Tonight, as I sat down to write this blog, I realized how very female my “blogging situation” is. I mean, obviously, Augustus Carmichael isn’t my actual name (it’s the name of a character in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse). But what’s distinctly female about this is that I have to assume a pseudonym in order to articulate my reality.
I am not safe to discuss feminist concerns/biological female reality/the reality of my female experience without assuming a false identity.
Is there really anything more female than that? I mean, what is this? The 18fucking40s. I feel like George motherfucking Eliot.
This blog is, in and of itself, evidence of oppression.
I can’t object to the disgusting appropriation of my sex, and all the suffering therein, but meanwhile, men who “feel like” women, because they like lace and pink and twirling (or whatever “women” supposedly like) are free to define feminism and womanhood. Meanwhile, men are free to dress up and take hormones and tell women they’re “doing womanhood wrong.”
And yet I, an actual woman, have to “blog underground.” I have to assume a false identity because men, who think they are women, will harass me into obscurity if I dare voice my objection to the colonization of MY SEX.
And it is MY SEX. I was born into it. I, and my mothers, sisters, and ancestors before me, suffered as a result of it – sociologically, biologically.
The female sex, womanhood, belongs to ME and my sisters. I will be damned if any theory, any man with his eyeshadow, lipstick, estrogen pills and tutu is going to co-opt that experience and claim it for his own.
Alas, as an actual female, I have to say all these things under a pseudonym, and if that’s not subjugation, if that’s not patriarchy, I don’t know what is.
This is what it is to be a female: we are silenced by men who claim our sex, we have to assert ourselves under pseudonyms for fear of the backlash by men who claim they are women.
Feminism has been hijacked by the myth that pornography is liberatory (this thinking benefits men) and by the idea that gender worship is healthy (again, this benefits men). Wake up.
Women, wake up. Your experiences are being colonized by fetishists. Our work is not over – not by a long shot. Reject trans-ideology. Reject queer theory. Reject gender.
Hypotaxis 
Well said.
Thank you. I’ve long felt that many trans men caricature and appropriate what I perceive as negative female stereotypes, and that they are ignorant of how problematic this is for women as a group. While modern feminist women are trying to shirk the culturally loaded burden that is “femaleness” and the expectation that we be slender and delicate and pretty, trans men are happily donning girly costumes (that actual women would never wear), and affecting girly mannerisms that would put Mrs Cleaver to shame. This is not always the case, however, and I try to avoid broad generalizations. There is nothing wrong with being trans, but if you’re trans and suddenly think you know everything about women’s issues, you’ve got another thing coming to you. If you’ve never been ridiculed in front of your 9th grade class for not getting a tampon out of your backpack 100% silently, you don’t know shit about women’s issues. At least be sensitive to them and be an ally…
“I feel like George motherfucking Eliot.”
Beautifully said. Thank you.
Almost all of us use a false name to speak the truth about our lives and about queer theory, trans politics, sex-positivism, etc., in these internet discussions/forums. Speaking of which, I once enraged a trans-activist on a news website by referring to a male trans as “he.” He used extremely threatening language and said something to the effect of “you wouldn’t dare say that to my face, you cis bigot.”
And he was right: I wouldn’t dare. I’m not stupid; none of us are stupid. We know very well that women speaking out against our sexed-based oppression, against the objectifying of our bodies and our lives, is subject to gas lighting, ridicule, censure, punishment and violence. Each time we open our mouths, we risk abuse, not only from men, but from other women.
It’s our younger sisters, daughters and granddaughters to come that I worry the most for. They are so afraid of being “called out” as the oppressors of men who think “woman is a feeling,” and that female is a metaphysical category, that they are internalizing these gender ideologies, allowing intersectionality-gone-mad to render womanhood under male supremacy meaningless, and prostrating themselves before the altars of queer cults.
Young women are turning on us, turning on each other, and “choosing” to hand over their bodies to men who applaud them, and shame them at the same time, for being sluts. All in the name of “liberation.” Many of them are also electing to have their healthy breasts removed and their voices, bodies and genitals marred by synthetic testosterone. Also in the name of freedom. Because, according to trans/queer logic, the reality of human reproductive biology causes oppression (not men!). So, women should become men, and vice-versa. Sexual dimorphism, per se, is ostensibly to blame, so let’s all pretend it doesn’t exist. All together now: let’s pretend! And, if you don’t, you need–and dammit you will get–an education. And that “education” is as Orwellian and ominous as it sounds.
Young women (and older women, too) need to hear that they can withdraw to somewhere quiet where they can listen to their instincts and exercise their reason. They need to know that they CAN experiment with saying “this doesn’t quite make sense” and then stand back and watch how they are punished, and by whom. They need the courage to risk being ostracized, to witness first-hand how all this wonderful “agency” they have comes to an abrupt end when it does not harmonize with the male–including all forms of trans and queer–status quo.
You’re making me think, morag99, about why I use a pseudonym online. I comment at a number of different sites, and I just don’t want to deal with personal attacks and will often leave a site if they occur (partly because they’re boring). However, IN PERSON, I will say frankly what I think, and though I’ve been threatened, no one has yet had the nerve to attack me. I couldn’t believe when a fat woman was spit on when she was visiting San Francisco and no one she was with did anything; it’s amazing how bullies shrink when you stand up to them. I’m aging and disabled, but I’ll take on a man any day of the week who thinks threatening behavior is okay.
Thank you. We’re totally on the same page.
I never thought of it that way so much. I just thought “well, if I’m going to talk about feminism, I’ll have to be completely paranoid about lets me career and friends be destroyed because I typed something that’ll decide feminists to come and destroy me”. Looking back, I realize how I should’ve run away from such spaces.
The worse is, that mindset is leaking into French feminism, and will start to destroy the (already half-forgotten) work of previous women.
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