#as a trans man whose family still uses they/them and neutral terms for me and would describe me as nonbinary

[transmascissues]

i absolutely cannot believe people are trying to start discourse about whether nex benedict was actually nonbinary / whether it was okay for him to describe himself as nonbinary to some people if he didn’t actually identify that way as if he isn’t literally DEAD because he was KILLED. this is a MURDERED CHILD and these monsters are so busy getting mad at the possibility that he might have been a trans boy who described himself as nonbinary to his family because that was easier for them to take that they’re turning a CHILD who was MURDERED into fucking discourse. even when we die at the hands of cis people’s violence, our own community finds a way to make us the villains of the story.

and all of this bullshit on top of the ways that cis people are already trying to say our grief over his death is unjustified. all of this on top of people claiming he wasn’t murdered and speculating on other causes of death (i literally saw someone say he “clearly went home and took the coward’s way out” and i have never been more disgusted) or claiming that he started the fight as if any action on his part could’ve been enough to justify his death. i am haunted by the sound of his father screaming that his child was not filth because that is what people have been saying about this poor kid, that’s how cruelly his memory is being treated, and even the trans community can’t get it’s shit together enough to look past the stupid discourse and see the tragedy in front of us. did you all forget that it was supposed to be up to us to grieve him in the way he deserves when the rest of the world fails to care if people like him live or die? did you all forget that this child was our sibling, the future of our community, a life that we should have had the chance to know and treasure while he was still here but that we now have a responsibility to hold close to our hearts in his absence? nex’s life was precious and it was ended far too soon and if you truly believe that anything is more important than mourning his life and fighting for a world where no more trans people have to meet such an awful fate, you’re a traitor to this community and you do not deserve the place you occupy within it.

i’m so tired. i can’t even imagine how tired his family must be, to see the public treat the child they’re grieving so horribly, to see the world fail their baby again. leave him alone. he was already robbed of peace in life; the least you can do is let him finally have it in death.

[comrade-meow]

“If men could get pregnant,” Gloria Steinem famously said, “abortion would be a sacrament.” But we live in a new world — one wherein men can get pregnant, which has made things a little bit awkward for those fighting for abortion rights (though they refuse to acknowledge it). Today, it’s important not to exclude “men” from the abortion debate, as “men” can get pregnant too.

“Gentle reminder,” Imani Gandy tweeted last month, “it’s not only women who need abortions.” Gandy is Senior Editor of Law and Policy for Rewire News Group, once called RH Reality Check, Rewire has been focused on the abortion fight and reproductive rights since 2009. Today, they publish articles like, “Medical Students Are ‘Driving’ for Change Over Gender-Inclusive Language,” which tells the story of “Sam,” a trans-identified female whose pregnancy symptoms were, we are told, not taken seriously because she was not a “cis woman.” Rewire writer Alys Brooks concludes that “Sam’s story illustrates not only the high stakes of accurately communicating a patient’s gender and their sex assigned at birth, but also the need for health-care providers to factor those details into clinical decision-making.”

Medical students are “driving and demanding” changes to the med school curriculum that “better accounts for transgender patients,” Brooks reports. Which includes “degendering”: replacing terms like “pregnant women” with “pregnant people.”

Biology professor’s like Karen Hales, who is employed at Davidson College in North Carolina, have moved towards replacing “mother” and “father” with “egg parent” and “sperm parent.”

In truth, “Sam” had failed to inform the nurse that she was female, identifying herself as “transgender” and, even worse, her medical records showed she was a “man.”

To me, this exemplifies the false propanganda pushed by trans activists and the complicit media, constantly claiming incidents of “transphobia,” which are, in fact, simply about either people who identify as transgender being correctly sexed, or about people lying about their sex, thereby confusing the sane.

“Sam” was not treated ineffectively at the hospital because she claims to be “transgender,” but because it is imperative that medical professionals know the sex of their patients, and “Sam” had been informed by the government and trans activists that it was not only acceptable but necessary to her survival and happiness that she lie about her sex.

The notion that what is needed is to “degender” (which actually means “desex”) patients is ludicrous. Health care professionals need basic information about a patient’s biology/sex, easily communicated by using the (correct) language that already exists: female/male, woman/man, he/she. Imposing gender identity ideology on medicine and biology is clearly confusing, not clarifying, matters.

~~~

On Saturday, thousands gathered across America to protest Senate Bill 8, which was passed in Texas last month and allows people to sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion after six weeks. While the conversation about abortion should be extended beyond the “legal” vs “illegal” one — a conversation too complex for this particular piece, but that I will say is oversimplified and limited by the notion that women should be reliant on the medical establishment in order to have autonomy over their bodies and reproductive choices — I of course disagree with a law allowing those who “help” women get abortions to be sued. But what is worse is the fact that so many of those fighting this legislation refuse to say that this is an issue affecting only women.

If you can’t understand or say that abortion only impacts women, you cannot fight effectively for abortion rights.

There is a reason men have attempted to control women’s bodies, autonomy, and reproduction all these years, and that is because of biology. ***In an evolutionary sense, men need to know if their offspring is indeed their offspring, in order to stick around. They have an evolutionary drive to spread their seed, as it were, and they don’t (again, in an evolutionary sense, perhaps not an ideal/moral one) wish to invest their time in a family that isn’t “theirs.”*** This is why men decided to keep women in the home and out of public life, gallivanting with other men who might impregnate them. If women have control over their reproductive choices, it limits men’s ability to control women and keep them dependent/in the home, tied up with baby-making/raising.

I am oversimplifying, but the point I am trying to make is that only females can get pregnant, which is why men have tried to control their bodies and lives, historically, and is the basis for women’s historic oppression.

Women were never kept in the home, their autonomy limited, because they grew their hair long, wore skirts, put lipstick on, or named themselves “Caitlin” or “Alana.” Nor have women ever been able to opt out of historical oppression by wearing pants or cutting their hair short. Their status remains vulnerable because they are biologically female. Modern, Western civilization and legislation has protected women from institutional oppression, but the fact of pregnancy still means we may be vulnerable to, well, having little control over our lives. Abortion and our ability to control if and when we get pregnant offers us some control over our life circumstances and freedom.

This all seems like basic feminist information, but has become invisibilized by trans activism and its woke disciples. At abortion rallies across the nation, trans activists insisted on disrupting what should be unequivocally woman-centered activism to remind participants that this was not just a women’s issue as “men need abortions too.” In Washington, trans-identified athlete and activist, Schuyler Bailar, said:

“This is a women’s issue, and it is also a transgender man’s issue. It is also a nonbinary person’s issue. It is also a gender queer, gender fluid, transmasculine person’s issue. This is about all of us.”

And, yes, pregnancy and therefore abortion could well affect anyone who identifies as any of these things, but that still doesn’t mean men need abortions. It just means only females will ever want to access an abortion, making Bailar’s entire statement unnecessary. Pregnancy doesn’t care how you feel about gender roles or about how you identify. The only thing that matters is your biology.

You might think it is merely “polite” or “inclusive” to discuss pregnancy and abortion in gender neutral terms, or to remind people that “men can get pregnant too,” but what you lose in doing so is massive: why this matters and is a fight in the first place. It is also, of course, embarrassing and farcical, and makes a mockery of women’s rights advocates. Who could possibly take seriously an activist (or reporter, or politician, or academic, or health authority) who demands female autonomy while also insisting that “men can become pregnant”?

Young women in particular have completely lost the history of and context for the women’s movement, and, as a result, are losing hard fought for rights. That they’ve allowed themselves to be bamboozled by a group of narcissists who have zero interest in women’s rights and are so privileged they can manage to occupy their time with academic notions of “gender,” rather than the material circumstances of their lives, is shameful, and demonstrates how thoroughly out of touch they are with the current and past real life struggles of women across the globe.

Erasing women from the fight for reproductive rights should be sacrilege, but instead it has become doctrine. Women’s rights will continue to disappear in front of our eyes so long as women continue to go along with this nonsense ideology. If you can’t even acknowledge what a woman is and what rights are particular to females, your role in this fight is a joke.

***replace evolution with class society imo***

[genderqueerpositivity]

1) Nonbinary, to me, is a word that I can used to express that my gender is outside the man/woman binary. I also identify as trans: my gender identity is different from the one expected of a person who was assigned female at birth.

