Feminism

by

Identify with Truth

We live in an alternate reality, a reality where if we say up is down and down is up then it must be so, and anyone who dares question this better run for the hills because they will come for you. In today’s reality, the child who pointed out that the emperor was naked would have been stoned for pointing out the obvious because pointing out the obvious and stating the truth means that the child is infringing on the rights of the emperor to identify as wearing fancy clothes.

Yesterday I stumbled into one of these modern “conversations” (if you could call it that) that was stepping into a rabbit hole of this modern insanity. I honestly don’t even know what got things going. I did not read through the entire thread. I just saw that someone had posted that The Midwives Alliance of North America was saying that if someone claimed men cannot give birth, then that person was “transphobic” and their words were “hate speech.”

Genuinely baffled, I asked the question, “How is it that stating the obvious is transphobic? What does phobia have to do with any of it?” I do know that the use of the word phobic has been attached to any kind of group hatred, when it really isn’t a phobia, but the label can suit. However here, I could not see how the label suited. How is saying men can’t give birth hatred of trans people?

I also pointed out that in claiming that men can give birth, it is  a complete dismissal of my experience as a female who has carried a child in my body and has given birth, and all of the attendant experiences of being a female outside of birthing and mothering. I said, “Please tell me how it is “transphobic” to point out something that is simply true? Where is the phobia in this? I don’t think it’s fair that a man can compare his body to mine. He has not and will never give birth. He has not and will never experience carrying a child in his womb; indeed he has no womb. He has not and will never experience what it is to be female, even if he cloaks himself in all that a female would experience. He will never experience menstruation and everything associated with it. Why is it considered “transphobic” to state this very obvious fact? It dismisses and diminishes my pregnancy and birth experience. It dismisses and diminishes the legacy of being a woman. It is thievery to try and take this away.”

In response, I was called a TERF and some other acronyms. I was called a transphobe. I was told my words were “hate speech,” and told by one person that they “knew several men who had wombs and had given birth.”

I sat and stared at my computer screen in complete and utter bafflement. WTF? Had some scientific calamity worse than cloning happened whereby humans decided they wanted men to have wombs and give birth so now it is so? Seriously? Are they transplanting them? How are they doing the hormones? Again, WTF?

Then it dawned on me. Oh! I get it. It’s a labeling thing, a language problem. The person who gave birth was actually a biological female. She just called herself a man and lived as a man so she is a man–or rather he is a man–so therefore men gave birth. What a fucking clusterfuck.

So I said so. I said, This is a label thing. You’re labeling biological females as men, so then men can give birth. I get it. Then I got online screamed at for stating this, telling me that it isn’t a “label” thing, but an “identity” thing, said very sarcastically because I’m clearly not in the know and I’m infringing on someone else’s rights by failing to label the identity thing the identity thing by calling it a labeling thing.

Honestly, before this, I thought I got it. I figured someone wants to identify as something else, more power to them, but it doesn’t change their biology. I also knew that there are some very rabid and abusive biological men who call themselves transwomen who verbally abuse and threaten violence on anyone who dares to question this identity, regardless of biology. Apparently there are also those who know “transmen” and who are “transmen” (biological females calling themselves men) who will also verbally assault and threaten violence on anyone who dares question their reality, too. This is a rabbit hole, and a scary one at that. On college campuses across the US, this “reality” is taught as reality called “Queer Theory,” and anyone who questions it is shut down, often viciously, including losing their livelihoods. This is insane. What is more insane is that the Midwives Alliance of North America, a group that purportedly exists to help females give birth, a group specifically by and for mothers, is filled with those who buy into this nonsense.

The people “yelling” at me for daring to question their identity reality asked me why I thought it was offensive that men could step in and take over my female experience. They asked how in the world does this impact me?

My response was that first, it is intellectually dishonest to on the one hand claim that individuals who want to identify as something biologically impossible can’t be questioned about this, but when I claim as an individual that I find it offensive for a man to co-opt my experience as a woman and as a mother, I am being abusive. At every avenue they shut down any discourse. Because many people who identify as something other than their biology have often been the victims of horrible abuse, those who support them see any questioning of their choices as abusive, too. They can’t see their own abusive behavior however, quickly jumping to the offensive while believing themselves on the defensive in protection of these victims who identify.

