A Statement On Feminism

I have been aware for years now that there are people avoiding or blocking me and my website because they see the word "feminism" and automatically assume either I or the study materials listed within advocate for trans exclusion. This is a completely false assumption and it was irresponsible of me to avoid addressing this problem for this long.

Firstly, it makes good sense why this would happen. Transgender people are a persecuted minority everywhere in the world. In the current era of humanity there is no relative safety in transgender existence. If you are in solidarity with the transgender people of the world, you are correct to be concerned about potential hostile ideas and actors.

In certain parts of the world, particularly in the English-speaking space, certain terrible ideas about sex and gender have become dominant. It should be noted that it takes an incredible amount of time, effort, and resources for ideas to become dominant in any given society. We all have different perspectives and opinions on many different things, but to have a particular set of thoughts constantly shoved into your mind through the media, and by extension the participants on social media, should make us all question the origin and intent of these ideas.

When an idea becomes dominant enough it begins to invade entire belief systems. It is transformed and adapted so that it becomes compatible with the things that we already strongly believe. As a crude example, take the idea that your gender identity is completely determined by your biological characteristics. This idea is older than some religions and political ideologies, but religious and political leaders do the labor of incorporating, justifying, propagating, and normalizing this old idea as if the solution to sex and gender was always present in their ideological space. In reality, it's a new and different mutation of an old belief that is used to pursue the same intent of that old belief.

The example given is a very anti-feminist belief, in the most literal sense. Feminism arose directly as a response to the injustice that was legitimized by such beliefs. It arose out of people who were oppressed from birth because they were assigned a specific social position due to their genetic makeup. If we were to try and locate a singular purpose that defines the entire existence of feminism, it would be to oppose this old idea of biological determination so that people can live to be free from the suffering it perpetuates.

To understand why having your biology determine your social position in the gender hierarchy is anti-feminist, you need to understand the gender system. To keep things easy, though oversimplified, we call this system the patriarchy.

As an aside, it's extremely important to understand that the precise use of language has to sometimes be sacrificed during the development of the content it represents: patriarchy is not simply only about men just as feminism is not only about women. If you get caught up giving disproportionate energy to trivial issues, you've already lost the point. Getting burnt out on petty discourse is not only harmful and counter-productive, it is also a tactic of counter-insurgency. The word insurgency means uprising: if you give a shit at all about the existence of trans people, or are trans yourself, you should be rising up. Develop healthier coping mechanisms and slap yourself in the face if you have to. If you consider yourself an ally or a target, there are no excuses. People have struggled and won in the face of their own systematic extermination. You are no different than these people.

Simply put, real feminism is whatever actually works to abolish the gender system. It doesn't matter what it's called, what matters is what it does. You can call it radical, you can call it trans-inclusive, you can call it gay pride, you can call it the parrot's pussy. It does not fucking matter. Read it again: what it matters is what it does. Beyond the spectacle, the aesthetics, and the sensations, what is really happening?

Patriarchy is the exact opposite. It's whatever works to keep the gender system in place. Because it is actually the gender system, it is interested in its own survival. It employs counter-insurgent strategy. It will amplify your mistakes. It will expose your weaknesses. It will manipulate your confusion. It will feed your ignorance. Patriarchy will make you hate all women or some women and all men or all trans people because it makes you feel good, because at the end of the day you will have done nothing to challenge it. You may just end up reinforcing it and becoming the thing you hate, and go to your grave without ever being made aware of it. This is just a tiny example of how the system has survived for thousands of years.

So when a self-proclaimed feminist invalidates the existence of transgender people, what are they really doing? It appears to me that they are persecuting a minority while simultaneously securing their own place in the gender hierarchy. That is not feminism. That is patriarchy, that is anti-feminism. Clear as fucking day. How am I able to see it? Because I read the books. That's why I'm a goddamn librarian.

If I seem overly upset, consider how anti-intellectual it is to be dismissive of a curated source of knowledge that could benefit you or someone you care about, simply because you couldn't investigate for more than a couple of seconds and you let your emotions overtake you. When you act in this manner, it harms us all. Blocking my website actively turns the algorithm against me by reducing the chance of my library to be found. That is the expected behavior of our adversaries, but if we had a direct conversation you would tell me that you are, at the very least, an ally. Once again, consider that the word ally is just a word and what really matters is what you do. Call yourself whatever you want: you are engaging in friendly fire.

I don't call myself anything because I know how ambiguous it is to identify with any label. I could for example call myself a woman, but then there are only two things that matter: what you think it means, and what I think it means. Since nobody ever bothers to sit down and have a deep conversation with me about what a woman is, you are never going to know what I think it means. So, really then, the only thing that matters is what you think it means. I might as well keep my personal identity label to myself, if I have one at all, online and offline.

That is without even taking into consideration the aspect of security. If I had a big sign on my page that said I am "not a TERF" I'm sure it would make you more than a little suspicious. If I called myself trans, why would you even believe me? It is absolutely dangerous to rely on appearances. There is no shortcut to paying sustained attention and calmly investigating the community surrounding you. Get to know people online and offline. We are at war. It doesn't matter how cute, weak, tired, broke, peaceful, pious you think you are, the time has come for you to become heroic. If you disagree, keep it to yourself and don't get in the way of the people fighting for you.

Am I overreacting? Many of us are losing our rights. Some of us are getting sucked into the folds of oblivion. Very few of us know what to do about it. I'm always around to talk about what we should do, but nobody's listening and everybody's forgotten how to be properly social. People disappear all the time and we have no idea what happened to them because we are largely disconnected from each other. All notions of community are a lie because every community is dysfunctional. When life hits you hard, none of your internet friends will really be able to do a fucking thing to help you out — partly because they don't know you well enough, and partly because they need help themselves! Everyone is suffering, and everyone is disconnected.

Did I forget to mention the gays? Your sexual orientation is also assigned to you at birth by this same gender system. If you don't think that the gay struggle and the trans struggle and the women's struggle are the same struggle, you are shooting yourself in the foot. It's all the same system and it all serves the same purpose: to reproduce the bullshit social system that's currently crumbling underneath our feet.

Because we are all practically isolated from each other, it kills us off one by one. Thousands if not millions of us have already reached a level of existential emergency and we feel our death encroaching. If this doesn't apply to you today then it might tomorrow. It's a machine that will grind us all up if we don't work together to overcome it. Do not give in to willful ignorance and self-gratification. Learn to read again, and learn to love reading. I work to make it as easy as possible — that's what the library is for.

Find your love of humanity and do what must be done.