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Anastasia

Anastasia

@aletheia327.bsky.social

1.2K followers 76 following 160 posts

she/her, queer, millennial, Wittigian radical feminist

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Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Jan 21

I wasn't planning on moving to bsky, since my Twitter experience is very psychologically violent and I was expecting that aspect of it to port over too, but one cross post later I'm feeling a bit more optimistic, so I suppose we'll see.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Aug 4

The transphobia itself doesn't come up in this screenshot, but anti-transmasculinity is one conceptual step away from this, and the weapon they'll hand you so you can feel more secure in the 'value' you have under patriarchy is transmisogyny. The logic all just runs together.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Aug 4

This is what 'womanhood as biological reality' is really about. It's teleology, treating it like some sort of social ill if you're not positive enough about the possibility of pregnancy. Romanticizing reproductive capacity becomes 'pro-woman,' any challenge must be stamped out.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Aug 4

It really cannot be overstated how this type of traditionalist propaganda has worked its way into liberal and radical spaces through transphobic feminism. It's the same rhetorical trick--not accepting 'womanhood' (defined as reproductive capacity, naturalized as neutral) is 'misogyny.'

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 20

That's just derangement tbh. Radicalization does kinda snap your mind.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 19

I mean, the context is almost always that people think the underlying problem with TERFs is that they are not positive enough about womanhood. I agree that most of the GC crowd (including many of the radfeminists) are very protectionistic, but I don't think that's usually what's being highlighted.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 19

They will get angry when trans women enjoy the trappings of womanhood, but they will sometimes get even angrier when trans women say that womanhood is just subordination. They will interpret every possible relation a trans woman could have to womanhood as misogyny because they're transmisogynists.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 19

They want there to be something wonderful beneath, so they rehabilitate reproduction itself, Catholic style, and refuse to look too closely at how that's socially constructed and coercive too. Or they treat it as glorious and terrible at once, and reframe misogynistic oppression as a badge of honor.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 19

There's this common misconception that TERFs "define womanhood in terms of suffering," and it's not true. They are just radical feminist enough to understand that gender is a social dynamic and womanhood constructed through subordination, but they rebel against the full implications of this.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 19

It's the other way around, it's pro-trans radical feminists who define womanhood exclusively in terms of gender subordination and TERFs who lose their shit over it and throw a fit over how misogynistic it is to not join their fertility cult.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 19

Sort of! It's not 100% about capacity because they use teleology so that they can cover infertile cis women also, but the narrative there is going to be more about how it's a tragic "female" condition so you're deserving of empathy.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 19

Every time people cry "you're reducing women to walking uteruses," they do two things: they give TERFs ammunition to say their opponents are misogynists who think female reproductive anatomy is disgusting, and they divert attention away from the actual goal and primary target of this ideology.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 19

I wish people wouldn't say that TERFs reduce women to reproductive anatomy, because this is actually a сis supremacist project aimed at improving the status of сis women, especially straight ones, by leaning into transmisogyny and shoring up the patriarchal value attached to reproductive capacity.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 17

Their entire ideology is about prioritizing theoretical possibilities, like women's representation becoming disproportionately trans (something that implicitly relies on the false assumption that trans women have "male" privilege), over the very real vulnerabilities that trans people experience.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Apr 17

This is really disgusting, and I feel like the journalistic neutrality here, where gender critical propaganda and narratives are presented and then left unexamined, is part of the problem. It's supposed to look like "reasonable concerns," not like implausible scenarios dreamed up by a hate movement.

The Associated Press @apnews.com · Apr 16

The U.K. Supreme Court rules that Britain's equalities law defines a woman as someone born biologically female. The ruling means a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female should not be considered a woman for equality purposes.

UK Supreme Court rules that equalities law defines a woman as someone born biologically female

The Supreme Court has ruled that the U.K. equalities law defines a woman as someone born biologically female.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 28

I care about men being sexually victimized, I don't care that a lot of straight adult men are too busy worrying about their masculinity to form meaningful relationships.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 28

Talking about how men get disciplined into being patriarchal subjects is fine, the way people talk about it is almost always MRA adjacent and geared towards denying that men even have real social power.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 28

There's no reason to be going around saying systems of exploitation harm everyone.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 28

You can talk about how men suffer because of masculinity until the end of time, and it's not even completely false, but the catch is that gender is still hierarchical. They're still empowered to see any drawbacks as an affront to the privileges they feel entitled to by virtue of being men.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 28

I think people who are drawn to the liberal talking point that patriarchy harms (cishet) men too don't really understand that misogynistic men already believe themselves to be the true victims of patriarchal society. It's part of why they insist that women owe them sex and deference.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 26

She's not saying that feminism is inherently transphobic, she's just talking about an intersectional issue that objectively exists.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 26

People sometimes don't want to talk about this because there's a tendency on the left to treat intersectional problems within feminism as evidence that feminism is uniquely reactionary (no movement has solved intersectional issues), but you do need to acknowledge it if you want to guard against it.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 26

The thing about seeing trans women as a secondary victim you can extend some degree of solidarity to on your own terms is that as soon as you don't have the resources to do that (financially, emotionally, etc.), they can become a threat or drain to you instead, and that way lies TERF radicalization.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 26

This is frankly just true and something people should be willing to wrestle with. The power and sense of authority we lack in relation to cis men, we're enabled to seek out within the category of womanhood itself, and this often includes taking a 'noblesse oblige' attitude towards trans inclusion.

Talia "Estro Junkies" Bhatt ♀︎♀︎ @taliabhatt.itch.io · Mar 26

There's an important thing to understand about many "trans-inclusive" cis feminists.

A lot of them recognize that trans women are oppressed, and many even acknowledge that trans women have a place in feminism. They believe that place should be secondary to "real" feminist concerns, however.

Mallory Moore @sexabolition.blog · Mar 26

But as soon as you decide that TERFism is necessary and the tranners are getting too uppity, you then find friends like the anti trans feminists who make jokes about killing trans women with cancer (fair play for women's original director) and get pulled into social circles slowly radicalising you

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 16

This is why straight privilege exists for women even though heterosexuality as a structure reifies and facilitates women's oppression--because your value as a woman is tied to desirability (and marriageability) and you're incentivized to guard whatever status patriarchy will afford you.

Anastasia @aletheia327.bsky.social · Mar 16

I feel like we have to constantly relitigate the fact that heterosexuality is violent and oppressive for women by design, that you are socially coerced into it, that part of what this means is that you are rewarded with social status and proximity to power for conforming and punished if you don't.