My second response was to say that I have decided that I am going to identify as a black woman. I have kinky hair; I’ll just dye it black. I will go and tan until I’m dark brown and wear brown contact lenses. I will change my name to Lakeisha and hang out with my homies. I’ll listen to Beyoncé and Rihanna because they are my sistahs. I’ll wear a lot of bling. I can share in the black experience of exploitation and slavery. I can fight to ride on the front of the bus, holding the deaths of Hayes and Mary Turner in my heart because their experience is my experience because I want it to be and therefore it is so.

All of this identity bullshit, and yes, I’m beginning to consider it all bullshit, is just co opting stereotypes. It is fully buying into the culture that creates the stereotype. If you aren’t a part of the dominant culture that creates the stereotype then you wouldn’t have a stereotype to co-opt because the stereotypes come from the dominant culture.

If I want to identify as a black woman, I’ll take the stereotypes of what it means to be a black woman and appropriate them, tell everyone that this is how I identify, and then it is true. If anyone questions me, then they are being hateful and infringing on my rights. I am changing my identity in response to abuse by the patriarchal system and the dominant culture, so as a victim of this system, I have a right to do so.

How is this in any way different than co-opting the stereotypes of the biology of male and females and then abusing anyone who questions it? It isn’t. A biological male who wants to claim my experience as a female who has carried children in my womb and given birth and is a mother and has experienced all there is to experience as a female is offensive. My saying so isn’t hate speech, it’s truth. Those who call truth hate speech are just the same as abusers in every other situation: they are projecting onto their victims what they are and what they do. Threatening me, verbally abusing me, trying to shut down these words is abuse.  Considering the dominant culture is completely abusive and well, domineering, none of this is surprising. It is the product of the people of the lie, where lies are truth and the truth is a lie. Keep everyone guessing so no one knows what is real anymore.

I used to work in an office with a sociopath. For the first six months, I thought everything was hunky dory. Gradually however, I started to question what was right in front of my face. Am I insane? I wondered. Wait, did I just experience that, or am I losing my mind? Over and over, I questioned reality and my sanity. When I finally reached out and asked a women who was becoming my friend if the insane reality I was experiencing was indeed reality, she confirmed it. No, you are not insane. Yes, what you are experiencing is true. Yes, the person causing all of this is an abusive sociopath.

This is how it is in this culture. It is a sociopathic, insane system where up is down and down is up and if you question it then you are the bad guy. Little children may not point out that the emperor is naked.

We must all resist this. We must all continue to speak the truth even if those who would co-opt and change and act like the sociopaths that they are would try to shut us down and threaten us with violence. Identify with truth, even if it kills you. It is only in refusing to participate in the house of mirrors madness they would have us believe is reality can we have any hope of shutting it down.

by

These Breasts were Made for Feeding

This article was published on Huffington Post and can be seen here. If you like it, buzz it up and feel free to share, with proper accreditation of course.

These Breasts were Made for Feeding

~ by Lara M. Gardner

Time magazine recently ran a cover story about long-term breastfeeding. It depicted a cover photo of a woman standing and staring into the distance, a three-year-old boy standing on a chair in front of her, attached to her breast. Needless to say, the photo and article caused an uproar. Some people thought it was obscene. Others, myself included, thought it was misleading, to say the least.

It doesn’t surprise me that breastfeeding and breastfeeding to an age that more naturally suits biology has come to the fore in the public consciousness. It fits right in with the resurrection of the right-wing war on women, statements by politicians that women should never have been able to vote, laws that force women to share their sex lives with employers, and basically anything that says women cannot and should not be able to determine anything about themselves, and most especially their sexuality or anything related to their bodies (unless they are getting their breasts cut off because they have cancer, then it is okay).

All this furor over women breastfeeding children beyond an age our culture has deemed appropriate (corporate profits aside) belies a greater underlying issue. Ultimately, any discussion of breastfeeding as obscene is part of this American cultural hostility against women. Our culture would like to maintain that women’s bodies are property and should be available at all times as sexual playthings. Seeing the female body as life-giving and nurturing (i.e., breastfeeding) is a far more powerful message, and certainly not something that can be owned and controlled.

