“I understand the desire to be inclusive. The feminist movement has historically not been super inclusive or intersectional, particularly for women of color and lesbian and bisexual women. I think the third wave has been doing a much better, albeit not perfect, job of being more intersectional.
However, radical feminism is about females. We acknowledge the power structure as being male people oppressing female people. A trans woman can change her name, get surgery, do everything to try to become like females, but she will always be male, which comes with implications in three major areas: sex-based oppression, privilege, and socialization.
There are specific issues which only affect female people like menstruation, pregnancy, reproductive rights, and female genital mutilation. While not every female person is affected by these things, ONLY female people are affected by them. A trans woman never has to worry about pregnancy. A trans woman doesn’t have to spend money on a box of tampons every month. (Which are taxed as a luxury item in some states, by the way.) A trans woman from a culture where female genital mutilation is practiced will never be a victim of that practice. I recognize and understand that trans people are an oppressed based on being transgender and these things are complicated, but there are such things as sex specific issues and there is nothing wrong with having a movement to address those issues.
TL;DR radical feminism is about the liberation of the female sex and transwomen are biologically male. It doesn’t apply to “gender identity”.
May I just mention how effing pissed off I am that the effing backlash was so effing successful that people in the year 2017 don’t even know that Feminism is a political movement for the liberation of women.”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
3 comments
May 13, 2017 at 8:56 am
sarineal
“I think the third wave has been doing a much better, albeit not perfect, job of being more intersectional.”
As an older woman, while I love the statement made here which very much centres women, I think this part disparages the second wave. The wave of feminism which gained women many of the rights they enjoy today. Many of those rights seem to be starting to slip away, tampons are an issue, but much more major is reproductive rights which are at risk. I feel the third wave misreads theory – such as intersectionality. This was raised in the context of employment discrimination affecting black women. They experienced both racism and sexism but legally could only take a case for one area they were discriminated against, This left them without full redress, and full recognition of the oppression and discrimination they faced. It was not about including all oppressions or all incidences of claimed discrimination even if not systemic and institutionalised. Rather it is about understanding that women, discriminated against as females for our biology, could and did face other area of oppressions which could fail to be addressed by society and at times within the movement as well. The thing is the second wave was and is much more intersectional than is claimed, not all were middle class and white and black women, and women around the world of all ethnicities were a part of and contributed greatly to feminism. This should not be forgotten, nor the work done in anti-violence, anti-racism, and anti-poverty movement that feminists.
We should not be apologetic, and should not have to scrape and bow and scrape to men who, if anything, are policed for being insufficiently masculine or disparage other women and the women who worked so hard to improve the lot of wome.
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May 13, 2017 at 9:55 am
The Arbourist
@sarineal
Thanks for taking the time to comment. :)
Very well said.
The culprit could be, among other things, the difficulty in transmitting feminist values inter-generationally.
The gains made by the second wave redefined women in Western society, and the status-quo recognized the power of militant, organized women. Efforts were made to co-opt, marginalize and I think most importantly divide women from each other.
The radical memory seems like it went underground during the 80’s with the rise of Reagan and Thatcher aka neo-liberalism. The neo-liberal idea that somehow ‘choice’ was king, and that the individual was the basis of society corroded feminist (and progressive) organizing dramatically curtailing the spread of feminist ideals.
The 80’s till now have been particularly bad, as patriarchal society has always discouraged women from learning their history, forcing women to start from scratch every generation but it seems magnitudes worse now as many women aren’t even aware of the recent battles that have been fought to protect females as a class.
I could not agree more. :)
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May 13, 2017 at 1:35 pm
lovetruthcourage
While I agree with the main point that feminism is really about women’s liberation from men and patriarchal power structures, I do have to comment on the how this piece begins. Feminists have always been at the forefront of inclusion, and have historically been more inclusive than the society at large. However, we are all born into certain social realities. The 3rd wave need not waste too much time patting themselves on the back for doing a better job of being inclusive and intersectional; if they lived in prior centuries or decades they likely could do no better than the feminists of those days. Remember, even the 1st wave had a healthy alliance with the African American community. After African American men got the vote, they abandoned the suffragettes to fight on their own. It is what it is.
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