Dear Radfems.

trafalgarslaw:

Did you ever notice that when someone goes: ‘Hey this woman has done something awesome!’ most people will agree that yes, awesome. And that’s that.

If someone goes: ‘Hey, this person of colour has done something awesome’, most people will go: ‘Yeah, but they only could because white people gave them the resources or education or whatever.’ or they will flat out deny that it was awesome or will claim that it only became awesome when a white person started to do it

If someone goes: ‘Hey, this neurodivergent/disabled person did something awesome’, most people will make inspirational porn of it and use it to shit on other neurodivergent/disabled people who can’t do the same.

If someone goes: ‘Hey, there’s this kid who did something awesome’, most people will go and heap all the praise and rewards on this child’s parents or teachers and claim that a child could never have done this on their own.

So, tell me again how being a woman is the most oppressed person to be. Yeah, being a woman might carry less privilege than being a man, but at least society is willing to concede that yes, women can be people and they can be awesome without having to either praise someone else for their awesome or shame every other member of their group for lacking the awesome.

I really don’t agree that women have as much privilege as presented in this simplistic summary (plenty of times when people are like “psh she shouldn’t be doing that she’s a woman”, or “she’s only doing that to impress her man” or whatever, if we want to take this metric on its own and ignore all the other shit that various marginalized groups get); but the points brought up wrt the non-neurotypical and age-related part of this are what I’m reblogging for. I’ve met both of these a few too many times (being an old-beyond-my-years kid for most of my life, the latter especially), and I appreciate that someone’s actually mentioned these two groups.

As directed at radfems, I agree to a point: that is, please remember that feminism that does not also acknowledge the struggles of non-white, non-cis, non-whatever women is not feminism at all. Beyond that - the thrust of this is well meant but it veers off into territory I’m really not comfortable with.