The Time photo is offensive precisely because it is obscene, but it is not obscene because the young child in it is breastfeeding. Rather, it is obscene because it has taken something that is nurturing (and arguably scientifically best for children and women), and turned it into something salacious and indecent.  Nothing about the photo is in any way representative of breastfeeding as it is. It seeks to make breastfeeding seem suggestive and forbidden, something tawdry that should be stopped before it gets out of control, something that should be hidden under a blanket.  No matter that breasts are flaunted as sexual playthings in advertising and on magazine covers. In the latter context, breasts are kept in their place. It is the former that touches a nerve because it suggests that breasts might have another, more fundamental purpose, one that doesn’t involve breasts as property or women as objects.

Perhaps the editors of Time intended for the photo to inflame and kickstart further discussion about women’s bodies and women’s place in our culture. Perhaps they understood that breastfeeding is something so fundamental to being a woman, something as life-giving as the birth process itself, that it should be acceptable in our culture, without question and without blankets. Perhaps they wanted to make it loud and clear just how ridiculous it is to claim this act is obscene. Maybe they weren’t just trying to sell magazines. I doubt it, but it is possible.

(In the interests of full disclosure, this article was written while my 2 1/2 year old daughter nursed in my lap.)

by

More Pithy Observation

Why is it that so many people think that for a woman to be self-actualized and equal — in the workplace, in the home, in her sexuality — she has to act like a man? I don’t see how sleeping with a bunch of men and ignoring them later makes me any stronger or wiser. I don’t see how shattering the glass ceiling by working ridiculous hours and ignoring my children gives me any sort of independence. I don’t see how ignoring household chores and letting my children care for themselves before they really understand who they are offers me freedom. So often what is held up as equality isn’t equal at all, it’s reduction of the female self to an outdated patriarchal view of how the world ought to operate. And I’m simply not on board with it.

That’s all.

by

Lowering the Glass Ceiling

See this piece on Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lara-m-gardner/lowering-the-glass-ceilin_b_128346.html

I would like to take you on a journey of the imagination…

Imagine that Sarah Palin is not a woman, but a man.  We’ll call him Mr. Palin.  Mr. Palin has been mayor of a small town in Alaska, and governor of that state for less than two years, a state whose entire population is less than that of most US major metropolitan areas and in this position.  In this position, Mr. Palin is being investigated for questionable conduct.  Imagine that he obtained his passport within the last couple of years, and that he considers foreign policy experience living next door to another country.  Take it further and imagine he believes the earth was created in a few thousand years, that dinosaurs roamed the earth with humans, and that creationism should be taught in public schools.  Suppose also that this man believes women should not have the right to choose, and that rape victims should pay for their own rape kits.  Imagine Mr. Palin hunted moose from a helicopter and sought removal of environmental protections for polar bears. Imagine he has no knowledge of financial markets, the cold war, weapons systems, or Middle Eastern history.  Imagine all of this and more.

If this were true, and Sarah Palin were a man, would he have even been on the longest list of potential US vice-presidential candidates for any political party?  It would be unthinkable.

Why are the standards for this woman running for vice-president so much lower than they would be for a man?  Shouldn’t the standards be the same?  To determine whether someone did not get a job because of something other than merit, simply slip whatever that person is not into the position in your mind and ask yourself whether the same standards would apply.  If there are disparities in the standards required between two people seeking the same position, it is quite likely that discrimination is occurring in some form, even if it is allowing someone to be worse at something in an effort to pretend there is no -ism taking place.

Here, we have a woman running for vice-president who is grossly underqualified.  Those who support her claim that her position as a vice-presidential candidate is evidence of women shattering the glass ceiling.  Actually, the opposite is true.  Allowing her to take a position for which she is not qualified and giving her extra points for being a woman is the ultimate in sexism:  it is using gender as a qualifier rather than merit.  Beyond the obvious arguments against her abilities, her position as a vice-presidential candidate assumes on some level that a qualified woman could not perform the job.  Sarah Palin’s place on the Republican ticket does not shatter the glass ceiling, it lowers it.