I identify as genderqueer, which is my preferred gender label. I connect with the history of the term, and the association with queer identity. I also like that genderqueer describes my gender for what it is instead of what it is not ("My gender is queer" as opposed to "My gender is not binary".)

I'm also transmasculine and gendervague (my experience of gender identity is inherently connected to my neurodivergence).

2) My pronouns are they/them/their, he/him/his, or ey/em/eir.

3) I prefer Mx.

4) On the nonbinary flag, the yellow stripe. On the genderqueer flag, the green one. On the trans flag, the white one. All of which are for people whose genders are outside of the binary.

1) 17/18. This is around the time I joined tumblr and around the time I discovered an article about genderqueer identity written by a genderqueer person. (I googled to link it, as I still remember the author's name and the article name, and the website no longer exists. That sucks.)

2) Same as above. I was just, amazed, that being neither a woman or man was something that a person could actually do. Actually be.

3) I definitely questioned if I could be trans before I learned that I was possible to be nonbinary. I would've been like...15/16? I remember hearing about Chaz Bono's transition on TV. And again, I was like, people can do that??! Everyone around me reacted to the news of his transition with so much disgust and confusion. I didn't think I was a man, not entirely anyway, and if you aren't a man then you must be a woman. And the way that people around me spoke of transgender people, I believed that I didn't want to be like that anyway.

Fuck internalized transphobia.

4) I've come out to some people. Mostly other trans folx--friends, people in my local community. I was outed as a lesbian to my family around the same time that I discovered nonbinary genders (almost a whole decade ago). And it went very badly for me. As a result, I'm not out to most of my family as trans. But I did just come out to my dad on the 4th of July, and that went far better than I could have expected.

5) Being out is important to me. But I'm not certain how the rest of my coming out will go.

1) I get to define myself on my terms. I get to choose the names, and the labels, and the pronouns. I get to play with gender presentation and to find different ways to express my gender. I love being in trans centered spaces, I love the name tags, the pronoun pins, and the consciously inclusive and neutral language.

2) I've learned a lot about gender and self-identity. I've learned that what makes me happy matters.

3) I've gained a better understanding of myself and what I want for my future. I've gained friends within the community.

4) When someone uses my name, when I hear my pronouns spoken out loud, the first time (and every time since) that I've put on a binder.

1) I'm neurodivergent, chronically ill, and fat. I am not 30 yet, but I'm much closer to 30 than 20.

2 and 3) My gender identity and neurodivergence are very connected, I'm gendervague. That isn't a popular statement to make. Transphobes manipulate the overlap between the trans and neurodivergent communities in an attempt to pathologize transness. In reaction, those within the trans community who buy into respectability politics openly mock the terminology created by autistic and otherwise neurodivergent trans people that we use to describe the ways that our genders and neurology are connected.

In some ways neurodivergent and/or autistic trans people are both invisible and too visible.

At a few weeks short of 28, I'm older than many of the most visible faces in the nonbinary community; I'm almost 28, and the closer I get to 30, the more I wonder what aging as a nonbinary person will look like. There aren't as many visible nonbinary people over the age of 30 as there are under the age of 30. Nonbinary identity is often presented as a phase that young people go through--that is unfair to nonbinary youth, and it is also unfair to older nonbinary people.

I'm fat and afab, which means that I cannot achieve the nonbinary ideal of thin, flat chested, androgyny. The majority of visible nonbinary people are thin and conventionally androgynous. Even while binding my chest, my fat body is only ever perceived as afab.

4) Nonbinary people can look like anyone. I look like a nonbinary person right now, just as I am. I'm just as nonbinary right now as I will be once I've medically transitioned (which I intend to in the future.) My other identities don't make me less nonbinary.

[queerbreadcrumbs]

I wrote this letter to for when I eventually come out (:

To my loved ones,

I wrote this letter to explain something important to you, because I value our relationship and your support. I wanted to share with you that I don’t fully identify as the current gender I am recognized as. I’m non-binary. As such, from now on it’d be great if you could address me as “Rowan” rather than “*******” and use they/them pronouns for me. Obviously, I know that this will take some time to adjust to and I’m not expecting miracles, but genuine effort will mean the world!

I understand that this may be somewhat confusing, especially as you’ve all known me for quite some time. Over the course of this letter, I have included answers to the most common questions people have, as well as definitions and resources for further information. I’m also happy to answer any questions you may have regarding this insofar as they are respectful.

What does non binary mean?

-       Non- Binary or genderqueer individuals have a gender identity and/or expression that is neither man or woman. Some people are both, or are fluid in their gender identities or expressions and others are neither. In my case, it’s that I don’t identify particularly strongly with either gender. Most of the time I don’t feel like either a man or a woman, I just am.

Are you trans?

-       Well yes and no. Yes in the sense that I don’t agree with the gender assigned to me at birth, no in the sense that I have no desire to transition to male.

Do I have to do anything?

-       Not really! As I mentioned earlier, my name is now Rowan, and my pronouns are now they/them. So instead of saying something like “I like ******, she bakes really good cakes” or “****** left her coat here!” you’d instead say “I like Rowan, they bake really good cakes.” Or “Rowan left their coat here!” The only thing you really have to do is make a conscious effort not to use my old name and pronouns.

What are pronouns and why do you want new ones?

-       Pronouns are a group of words we use as short versions for nouns. The most common ones in the English language are she/her/ (feminine) and he/him (masculine). The singular form of these that isn’t gendered is usually thought to be “it/it’s” and personally I find this much more jarring in a sentence than they/them. Firstly, because it’s dehumanising. We tend to use the pronoun “it” when describing an inanimate object. “Look at that potato, it’s got eyes growing on it!” Whereas when describing a group of people, or someone whose gender you don’t know, the grammatically correct pronouns to give would be they/them. I don’t really know my gender, so I don’t expect you to figure it out through a complex use of English syntax. They/them, like you would use with any other unknown is fine.

-       This is something I want to change because people using she/her in reference to me makes me quite uncomfortable. When I am referred to as female it kind of feels like I’m an imposter or deceiving people in some way, like you’re seeing something that’s not there and that you’ll be cross when you find out I’ve been lying to you. I’d like to change my pronouns as I want to be honest with you all about who I am.

Why “Rowan”?

-       Rowan is a Gaelic name which comes from the Rowan tree. (Like the name Willow is after the Willow tree) In Scottish Gaelic it means “little redhead” and has always been a unisex name, although usually these days we see it more for boys than girls. I imagine most of you would immediately think of Rowan Atkinson. (Mr Bean, Blackadder)

-       I chose Rowan for a few reasons. Firstly because of its Gaelic origin and my desire to keep some connection to my Celtic roots. Secondly it sounds similar to ******* and has the same number of syllables which should help you when remembering to use it! Thirdly as those of you related to me directly will know, when those of us assigned female at birth (AFAB) reach a certain age our hair reddens before turning grey. As my hair has already started to pick this up, I thought a name meaning “redhead” was appropriate.

-       I wanted to change this because my given name is quite feminine and much like being referred to as she/her, being called ‘*******’ makes me feel very uncomfortable. You’d think being called it for 24 years would be enough to get used to it, but apparently not!

Why change this now?

-       I’ll admit that this all may be quite shocking or confusing to some of you. Please know that I have given this no small amount of thought. Accepting myself as I am has been a long and arduous process for me, so I understand if it feels like a lot for my loved ones too.

-       Looking back, it feels like I’ve had a difficult relationship with gender. As some of you will remember I was always a bit of a tomboy growing up. It took a long time for me to be comfortable wearing dresses.

-       As a teenager though, I began to face increasing pressure to be feminine, and was often called a lesbian for the way I chose to present myself. I had short hair and wore many a check shirt with doc martens. I loved it! Although, I did notice on the occasion I didn’t do this and presented in a more feminine way I was praised for this. People told me I looked nicer; people treated me better. The teasing stopped and I lived with less harassment which felt nice. Unfortunately, though I interpreted this feeling nice as enjoying being perceived as female.

-       I was still quite uncomfortable and some of my friends and loved ones picked up on this. However, I didn’t think it too important to question.

