vuvaliniterf:appropriately-inappropriate:lesbian-lizards:‘Has “a thing” for stripping Marsha P Johns
vuvaliniterf:appropriately-inappropriate:lesbian-lizards:‘Has “a thing” for stripping Marsha P Johnson of her identity’ How can we strip anyone of an identity? I am female. You can iron my breasts and sew my vulva shut, remove my ovaries and uterus, and I’d still be female down to the cell. I am mixed race. You can call me white, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was born to a Latino man and a White woman. What you call me has no bearing on the fact of my existence. I am an immigrant. You can say I’ve always been culturally exposed to Canadian culture and that would be almost true–but that doesn’t negate the fact that I packed a bag, hopped on a plane and left my country of birth for a strange new land. I am a lesbian. You can call me straight. You can call me a gynesexual. You can even call me a terf or tell me I just haven’t met the right man yet. It doesn’t change what or who I am. If your identity is so easily taken from you, then it must not have gone down that deep. And anyways, Marsha called themselves male in an interview days before they died. Isn’t ignoring that “stripping [her] identity”?This really gets at how meaningless “identity” has become as a concept mostly thanks to transgenderism, although I think liberals in general are now “identifying” into groups despite having no claim to those groups. (I’m thinking of liberals who “identify as Marxists despite not actually believing in/practicing Marxist theory.)Identity used to be a useful word to describe how belonging to a group shapes your experiences and who you are, but now it means: “I’m not a member of this group in any objective way, but I’m going to identify into it anyway (and I don’t give a fuck what actual members of that group think about it, if anything they’re oppressing me for not honoring my identity).”As a result, more and more I find myself avoiding the term “identity” to describe anything that has a basis in material reality. As an example, I’d only use “identity” to describe someone who calls themselves gay or lesbian if I have reason to believe they’re lying, you know, like Erika Moen.Yeah I’m getting really tired of this whole “you are whatever you say you are!” brand of activism.There was that post recently where someone was saying anyone who says they are a feminist is a feminist, even if they don’t actually believe in feminist theory or do anything to actually help women. Lesbians in particular have to deal with everyone and their uncle calling themselves a lesbian without getting any say in the matter. When we do try to say “hey, maybe don’t call yourself a lesbian if you date men? (or are one)” and get yelled at for “policing” other people’s sexualities… Not to mention the whole “anyone who identifies as a woman/man is one!” (In regards to that: I used to not even have much of a problem with males ‘identifying’ with/as women or vice versa but they used to at least acknowledge that identifying as something didn’t literally make them that thing.)And there’s so much discourse surrounding “gatekeeping” and “exclusionists” as a result of identity politics. But who are the ones losing their spaces and language in these cases? -- source link