The hunger to imagine a world where things can be different, to imagine a definition of "men" that ISN'T "rooted in the facts of reproductive biology", to pull the oppressive structures of our world apart, ever so slowly, and rearrange them
-
-
The bougie cis feminist lady who wrote that sentence didn't have some nuanced, deeply spiritual concept of what "manhood" meant when she wrote it And she'd probably agree it would be stupid to make it about "masculine stereotypes"
Show this thread -
The statement "If the people who got pregnant were tall, muscular, bearded and wore suits and ties, then maternity leave would be in the Constitution" is a... silly fucking thing to say Indeed, as TERFs like to crow, the experience of many trans men disproves it
Show this thread -
Whoever was the first one to write one of these angry slogans about "If men could menstruate..." or "If men could breastfeed..." or "If men could give birth..." was wholesale ripping out the radfem definition of "sex classes" and replacing it *only* with power
Show this thread -
The lady who wrote the OP directly agrees with Andrea Long Chu She's saying "If the uterus-having gestating sex class *had power*, then they would no longer be women, they would be defined as men"
Show this thread -
What's telling, to me, is that this is the logical consequence of TERF ideology and *they agree with it* to keep on sending memes like this but when confronted with it directly they find it very offensive, it cuts to the core emotionally
Show this thread -
"Fuck you! This meme is just to express our frustrations! It's not supposed to *literally mean* that we want a world where men could get pregnant -- or that we want to be 'men who get pregnant' -- and it's disgusting to say that it does!" Okay why though Let's unpack that
Show this thread -
It's tied deeply to the TERF obsession with what they call "passing women" -- the Sweet Polly Oliver/Mulan narrative, the woman who in all ways presents socially as a man and therefore accrues all of a man's power and privilege for herself
Show this thread -
And when they grab a real historical figure to fill in for that narrative -- someone like Albert Cashier or James Barry -- and trans people say "Okay but a more accurate definition for such a person would be a 'trans man'" -- they become incensed
Show this thread -
Assuming all the details historians have deduced about James Barry's life are accurate -- supposing his stretch marks in death really did mean he got pregnant and gave birth in secret -- isn't he exactly what the OP was fantasizing about?
Show this thread -
A man -- a respected doctor and military officer, known to everyone as a man, with all the privileges thereof -- who got pregnant and gave birth? And therefore, speculatively, pioneered the first surgical C-section -- as a man with a man's privilege who "knew how it felt"?
Show this thread -
But that's the whole, like, seething writhing contradiction at the heart of TERFism "Why can't men get pregnant? It'd be so much better if they could!" is this plaintive and fervent desire for the power and privilege accrued with manhood to be decoupled from reproductive biology
Show this thread -
But the idea of this *actually happening* is a huge threat A shock to the system, a cut to the core Like they experience being directly told "Okay, if you want to you can be a man who gets pregnant, and we'll fight to make society respect that" as a horrifying violation
Show this thread -
"I was a tomboy and I would've been transed as a child and that would've been the worst thing!" etc. Like there's something precious and vital about the name "woman" belonging to you, even as those "What if MEN could..." questions reveal how much harm that label carries with it
Show this thread -
Just saying TERFs bang on about how circular and inchoate and ephemeral the definition of "gender identity" is Fine, but they're apparently not free of it themselves
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.