Well, it is picture and story time. Here is the picture –
And here is the artful rejoinder provided by “blackswallowtailbutterfly” (I think, tracing tumblr sources can be tricky at times).
“Was…was that it? Was that the “valid point against sex-based oppression” you wanted witwitch to see? Because, um, fail.
Females have ovaries that produce ova and a uterus that sheds its lining once a month. Because of the ova production and a uterus with the potential to support a foetus, our reproductive rights are restricted. Because of the monthly shedding, we are mocked, bullied, and in some countries actively ostracized until the bleeding stops. If we become pregnant, we are considered murderers if we abort, defective if we miscarry, abandoning our child if we adopt, milking the system if we’re poor and we keep the child, unable to properly raise a child if we’re a single mother, etc..
Having vaginas ensure that we are expected to serve males sexually, even if some of us are completely repulsed by males. Although the vagina can tear if we aren’t aroused or natural lubrication isn’t sufficient, we are expected to take it until the man is satisfied. Our vaginas are considered icky, our natural smells wrong. Males who are perceived too feminine are often compared to our vaginas (“pussy”, “mangina”).
We also have clitori and labia, and depending where we’re born we may have our clitoris and/or our labia cut off. Even if we live in places where that’s not legal or condoned, porn ensures a good number of women will be dissatisfied with the size or shape or colour of the labia, and may be ashamed if their clitoris is “too big”. Only recently was it discovered that the clitoris is far more than the visible glans, that most of it is internal, and yet the inner working of the penis and testes has been fairly common knowledge for decades.
We lack a prostate, but males expect us to simply give in to anal sex because they want to try it. We are expected to do this even at the risk of pain and tearing.
Our bladders are tipped, which makes us much more likely to get bladder infections, yet we are not given extra bathroom breaks.
Males are seen as the default humans. Symptoms listed for various conditions are those that males experience, but not females. Female symptoms go completely ignored unless a women’s health organization covers it.
We also have breasts, which are treated as sexual objects for male pleasure, which overrides their actual function, and even the lives of the women. Breastfeeding in public is considered inappropriate, but full frontal nudity of females is commonplace in multiple media. Campaigns against breast cancer are called “Save The Tatas” and the like.
Females on average are weaker than males, having less muscle mass and lesser bone density. Males use this difference to intimidate, terrorize, beat, rape, and even murder females.
tl;dr If you think acknowledging sex-based oppression is seeing women are “walking vaginas”, you are actively ignoring the myriad ways our bodies are used against us under patriarchy. Also, no radfem belief will ever reduce women to our parts more than “vagina-haver”, “uterus-bearer”, “clitoris-owner”, “pregnant person”, “person with a vulva”, etc..”
And thus endeth the lesson on what (a small fragment of) sex-based oppression is like.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
18 comments
October 15, 2015 at 6:23 am
Miep
At this point I’m up for being a walking vagina with a brain that says “I am so tired of this crap” and a mouth emitting said statement. This is my new identity now, respect please.
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October 15, 2015 at 7:10 am
stchauvinism
Reblogged this on Stop Trans Chauvinism.
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October 15, 2015 at 7:35 am
john zande
Damn, that is good. And this line is brilliant: milking the system if we’re poor and we keep the child. Oh so very true.
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October 15, 2015 at 8:35 am
The Intransigent One
I would have no problem with most of this post. The body as the locus of oppression? Absolutely. Female reproductive anatomy and function as the basis from which women’s oppression derives? Absolutely.
But as an argument that trans women are not our sisters? I call bullshit. Patriarchy doesn’t need to inspect the shape of any particular woman’s external or internal genitalia, audit her reproductive capacity, or examine her chromosomes, to justify itself in shoving her into the Procrustean woman-shaped box and oppressing her accordingly. And if you turn out not to quite fit in that box – whether biologically like your reproductive anatomy, or socially like not presenting all femmy, that’s not a ticket out of the box and into real personhood, it’s a license to oppress you extra.
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October 15, 2015 at 9:39 am
Muffy
Trans women cry oppression even when *abortion* politics refers to uterus owning persons and not women who have penises.
Yes, when abortion rights are discussed, it is important not to erase trans women.
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October 15, 2015 at 10:01 am
roughseasinthemed
Very complex. In my days on a radfem forum, the intransigent one may well remember, there were clear-cut views about trans women. And, their previous privilege.
When I see trans women wanting to aspire to the heights of ‘feminity’ with make up, pretty skirts, high heels, and nicely done hair, I groan. When some of us are trying to get away from sexual stereotypes, I see trans women dragging us back in their desire to become an image of ‘women’. Not good. At all.
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October 15, 2015 at 10:18 am
The Intransigent One
@roughseasinthemed – I both agree with you and disagree. On the one hand, equating the practice of femininity with womanhood, is all sorts of bad. On the other, passing can be a literal survival issue for trans women.
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October 15, 2015 at 10:26 am
The Arbourist
@TIO
It would be nice wouldn’t it if we could all just get along. Transwomen would be valuable feminist allies, listening to and trying to understand the problems of women – and in many cases this is the case.
There does exist a particularly virulent strain of trans-activism that makes the term ‘oppression-olympics’ seem quaint and in need of a bigger more descriptive term. Many of these people, we’ll call them FETA’s (Female Exclusionary Trans Activists) are more than happy silence woman on women’s issues, issue threats, and generally behave as the entitled individuals they once were.