-       BUT NOT FOR LONG! Lockdown had a profound effect on me coming to terms with my gender. Because I wasn’t going anywhere, I no longer had to perform femininity. I just wore what felt good. I cut my hair really short and liked it! I was very comfortable with being at home, both physically and mentally.

-       However, when lockdown ended, I got a new job. I had to start performing again and the long hiatus made me realise just how uncomfortable I actually am being seen as a woman. The kids at school call me “miss.” I get called ****** constantly as people are trying to get my attention in the conventional way rather than just throwing things at me or just touching me like Tom does. Honestly, I hate it and it’s profoundly exhausting, which is why I’ve decided I want to live as Rowan.

-       Another thing that put all of this into sharp perspective for me was getting engaged. Don’t misunderstand, I love Tom more than anything in the world, and I still want very much to get married to him and for us to spend the rest of our lives together. I’m still very excited about our wedding! However, the language used to talk about weddings and engagements and the expectations surrounding them are very gendered! Words like ‘bride’ or ‘wife’ feel very strange and foreign when applied to me. As mentioned earlier though I don’t want to be a husband or groom either. I’m not sure there are alternatives for these words. I quite like how romantic “betrothed” sounds but I also don’t want to sound like I’ve just walked out of 1655.

-       Trying on wedding dresses was another huge hurdle for me. Part of it was my self-esteem issues and lack of confidence but everything I tried on made me feel like a fake, a failure. It being during times of COVID, I wasn’t permitted to take anyone with me to my fitting appointments. As such, I had these strange, unfamiliar saleswomen telling me I’d make a stunning bride and all such other nonsense while I felt just…wrong. At the time, I remember discussing it with my friends after sending them some pictures of me wearing wedding dresses. The words I used were “I felt like an imposter.” This is not just because I’m not used to wearing anything fancy. It’s because I’m not a woman. The clothes you wear on your wedding day are meant to make you feel fantastic, and I didn’t feel even comfortable in any of them, let alone fantastic. I have since purchased a dress to wear on my wedding day. It is simple, and I will style it to make myself as happy as I can be. I will still look like a “bride”. I’m just going to try to be as comfy as I can, reminding myself that clothes have no gender.  

What about clothes?

-       Typically, clothes are gendered. You walk into a shop and they usually have a men’s range and a women’s range. Because I am neither, I shop in both ranges!

-       I do also own a fair few dresses and skirts. This won’t change. Clothes have no gender. Traditionally yes, women wear dresses and skirts. But plenty of people who identify as men wear them and find them comfortable. Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Harry Styles, Jayden Smith. These are all men, and yet they have all rocked skirts at one point or another. My wearing a dress or a skirt doesn’t make me any less non-binary as much as it didn’t make these guys any less of a man.

-       Furthermore, it wasn’t that long ago that trousers were deemed too masculine for women. However most modern women wear trousers, a lot of the time. Some of you are probably wearing trousers right now. Trousers have only recently begun to be considered neutral in our culture. Of course, it depends massively these days on the cut and the fit of them, but trousers can absolutely be masculine or feminine, just like me. I truly believe that one day skirts and dresses will become this neutral. They have been for a long time in Scotland.

-       In my mind this also explains why my personal preference for clothing has always been baggy and loose fitting.

Gendered terminology

-       As I mentioned previously when I talked about weddings, a lot of family language is heavily gendered. Son/Daughter, Husband/Wife, Niece/Nephew, Mum/Dad, Auntie/Uncle, Brother/Sister ect. Some of these words have gender neutral equivalents, and others don’t really. Where there is a gender-neutral equivalent, I would prefer it. Where there isn’t, I’m okay to be referred to as the female variant. For example, I’m fine being “Auntie Rowan”, “Dawn’s daughter[1]” or “Tom’s wife.[2]” But, I’d rather be Winnie’s parent than her mum, my Auntie’s nibling than her niece and Leanne’s sibling than her sister. If this sounds a little odd in conversation, and I’m sure it will do at first, you can say things like “My daughter uses they/them pronouns.”

So, are you “out, out”?

-       This letter is the start of my “social” transition. This is the part where the trans or non-binary person begins to live as themselves. As my close friends and family, I have chosen to share this with you first. As I live authentically, I want you to hear it from me, and have it explained by me rather than just stumbling across the fact I’ve changed my name on social media.

-       However, I’m not fully out yet. I’ve not yet informed anyone I work with or anyone in an official capacity, such as my doctor and I’m not using my new name legally just yet.

-       Please be mindful when discussing this with others that they may not be accepting. What matters is that you accept me. If you think telling a specific person might put me at risk, then don’t tell them.

-       If you want to discuss this with extended family that’s fine! 

More information

-       If you have questions that I haven’t answered here let me know and I’ll do my best to answer.

-       If you don’t feel comfortable asking me or just want more information on non-binary identities: - https://lgbt.foundation/who-we-help/trans-people/non-binary - https://gender.wikia.org/wiki/Non-binary - “A Field Guide to gender-neutral language” Shelley Roth (50p on apple books, or I could smuggle you a copy!)

In conclusion, I hope that you’re able to understand and support me in my coming out and coming to terms with my nonbinary identity, and that this doesn’t ruin, but strengthen our relationship. This has been very hard for me to share, but I’m ready to be my authentic self.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Yours,

*********

[1] Technically yes, Son/Daughter do have the gender-neutral variant of child, but It’d be kind of weird to call a 24 year old a child, so please don’t.

[2] I hate the word “spouse” it just sounds like “spout” and I’d rather be someone’s wife than someone’s spout any day.

[sweetiepie1990]

(part 1)hi there! im a different anon than the other but i have a couple questions if u dont mind my asking? the first is that I've started seeing people use latinx more than latin@, and im wondering if there's a specific reason u use the latter? just curious. also,, as someone who's been questioning my gender lately but who has struggled to find a way to discuss this w my family, i was wondering if u had any advice, or would share some of ur experience? i come from a mexican-american family....

I’m assuming there’s a part two but I haven’t gotten it yet. But sit down, take a load off. Some asshole wouldn’t stop trolling me earlier. Which means I’m fired up and ready to talk.

They both mean the same thing. Literally the only difference is preference. But I prefer the arroba (the @ symbol) because it can look like a lot of different variations of o and a at once (so it covers a lot of diff gender identities). Honestly, it’s nothing too new. I remember around 2012 around here, a lot of people where using the term Latin (pronounced like the first two syllables of latino). People are constantly constructing and reconstructing words to make new and better meanings.

Fuck anyone who tells you that Latino is gender neutral and the “correct grammar”. It implies the default is male/masculine. That’s like writing white as the default skin tone–it’s bigoted, narrow minded, and utter bullshit. Plus, if most Spanish words to describe emerging technology are basically borrowed from English, saying LatinX or Latin@ will not destroy the language.

See? I’m worked up. Sorry.

Talking with your family is rough, I get it. It’s terrifying no matter how accepting they may be of other trans people. First? I learned early on that my mom constantly misgenders everyone. She doesn’t even mean to but English is her second language and her default is third person singular in Spanish (which in a way is gender neutral because it’s “he/she/it/they”). She calls my cis sister he more often than she and she still hasn’t completely gotten used to using they/them pronouns for me.

Sometimes it feels like I’m making excuses for her? But I also see her struggling to stop herself and think about pronouns. It’s not a lot, but it’s a start. (I had to explain to her the other day that a trans man can totally be gay. It’s a process…Honestly, I didn’t know being enby was a thing until my best friend came out to me. I didn’t get it for the longest time, but I kept quiet and was supportive for them and I’m really glad I did. It’s tough being trans when there’s little to no representation out there.) That being said, you’re under no obligation to put in that emotional labor, especially if you’re still figuring out who you are.

When I came out as bi, my mom asked if I was sure. We basically had a conversation where she tried to nicely talk me out of it. It hurt like a fucking bitch. We didn’t talk about it again until after everything that happened with my ex. She believed me after that. And I think ever since then, if I tell her something about myself she does her best to listen and try to understand. Which isn’t ideal how we got here but I’m glad she’s like this now.

