Dear Radfems.

trafalgarslaw:

klutzygeek:

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.

Uh. From what I understand, white, neurotypical, able-bodied cis-women are actually an extremely privileged group, all told.

Of course, being a woman can be pretty shitty, but it’s not the be all and end all of oppression.

It’s like, I see people going on and on and on about how women have it so hard and we should focus on feminism to the exclusion of everything else and it pissed me the fuck off. It’s like people don’t realise that only being a woman doesn’t make their lives all that bad.

Being a woman of colour or a young girl or a trans*woman or a poor woman or a disabled woman or a neurodivergent woman is where shit gets really bad and radfems have a serious tendency to ignore this.

I know that society will occasionally say that a woman should not have done something or only did something to impress her man or whatever, but they usually don’t dispute that whatever was done has happened.

I did put this pretty badly in terms of language, but… yeah. If someone is ‘just’ a woman, without being oppressed on an other axis, they carry a shit-ton of privilege over people who are oppressed otherways and I kind of wanted that pointed out.

Sorry if I fucked up too badly.

Yeah, this makes a lot more sense with that clarification. Don’t worry too much about it - I knew what you meant, but as you know it came across a bit differently, and the internet is very good at picking up on that. Essentially it comes down to that little bit in the middle of your reply there: that it’s really really dangerous to “focus on feminism to the exclusion of everything else”. Because then it becomes the marginalized oppressing the more marginalized, and that always really really frustrates me.

Recently I came across what may have been (it’s unclear if my perception is correct here, but I’m fairly sure it is) an LGBT organization who, in its blurb about scholarship recipients, misgendered the one trans* recipient. Argh! And it’s, you know, things like this happen. LGBT groups or feminist groups or charity organizations demean or ignore trans* people or poor people or disabled people or people they deem too young to believe in the movement/ help out/ know their own sexuality or even people who just call them out on things they’re doing wrong.

I was utterly overjoyed to be asked about my preferred pronouns for an LGBT meeting coming up - that is the first time in my involvement that anyone’s ever bothered to ask, and it’s telling that this particular group is supported by an intersex-supporting organization, hosted on ground celebrating people of color, and aims to welcome youth. That when we take into account that not everyone fighting for a particular cause is like us, we end up stronger and more diverse and less divisive for it. And that’s what should be taken away from your post (and what I believe you intended): not the “zomg women aren’t oppressed? fuck you.” but the “hey, we need to bear the not-like-us members of our group into account too.”