic radical feminists,
the former too closely resembles role enforcement
while the latter too closely resembles self-loathing.
If trans people and trans activists were at
all interested in sending women at large back
to the kitchen, entrenching them further into
the sex class, or in the case of trans men,
eliminating women altogether or otherwise
gender-leveling up, the transphobic radical
feminists might have a point.
Inconveniently for them, this couldn't be
further from the case.
The patriarchy has the same persistent negative
impact on trans women as it does cis women.
Society tells them that they are more acceptable
when they present in a feminine manner and
worth less as a person when they fail to please
the eye.
The rigid physical standards applied to women
cause trans women inordinate amounts of stress.
The sex classing of women and requisite caste
system of the class (more commonly known as
varying degrees of fuckability, or even more
commonly as a scale from 1 to 10) has inhumanely
relegated trans women with a certain remaining
organ to the undesirables.
They are expected to be content with either
fetishization or pity fucking, along with
cis women of the overweight and differently
abled varieties.
This particular problem has recently been
the birth of a massive online "cotton ceiling"
debate.
We'll get back to that.
Let us first work on the premise that trans
women are women and trans men are men.
Of course without the validity of their genders
decided upon, it's easy enough for transphobes
to make their arguments unchallenged.
The most common radical feminist position
on trans identities is that a post-patriarchal
world would not require men to call themselves
women to be feminine.
They could just be feminine men; reverse that
for trans men.
But this doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
Society already does not require masculine
women to call themselves men or feminine men
to call themselves women.
Furthermore, a post-patriarchal world - more
specifically a post-gender role world - would
necessarily have eliminated almost every trait
that divides men from women.
Things we think of as masculine or feminine
would no longer be associated with men or
women and would no longer even be recognizable
as masculine or feminine.
Masculinity and femininity would lose all
meaning.
This is not a utopian fantasy.
Many things have already lost masculine and
feminine categorization.
In my mother's time, trumpet playing was masculine.
In my grandmother's time, making jokes was
masculine.
Today, neither of these activities are associated
with gender.
It is not possible to draw a line in this
gender-blending at the physical.
Perhaps the imaginations of older-generation
feminists who grew up in far more oppressive
environments than today's feminists were unable
to think as far ahead as, say, the thick-necked,
slender-hipped, flat-chested physiques of
the very feminine 2012 Olympic women's gymnastics
team, or the soft skin and round, well-developed
breasts of a trans woman on HRT.
Nonetheless, here we have it.
The lines are being erased with the slow liberation
of women and medical advancement.
If the contention of radical feminism is that
neither behavior, nor presentation, nor physical
appearance should make or break the difference
between men and women, why draw the line at
the word "man" or "woman?"
The very words will become nonsensical and
impossible to define.
Sure, there will still be some natural hormonal
division, but when people can safely, permanently,
and completely alter these differences at
will, why deny it?
When women and men are socialized equally,
what will anyone have lost?
What will anyone have gained but the right
to define themselves, the right for which
radical feminists so arduously fight?
Back to the cotton ceiling debate, or really,
any debate online between radical feminists
and trans activists: Is a childhood of boy-designated
socialization sometimes evident in arguments
from trans women?
Absolutely.
To start with, they don't question themselves,
apologize for themselves, or wait for their
turn to speak quite as often as cis women
are taught to do from birth.
Likewise, a childhood of girl-designated socialization
is sometimes evident when trans men make arguments.
It will be nice when girl-designated socialization
and boy-designated socialization include a
childhood where respect and assertiveness
are taught equally, but though there has been
progress, we're not there yet.
However, there is no reason to make the leap
from a sense of the way somebody was socialized
as a child to their "true" gender.
Like the wage gap, sex classing, and glass
ceiling, all of which very much apply to trans
people's identities rather than their designated
birth sex, these are simply the costs and
benefits of the patriarchy.
Like skirts, heels, trucks, and sports, they
are no more reflective of the true identity
of a trans person than they are a cis person.