(I know a few other Latin@s whose parents came around eventually because they were clueless their kids came out. It seems to be a trait that Latin@ countries don’t talk about queer identities nearly as much as they should)

Ummm, tips? Start by talking a little more generally, and throw in a bit about racism if that’s a discussion they’re more responsive to. For me, gender in US culture is weird. They’re not as physically affectionate, cis women are really limited by body types, cis men by their height. How fucking Eurocentric the beauty industry here, I think, makes it really hard to be a POC and to be cis.

In general, if you frame it as “I want to feel more [gender assigned at birth]” I find that Latin@ parents are more responsive to that. They open up more about their experiences and (hopefully) you can engage them in some really meaningful discussions. Maybe you can turn their viewpoints totally upside down.

I’m a big advocate for “getting your family on a similar page before you open up to them”. But I also know how isolating that can feel. I’d say figure out who can be in your corner and work your way up to coming out to who you can trust.

Hope this helps

[lamingtonladies]

One Is Not Born a Woman – Monique Wittig

Printable pamphlet here

Monique Wittig is the author of novels—Les guérillès (1969; English trans. 1985) and The Lesbian Body (1975; Le corps lesbian 1973)  among others—and short stories as well as plays and essays including the influential essay “The Straight Mind” (1981). She has been awarded the Prix Medicis and is Professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Arizona. First published 1981 this essay offers a challenging alternative to previous explanations for the historical causes of gender oppression. Wittig disputes the naturalness of women as a social category and the biological origins of both gender difference and inequality, first arguing that women are culturally imagined and not born, and, in turn, that lesbians, because of heterosexuality’s rigid two-gender system, are not women. Although lesbians, like women, are cultural artifacts, their meaning within Wittig’s analysis is not defined in terms of the erotic in but in that describe terms lesbianism’s ability to evade heterosexuality’s insistence on a  firm connection between gender and sexuality.

A materialist feminist1 approach to women’s oppression destroys the idea that women are a “natural group”: “a racial group of a special kind, a group perceived as natural, a group of men considered as materially specific in their bodies.”2 What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a “natural group.” A lesbian society3pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one and shows that we have been ideologically rebuilt into a “natural group.” In the case of women, ideology goes far since our bodies as well as our minds are the product of this manipulation. We have been compelled in our bodies and in our minds to correspond, feature by feature, with the idea of nature that has been established for us. Distorted to such an extent that our deformed body is what they call ’“natural,” what is supposed to exist as such before oppression. Distorted to such an extent that in the end oppression seems to be a consequence of this “nature” within ourselves (a nature which is only an idea). What a materialist analysis does by reasoning, a lesbian society accomplishes practically: not only is there no natural group “women” (we lesbians are living proof of it), but as individuals as well we question “woman,” which for us, as for Simone de Beauvoir, is only a myth. She said: “One is not born, but becomes a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society: it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.”4

However, most of the feminists and lesbian-feminists in America and elsewhere still believe that the basis of women’s oppression is biological as well as historical. Some of them even claim to find their sources in Simone de Beauvoir.5 The belief in mother right and in a “prehistory” when women created civilization (because of a biological predisposition) while the coarse and brutal men hunted (because of a biological predisposition) is symmetrical with the biologizing interpretation of history produced up to now by the class of men. It is still the same method of finding in women and men a biological explanation of their division, outside of social facts. For me this could never constitute a lesbian approach to women’s oppression, since it assumes that the basis of society or the beginning of society lies in heterosexuality. Matriarchy is no less heterosexual than patriarchy: it is only the sex of the oppressor that changes. Furthermore, not only is this concoction still imprisoned in the categories of sex (woman and man), but it holds onto the idea that the capacity to give birth (biology) is what defines a woman. Although practical facts and ways of living contradict this theory in lesbian society, there are lesbians who affirm that “women and men are different species or races (the words are used interchangeably): men are biologically inferior to women; male violence is a biological inevitability …”6 By doing this, by admitting that there is a “natural” division between women and men, we naturalize history, we assume that “men” and “women” have always existed and will always exist. Not only do we naturalize history, but also consequently we naturalize the social phenomena which express our oppression, making change impossible. For example, instead of seeing giving birth as a forced production, we see it as a “natural”, “biological” process, forgetting that in our societies births are planned (demography), forgetting that we ourselves are programmed to produce children, while this is the only social activity “short of war”7 that presents such a great danger of death. Thus, as long as we will be “unable to abandon by will or impulse a lifelong and centuries-old commitment to childbearing as the female creative act,”8 gaining control of the production of children will mean much more than the mere control of the material means of this production: women will have to abstract themselves from the definition “woman” which is imposed upon them.

A materialist feminist approach shows that what we take for the cause or origin of oppression is in fact only on the mark9 imposed by the oppressor: the “myth of woman,”10 plus its material effects and manifestations in the appropriated consciousness and bodies of women. Thus this mark does not predate oppression: Colette Guillaumin has shown that before the socioeconomic reality of black slavery, the concept of race did not exist, at least not in its modern meaning, since it was applied to the lineage of families. However, now, race, exactly like sex, is taken as an “immediate given,” a “sensible given.” “physical features,” belonging to a natural order. But what we believe to be a physical and direct perception is only a sophisticated and mythic construction, an “imaginary formation,”11 which reinterprets physical features (in themselves as neutral as any others but marked by the social system) through the network of relationships in which they are perceived. (They are seen as black, and therefore they are black; they are seen as women, therefore they are women. But before being seenthat way, they first had to be made that way.) Lesbians should always remember and acknowledge how “unnatural,” compelling, totally oppressive, and destructive being “woman” was for us in the old days before the women’s liberation movement. It was a political constraint, and those who resisted it were accused of not being “real” women. But then we were proud of it, since in the accusation there was already something like a shadow of victory: the avowal by the oppressor that “woman” is not something that goes without saying, since to be one, there has to be a “real” one. We were at the same time accused of wanting to be men. Today this double accusation has been taken up again with enthusiasm in the context of the women’s liberation movement by some feminists and also, alas, by some lesbians whose political goal seems somehow to be becoming more and more “feminine.” To refuse to be a woman, however, does not mean that one has to become a man. Besides, if we take as an example the perfect “butch,” the classic example which provokes the most horror, whom Proust would have called a woman/man, how is her alienation different from that of someone who wants to become a woman? Tweedledum and Tweedledee. At least for a woman, wanting to become a man proves that she has escaped her initial programming. But even if she would like to, with all her strength, she cannot become a man. For becoming a man would demand from a woman not only a man’s external appearance but his consciousness as well, that is, the consciousness of one who disposes by right of at least two “natural” slaves during his life span. This is impossible, and one feature of lesbian oppression consists precisely of making women out of reach for us, since women belong to men. Thus a lesbian has to be something else, a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature, for there is no nature in society.

The refusal to become )or to remain) heterosexual always meant to refuse to become a man or a woman, consciously or not. For a lesbian this goes further than the refusal of the role“woman.” It is the refusal of the economic, ideological, and political power of a man. This, we lesbians, and nonlesbians as well, knew before the beginning of the lesbian and feminist movement. However, as Andrea Dworkin emphasises, many lesbians recently “have increasingly tried to transform the very ideology that has enslaves us into a dynamic, religious, psychologically compelling celebration of female biological potential.”12 Thus, some avenues of the feminist and lesbian movement lead us back to the myth of a woman which was created by men especially for us, and with it we sink back into a natural group. Having stood up to fight for a sexless society,13 we now find ourselves entrapped in the familiar deadlock of “women is wonderful.” Simone de Beauvoir underlined particularly the false consciousness which consists of selecting among the features of the myth (that women are different from men) those which look good and using them as a definition for women. What the concept “woman is wonderful” accomplishes is that it retains for defining women the best features (best according to whom?) which oppression has granted us, and it does not radically question the categories “man” and “woman,” which are political categories and not natural givens. It puts us in a position of fighting within the class of “women” not as the other classes do, for the disappearance of our class, but for the defence of “woman” and its reinforcement. It leads us to develop with complacency “new” theories about our specificity: thus, we call our passivity “nonviolence,” when the main and emergent point for us is to fight our passivity (our fear, rather, a justified one). The ambiguity of the term “feminist” sums up the whole situation. What does “feminist” mean? Feminist is formed with the word “femme,” “woman,” and means: someone who fights for women. For many of us it means someone who fights for women as a class and for the disappearance of this class. For many others it means someone who fights for woman and her defence—for the myth, then, and its reinforcement. But why was the word “feminist” chosen if it retains the least ambiguity? We chose to call ourselves “feminists” ten years ago, not in order to support or reinforce the myth of woman, nor to identify ourselves with the oppressor’s definition of us, but rather to affirm that our movement had a history and to emphasise the political link with the old feminist movement.

