Taking the side of the oppressed has long been feminism’s raison d’etre. Amid an explosion of misogyny in public life, compassion and unity are more important than ever
I have written nothing on trans issues for seven years. A now-familiar row had broken out in the feminist movement back then, and I assumed that feminism would soon re-orient itself away from which body parts define a woman and whether or not the word “womxn” signified an assault on our sense of selves, and towards what I thought was obviously the more fundamental question of the movement: who has it worse? Feminism, in my life’s experience of it, takes the side of the oppressed. That is our raison d’etre.
So, anyway, I had seen this wonderful talk by Helen Belcher, who described the three ways in which trans people are portrayed and undermined, in the media and beyond. “The first is that they’re fraudulent. They’re not really who they say they are. We’d better humour them in their delusion. The second is trans as undeserving deviant. The third is trans as comedy.” Since then, this has intensified, with other, even more hostile, elements added: trans people as predators, the trans movement as deliberately poisoning the young. The savage mischief has seeped out of it. There is not much of the “We’d better humour them” any more.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2wIBNby