To justify their entitlement FETA’s will use convoluted and recursive identity politics to make assertions about reality that are inchoate and not based on anything resembling evidence. Strong feelings cannot trump empirical truths, it just doesn’t work that way.
And since harassing women on the internet is easy and building a viable movement is meatspace is hard one can guess the frequency of which face of trans-movement women most often experience.
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October 15, 2015 at 10:29 am
Muffy
Heck, Arb, did you know that “transwoman” is transphobic now?
Yep.
It has to be typed “trans woman”
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October 15, 2015 at 10:53 am
roughseasinthemed
@ well anyone really. TIO must remember the discussions on Twistys and later on radfem something. Topia. Whatever. There were very polarised views.
I think trans people are well victimised. That’s an easy one. But, to want to pass as a woman and buy into a stereotypical female image shoots everything in the foot that I am fighting for.
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October 15, 2015 at 11:03 am
The Intransigent One
@arb – I’m not going to argue that FETAs aren’t a thing. Clearly they are.
Just that my own experience of trans folk – whether online, in person, or at one remove (a couple friends with trans and/or gender nonconforming kids) is that they are just people doing their best to live their lives in a world that doesn’t quite know what to do with them. It’s intellectually complicated because I am aware I’m making some kind of no true scotsman argument, but in my heart I am unwilling to throw these people that I have been induced to care about, under the bus, because other people share a salient characteristic and are horrible excuses for human beings.
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October 15, 2015 at 11:05 am
The Arbourist
@Muffy
Fascinating stuff Muffy, you must travel in circles wider than I :)
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October 15, 2015 at 11:10 am
The Intransigent One
@roughseasinthemed – yeah I certainly remember those discussions. (not fondly)
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October 15, 2015 at 11:59 am
Muffy
I started to research the subject after reading this thread:
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/03/18/cisgender-women-arent-people-seek-abortions-activists-language-reflect/
Apparently using ‘female bodied ‘in relation to people who can get pregnant erases trans women, because trans women cannot get pregnant.
And the thread was a great example of oppression olympics, as the person being accused of bigotry was a black lesbian, who had the temerity to point out that only biological females can give birth.
See, just being an ally isn’t enough. You have to be the perfect ally, and never make any mistakes, especially with your wording, otherwise you are a bigot and can DIAF.
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October 15, 2015 at 12:37 pm
syrbal-labrys
Here is the thing, for me it is like watching the early Christian Church, once made legal by Constantine, proceed to tear itself apart with slaughter of all deemed “outliers” or “heretical”. If feminism is to to anything to actually better female lives, we need to see some solidarity with all who embrace the title “female” instead of picking nits for power plays. If the early civil rights activists had told every white person “You aren’t black, even if on our side — step back”, what would have been lost there? Politically, if every time an opposing party member crosses the line to attempt doing the right thing for constituents, what would be lost if he/she was told “No, we don’t want YOUR kind here,” ?
I am the sort of old school feminist who feels that if we devolve into ideologists instead of activists; if we argue semantics and physiology instead of looking hard at the reception anyone PERCEIVED as female receives in a patriarchal world, we are LOSING our most vital focus.
If “immitation” is the sincerest compliment, and some feminists are bound and determined to call transitioning humans “immitations” — why can’t they at least accept that this new person, already struggling intensely to be the deep inner self outwardly (at last) IS willing to take it as those of us born female take it. That alone makes them MY comrades in arms. To brand all but cis-women from feminist action is, to my mind discriminatory.
As for prior privilege? Well, ask ANY transitioning person of either gender how that really works? Women newly presenting as men discover male privilege, often with a sudden deep shame and recognition. Men presenting as women are often shocked to find how totally their lives change because they are perceived as less with addition of head hair, make up and lack of facial hair.
I personally cannot ignore the travails of transitioning women because a few FETA sorts are trying to hold onto privileges they are terrified to lose.
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October 15, 2015 at 12:39 pm
syrbal-labrys
There are a lot of discussions I don’t recall with fondness. On may topics.
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October 15, 2015 at 12:52 pm
Muffy
Bio sex is a social construct and anyone who says otherwise even in the context of abortion is a transphobic bigot:
http://www.autostraddle.com/its-time-for-people-to-stop-using-the-social-construct-of-biological-sex-to-defend-their-transmisogyny-240284/
Btw. Every trans man that I have met online has been great. It is the trans women who like to claim the title of most oppressed.
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October 16, 2015 at 2:25 pm
flowirin
i’ve seen radfems turn this around and use their consideration that a woman born trans is actually a man as an excuse to objectify their post-SRS genitalia as a ‘fuckhole’. A distasteful mix of misandry and misogyny.
What is a woman? If we strip away all the gender roles, it is purely biology, mainly visual appearance at birth, imo. On top of that is the experience of living in patriarchy, with all its horrors. I’d like to think that those experiences, whilst real, are in no way an essential part of being a woman. I’d like to think that we can deconstruct gender and end it.
back to trans. Neither radfem nor TG recognise that there is a difference between men with gender role disorder and women born male. This is key to unravelling the excesses of trans misogyny, imo.
If the difference is acknowledged, then we can happily accept that most of the men who play stereotyped gender roles, but who retain attachment to their male anatomy (through desire to use it for sex and reproduction) are not women at all, without throwing anyone ‘under the bus’ as a previous commentator mentioned. We can make laws that exclude these men from female spaces, exclude them from disrupting women’s groups that focus on anatomy and help them redefine male. Laving the rest of us alone.
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