Catherina
Catherina's JournalMerriam Webster Definition 2b
2
b : a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman —sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse
I take exception to your statement that this was a slur against Feminists. First, Feminists are divided about the use of the word when it comes to definition 2b. Second, the juror put the word feminists in quotes to make it clear he, or SHE even, wasn't talking about all Feminists, or for that matter, all women.
Definition 2b is about an ATTITUDE, not a gender, and it's a word younger Feminists are reclaiming to not have those negative connotations.
Don't believe me? Read Jo Freeman who authored the Bitch Manifesto in 1996.
http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/wlm/bitch/
I wish the juror had phrased things differently since the word upsets some, many?, women here but it is what it is. Definitions change, attitudes change.
I'll take bitch as a compliment for $200 Alex.
“I intend to scream, shout, race the engine, call when I feel like it, throw tantrums in Bloomingdale's if I feel like it and confess intimate details about my life to complete strangers. I intend to do what I want to do and be whom I want to be and answer only to myself: that is, quite simply, the bitch philosophy...”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women
The rise of bitch through history can be traced to 4 distinct periods: The Definition, The Rise, the Reclamation, and the Popularization. The last 3 can be tied to specific events in American feminism.
I: The Definition
...
II: The Rise
...
III: The Reclamation
...
The 1960’s found women gaining a sense of pride in many of the things their opponents criticized them for: assertiveness, strength, independence, and a willingness to fight for their own definition of happiness. In 1968, Jo Freeman (Joreen) published The BITCH Manifesto, a document that defines the bitches of 2nd wave feminism.
...
IV: The Popularization
By the time Feminism began its 3rd wave, reclaiming bitch was an official part of many feminist’s agenda. 1996 saw the first publication of Bitch Magazine, a periodical giving a “feminist response to pop culture.” One of the magazine’s founders, Andi Zeisler, explained in a 2006 interview that they chose the name explicitly because they wished to reclaim the word.
...
V: Modern Day
Nowadays people can read a diet book titled Skinny Bitch, drink many varietals of Sassy Bitch Wine, make new friends at a “Stitch ‘n Bitch” knitting club, listen to Meredith Brooks sing “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother” or dance to Ludacris’ stirring lyrics “Move bitch, get out the way, get out the way bitch, get out the way.”
Bitch has come a far way from the “most offensive appellation” to women it was at the end of the 20th century. The 1st wave feminists of the 1920’s gave it an identity, the 2nd wave feminists grabbed it from the voices of their critics and reclaimed it as theirs, and the 3rd wave brought it forth, polished it up, and presented it to the world. From biche sone to bitch, please, the word has had a long and busy history, making it now one of the most common, and most complicated, swear words in America.
http://clarebayley.com/2011/06/bitch-a-history/
I'm really glad you started this thread
I'm reading part 3 of Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights by Angela Davis. I've never read this before and welcome learning more. All 3 parts are worth reading.
The 3 parts are only of Chapter 12 of her book "Women, Race & Class". Now I want the book.
Part 1
Part 2
The abortion rights activists of the early 1970s should have examined the history of their movement. Had they done so, they might have understood why so many of their Black sisters adopted a posture of suspicion toward their cause. They might have understood how important it was to undo the racist deeds of their predecessors, who had advocated birth control as well as compulsory sterilization as a means of eliminating the "unfit" sectors of the population. Consequently, the young white feminists might have been more receptive to the suggestion that their campaign for abortion rights include a vigorous condemnation of sterilization abuse, which had become more widespread than ever.