It is, then, this movement that we can put in question for the meaning that it gave to feminism. It so happens that feminism in the last century could never resolve its contradiction on the subject of nature/culture, woman/society. Women started to fight for themselves as a group and rightly considered that they shared common features as a result of oppression. But for them these features were natural and biological rather than social. They went so far as to adopt the Darwinist theory of evolution. They did not believe like Darwin, however, “that women were less evolved than men, but  they did believe that male and female natures had diverged in the course of evolutionary development and that society at large reflected this polarisation.”14 “The failure of early feminism was that it only attacked the Darwinist charge of female inferiority, while accepting the foundations of this charge—namely, the view of woman as ‘unique.’”15 And finally it was women scholars—and not feminists—who scientifically destroyed this theory. But the early feminists had failed to regard history as a dynamic process which develops from conflicts of interests. Furthermore, they still believed as men do that the cause (origin) of their oppression lay within themselves. And therefore after some astonishing victories the feminists of this first front found themselves at an impasse out of a lack of reasons to fight. They upheld the illogical principle of “equality in difference,” an idea now being born again. They fell back into the trap which threatens us once again: the myth of woman.

Thus it is our historical task, and only ours, to define what we call oppression in materialist terms, to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category “woman” as well as the category “man” are political and economic categories not eternal ones. Our fight aims to suppress men as a class, not through a genocidal, but a political struggle. Once the class “men” disappears, “women” as a class will disappear as well, for there are no slaves without masters. Our first task, it seems, is to always thoroughly dissociate “women” (the class within which we fight) and “woman,” the myth. For “woman” does not exist for us: it is only an imaginary formation, while “women” is the product of a social relationship. We felt this strongly when everywhere we refused to be called a “woman’s liberation movement.” Furthermore, we have to destroy the myth inside and outside ourselves. “Woman” is not each one of us, but the political and ideological formation which negates “women” (the product of a relation of exploitation). “Woman” is there to confuse us, to hide the reality “women.” In order to be aware of  being a class and to become a class we first have to kill the myth of “woman” including its most seductive aspects (I think about Virginia Woolf when she said the first task of a woman writer is to kill “the angel in the house”). But to become a class we do not have to suppress our individual selves, and since no individual can be reduced to his/her oppression we are also confronted with the historical necessity of constituting ourselves as the individual subjects of our history as well. I believe this is the reason why all these attempts at “new” definitions of woman are blossoming now. What is at stake (and of course not only for women) is an individual definition as well as a class definition. For once one has acknowledged oppression, one needs to know and experience the fact that one can constitute oneself as a subject (as opposed to an object of oppression), that one can become someone in spite of oppression, that one has one’s own identity. There is no possible fight for someone deprived of an identity, no internal motivation for fighting, since, although I can fight only with others, first I fight for myself.

The question of the individual subject is historically a difficult one for everybody. Marxism, the last avatar of materialism, the science which has politically formed us, does not want to hear anything about a “subject.” Marxism has rejected the transcendental subject, the subject as constitutive of knowledge, the “pure” consciousness. All that thinks per se, before all experience, has ended up in the garbage can of history, because it claimed to exist outside matter, prior to matter, and needed God, spirit, or soul to exist in such a way. This is what is called “idealism.” As for individuals, they are only the product of social relations, therefore their consciousness can only be “alienated.” (Marx, in The German Ideology, says precisely that individuals of the dominating class are also alienated, although they are the direct producers of the ideas that alienate the classes oppressed by them. But since they draw visible advantages from their own alienation they can bear it without too much suffering.) There exists such a thing as class consciousness, but a consciousness which does not refer to a particular subject, except as participating in general conditions of exploitation at the same time as the other subjects of their class, all sharing the same consciousness. As for the practical class problems—outside of the class problems as traditionally defined—that one could encounter (for example, sexual problems), they were considered “bourgeois” problems that would disappear with the final victory of the class struggle. “Individualistic,” “subjectivist,” “petit bourgeois,” these were the labels given to any person who had shown problems which could not be reduced to the “class struggle” itself.

Thus Marxism has denied the members of oppressed classes the attribute of being a subject. In doing this, Marxism, because of the ideological and political power this “revolutionary science” immediately exercised upon the workers’ movement and all other political groups, has prevented all categories of oppressed peoples from constituting themselves historically as subjects (subjects of their struggle, for example). This means that the “masses” did not fight for themselves but for the party or its organisations. And when an economic transformation took place (end of private property, constitution of the socialist state), no revolutionary change took place within the new society, because the people themselves did not change.

For women, Marxism had two results. It prevented them from being aware that they are a class and therefore constituting themselves as a class for a very long time, by leaving the relation, “women/men” outside of the social order, by turning it into a natural relation, doubtless for Marxists the only one, along with the relation of mothers to children, to be seen this way, and by hiding the class conflict between men and women behind a natural division of labour (The German Ideology). This concerns the theoretical (ideological) level. On the practical level, Lenin, the party, all the communist parties up to now, including all the most radical political groups, have always reacted to any attempt on the part of women to reflect and form groups based on their own class problem with an accusation of divisiveness. By uniting, we women are dividing the strength of the people. This means that for the Marxists women belong either to the bourgeois class or to the proletariat class, in other words, to the men of these classes. In addition, Marxist theory does not allow women any more than other classes of oppressed people to constitute themselves as historical subjects, because Marxism does not take into account the fact that a class also consists of individuals one by one. Class consciousness is not enough. We must try to understand philosophically (politically) these concepts of “subject” and “class consciousness” and how they work in relation to our history. When we discover that women are the objects of oppression and appropriation, at the very moment that we become able to perceive this, we become subjects in the sense of cognitive subjects, through an operation of abstraction. Consciousness of oppression is not only a reaction to (fight against) oppression. It is also the whole conceptual re-evaluation of the social world, its whole reorganisation with new concepts, from the point of view of oppression. It is what I would call the science of oppression created by the oppressed. This operation of understanding reality has to be undertaken by every one of us: call it a subjective, cognitive practice. The movement back and forth between the levels of reality (the conceptual reality and the material reality of oppression, which are both social realities) is accomplished through language.

It is we who historically must undertake the task of defining the individual subject in materialist terms. This certainly seems to be an impossibility since materialism and subjectivity have always been mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, and rather than despairing of ever understanding; we must recognise the need to reach subjectivity in the abandonment by many of us the myth “woman” (the myth of woman being only a snare that holds us up). This real necessity for everyone to exist as an individual, as well as a member of a class, is perhaps the first condition for the accomplishment of a revolution, without which there can be no real fight for transformation. But the opposite is also true; without class and class consciousness there are no real subjects only alienated individuals. For women to answer the question of the individual subject in materialist terms is first to show, as the lesbians and feminists did, that supposedly “subjective,” “individual,” “private” problems are in fact social problems, class problems; that sexuality is not for women and individual and subjective expression, but a social institution of violence. But once we have shown that all so-called personal problems are in fact class problems, we will still be left with the question of the subject of each singular woman—not the myth, but each one of us. At this point, let us say that a new personal and subjective definition for all humankind can only be found beyond the categories of sex (woman and man) and that the advent of individual subjects demands first destroying the categories of sex, ending the use of them, and rejecting all sciences which still use these categories as their fundamentals (practically all social sciences).

To destroy “woman” does not mean that we aim, short of physical destruction, to destroy lesbianism simultaneously with categories of sex, because lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely. Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (women and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation we have previously called servitude,16a relation which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economic obligation (“Forced residence,”17 domestic corvée, conjugal duties, unlimited production of children, etc.), a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or stay heterosexual. We are the escapees from our class in the same way as the American runaway slaves were when escaping slavery and becoming free. For us this is an absolute necessity; our survival demands that we contribute all our strength to the destruction of the class of women within which men appropriate women. This can be accomplished only by the destruction of heterosexuality as a social system which is based on the oppression of women by men and which produces the doctrine of the difference between the sexes to justify this oppression.

Notes

Christine Delphy, “Pour un féminisme matérialiste,” L'Arc 61 (1975). Translated as “For a Materialist Feminism,” Feminist Issues 1, no. 2 (Winter 1981).

