[Saya]

Originally Posted by Languor

Sorry to veer off topic but I really want to talk to someone about some issues surrounding transphobia. What do you think about the inclusion/exclusion of transwomen in women-born-women spaces (shelters, festivals, pharmacies)?

Transwomen are women, and should be allowed as such.

I fully recognise that exclusion is a powerful tool to oppress. Many underclasses have experienced exclusion from spaces that are traditionally white-male only. But the rejection of one underclass from another underclass's space is not usually considered an oppressive action (eg. Straight people from mardi gras parades, white people from black rights meetings, both exclusions I agree with wholeheartedly).

But straight people/white people aren't an underclass as identities, they're oppressive. I need queer only spaces because when you're being candid and open about how you feel, straight people tend to get defensive and derail the whole thing so its about them. This is also why I think women only spaces and black only spaces and trans only spaces, etc etc are pretty important, it allows the voice to be authentically the voice of the identity group. There is overlap of course, women can be queer and can be black and be trans all at the same time so its not like everyone is staying separate at all.

Questions like the ones I've listed have seen many radical feminists labeled transphobic by trans-activists recently and I was frightened at how silencing that seemed. When women stop being able to discuss what is or is not misogyny and where women born women are different from trans women then feminism is not a movement that allows women to express themselves.
I guess I'm just a little shocked at how the "transphobic" label seems to be being slung at a lot of women at the moment. Especially when trans people experience massive prejudice at the hands of white men (who are far more deserving of the label) every day.

Lots of feminists do this for far less valid reasons (you're not a feminist if you're Muslim, you're not a feminist if you're pro-life...not that I agree with anti-choice feminists, but I don't revoke their feminist cards. Plenty of feminists in history we idolize were very racist and anti-choice and a whole lot of unpleasant oppressive things). I don't think transphobic radfems aren't feminists, but I don't need their transphobia in my life and I would totally boot them off my blog too. Women can oppress other women, and cis women certainly oppress trans women. We exclude them from spaces where they need to be, and that endangers their very safety. Its easy to pass the buck to men but really, would transwomen be murdered so often if we let them in our bathrooms, our feminist groups, our shelters, and if we constantly out them? We throw them to the wolves and wonder why they don't like us.

Its also problematic to people FAAB (female assigned at birth), because it misgenders them as women. Are transmen okay in women-born-women spaces? What about genderqueer or genderfluid people who may not identify as women, but were FAAB and still face the same sexism cis women face?

As a side note, I hope you don't think that I'm for or against the inclusion/exclusion of trans women in woman born woman spaces by what I've said here. Honestly, I have a lot more research to do before I know what I think.

I gathered that, but I hope you realize why its so problematic. "Women born women" is extremely problematic, are we really defined by our vaginas? I wonder if because some feminists resent the fact that there's diversity and no universal womanhood, they look to the vagina as the one thing that unites us. Like I even know feminists who are only okay with transwomen if they have vaginas, like they're entitled to know what's between their legs.

You know a good way I like to explain this, is The Little Mermaid. Ariel for the first half of the movie doesn't have a vagina. We have no idea how mermaids reproduce in Disney's or Anderson's mermaidverse, it could be magic for all we know and they have no sex organs, and therefore no real sex. But we don't question that Ariel is a girl. She's a merMAID after all. She presents as a woman even if she doesn't have the genitalia, and she is not disordered or Frankenstein's monster when she gets a vagina and becomes human, she just got legs now and is able to pass as a human woman no problem, and we're happy that she's where she wants to be.