It was not until the media decided that the casual sterilization of two Black girls in Montgomery, Alabama, was a scandal worth reporting that the Pandora's box of sterilization abuse was finally flung open. But by the time the case of the Relf sisters broke, it was practically too late to influence the politics of the abortion rights movement. It was the summer of 1973 and the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortions had already been announced in January. Nevertheless, the urgent need for mass opposition to sterilization abuse became tragically clear. The facts surrounding, the Relf sisters' story were horrifyingly simple. Minnie Lee, who was twelve years old, and Mary Alice, who was fourteen, had beer unsuspectingly carted into an operating room, where surgeons irrevocably robbed them of their capacity to bear children.34 The surgery had been ordered by the HEW-funded Montgomery Community Action Committee after it was discovered that Depo-Provera, a drug previously administered to the girls as a birth prevention measure, caused cancer in test animals.35
In the aftermath of the publicity exposing the Relf sisters' case similar episodes were brought to light. In Montgomery alone eleven girls, also in their teens, had been similarly sterilized. HEW-funded birth control clinics in other states, as it turned out had also subjected young girls to sterilization abuse. Moreover individual women came forth with equally outrageous stories. Nial Ruth Cox, for example, filed suit against the state of North Carolina. At the age of eighteen — eight years before the suit — officials had threatened to discontinue her family's welfare payments if she refused to submit to surgical sterilization.37 Before she assented to the operation, she was assured that her infertility would be temporary.38
Nial Ruth Cox's lawsuit was aimed at a state which had diligently practiced the theory of eugenics. Under the auspicies of the Eugenics Commission of North Carolina, so it was learned, 7,686 sterilizations had been carried out since 1933. Although the operations were justified as measures to prevent the reproduction of "mentally deficient persons," about 5,000 of the sterilized persons had been Black.39 According to Brenda Feigen Fasteau, the ACLU attorney representing Nial Ruth Cox, North Carolina's recent record was not much better.
"As far as I can determine, the statistics reveal that since 1964, approximately 65% of the women sterilized in North Carolina were Black and approximately 35% were white."40
...
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/margins-to-centre/2006-December/001053.html
I'll take racist for $200 Alex. A product of her times but still racist
This is just awful:
"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with
social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most
successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal.
We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro
population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if
it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
-- Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255
Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith
Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in
Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth
Control in America . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
http://blackquillandink.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/margaret-sanger-quotes.pdf
When Margaret Sanger severed her ties with the Socialist party for the purpose of building an independent birth control campaign, she and her followers became more susceptible than ever before to the anti-Black and anti-immigrant propaganda of the times. Like their predecessors, who had been deceived by the "race suicide" propaganda, the advocates of birth control began to embrace the prevailing racist ideology. The fatal influence of the eugenics movement would soon destroy the progressive potential of the birth control campaign.
During the first decades of the twentieth century the rising popularity of the eugenics movement was hardly a fortuitous development. Eugenic ideas were perfectly suited to the ideological needs of the young monopoly capitalists. Imperialist incursions in Latin America and in the Pacific needed to be justified, as did the intensified exploitation of Black workers in the South and immigrant workers in the North and West. The pseudoscientific racial theories associated with the eugenics campaign furnished dramatic apologies for the conduct of the young monopolies. As a result, this movement won the unhesitating support of such leading capitalists as the Carnegies, the Harrimans and the Kelloggs.26
By 1919 the eugenic influence on the birth control movement was unmistakably clear. In an article published by Margaret Sanger in the American Birth Control League's journal, she defined "the chief issue of birth control" as "more children from the fit, less from the unfit."27 Around this time the ABCL heartily welcomed the author of "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" into its inner sanctum.28 Lothrop Stoddard, Harvard professor and theoretician of the eugenics movement, was offered a seat on the board of directors. In the pages of the ABCL's journal, articles by Guy Irving Birch, director of the American Eugenics Society, began to appear. Birch advocated birth control as a weapon to
"... prevent the American people from being replaced by alien or Negro stock, whether it be by immigration or by overly high birth rates among others in this country."29
By 1932 the Eugenics Society could boast that at least twenty-six states had passed compulsory sterilization laws and that thousands of "unfit" persons had already been surgically prevented from reproducing.30 Margaret Sanger offered her public approval of this development. "Morons, mental defectives, epileptics, illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes and dope fiends" ought to be surgically sterilized, she argued in a radio talk.31 She did not wish to be so intransigent as to leave them with no choice in the matter; if they wished, she said, they should be able to choose a lifelong segregated existence in labor camps.
...
from "Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights" by Angela Davis
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/margins-to-centre/2006-December/001052.html
A disturbing quote from the Negro Project
t)he mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the population least fit, and least able to rear children properly."The passage below is from a pro-life religious site. Enter the link at your own risk if that offends you.
At a March,1925 international birth control gathering in New York City, a speaker warned of the menace posed by the "black" and "yellow" peril. The man was not a Nazi or Klansman; he was Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a member of Margaret Sanger's American Birth Control League (ABCL), which along with other groups eventually became known as Planned Parenthood.