Colette Guillaumin,  "Race et Nature: Système des marques, idée de groupe  naturel et rapports sociaux,“ Pluriel, no. 11 (1977). Translated as "Race and Nature: The System of Marks, the Idea of a Natural Group and Social Relationships.” Feminist Issues 8, no. 2 (Fall 1988).

I use the word society with extended anthropological meaning; strictly speaking, it does not refer to societies, in that lesbian societies do not exist completely autonomously from heterosexual social systems.

Simone dc Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Bantam. 1952), p. 249.

Redstockings, Feminist Revolution (New York; Random House, 1978), p. 18.

Andrea Dworkin, “Biological Superiority: The Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea,” Heresies 6:46.

Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey (New York: Links Books, 1974), p. 15.

Dworkin, op. cit.

Guillaumin, op. cit.

De Beauvoir, op. cit.

Guillaumin, op. cit.

Dworkin, op. cit.

Atkinson, p. 6: “If feminism has any logic at all, it must be working for sexless society.”

Rosalind Rosenberg, “In Search Of Woman’s Nature,” Feminist Studies 3, no. ½ (1975): 144

Ibid., p. 146.

In an article published in L'Idiot International (mai 1970), whose original title was “Pour un mouvement de liberation des femmes” (“For a Women’s Liberation Movement”).

Christiane Rochefort, Les stances à Sophie (Paris: Grasset, 1963).

[javen-tiger]

One Is Not Born a Woman – Monique Wittig

Printable pamphlet here

Monique Wittig is the author of novels—Les guérillès (1969; English trans. 1985) and The Lesbian Body (1975; Le corps lesbian 1973)  among others—and short stories as well as plays and essays including the influential essay "The Straight Mind" (1981). She has been awarded the Prix Medicis and is Professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Arizona. First published 1981 this essay offers a challenging alternative to previous explanations for the historical causes of gender oppression. Wittig disputes the naturalness of women as a social category and the biological origins of both gender difference and inequality, first arguing that women are culturally imagined and not born, and, in turn, that lesbians, because of heterosexuality's rigid two-gender system, are not women. Although lesbians, like women, are cultural artifacts, their meaning within Wittig's analysis is not defined in terms of the erotic in but in that describe terms lesbianism's ability to evade heterosexuality's insistence on a  firm connection between gender and sexuality.

A materialist feminist1 approach to women's oppression destroys the idea that women are a "natural group": "a racial group of a special kind, a group perceived as natural, a group of men considered as materially specific in their bodies."2 What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a "natural group." A lesbian society3 pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one and shows that we have been ideologically rebuilt into a "natural group." In the case of women, ideology goes far since our bodies as well as our minds are the product of this manipulation. We have been compelled in our bodies and in our minds to correspond, feature by feature, with the idea of nature that has been established for us. Distorted to such an extent that our deformed body is what they call '"natural," what is supposed to exist as such before oppression. Distorted to such an extent that in the end oppression seems to be a consequence of this "nature" within ourselves (a nature which is only an idea). What a materialist analysis does by reasoning, a lesbian society accomplishes practically: not only is there no natural group "women" (we lesbians are living proof of it), but as individuals as well we question "woman," which for us, as for Simone de Beauvoir, is only a myth. She said: "One is not born, but becomes a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society: it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine."4

 However, most of the feminists and lesbian-feminists in America and elsewhere still believe that the basis of women's oppression is biological as well as historical. Some of them even claim to find their sources in Simone de Beauvoir.5 The belief in mother right and in a "prehistory" when women created civilization (because of a biological predisposition) while the coarse and brutal men hunted (because of a biological predisposition) is symmetrical with the biologizing interpretation of history produced up to now by the class of men. It is still the same method of finding in women and men a biological explanation of their division, outside of social facts. For me this could never constitute a lesbian approach to women's oppression, since it assumes that the basis of society or the beginning of society lies in heterosexuality. Matriarchy is no less heterosexual than patriarchy: it is only the sex of the oppressor that changes. Furthermore, not only is this concoction still imprisoned in the categories of sex (woman and man), but it holds onto the idea that the capacity to give birth (biology) is what defines a woman. Although practical facts and ways of living contradict this theory in lesbian society, there are lesbians who affirm that "women and men are different species or races (the words are used interchangeably): men are biologically inferior to women; male violence is a biological inevitability . . ."6 By doing this, by admitting that there is a "natural" division between women and men, we naturalize history, we assume that "men" and "women" have always existed and will always exist. Not only do we naturalize history, but also consequently we naturalize the social phenomena which express our oppression, making change impossible. For example, instead of seeing giving birth as a forced production, we see it as a "natural", "biological" process, forgetting that in our societies births are planned (demography), forgetting that we ourselves are programmed to produce children, while this is the only social activity "short of war"7 that presents such a great danger of death. Thus, as long as we will be "unable to abandon by will or impulse a lifelong and centuries-old commitment to childbearing as the female creative act,"8 gaining control of the production of children will mean much more than the mere control of the material means of this production: women will have to abstract themselves from the definition "woman" which is imposed upon them.

 A materialist feminist approach shows that what we take for the cause or origin of oppression is in fact only on the mark9 imposed by the oppressor: the "myth of woman,"10 plus its material effects and manifestations in the appropriated consciousness and bodies of women. Thus this mark does not predate oppression: Colette Guillaumin has shown that before the socioeconomic reality of black slavery, the concept of race did not exist, at least not in its modern meaning, since it was applied to the lineage of families. However, now, race, exactly like sex, is taken as an "immediate given," a "sensible given." "physical features," belonging to a natural order. But what we believe to be a physical and direct perception is only a sophisticated and mythic construction, an "imaginary formation,"11 which reinterprets physical features (in themselves as neutral as any others but marked by the social system) through the network of relationships in which they are perceived. (They are seen as black, and therefore they are black; they are seen as women, therefore they are women. But before being seen that way, they first had to be made that way.) Lesbians should always remember and acknowledge how "unnatural," compelling, totally oppressive, and destructive being "woman" was for us in the old days before the women's liberation movement. It was a political constraint, and those who resisted it were accused of not being "real" women. But then we were proud of it, since in the accusation there was already something like a shadow of victory: the avowal by the oppressor that "woman" is not something that goes without saying, since to be one, there has to be a "real" one. We were at the same time accused of wanting to be men. Today this double accusation has been taken up again with enthusiasm in the context of the women's liberation movement by some feminists and also, alas, by some lesbians whose political goal seems somehow to be becoming more and more "feminine." To refuse to be a woman, however, does not mean that one has to become a man. Besides, if we take as an example the perfect "butch," the classic example which provokes the most horror, whom Proust would have called a woman/man, how is her alienation different from that of someone who wants to become a woman? Tweedledum and Tweedledee. At least for a woman, wanting to become a man proves that she has escaped her initial programming. But even if she would like to, with all her strength, she cannot become a man. For becoming a man would demand from a woman not only a man's external appearance but his consciousness as well, that is, the consciousness of one who disposes by right of at least two "natural" slaves during his life span. This is impossible, and one feature of lesbian oppression consists precisely of making women out of reach for us, since women belong to men. Thus a lesbian has to be something else, a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature, for there is no nature in society.

 The refusal to become )or to remain) heterosexual always meant to refuse to become a man or a woman, consciously or not. For a lesbian this goes further than the refusal of the role "woman." It is the refusal of the economic, ideological, and political power of a man. This, we lesbians, and nonlesbians as well, knew before the beginning of the lesbian and feminist movement. However, as Andrea Dworkin emphasises, many lesbians recently "have increasingly tried to transform the very ideology that has enslaves us into a dynamic, religious, psychologically compelling celebration of female biological potential."12 Thus, some avenues of the feminist and lesbian movement lead us back to the myth of a woman which was created by men especially for us, and with it we sink back into a natural group. Having stood up to fight for a sexless society,13 we now find ourselves entrapped in the familiar deadlock of "women is wonderful." Simone de Beauvoir underlined particularly the false consciousness which consists of selecting among the features of the myth (that women are different from men) those which look good and using them as a definition for women. What the concept "woman is wonderful" accomplishes is that it retains for defining women the best features (best according to whom?) which oppression has granted us, and it does not radically question the categories "man" and "woman," which are political categories and not natural givens. It puts us in a position of fighting within the class of "women" not as the other classes do, for the disappearance of our class, but for the defence of "woman" and its reinforcement. It leads us to develop with complacency "new" theories about our specificity: thus, we call our passivity "nonviolence," when the main and emergent point for us is to fight our passivity (our fear, rather, a justified one). The ambiguity of the term "feminist" sums up the whole situation. What does "feminist" mean? Feminist is formed with the word "femme," "woman," and means: someone who fights for women. For many of us it means someone who fights for women as a class and for the disappearance of this class. For many others it means someone who fights for woman and her defence—for the myth, then, and its reinforcement. But why was the word "feminist" chosen if it retains the least ambiguity? We chose to call ourselves "feminists" ten years ago, not in order to support or reinforce the myth of woman, nor to identify ourselves with the oppressor's definition of us, but rather to affirm that our movement had a history and to emphasise the political link with the old feminist movement.

