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anyway, I want to talk about the T*RF insistence on womanhood as experiences of pain.
Whenever the topic of "what is womanhood" comes up in these anti-trans discussions, these folks insist that trans women can't possibly know what womanhood is because they haven't experienced X form of oppression.
Which is, honestly, one hell of a way of looking at being a woman? Like, I've literally joked with trans women friends who transition and start experiencing sexism at work with "congrats, welcome to womanhood," but when it comes down to it, that's a really shitty thing.
Because if an identity is solely built out of pain and victimhood, then it has no existence apart from the power structure. Womanhood as pain requires men to be two dimensional things that exist to inflict pain. Men are pain inflicters, women are receivers of pain.
This metric also ignores the fact that trans women experience gendered violence as well, but more to the point: having your entire relationship to how you perceive your gender tied to the pain you've experienced? There's really no way to positively deal with that pain.
At some point, you're literally arguing that gender based violence is necessary and therefore can never logically worked toward its elimination because it is essential to womanhood. I mean, that's the logical conclusion of "womanhood is pain."
I encountered this a little while ago when I was upset about allies horning in on having flags and shit during Pride. I found myself saying "they've never had to come out of the closet in the same way!! they aren't experiencing queer life day in and day out!"
And I realized...
And I realized...
...I was defining my queerness based on my oppression as a lesbian woman and trying, incorrectly, to summarize "the queer experience." The queer experience, for many, is one of pain and losing friends and family and sacrificing to be true to yourself. But it's also one of beauty.
There's beauty in people falling in love and figuring out life together. There's beauty in finding a queer community where you can talk positively about who you are, and make jokes about being gay. There's a thisness to the queer experience that isn't defined by oppression.
I have a young cousin (high school age) who has a lot of queer friends, and at one point turned to her mom and said, "hey, I don't know what I am yet, and I'm okay with that." And her mom was like, "Cool. Let me know when you do figure it out."
And THAT is queer experience too!
And THAT is queer experience too!
And honestly, our goal as women fighting for a better world shouldn't be to draw boundaries around what womanhood is that define us by our worst, most traumatic of experiences.
I am not defined by my pain, as much as it is my experience. My life as a lesbian woman is defined by a truly magical community that has thought deeply about who we are and decided to move forward in joy (and righteous anger when required).
Anyway, I want my lesbian, womanly experience to be defined by sending tiktoks to my queer friends laughing about bisexual jean cuffing and wanting women to step on our necks, not by the rejection I've faced from family.
And for once, can't womanhood be defined by something other than what men do to us? How about women as revolutionaries instead?