Margaret Sanger's beliefs about social works of charity are revealing: She criticized the success-- not failure-- of charity... She called for the halt to the medical care being given to slum mothers, and decried the expense to the taxpayers of monies being spent on the deaf, blind and dependent. She condemned foreign missionaries for reducing the infant mortality rates in developing countries, and declared charity to be more evil than for the assistance it provided to the poor and needy. Sanger's thinking moved to fascism in an elitist attitude that presumes to judge who is worthy to live and to die.
http://www.acts1711.com/sanger.htm
These quotes settle it:
"Today eugenics is suggested by the most diverse minds as the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems. - Margaret Sanger
In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feebleminded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation. - Margaret Sanger
"The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped." - Margaret Sanger
"
Slavs, Latin, and Hebrew immigrants are) human weeds ... a deadweight of human waste ... (Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a) menace to the race."
"Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent Multiplication of this bad stock."
- Margaret Sanger, April 1933 Birth Control Review
The more I'm reading, the sicker I'm getting. What's this?
What percentage of the population did she consider *tainted*?
"a special type of philanthropy or benevolence, . . . which strikes me as being more insidiously injurious than any other. . . to supply gratis medical and nursing facilities to slum mothers." The Pivot of Civilization, p. 114
". . . we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all, . . ." The Pivot of Civilization, p. 187
"Borderline cases" - "a greater menace" = 39.2%
"Morons" - Sterilize and Segregate = 47.3%
"Thoroughbreds" - Allowed to Reproduce = 13.5%
Fun fact. F. Scott Fitzgerald took a poke at the nasty eugenics movement and at Stoddard and his book, The Rising Tide of Color in The Great Gatsby.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read “The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?”
“Why no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.”
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration…
I vote racist and elitist for $200. Make that $500. Her easy acceptance of racism is inexcusable, even for her times. There's no sense in white-washing this. She probably wouldn't be a racist if she were around today, but it is what it is.
All you need to clean toilets is vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice, and/or borax.
Borax and Baking Soda
Mix 3 parts baking soda to 1 part Borax
Vinegar - howstuffworks Uses for Vinegar: Cleaning Your House
Pour white vinegar into the toilet and let it sit for 30 minutes. Next sprinkle baking soda on a toilet-bowl brush and scour any remaining stained areas. Flush.
Baking Soda - eHow How to Clean Your Toilet Bowl Naturally
Pour 1/2 box of baking soda into the toilet bowl.
Let the baking soda stand overnight in the bowl. Try to do this the last thing before bed so you don’t accidentally flush the toilet before the baking soda has a chance to work.
Flush the toilet several times in the morning.
Run a brush around the bowl to fully remove any loosened grime.
Borax and Lemon Juice – eHow How to make Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaners
Pour 1 cup of Borax into a small bowl.
Pour 1/2 cup of lemon juice over the Borax and gently stir with a spoon into a paste.
Flush the toilet to wet the sides, then rub the paste onto the toilet with a sponge.
Let it sit for 2 hours before scrubbing thoroughly. This is great for removing a stubborn stain, like a toilet bowl ring.
Borax and Vinegar – eHow How to make Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaners
Flush the toilet to wet the sides of the bowl.
Sprinkle a cup of Borax around the rim and sides of toilet.
Spray 1/2 cup of vinegar over the Borax.
Allow to sit for several hours or overnight.
Scrub thoroughly with a toilet brush until the bowl gleams.
Sometimes, hard water just leaves a stubborn ring that no amount of scrubbing or rubbing can get rid of. That’s when you grab a pumice stone, wet it and and rub lightly on the stain.
Girls for Gender Equity honor Anita Hill at 10-Yr Anniversary Celebration, June 14, NYC
It’s Thursday June 14th from 6-9pm at the Brooklyn Historical Society, and it honors Anita Hill. Go! All proceeds will go directly to support GGE’s ongoing work, which includes sexual harassment training, youth leadership, and a wide variety of gender equality work. GGE is also doing a special “Phenomenal Women” tribute where smaller donors can give $50 to have a picture of a “phenomenal woman” in their life be a part of a slideshow at the event. And Feministing’s Vanessa Valenti will also be honored as “Gender Justice Warriors.” It sounds awesome and you should go.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/05/18/event-you-should-attend-girls-for-gender-equality-10th-anniversary/
GGE Honors Anita Hill at
10-Year Anniversary Celebration
Tickets on sale HERE Please share this invitation with your contacts!
We look forward to celebrating with you. This will be an evening of celebration, connecting with new and old friends, an opportunity to meet a living legend, Anita Hill, and an opportunity to reflect on the great work in our communities to advance girls and women of color.