 It is, then, this movement that we can put in question for the meaning that it gave to feminism. It so happens that feminism in the last century could never resolve its contradiction on the subject of nature/culture, woman/society. Women started to fight for themselves as a group and rightly considered that they shared common features as a result of oppression. But for them these features were natural and biological rather than social. They went so far as to adopt the Darwinist theory of evolution. They did not believe like Darwin, however, "that women were less evolved than men, but  they did believe that male and female natures had diverged in the course of evolutionary development and that society at large reflected this polarisation."14 "The failure of early feminism was that it only attacked the Darwinist charge of female inferiority, while accepting the foundations of this charge—namely, the view of woman as 'unique.'"15 And finally it was women scholars—and not feminists—who scientifically destroyed this theory. But the early feminists had failed to regard history as a dynamic process which develops from conflicts of interests. Furthermore, they still believed as men do that the cause (origin) of their oppression lay within themselves. And therefore after some astonishing victories the feminists of this first front found themselves at an impasse out of a lack of reasons to fight. They upheld the illogical principle of "equality in difference," an idea now being born again. They fell back into the trap which threatens us once again: the myth of woman.

 Thus it is our historical task, and only ours, to define what we call oppression in materialist terms, to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category "woman" as well as the category "man" are political and economic categories not eternal ones. Our fight aims to suppress men as a class, not through a genocidal, but a political struggle. Once the class "men" disappears, "women" as a class will disappear as well, for there are no slaves without masters. Our first task, it seems, is to always thoroughly dissociate "women" (the class within which we fight) and "woman," the myth. For "woman" does not exist for us: it is only an imaginary formation, while "women" is the product of a social relationship. We felt this strongly when everywhere we refused to be called a "woman's liberation movement." Furthermore, we have to destroy the myth inside and outside ourselves. "Woman" is not each one of us, but the political and ideological formation which negates "women" (the product of a relation of exploitation). "Woman" is there to confuse us, to hide the reality "women." In order to be aware of  being a class and to become a class we first have to kill the myth of "woman" including its most seductive aspects (I think about Virginia Woolf when she said the first task of a woman writer is to kill "the angel in the house"). But to become a class we do not have to suppress our individual selves, and since no individual can be reduced to his/her oppression we are also confronted with the historical necessity of constituting ourselves as the individual subjects of our history as well. I believe this is the reason why all these attempts at "new" definitions of woman are blossoming now. What is at stake (and of course not only for women) is an individual definition as well as a class definition. For once one has acknowledged oppression, one needs to know and experience the fact that one can constitute oneself as a subject (as opposed to an object of oppression), that one can become someone in spite of oppression, that one has one's own identity. There is no possible fight for someone deprived of an identity, no internal motivation for fighting, since, although I can fight only with others, first I fight for myself.

 The question of the individual subject is historically a difficult one for everybody. Marxism, the last avatar of materialism, the science which has politically formed us, does not want to hear anything about a "subject." Marxism has rejected the transcendental subject, the subject as constitutive of knowledge, the "pure" consciousness. All that thinks per se, before all experience, has ended up in the garbage can of history, because it claimed to exist outside matter, prior to matter, and needed God, spirit, or soul to exist in such a way. This is what is called "idealism." As for individuals, they are only the product of social relations, therefore their consciousness can only be "alienated." (Marx, in The German Ideology, says precisely that individuals of the dominating class are also alienated, although they are the direct producers of the ideas that alienate the classes oppressed by them. But since they draw visible advantages from their own alienation they can bear it without too much suffering.) There exists such a thing as class consciousness, but a consciousness which does not refer to a particular subject, except as participating in general conditions of exploitation at the same time as the other subjects of their class, all sharing the same consciousness. As for the practical class problems—outside of the class problems as traditionally defined—that one could encounter (for example, sexual problems), they were considered "bourgeois" problems that would disappear with the final victory of the class struggle. "Individualistic," "subjectivist," "petit bourgeois," these were the labels given to any person who had shown problems which could not be reduced to the "class struggle" itself.

 Thus Marxism has denied the members of oppressed classes the attribute of being a subject. In doing this, Marxism, because of the ideological and political power this "revolutionary science" immediately exercised upon the workers' movement and all other political groups, has prevented all categories of oppressed peoples from constituting themselves historically as subjects (subjects of their struggle, for example). This means that the "masses" did not fight for themselves but for the party or its organisations. And when an economic transformation took place (end of private property, constitution of the socialist state), no revolutionary change took place within the new society, because the people themselves did not change.

 For women, Marxism had two results. It prevented them from being aware that they are a class and therefore constituting themselves as a class for a very long time, by leaving the relation, "women/men" outside of the social order, by turning it into a natural relation, doubtless for Marxists the only one, along with the relation of mothers to children, to be seen this way, and by hiding the class conflict between men and women behind a natural division of labour (The German Ideology). This concerns the theoretical (ideological) level. On the practical level, Lenin, the party, all the communist parties up to now, including all the most radical political groups, have always reacted to any attempt on the part of women to reflect and form groups based on their own class problem with an accusation of divisiveness. By uniting, we women are dividing the strength of the people. This means that for the Marxists women belong either to the bourgeois class or to the proletariat class, in other words, to the men of these classes. In addition, Marxist theory does not allow women any more than other classes of oppressed people to constitute themselves as historical subjects, because Marxism does not take into account the fact that a class also consists of individuals one by one. Class consciousness is not enough. We must try to understand philosophically (politically) these concepts of "subject" and "class consciousness" and how they work in relation to our history. When we discover that women are the objects of oppression and appropriation, at the very moment that we become able to perceive this, we become subjects in the sense of cognitive subjects, through an operation of abstraction. Consciousness of oppression is not only a reaction to (fight against) oppression. It is also the whole conceptual re-evaluation of the social world, its whole reorganisation with new concepts, from the point of view of oppression. It is what I would call the science of oppression created by the oppressed. This operation of understanding reality has to be undertaken by every one of us: call it a subjective, cognitive practice. The movement back and forth between the levels of reality (the conceptual reality and the material reality of oppression, which are both social realities) is accomplished through language.

 It is we who historically must undertake the task of defining the individual subject in materialist terms. This certainly seems to be an impossibility since materialism and subjectivity have always been mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, and rather than despairing of ever understanding; we must recognise the need to reach subjectivity in the abandonment by many of us the myth "woman" (the myth of woman being only a snare that holds us up). This real necessity for everyone to exist as an individual, as well as a member of a class, is perhaps the first condition for the accomplishment of a revolution, without which there can be no real fight for transformation. But the opposite is also true; without class and class consciousness there are no real subjects only alienated individuals. For women to answer the question of the individual subject in materialist terms is first to show, as the lesbians and feminists did, that supposedly "subjective," "individual," "private" problems are in fact social problems, class problems; that sexuality is not for women and individual and subjective expression, but a social institution of violence. But once we have shown that all so-called personal problems are in fact class problems, we will still be left with the question of the subject of each singular woman—not the myth, but each one of us. At this point, let us say that a new personal and subjective definition for all humankind can only be found beyond the categories of sex (woman and man) and that the advent of individual subjects demands first destroying the categories of sex, ending the use of them, and rejecting all sciences which still use these categories as their fundamentals (practically all social sciences).

