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a contemplative bug
@BadhbhCatha
The Original Critical Voice
Joined June 2017
a contemplative bug’s Tweets
I'm exhausted by men and their wars. I'm drained by the war-like spirit. I just want peace.
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I think I'm slowly realizing that focusing all my efforts on transgenderism just won't work out. It's small in the context of larger things.
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This doesn't mean I should abandon what I believe in, which is supporting women & difference. But I've had to reevaluate action & coalition.
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My critique of transgenderism for being antifeminist and antiwoman led to a coalition with groups who are antifeminist and antiwoman.
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I want to hold onto my principles, but all of them. I want women to be strong, but joining with other groups that hate women won't work.
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Male doctors & psychiatrists, antifeminists, others who hate lesbians and women. I would let them tag along for just one issue I believe in.
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But what shook me is that, more and more, the people sharing my critical spaces were the same people also denigrating lesbians & feminists.
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What I want is for lesbians & especially butches to not feel like they have to change who they are for others. To self-affirm and be strong.
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There's so much coercive pressure for women, especially lesbians, to conform and reshape ourselves. Adrienne Rich wrote about it.
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I've been reconsidering how I feel about transmen lately. I think it hurt me to learn that other women could give into pressure and change.
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I mostly just read poetry today. Adrienne Rich. It was a great day. I think I might start reading Audre Lorde again soon, it's been awhile.
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I'm not sure if all of this is good for me. I'm a person. I deserve breaks, I deserve pursuits that make me feel alive rather than attacked.
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Sometimes I wonder what it's like to go a day, a month, a year just not letting this transgenderism mess enter my concerns. What would I do?
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For so long I've gone to work and then come home and jumped right into the same endless gender debates. Why haven't I been able to move on?
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But I also looked through their work a bit. Raymond and Hausman focused on transgenderism in their Dissertations, and then mostly moved on.
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Raymond and Hausman were absolutely crucial for critiquing transgender ideology. Hausman's "Changing Sex" put the gender in gender critical.
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Rich, Daly, Morgan, and Dworkin were prolific! They inspired some of my original gender critical thoughts, but they wrote on so much more.
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I looked at books by some of my radfem heroes today. Adrienne Rich. Mary Daly. Bernice Hausman. Robin Morgan. Janice Raymond. Andrea Dworkin
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I want to continue being a feminist, but refocused. A fighter, but with different kinds of battles. A community builder, but another group.
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But now? I'm having second thoughts, even regrets. I don't know where I'll end up, but I want to refocus. I want to value my time too.
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So when the antifeminist men came along, it felt like an immediate relief. I could accept having them on my side and work through it later.
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I think a lot of it was feeling like I had no allies. If I searched my name on twitter all I saw was people angry with me and mocking me.
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Why have I mistrusted transwomen so much but then accepted the comradery of antifeminist and antiwoman men? It makes no sense in retrospect.
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I kept up this project because I believe in radical feminism, but I often made concessions out of feeling attacked and backed into a corner.
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I continue to be suspicious of transwomen, but does that mean I should align with others who are explicitly antifeminist and antiwoman?
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I've started to become very uncomfortable with people who want to participate in my gender critical project but who I otherwise detest.
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For me "TERF" is not just a slur, it's a prison.
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It's not just a fear of being wrong, or thinking things that I was attached to in a new way. I'm also afraid of what my community will think
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I wonder how much I kept up my focus just because it pinned me down in a place that also sometimes felt like comradery. Stuck by both sides.
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It also put me in the tough position of being an original. Someone others in the trenches looked up to. Making a real community too. An icon
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Then it started to become a huge source of stress. Random people angry at me, yelling and sometimes attacking, sometimes shutting me out.
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It's really tough being one of the first people called a "TERF." I used to see it as a badge of pride. It was a sign I was principled, real.
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Maybe there's a way to accept the real thoughts I've had, my real ways of working through things, but also move on. Try something different.
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What if the arrogance goes both ways? I've fought. Sometimes lost, sometimes won. Sometimes felt really bad. But what would it mean to stop?
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I also had some real fights, and frankly got really burned on them. I felt attacked and I felt hurt. But I realize that was a few people.
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For a long time I was really mad at transwomen, I saw them as arrogant. How could they understand what I've experienced? It was an insult.
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I'm revisiting feminist writings that I respect. In Frye's Politics of Reality she has this great essay on arrogance, opposes it with love.
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I don't know if you've noticed, but things have been kind of bad lately. Maybe I could help with that. Maybe I could make a real difference.
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