Thank you Host Committee Members and Co-Sponsors for believing in our vision and helping us move closer to our mission.
Host Committee
Katie Barnett | Brooklyn Community Foundation | Timothy Dorsey and Michael Morandini
Jacqueline M. Ebanks | Letitia James | Ana L. Oliveira | Arva Ric
David Schulman | Pamela Shifman | Emma Jordan-Simpson
Alvin Starks | Cynthia Steele | Chiemi Suzuki, Esq. | Reverend Alfonso Wyatt
Co-Sponsors
A Long Walk Home | BLACK GIRLS ROCK! | Black Women’s Blueprint | Center for Anti Violence Education
Concord Baptist Church | Feministing | Holly Delaney Cole | K Shah Consulting | Legal Momentum
Leslie MacKrell | Men of Strength | Omega Women’s Leadership Center
Public Science Project | Sadie Nash Leadership Project | Sanctuaryfor Families | Soapbox, Inc.
SPARKmovement | Tewa Women United | UrbanWord NYC | WonderWomen
http://www.ggenyc.org/celebrating-10-years/
But he didn’t want to be questioned!
But he didn’t want to be questioned!
By Jill on 5.24.2012
Good news, criminals: You can sexually assault someone, get caught, decide you simply don’t feel like being questioned right at this moment and then walk free. Or at least those are the rules the NYPD plays by:
New details have emerged about a 22 year-old woman who was attacked yesterday morning around 5:30AM by a Hispanic male in his 40s. CBS New York reports that the woman was returning home from her job at a Manhattan night club when she exited the 4th Avenue/9th Street F/G station. As she walked on 16th Street between 4th and 5th Avenues she noticed a man was following her, but thought that she’d shaken him. Soon after, the man jumped at and groped her. Neighbors heard the young woman scream, and as they ran outside, the assailant fled. He didn’t get far though — a neighbor cornered him on Prospect Ave and 3rd Ave.
According to both CBS and NY1, the assailant was detained by police for about 15 minutes before being released.
“I was just (beep) off that the cops didn’t do anything about the guy,” Donald Harrington, a neighbor, told NY1. “They came up here, I told them where the girl was and they just kept on going. They said they had no victim even though we call them back. We took the girl down we spoke to the police and they said the guy didn’t want to be questioned so they let him go.”
Police returned to the scene on Wednesday to speak with neighbors and check out security footage.
...
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/05/24/but-he-didnt-want-to-be-questioned/
It is not the differences between us that tear us apart
What We Aren’t Talking About When We Talk About ‘White Privilege’
May 24, 2012
By Theresa Warburton and Joshua Cerretti
We’re white feminists. We aren’t white just because our ancestors were mostly European. We are white because we regularly experience being identified as such by individuals and institutions that systematically favor those who appear white over those who don’t. We aren’t feminists just because we have degrees and teach in Gender and Women’s Studies. We are feminists because we are committed to dismantling the structures that systematically favor men over women, heterosexuals over non-heterosexuals, the rich over the poor, and, amongst many other oppressions, white people over people of color.
...
These challenging conversations are necessary because, in the age of intensive plurality and diversity, any movement worth being part of is going to involve organizing across many forms of difference. Notice how we say ‘across’ and not ‘in spite of.’ We say that because it’s likely that most people in these movements will have at least one identity that provides systematic, unearned advantages – whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, citizenship, able-bodiedness, etc. – and those same people will have other identities that provide systematic, unearned disadvantages. We need to recognize that the vast majority of people are both oppressed and oppressive in different ways, in different contexts, and in different moments.
...
You’re receiving this talk about white privilege because we want to work together to rid this world of the various oppressions that make life worse for so many people. Overcoming the challenge that these forces present will require working across multiple forms of difference, and to do this we mustn’t forget that the challenges lie not in difference itself, but in the oppressions structured around difference. As Audre Lorde said so beautifully…
[...]it is not the differences between us that tear us apart, destroying the commonalities we share. Rather, it is our refusal to examine the distortions which arise form their misnaming, and from the illegitimate usage of those differences which can be made when we do not claim them nor define them for ourselves.
As feminists, we don’t want to participate in the use of oppressive force or reproduce any system that legitimates this force. As white people born in the U.S. who work at a university, we’ve benefited enormously from this very system we oppose. These contradictions will not be resolved in silence and, unless we work on recognizing and addressing them, we don’t expect for it to be easy for anyone who hasn’t shared our experiences to work with us.
