Feminist: oh, so we won’t use gendered pronouns anymore?
TERF: no keep those
Feminist: gendered clothing?
TERF: no thats ok
Feminist: segregated bathrooms?
TERF: no those are important
Feminist: so we’re going to do something about the gender binary, yeah? We’re going to attack the idea that gender is intrinsically linked to one’s anatomy, and we’re going to boost the visibility of trans and intersex people, who face the most violent consequences of the sex and gender binaries – yes?
TERF: no
Feminist: then what are you going to do, exactly? What is your plan? How are you going to accomplish this?
something that incredibly depresses me about how far both radfem and libfem separatists have sunk their claws into lesbian and bi circles respectively is that they’ve forced this notion that lesbians and bi women are these two separate entities with divergent histories with no common points whatsoever. in reality, our histories and our lives have always been intertwined. it was separatism that began the schism between us, but the notion that we’re two groups of people who began separately and now have to work to come back together is, i think, the root of a lot of the problems between us. and it makes me so genuinely upset.
If you were really not attracted to trans women, why don’t you leave us alone?
You complain that trans women would ‘trick’ you into having sex with them, so clearly worried that some girl you’re hot for might turn out to be trans. You run through a dozen hypothetical scenarios, dealing out judgment and explaining exactly when and how trans women should disclose. You talk through which sex acts you would be most repulsed by and how important it is to you that everyone protect you from falling into that scenario. Seriously, I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t spend this much time talking about and thinking about having sex with people I’m not attracted to.
When confronted about your transphobia your standard response is “I’m just not attracted to trans women, there’s nothing wrong with that,” but the whole scenario you’re focusing on is the possibility that someone you are attracted to turns out to be trans and you’d go into a rage. If you were really not attracted to trans women, wouldn’t you just have never gone on the date to begin with because you weren’t attracted to her?
How is it that you ended up arguing with a dozen trans women through social media? Somehow you manage to keep up with each of them and know them by name, all so that you can better harass them, leaving little remarks on their pages about how they trick people into weird deviant sex. The opposite of attraction isn’t repulsion, but indifference. You’re not acting like someone who is indifferent about trans women. Did you really just say that you’re not attracted to trans women for the fourth time in this conversation? I’m beginning to wonder if it’s not me you’re trying to convince, but yourself.
I’m willing to bet that if we could thoroughly explore your computer and your internet history, we’d find some trans porn on there. What is that “research”? Oh, I forgot, it’s “evidence.” You’ve got screen caps of at least 50 trans women’s OK cupid pages, downloaded copies of their fetlife photos, all documented with name, age, and location so that you can post them to your own website and “warn” other people so no one is “tricked” into having sex with them. Scouring the internet you relish every nude pic you can find. Each posted to the front page of your site with a triumphant “Look! It’s a penis! And she calls herself a woman – ha!”
Usually when someone is not attracted to me, they don’t give me a second thought and move on with their life and allow me to move on with mine. But you – You track down my personal internet accounts so you can continue the argument we go into after I left it. You go through things I posted on tumblr 3 years ago. You look through my online dating profiles from 2010 and try and run google image searches to see where else my risque photos may have been. You check legal name change records in my county to try and find my “real” name. You look up where I work so you can call my boss and tell them they hired a pervert. You write fan fiction about about how many cocks I suck and send it to the city council and school board until their lawyers send you a cease and desist letter (seriously, that really happened to me).
There’s nothing wrong with incidentally not being attracted to me. But that’s not what’s going on here. I’m not saying you’re attracted to me, but in your repulsion you’ve become obsessed with me and others like me. That obsession is what’s dangerous and it’s fueled by some deep seated fascination that has a lot more to do with your feelings than it has to do with anything I’ve done.
So I’m rejecting you right here and now. I will never have sex with you. If you’re really not attracted to me, then you won’t care. If you feel relief, if you feel anxiety, if you feel insulted, then there’s something else going on. And you need to go take care of it by yourself. Don’t involve me.
Know what ticks me off the most about the “we’re canon” and “but that’s not canon” and “your ship is not canon” nonsense? It buys into the whole proprietary ownership of storytelling that Disney exemplifies: tales as commodities controlled and dispensed by suits with their own self-serving agendas.
If you tried to tell the bards or poets or ballad-writers of centuries past that there’s such a thing as “canon” and it’s superior, they would have laughed in your face. Try telling even the famous storytellers like Shakespeare or Homer or Sappho or Ibn Tufail.
The recent preoccupation with “canon v. fanon” in the culture battles makes the Textual Poachers author’s quote more relevant than ever:
“Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.”
– Henry Jenkins, 1997
I did my undergrad comp thesis on Pavel Chekov’s potential realization and fufillment in Star Trek fanfiction; Textual Poachers is a great resource. 🙂
And yeah, the moral of the story: people need to chill the fuck out about canon and ships (did you write The Thing? If not, stop.), read up on reader response theory, and enjoy the fan-works they enjoy and don’t participate in the ones they don’t. In the end, it’s your experience and others, and as much as people think fandoms are communal, they’re comprised of individuals with different perspectives and desires experiencing a work through their own worldviews.
I laugh because the term “canon” to mean true and authoritative is appropriated from religion, and that’s a very recent phenomenon pushed by the commercial imperative; “canon” as it pertains to fictional works means “collection” – e.g. the American literary canon, the canon of classical Hollywood cinema; “The girl’s bookshelf was filled with the canon of children’s literature…”
How ironic that people are using “canon” – i.e. scriptural authority, the doctrinal truth, the Truth so true it is the decisive Word of God – for something which is literally fiction.
If there’s “canon” in fiction then most of the TV writers in Hollywood are heretics.
for all the Discourse of ‘this is a group historically only for those who deal with homophobia or transphobia’, it’s not even that. not close. like the amount of abuse i’ve faced as a trans woman. from cis LGBs and truscum. i’ve blocked out half the shit i’ve been through just in lgbti and queer spaces. i can’t go to those places anymore. i want to just give up on discourse on this blog like, I don’t know why i’m fighting for a community that i haven’t felt welcomed in since, i thought i was a cis dude tbqh
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