 To destroy "woman" does not mean that we aim, short of physical destruction, to destroy lesbianism simultaneously with categories of sex, because lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely. Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (women and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation we have previously called servitude,16 a relation which implies personal and physical obligation as well as economic obligation ("Forced residence,"17 domestic corvée, conjugal duties, unlimited production of children, etc.), a relation which lesbians escape by refusing to become or stay heterosexual. We are the escapees from our class in the same way as the American runaway slaves were when escaping slavery and becoming free. For us this is an absolute necessity; our survival demands that we contribute all our strength to the destruction of the class of women within which men appropriate women. This can be accomplished only by the destruction of heterosexuality as a social system which is based on the oppression of women by men and which produces the doctrine of the difference between the sexes to justify this oppression.

 Notes 

Christine Delphy, "Pour un féminisme matérialiste," L'Arc 61 (1975). Translated as "For a Materialist Feminism," Feminist Issues 1, no. 2 (Winter 1981).

Colette Guillaumin,  "Race et Nature: Système des marques, idée de groupe  naturel et rapports sociaux," Pluriel, no. 11 (1977). Translated as "Race and Nature: The System of Marks, the Idea of a Natural Group and Social Relationships." Feminist Issues 8, no. 2 (Fall 1988).

I use the word society with extended anthropological meaning; strictly speaking, it does not refer to societies, in that lesbian societies do not exist completely autonomously from heterosexual social systems.

Simone dc Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Bantam. 1952), p. 249.

Redstockings, Feminist Revolution (New York; Random House, 1978), p. 18.

Andrea Dworkin, "Biological Superiority: The Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea," Heresies 6:46.

Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey (New York: Links Books, 1974), p. 15.

Dworkin, op. cit.

Guillaumin, op. cit.

De Beauvoir, op. cit.

Guillaumin, op. cit.

Dworkin, op. cit.

Atkinson, p. 6: "If feminism has any logic at all, it must be working for sexless society."

Rosalind Rosenberg, "In Search Of Woman's Nature," Feminist Studies 3, no. 1/2 (1975): 144

Ibid., p. 146.

In an article published in L'Idiot International (mai 1970), whose original title was "Pour un mouvement de liberation des femmes" ("For a Women's Liberation Movement").

Christiane Rochefort, Les stances à Sophie (Paris: Grasset, 1963).

[merrysithmas]

The twitter post on nonbinary gender that you posted....ever since you started specifically posting about nonbinary gender, I've been wanting to ask you its meaning because I had never come across it. But I was scared and embarrassed to ask you cause i thought you'd get mad at me. Sometimes I want to educate myself but then you don't know who to talk to or ask about things. And also thank you because through your blog I am learning so much about gender.

oh thank you!!! thank you so much for sending this and asking. i am always here for questions and thank you for having an open heart and a kind soul. i know sometimes it can be intimidating to learn – and it shouldnt be. we live in a very divided world right now, and i wish people would be more receptive to questions and bridge building.

it is my personal philosophy there is a difference between anger and hate – anger can be channeled into action and example and good. hate makes you have a commonality with all the other evil sectors in this world and i refuse to be a part of it.

as for nonbinary gender – basically this is an umbrella term which means “is not male or female”. nonbinary people are included under the T or “trans” letter in LGBTQ because their assigned sex (AFAB, AMAB assigned female/male at birth) does not align with their gender. however, many nonbinary people do not consider themselves trans and consider themselves simply nonbinary. but many do consider themselves trans. it is up to personal choice.

there are several nonbinary genders: agender (feeling like one does not have a gender at all, genderless), genderfluid (fluid gender which switches to more female or male depending), genderqueer (a catchall term for many of these identities or some combined), nonbinary (feeling neither totally male or female, or feeling both, or feeling both but one more than the other, or feeling a new gender which is male/female combined), Two Spirit (a term specifically for use only for certain people from various indigenous societies/cultures which describes a lauded subset of people who have two genders or a conduit between genders), demigender (feeling partially male or female), etc. the list goes on.

i know a lot of people will scoff at this and think - “oh that isnt REAL” “there are only two genders”. well guess what? it is real. it has been my life for literally as long as i can remember back into childhood. it wasn’t until a few years ago i discovered the term for it, and it wasn’t until last week that i decided i want to use gender neutral pronouns. i remember one day when i was in highschool i asked myself “am i trans??” i remember being so scared i cried for a day and repressed it so hard. i have never aligned or fit in in that way. i remember telling my mom as a kid i wasn’t a boy or a girl. i remember always struggling so hard trying to decide who to be. i remember doing a google search as a kid and reading about Two Spirit people of various indigenous cultures and thinking ��� my god. it’s “me”. it was the first thing i ever saw that spoke to an understanding of my identity, and i felt such immense comfort i cant even describe it to you.

but now, after coming out to myself and the world i am literally the happiest with myself i have ever been in my entire life. i finally feel like i am not living inside myself, that when people meet me they know exactly who i am because im not hiding it anymore. my whole life i always had this little voice in my head saying “the person they think they are meeting/seeing isnt the whole you and they will never really know you, no one does”. i am “out” to my family and friends who matter and i am so proud of myself. im not afraid of being visible. in fact, i want to promote it.

im a future doctor and i can tell you with 100% certainty there is biological basis for separation of gender and sex. whether it it hormone levels, chromosomal activity, genome structure, brain chemistry, brain physiology and anatomy, or likely an infinitely complex amalgamation of all that and more. but one doesnt have to be a doctor to have credit in saying this: i can tell you, just as me, a nonbinary person - i am real. and i dont want to hide or suffocate anymore. society’s rules and binaries are truly blind. they leave out so, so many people. and we are at a revolution in our culture right now that i hope is going to change that exclusion forever. i hope people will see other people free and realize the strictures and rules they were brought up to live behind arent all that exists.

i always say it like this: if you are cisgender (a person whose gender matches their sex at birth) it is not your job to “understand” a trans or nonbinary person. because you literally cant. you can’t pass judgment on something you literally cannot experience. a cisgendered person’s brain is not built with the chemistry/function of someone who experiences a nonbinary life. there is nothing wrong with that. but the job of a cisgendered person is to say: “i will never understand what that feels like, but i will -believe- it is real because trans and nonbinary people have the dignity of personhood, they are PEOPLE, just like me, and if they tell me this is how their bodies work it must be how it is working inside of them.”

and one more thing - gender identity has nothing to do with gender presentation. which means, a nonbinary person who dresses femme, wears make up and has long hair is just as nonbinary as a masculine presenting nonbinary or androgynous nonbinary person. a cisgendered woman who wears tshirts and baseball hats because that is what makes her comfortable is still a woman. a cisgenderd man who wears makeup is still a man. a trans woman who wears suits is still a woman. a transman who likes makeup is still a man. your gender is in your head, your sex/genitals are in your pants, and your aesthetic preference is just how you hapoen to like to decorate your body.

sexual orientation is separate from all of this, and is simply who you are attracted to. a cisgendered woman can be attracted to women: lesbian, poly, pan, bi. a nonbinary person can be bi, pan, poly too. a transman can also be bi, gay, pan, asexual, etc. a cisgendered man can be hetero or gay.

dysphoria is psychological and physical discomfort with ones sex/genitals/body/body function because it does not align with one’s gender. some trans/nonbinary people experience and many dont! so for instance as a nonbinary person i sometimes get intense dysphoria over my chest (breasts) and menstruation. more often than not i deal with it, sometimes im even proud of it, i am proud of surviving as a female-bodied person in this misogynistic world! im proud of the perspective it gives me on humanity. but if i could get rid of them would i? most days, most likely! ive always wanted to get rid of my breasts, i legit hate them. but some days i can deal. i console myself by saying all genitals are homologous to each other - male and female gentials are essentially the reverse of one another and so the same. they dont dictate who you are. if a woman with cancer gets an oophrectomy does thay make her not a woman anymore? of course not! if a man has his testicles removed is he no longer a man? am i a woman because i have a vagina? nope! gender isn’t one’s body. as a nonbinary pansexual person my identity is pretty firmly in the grey area lol. i consider myself an attractive androgynous. i am proud of who i am and what i look like, even when im not totally content.

i hope some of this helps and i hope you will spread acceptance! sorry this got so long but i wanted to give a real answer. always feel free to ask anything else, weird or not weird, i promise i wont get offended. :)