...
http://thefeministwire.com/2012/05/what-we-arent-talking-about-when-we-talk-about-white-privilege/
The Most Powerful Women You've Never Heard Of
The Most Powerful Women You've Never Heard Of
The Angela Merkels and Dilma Rousseffs get all the attention. But they're not the only female leaders running the world.
1 HELEN CLARK
Administrator, U.N. Development Program | New Zealand
As New Zealand's prime minister, Helen Clark oversaw a decade of economic growth and won three straight terms in her post after a long career as a Labour Party legislator and cabinet minister. Less than a year following her departure as Kiwi prime minister, however, Clark turned to a much larger -- and more challenging -- stage: Since 2009, she has led the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), the arm of the United Nations charged with confronting the world's worst problems, from global poverty to corrupt governance to health and environmental crises. Clark, 62, now oversees the UNDP's nearly $5 billion annual budget and more than 8,000 employees operating in 177 countries. Cholera in Haiti and famine in Somalia may be far from daily life for many New Zealanders, but Clark appears undaunted. Her top goal as administrator, she said last fall, is no less than to eradicate extreme poverty around the world.
2 LIU YANDONG
State councilor | China
Although they hold up "half the sky," as Mao Zedong famously said, women make up just over 20 percent of the delegates in China's national legislature. Former chemist Liu Yandong is the outlier: the only woman in the Politburo, the 25-member elite decision-making body at the top of the Communist Party pyramid. Considered a close ally of President Hu Jintao, she has a good chance of ascending this fall to become one of the small handful in the Politburo Standing Committee, the true ruling council at the center of the system. As with everyone in China's opaque Politburo, little is known about how Liu's politics differ from those of her colleagues, though some analysts think she favors increasing China's contacts with the outside world; the 66-year-old Liu has an honorary Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and spoke at Yale University in 2009. She would be the first woman in Chinese history to make it to the Standing Committee.
3 LAEL BRAINARD
Treasury undersecretary for international affairs | United States
With Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's attention focused on the U.S. economy, tackling the brush fires of global economic calamity has often fallen to Lael Brainard. The even-tempered, Harvard-trained economist was born in 1962 and raised in communist Poland as the daughter of a U.S. foreign-service officer. She went on to serve on the National Economic Council during Bill Clinton's administration, working on the U.S. response to the Mexican peso and Asian financial crises. During President Barack Obama's administration, Brainard has been consumed with Europe's financial contagion, shuttling back and forth between Washington and European capitals (while her husband, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, travels to his portfolio in Asia) in an effort to convince leaders to prop up failing economies and prevent further spread. It's not always the easiest task, given that many European leaders blame U.S. policies for starting the crisis in the first place, but Brainard has brought tireless diplomatic energy to the job.
4 NGOZI OKONJO-IWEALA
Finance minister | Nigeria
In March, the governments of South Africa, Angola, and Nigeria nominated Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former World Bank managing director, to succeed Robert Zoellick as president of the bank. By tradition, the position has been held by an American chosen by the U.S. government, but Okonjo-Iweala thinks it's time for a change. "The balance of power in the world has shifted," she said following her nomination, arguing that developing countries "need to be given a voice in running things." For the time being, she is more or less running things in Nigeria, where she is in her second term as finance minister. In her first term, the Harvard- and MIT-educated economist received plaudits for negotiating billions of dollars in debt forgiveness with Nigeria's international creditors and launching a high-profile campaign against corruption. This time her task is made all the more difficult by a campaign of terror by al Qaeda-affiliated Boko Haram militants. Nonetheless, the 57-year-old Okonjo-Iweala is determined to make Nigeria an attractive place for international companies, a big challenge of the kind she is known for tackling.
...
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/the_most_powerful_women_youve_never_heard_of
There are many more at the link
No Conundrum About It (the Oppression Olympics)
This is very well written and easy to read. The article explains
April 18, 2012 by Julia Serano
Aviva Dove-Viebahn’s recent Ms. blog post, “Transfeminism and Its Conundrums,” framed trans feminism* as a controversial and debatable submovement within feminism. I strongly disagree, as did a number of commenters, and here’s why:
Trans feminism—that is, transgender perspectives on feminism, or feminist perspectives on transgender issues—is one of many so-called “third-wave” feminisms. Its origins are closely linked with other feminist submovements—specifically, sex-positive feminism, postmodern/poststructuralist feminism, queer theory and intersectionality. These strands of feminism represent a move away from viewing sexism as an overly simplistic, unilateral form of oppression, where men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed, end of story.
