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Questioning Transphobia links to a post at Problem Chylde called The Top Five Ways That White Feminists Continue To Discredit Women of Color. For both bloggers, I think, the problem boils down to exclusion: "...it attempts to define what feminism is, what counts as feminism, and tells us that we aren't really part of it" (PC); "as being outside the movement, as being, at best allies to feminism, and not truly able to be a part of feminism" (QT).
This plugged in to some thoughts I've had about the difficult discussions of race and racism online, particularly in fandom (and therefore particularly amongst women). What I'm wondering is to what extent the fannish obsession with boundaries, and the schoolgirl thing about forming cliques, tends to whittle the debate down to simplistic binaries - who's on our side of the line, and who isn't.
Fandom spends a great deal of time trying to define boundaries - the most obvious debate being what counts as "canon" and what isn't. Is it An Unearthly Child or 100,000 BC? Which is more valid, tie-ins or fanfic? There's a parallel between this fanboyish behaviour and the bad habit in fangirldom of forming cliques - not by including mates in private conversation, but by publicly excluding individuals through indirect aggression (anonymous bitching, malicious gossip, "open letters", etc).
I've never really understood the thing about rigidly defining the edges of feminism. Or femaleness, for that matter. For example: who gives a toss whether progressive men are allowed to be feminists or merely "pro-feminist"? What's important is what they're actually doing about inequality. Similarly, the exclusion of transwomen from women-only spaces often seems not to be about how transwomen behave, but about trying to sharply define "female". Literally: who's allowed in the clubhouse and who isn't?
None of which is to say that I don't have exactly the same impulses as everyone else. Not only do I have my own gut feelings about what counts as canon, but I'm aware that sometimes my brain will cough up remarks like "But he's really a boy" or "Hmmf, he doesn't look very Aboriginal to me". Yeah, thanks for that, brain. Plus there's that dreadful thing where you see a name (or a username) and your grey cells do that internal scan for which category they belong to (sweetie / asshole / lol-bringer / complete cunt etc etc). Particularly dangerous when you're bad at names and tend to mix them up, as I do.
Anyway. So I'm talking about a powerful impulse to exclude, an impulse I think we've got to recognise and overcome. Audios aren't canon. New skool fans aren't real fans. She's a bad feminist. And she's not really a feminist at all. We're not talking to her. She is beyond the pale.
Now I must clean me lute.
This plugged in to some thoughts I've had about the difficult discussions of race and racism online, particularly in fandom (and therefore particularly amongst women). What I'm wondering is to what extent the fannish obsession with boundaries, and the schoolgirl thing about forming cliques, tends to whittle the debate down to simplistic binaries - who's on our side of the line, and who isn't.
Fandom spends a great deal of time trying to define boundaries - the most obvious debate being what counts as "canon" and what isn't. Is it An Unearthly Child or 100,000 BC? Which is more valid, tie-ins or fanfic? There's a parallel between this fanboyish behaviour and the bad habit in fangirldom of forming cliques - not by including mates in private conversation, but by publicly excluding individuals through indirect aggression (anonymous bitching, malicious gossip, "open letters", etc).
I've never really understood the thing about rigidly defining the edges of feminism. Or femaleness, for that matter. For example: who gives a toss whether progressive men are allowed to be feminists or merely "pro-feminist"? What's important is what they're actually doing about inequality. Similarly, the exclusion of transwomen from women-only spaces often seems not to be about how transwomen behave, but about trying to sharply define "female". Literally: who's allowed in the clubhouse and who isn't?
None of which is to say that I don't have exactly the same impulses as everyone else. Not only do I have my own gut feelings about what counts as canon, but I'm aware that sometimes my brain will cough up remarks like "But he's really a boy" or "Hmmf, he doesn't look very Aboriginal to me". Yeah, thanks for that, brain. Plus there's that dreadful thing where you see a name (or a username) and your grey cells do that internal scan for which category they belong to (sweetie / asshole / lol-bringer / complete cunt etc etc). Particularly dangerous when you're bad at names and tend to mix them up, as I do.
Anyway. So I'm talking about a powerful impulse to exclude, an impulse I think we've got to recognise and overcome. Audios aren't canon. New skool fans aren't real fans. She's a bad feminist. And she's not really a feminist at all. We're not talking to her. She is beyond the pale.
Now I must clean me lute.
