Sleeping for 12 hours because of pain and waking up to see established people on archaeology twitter tweeting transphobic & ableist rubbish, today is truly not the day.

A thread on everything bad here. 1/9

Having children don't make you more of a woman. Let's be clear on that. Thinking so is bio-essentialist, transmisogynist & ableist.

Women who are infertile, who chose not to have children, can't have children for medical reasons etc, are all still women. 2/9

Using "has children" as a measure of how much of a woman someone is, is just beyond gross and skeevy and I hate it. 3/9

And... the age thing. I mean, sure, with age, experience might come. But as is blatantly clear, that doesn't mean the person learns from it or anything. And again, it doesn't make you any more or less of a woman?? 4/9

"young women pulling apart older women for sport", is tbf, a genius move of silencing any criticism, & also the reason I'm not replying directly, or tagging OP. Because criticism isn't "pulling apart for sport". It's holding people to standards, to practice what they preach. 5/9

"women don't attack (or criticise or whatev) other women" is a long held liberal-feminist view. It forgets about the other oppressions women face, and paints the person with criticism as violent, aggressive, and a threat. 6/9

This shows that archaeology has a damn long way to go when it comes to understanding gender. If people can't even have a nuanced understanding of it in the modern day, I'm really uncertain that they can do a decent job understanding it in the past. 7/9

Also shows why the number of openly trans* archaeologists is still tiny. Hatred in the field is still rampant. 8/9

TDLR: the only thing that dictates how much of a woman you are, is how you feel about yourself and womanhood.

Women don't need to look a certain way, behave a certain way, or anything else, to be valid as women.

Archaeologists need to stop with their cis nonsense. 9/9