Excerpts from Sometimes I strike my face with my palm… written by the lovely Roz K and posted at her LJ. I don’t think she’s the only person who feels like this, not by a long way, but still my heart goes out to her.
The full piece is here, go and read it. That is all.
I had hoped, I had really hoped, that we were past all this…And yet, I know we are not.
Julie Bindel is still out there, and Sheila Jeffreys, and Germaine Greer. And it does not matter how many transwoman and transmen are killed or beaten by straight guys, somehow we still remain weapons of the patriarchy in the minds of women who should have better battles to fight than turf wars on ‘The F Word’.
The excellent Questioning Transphobia has been monitoring the current explosion of anti-trans hatred, and of feminist blogs that are prepared to defend trans rights and see them as inseparable from all other rights in general, and women’s rights in particular. QT is doing a good job and I am not proposing to do more than acknowledge that, and point you in the direction of her ongoing work on these issues.
What I am going to do is say something about how dispiriting all of this is, simply because it wastes so much of everyone’s time. I am going to go further, and talk, just a bit, about how much of my own precious personal time has been wasted by all of this down the years.
[…]
We should not be having to waste our time on all of this crap any more. There are misogynist homophobe racist transphobes in high places who want to KILL US ALL. Not just lesbians, not just transfolk, not just members of ethnic minorities – all of us in the progressive community.
I just think we should remember that. And transphobic feminists should remember that their feminism is the most important thing about them, and stop making feminism all about being mean to people.
bird of paradox 