If you really thought they were women
Jane Clare Jones nailing things down:
This argument is not, therefore, an appeal for empathy with the damage done to us by male power and projection, by the immemorial and immovable demand that we efface ourselves before the needs of more important others. We know our pain doesn’t count in your economy, that it only registers on your balance books as a sly deceptive weapon or a vicious wilful harm to the interests of the only kind of people given credit. That you’re so certain of the justness of your accounting, you never seem to notice, that this one obvious fact, gives the lie to the ‘validity’ of your catechism. If you really thought that they were women, their pain would be a nought to you as well.
If you really thought that they were women, you would ignore them and talk over them, at best, just as you do us. If you really thought that they were women, you would bully and threaten them as you do us. If you really thought that they were women, you would unleash violence against them, at worst, just as you do us.
In response to your demands, for our existence and its words, all we’ve said is ‘no.’ We haven’t threatened, or intimidated, or besieged, or tried to cancel. We’ve explained, millions of times, why we’re saying no, why we won’t let you take our words, because we need them. But the economy of entitlement that belies all your claims to gender non-conformity, will not respect our boundary. The boundaries here are literal, around our spaces, around the de-lineation of our words, but they are, above all, figurative. They arise from the expression of our own subjectivity. The naming of our needs and interests. They arise when we say ‘no,’ and ‘I don’t want,’ and ‘you can’t have.’ In an ethical economy it should be understood that the demand ‘I want to take’ never, between adults, has right of force over ‘I don’t want to give.’ You do not take from others what is not given freely, you don’t coerce them into giving things they do not want to give. Doing so is an act of narcissistic domination. It subordinates an-other’s needs and interests entirely to your own, and in so doing, annihilates their subjectivity. In its core, this is the logic, and the deep traumatic injury, of rape.
Women have a right to say no.
TA: Why won’t you accept that TWAW?
Women: Well, if we can just talk about our legitimate conc…
TA: Your concerns can suck my girl-dick, bitches. Now, why won’t you accept that TWAW?
Exceptionally good essay, bullseye in fact. This whole TRA thing is degenerate and perpetuated by the sexual deviants and social deviants who, thanks very much to fucking twitter, subject us to instantaneous exposure to their hate and nastiness. It’s overwhelmingly male mysogynists, that much is obvious.
This makes me think of all the uneducated me-too suck ups who put some pronoun or other on their twitter bio, including politicians like Warren and AOC and others. If they knew the iceberg of misogynistic hate that the pronoun tip of it represents, they might not be so quick to join in with the bullshit. They need to read that brilliant and informative article. Bravo, Jane Clare Jones, and thanks.
I also thought this was a smashing essay. Thanks for drawing our attention to it. Here are some of my favorite bits:
Gender is the system of entitlement that runs along the lines of sex. Let’s say that again.
And, of course, the conclusion:
Yes, indeed, “if people wanted to convince us that they were women, and not a threat, telling us to choke on cocks and hammering down the door with bats was probably not the way to go.”
The TRAs are proving themselves, day by day, to be no more than MRAs in skirts. How do young women get sucked into this hateful, desperate violence?
Won’t work… there’s none so deaf as those who won’t hear. Short of actually being on the end of the torrent of abuse few if any will lift a fucking finger.
It makes me despair… I want to do something. Where oh where do I point my sword?
Read that… not so much advocating violence… but yeah, what do you do? Hell if I know…
Figurative sword. Understood.
Sorry, you need to say it five times in all caps via twitter for it to be true.
“You radical feminists! First you say women need to be more assertive and less gender-conforming …. and then you change your mind.”
/s
From the article:
Women have been expected to justify every time they say no, sometimes to the point of taking it to court. Now the very act of a lesbian saying “no” has been deemed an act of bigotry. No one should have to justify their boundaries; they are their boundaries, for their reasons. And if a lesbian doesn’t want to have sex with someone, she should not have to justify the no.