Instead, these feminisms recognize that there are numerous forms of sexism—that is, numerous double standards based on a person’s sex, gender, or sexuality. In addition to traditional sexism (where men are viewed as more legitimate than women), there is heterosexism (where heterosexuals are viewed as more legitimate than homosexuals), monosexism (where people who are exclusively attracted to members of a single sex are viewed as more legitimate than bisexuals/pansexuals), masculine-centrism (where masculine gender expression is viewed as more legitimate than feminine gender expression) and so on.
There are also other forms of marginalization prevalent in our society, such as racism, classism and ableism.As feminists of color have articulated, these do not act independently of one another but intersect with and exacerbate one another. A woman of color doesn’t face racism and sexism separately; the sexism she faces is often racialized, and the racism she faces is often sexualized. This concept of intersectionality is now very well accepted among many contemporary feminists (albeit not by those who continue to adhere to a unilateral men-oppress-women-end-of-story approach to feminism).
...
http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2012/04/18/trans-feminism-theres-no-conundrum-about-it/
Women born women? RadFem2012 actively excluding trans women from attending
by Laura Woodhouse // 17 May 2012, 22:40
Tags: conference, exclusion, feminism, gender, not in my name, radfem2012, radical feminism, transphobia
Like many of you who have been discussing the issue on Twitter and Facebook today, I was angered to learn that a new UK conference for radical feminists, RadFem2012, is not only playing host to a well-known transphobe, but is actively excluding trans women from attending.
The conference is open only to "women born women living as women". Now, I personally support and fully appreciate the value of women-only space, but that space has to be open to all self-defining women. Excluding trans women from an event that aims to build an "anti-oppressive movement for the liberation of all women from patriarchal oppression" is bitterly ironic.
Trans women suffer horrifying levels of violence, abuse and discrimination, fuelled not only by the fact that they are women, but by the refusal of the vast majority of the cis population to acknowledge and respect their identities. The organisers of RadFem2012 have actively chosen to align themselves with this majority, and in so doing are complicit in trans women's oppression. Radical? Feminism? I think not.
Then there's Sheila Jeffreys, who thinks that "transgenderism" is:
...a practice in which persons who do not adhere to the correctly gendered practices that have been placed upon the biological sex are considered to have something called Gender Identity Disorder and they're expected to cross over into the other sex. Not criticize the gendered system as it exists, because that's unthinkable but to make some kind of "journey" by mutilating their bodies and taking dangerous drugs for the rest of their lives in order to supposedly represent the opposite sex.
The same Sheila Jeffreys who has been invited to speak at a conference where discussion will be "rooted in the realities of women's lives". Are we sure this isn't Irony2012? Because if Jeffreys and the conference organisers could bring themselves to listen to trans people's stories, to try and understand or empathise with the realities of their lives, they would realise quite how ridiculously facile and patronising the above argument is.
...
Boycott RadFem2012.
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/05/theres_nothing
Of course I checked the author's claims and it's right there on RadFem2012's page.
RadFem 2012 is women only. We respect that discussion spaces are needed free from oppression and dis-empowerment, and we assert our right as women to organise a women only space. As Radical Feminists we recognise that patriarchy dominates personal and political spaces across the globe. In turn we ask that RadFem 2012 be respected as a space where women born women living as women are able to meet and share information in a peaceful and safe environment.
http://www.radfem2012.com/participants.html
SERIOUSLY? WTF? SHAME ON YOU.
Further reading:
[link:http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2012/05/women_born_women|Women born women?
As a controversial conference restricts entry to 'women born women', Helen G analyses this phrase]
You can't smash patriarchy with transphobia
Trans Feminism: There's No Conundrum About It
Responding To The Feminist Anti-Transsexual Arguments
Where did we go wrong? Feminism and trans theory - two teams on the same side?
Rethinking Sexism: How Trans Women Challenge Feminism : http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/93826/rethinking_sexism:_how_trans_women_challenge_feminism/?page=entire
Legalities of excluding trans women from women only spaces
Profile Information
Name: CatherinaGender: Female
Member since: Mon Mar 3, 2008, 03:08 PM
Number of posts: 35,568
